Some people endeavor in risky behavior. They shut themselves off to take on explorations deep inside themselves. They challenge the sunrise, the establishment, their own ghosts. They do this neither for compensation nor reward. They do this for themselves. But they’re doing it for all of us, too. * Artists put themselves in harm’s way because they are compelled. Compelled to interpret, yes. To make account, yes. To change, I hope so.* Artists are not new. Neither is what they’re doing. And not even why they’re doing it is different than 30,000 years ago when people were scratching the guts of the Pont-d’Arc caves in France. It’s how they’re doing it that constantly evolves. * Artists are the prisms by which we evaluate ourselves. They teach us, inspire us, make us doubt and even make us believe in our better angels. They fracture the world around them so we can understand the world around us. * Long Island has always been a haven for artists. Some are legendary. Some die unknown, their greatness unrecognized. Right now, some are finding their ways through personal muck, without compensation, wheezing for fleeting moments of existence—their truest moments—between family, relationships, square jobs, traffic jams and mortgage payments. They navigate through all of that to a special, intangible plane of reality. They are important. * We present a sampling of some who are working and living right here, right now. You may have heard of them, you may have not. But you should know them. —naDa
5th Annual Artist VIP List: Andrew Brischler
Some art is a live wire: Raw, energetic, threatening. Andrew Brischler, a burgeoning artist, has been making his mark with tableau that are just like this (literally, his form is mark-making).
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Candyce Brokaw
The lady of polarity. Her art develops through stream of consciousness, motivated by her self’s need for healing.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Hector deCordova
Long before becoming a pioneer in the Greenport art movement with his wife, deCordova was a well-established, self-made man and self-taught artist.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Lis Dreizen
Works are an articulation of visions brought by the artist’s transcendence from the present to profound impressions in her memory. Though she doesn’t know it at the time.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Jim Gemake
Assemblage is intrinsically deceptive: Appearing to be randomly developed, unplanned and ultimately a spontaneous conception, works well done are nevertheless statements of time, reconciling past with present and looking to the future.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Jerelyn Hanrahan
The long-ago local returns, froth with eclectic impressions that result in supremely sophisticated sketches rendered in black ink on white paper.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Eileen Hickey-Hulme
Striving for cognitive dissonance, this artist reclaims devalued symbols by invoking the large scale and bold colors central to pop art.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Yong Jo Ji & Anna Atanasova
Invoking the flux and freedom of electronic music, the couple pairs their cultural sensibilities—Korean and Bulgarian—to create works that are timely, but also timeless.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Ruby Jackson
Now more than ever artists are heroic due to their compulsion to bring attention to daily realities despite limited commercial relevance.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Thea Lanzisero
The primary shape of this artist’s oeuvre is the circle, to which she gravitates for its cyclical symbolism, quality of openness and passage of air and light through it.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Pola Lanzaro
The meditative qualities of this ancient Asian artform are realized by the viewer and artist alike. Lanzaro is one who is not only keeping the treasured technique alive, but also teaching others.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Damon Tommolino
Works are politically motivated, but aesthetically driven. Instructive, socially oriented tableaux are virtually audible thanks to the energetic palette and refined brushwork.
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Chris Vivas
In the artist’s quest to reconcile perception and reality, he has embarked on epic works that explore the pareidolia—the mind’s eye subscribing images that don’t exist (like a cloud taking the form of a rabbit).
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5th Annual Artist VIP List: Shows Not To Be Missed
Circa Something Gallery and C2 Gallery
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Winner of the Pulse Inaugural Student Artist VIP Scholarship: Andrew Michael Sotiriou
Andrew Sotiriou was chosen among many submissions to receive our Student Artist VIP Scholarship because the work he submitted showed courage to explore with figures by using stream-of-consciousness-like mark making.
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VIPs are nominated based on the merit of their work and the requirement of at least one public exhibition of their work per year. We thank the following galleries, curators, journalists, fellow arthounds and previous VIPs for their nominations, suggestions and guidance in the annual compilation of this list. For more information about the artists featured here, please visit lipulse.com and also learn more about: Christine Benjamin (Art That Matters), Miriam Dougenis, Helen Harrison, Jeanine Klein, Dan Kudreyko, Marilyn Lavi (bj spoke gallery), Esperanza Leon (Solar Gallery), Sara Nightingale Gallery, Oliver Peterson, Kathie Russo, Georgia Vahue (Great Neck Arts Center). To be considered for next year’s list, please mail or email your attention to LI Pulse headquarters.