Splash of Red

Athina Pappa (Felix Felis) was born in 1986 in Thessaloniki, Greece. She is a concept artist and illustrator holder of an MA in architecture from Greece and of an MA in visual communication from the UK. She has participated in several group and individual exhibitions and is now working on book and design projects. She loves illustrating text from articles to poetry and she defines her style as philosophical pop and cross-cultural fusion.

Portia Subran was born in 1989 in Trinidad and has lived all her life in the growing city of Chaguanas. She was always interested in art as her father had always surrounded her with the works of the masters as well as the impressionists. After becoming frustrated with her own work and lack of guidance, her father sent her to a portrait drawing class and from there she was able to develop her own styles and techniques through which she was sufficiently able to express herself. She doesn't see herself as having a distinct style, but tries to encompass a range of styles from realistic portraiture, abstract pieces, to heavily design and detail oriented pieces. Subran is always trying to add new things to her artistic repertoire and draws something different almost everyday.

Amelia Jane Nierenberg is a Junior at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. She has participated in Les Tapies (affiliated with TASIS), the Art Studio Workshop Intensive Summer European Trip, and the Early College Program at SAIC. Her work has been shown in the Fieldston Summer Show and #artbecause. She spends much of her free time painting and taking pictures, and is an Art Major at her school.

Margaret Withers was born in Austin, Texas in 1965. Her father worked in the oil industry and because of the nature of the work they moved frequently, Withers’ dealt with this constant change by casting herself as both playwright and lead actor in countless fictions. She attended Texas A&M University where she received a BA in Literature. She moved to Colorado in 1991 and worked primarily in hand-built porcelain. In 1998 she started a series of mixed-media oil paintings with cast porcelain heads pushed into the canvas. In 2004 she attended CU Boulder’s MFA program but did not matriculate, instead deciding to move to New York City in 2006. In 2011 she started working primarily on paper with watercolor, ink and enamel on an overlapping series that explores migration, identity, belonging and the American anti-story. Her art has shown extensively in the US, and internationally in Europe, China and Moscow.

Leonard’s works consist of layered coloristic brush strokes juxtaposed with expressionistic gesture accompanied by locomotion.He attempts to address the issues as, assimilation and dissimulation, displacement and migration.The hybrid, the incomplete and the fragmentary are conceived as underlying principles of Leonard’s visual representations. Leonard Kogan lives and works in New York and Baltimore, MD.

Brett Stout is a 32 year old punk rock artist and writer living in Myrtle Beach, SC. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC. He is the owner and operator of the Anti Condo Art group and puts on controversial art projects throughout the Southern U.S.

Nick Lopergalo is currently an illustration student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He enjoys painting and drawing. He lives on Long Island and is looking for work.

Originally from New Castle, Delaware, Edward F. Palm is a former enlisted Marine, a Vietnam veteran, and a retired U.S. Marine officer turned academic (Ph.D., Pennsylvania). He has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and Glenville State College and has held dean appointments at Maryville University of St. Louis and Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington. Palm is also a lifelong serious amateur photographer and an occasional freelance writer who considers photojournalism to be his “road not taken.” Semi-retired, he now teaches for a major online university and lives in Bremerton, Washington.

Andrew Robertson is from, and currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky and earned his BA from the University of Louisville. His pen and ink drawings have been shown in different venues from the Regalo Gallery to the annual Art, Wine and Chocolate show at the Sweet Tooth Cafe. 19th century literature and Norse mythology, which stems from his roots in Denmark, have been main inspirations for his work. He aspires to produce illustrations for both children's books and novels. For more information, please visit andrewrobertson.webs.com

Believing that photography is a means to transform the world, not reproduce it, John Martino aims to make black & white, street-style photographs that function as works of fiction--that suggest and entertain, rather than document or confirm. His images have appeared in a number of diverse publications, including The Advocate, Photographer's Forum, New Orleans Review, and The Boston Globe. An on-line gallery of photos shot outside the United States is forthcoming from Cerise Press. More of John's work can be viewed on his website at www.johnmartinophoto.com.

Splash of Red challenged three artists (Porkchop, Joey Parlett and Jeff Allen) to create a piece of art inspired by a poem published on our website. Plus, Pulitzer Prize winner and New Jersey native Junot Diaz let us borrow the only lines he's ever written about the Jersey boardwalk from an unpublished novel for this project. The following experiment was displayed on the old heating plant on the Asbury Park boardwalk in New Jersey. They have since been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and live now only in photos, memories, and a tattoo on our editor's left arm.

