Beth Whitney

Beth Whitney is multi-disciplinary artist who has participated in a number of group shows in the greater New York City metro area as well as many collaborative, unsanctioned art exhibits and interventions. When she’s not spending time in her Jersey City studio, she’s busy designing and producing print and web materials for open source higher educational software communities. In addition she is employed as a Teaching Artist by Rutgers Paul Robeson Galleries, where she leads art outreach workshops in correctional facilities and other under-served communities within Newark, NJ.

About the work

My work explores visual dichotomies, the spectacle of consumerism, and the ways in which class distinctions are represented and glorified. During a few formative years spent as an amusement park carney I witnessed the power of garish surfaces to attract attention, while simultaneously masking the unsavory innards hard at work beneath these carnivalesque exteriors. Later, a career making props and dressing theater sets afforded me a view into a world where the distances between the audience and what unfolds on stage create spaces where uncomfortable ideas can be examined in a non-threatening environment.

I believe in harnessing art’s power of the uncanny to introduce similar theatrical experiences into everyday life. Interjecting art into the public sphere allows for unanticipated shifts in perception, subverting expectations and forming ruptures in routine patterns.

I have an inclination toward art as an act of subversion, and find working collaboratively a large part of my practice. “This is probably a really bad idea” usually crosses my mind at some point during projects I find worth pursuing. A large part of my process entails feeling uncomfortable and uneasy, and the times when I don’t signal that I’ve gone off course.

See Beth’s work for 365 Days of Print HERE

To see more of Beth’s personal work please visit: http://www.bethwhitney.com/