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a teenage amateur photographer and award winning mixed media artist from Stockport, England. She has been exhibited in places from Environ in Ireland to the Oxo gallery in London and was the only person in the whole of the UK to be placed with National Geographic in their See The Bigger Picture biodiversity photography competition.

Andrew Abbott is 31 years old. He was born in Halifax Nova Scotia, but grew up mostly in Boone North Carolina. He was an “art” major at U.N.C. Wilmington where he failed beginning ceramics twice. After college he joined the army for some reason, but got kicked out after about four years due to a “pattern of misconduct.” Since then he has committed himself to being an artist “professionally.” It is unknown where Andrew Abbott currently resides at this time, probably Maine.

Jim Fuess works with liquid acrylic paint on canvas. Most of his paintings are abstract, but there are recognizable forms and faces in a number of the paintings. He is striving for grace and fluidity, movement and balance. He likes color and believes that beauty can be an artistic goal. There is whimsy, fear, energy, movement, fun and dread in his paintings. A lot of his paintings are anthropomorphic. The shapes seem familiar. The faces are real. The gestures and movements are recognizable. More of his paintings, both in color and black and white, may be seen at www.jimfuessart.com

I've been sculpting since the age of six, 60 years ago. I've had my hands in clay all this time but have made a concerted effort the past few years to drive myself and my work to a point where the pieces express emotion and movement in time. This is a direction I took from quotes attributed to Rodin. I basically sequestered myself. Recently, I asked some people I highly respect for critiques and was greatly encouraged. As a result I'm showing my work, although the pieces still require some refinement and casting. In an effort to become active in the art community I'm displaying my work and seeking income hosting semi-private workshops.

Melodi is a chameleon who, for the past 23 years, has been working to perfect her human disguise. Because she has no voice of her own, Melodi breathes life into her artwork instead. Her hope is that these pieces can tell stories of the world she sees, and what she wants to say about it. In her other skin, Melodi is a medical student in her first year. Her photography, along with writing and drawing, help her stay connected to the people she one day hopes to take care of.

Francis Raven is a graduate student in philosophy at Temple University. His books include Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), 5-Haifun: Of Being Divisible (Blue Lion Books, 2008), Shifting the Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007), Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox 2005) and the novel, Inverted Curvatures (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005). Francis lives in Washington DC; you can check out more of his work at his website: http://www.ravensaesthetica.com/.

I am a carbon-based humanoid life form standing five feet tall with a particular affection for monsters, high heels, and cutlery from low-end dining establishments. I never remember where I park my car, and I aspire to someday make things explode with my brain. I don’t believe in absolutes, but what I absolutely believe is something Oscar Wilde articulated better than I ever could, “every saint has a past and every sinner has a future”. My painting techniques are very physical. I work with aggressive brushstrokes, scratch directly into the paint with my hands, and tear the canvas. I often sew the rips and gouges I create and through them, establish an intimacy with my work. While painting, I typically jot down stray thoughts and images in permanent marker directly onto the canvas. I tend to paint over most of them, however, some of the writing is usually visible. This layered aspect allows my work to act not only as a painting, but also an index of my process. (You can see more of Danielle's work in the Red Gallery.)

Audrey puts herself in darkness so she can see the world brighter. She likes being alone in crowded places and falling asleep to excessive noise. She takes pictures to prove the world exists and write stories to prove she exists. Possessing opposites at the same time, all the time, she thinks everything is pretty and everything is ugly, and all else- well, there leaves nothing else.

Michael Filimowicz is a new media artist working in the areas of sound, experimental video, creative writing, net art, public art and digital photography. As a writer he has published poetry, fiction and philosophy, and as a sound designer he has mixed soundtracks for film and television. He is an American Midwest transplant currently living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is on the faculty in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University.

Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 220 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net Anthology. He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is an English Professor at Essex County College. Professor Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate(ABD) at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education.

Here is the amazing artwork of Joey Parlett. While some of the images are for more mature audiences, all of them evoke a sense humanity balancing on the edge of a creative diving board. We hope you enjoy.

Justin Brunelle's artwork displayed here is based on his interpretation of crowds. How he relates to each particular mob of people determines his unique perspective on the group.

Porkchop paints his "Visions of Temptation" by imbuing vintage images with a dark twist. He creates intriguing scenarios by combining paint, illustration, and text. He has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe and is published in "The Greatest Erotic Art of Today: Volume 2," "Eye Candy," and "I Want Your Skull."