Brian Fox, a local sports and celebrity artist of national renown, donated a one of a kind painting depicting Mark Wahlberg in “The Fighter” to the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation. The painting, unveiled and autographed by Wahlberg at his Celebrity Golf Tournament Pre-Event Party, is the product of over 100 hours of work.

The Pre-Event Party took place June 24 at Tasty Burger on Boylston Street. Proceeds directly benefit the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to improving the lives of inner city youth through a working partnership with other organizations.

Fox, who is practiced in painting both sports figures and celebrities, found depicting Wahlberg in his role as legendary fighter Micky Ward to be both a satisfying combination of his two subjects and a wonderful way to contribute to the community.

Fox notes that in addition to respecting Wahlberg for his incredible acting talent, he is also has a great appreciation for his continued commitment to to his local roots and the community that defined his childhood.

On working in Boston, Fox states, “I enjoy working as an artist in this area. I have been extremely fortunate to paint many athletes from all over the world, but I do enjoy when the opportunity arrives to paint the Boston teams.”

Fox described the donation of the painting as one of the high points of his career, noting, “I feel blessed and thankful to be able to do this for a living, and to work with athletes, celebrities and organizations to give back as much as I can.”

The Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the arts school located in the heart of Boston on Huntington Avenue, has opened up MassArt Made, an on-campus boutique which allows their students, alumni and staff opportunities in more ways than one.

Eighty percent of the work sold at MassArt Made is contributed by the university’s alumni. The remaining 20 percent is divvied up between the students and faculty.

“It’s something we’ve wanted to do for years,” said Ginger Russell, the Creative Director and Manager of the boutique.

MassArt Made carries a variety of items including jewelry, apparel, sculpture, paintings and even items like Mimoco flash drives and children’s art kits by Scratch-Art. The items sold can range anywhere in costs from $4 to a $13,000 painting by Resa Blatman, which hangs displayed in the Kennedy building’s student center, adjacent to the boutique.

The factor that sets this student and alumni-operated business from boutiques of competing art schools like RISD is that 10 percent of all sales go towards scholarships for MassArt’s students.

“The artwork is higher priced, but a lot of people from the surrounding area are looking at it seriously,” Russell said.

However, MassArt Made shouldn’t be mistaken as an art gallery or a campus bookstore. Russell described how the boutique aims to showcase the university’s artists that best represent the school.

Each artist is chosen through a selection process in which the artist submits work to Russell herself and then a jury made up of four faculty, staff, and alumni members chooses ‘The best of the best’.

The artists chosen benefit from the sales, the presentation of their work and the boutique’s unique QR scanning system. Each artist’s display has a card with a specific SKU code and when scanned at the register, a 30-second interview with the artist is played over the boutique’s audio system.

“We thought it would be a really great way to get the customer more involved with the artwork and find out more about what they’re buying,” continued Russell.

The art itself comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Jonathan Baring-Gould of Newton, MA., has a line of ‘spirit shakers’ at MassArt Made. A description of Baring-Gould’s shakers says they are, “based on ancient traditions from around the world.” A shake is all it takes to release the positive energy from them.

Mia Maljojoki, an alumna jewelry designer based in Finland, has her moon rock-like line of jewelry for sale at MassArt Made. With her art she tries to answer her question, “Can emotions be a solid?”

Russell ended with a comment on an extra benefit of the boutique for MassArt students. She said there’s a certain measure of marketing and selling involved with selling art at the boutique that’s not included in the curriculum.

Not only can students sell their art at MassArt Made, but they can even work at the boutique. There are currently three students and one alumni working at MassArt Made. Russell described how the employees can be representatives of the school and talk to customers, parents, and prospective students about MassArt.

In regards to the showcased artists, Russell said, “They get to have more of a presence in the business world.”

The boutique is located at 625 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA. Store hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.

For more information visit MassArt Made on Facebook and Twitter.

ROME — The “Gagosian Gallery,” from February 3 will present the exhibition “Sanctuary,” a group of forty-one black and white photographs made by George Crewdson in the legendary Cinecittà studios in Rome. The abandoned outdoor film sets have become the subject of, rather than the mere setting for, his pictures. Moving through the empty streets of “Ancient Rome” at the beginning and end of the day, he has captured the palpable atmospheres. Crewdson was born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York and hid photographs are included in numerous museums and public collections around the world including Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and so on.

In the “Sanctuary” exhibition, Crewdson’s focus is on scenographic architecture as the principal subject underscores the illusory techniques that he has previously used to construct his scenes and actions. The series contains certain characteristics of a documentary film by which is exposed the hidden life of movies and their artifacts that remain once production has ceased. The intimate scale of the black-and-white photographs serves to further intensify the poignancy of each deserted scene.

The exhibition is at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome on Francesco Crispi Street from February 3 to March 5.

ROME — The exhibition “Rituals of Life” is accessible to visitors to the Vatican Museums will be on display for all of 2011.

“Rituals of Life” is a journey through the spirituality and culture of the Aboriginal people of Australia through the collection brought together in the Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums. “Rituals of Life” was collated by Fr. Nicola Mapelli, Curator of the Ethnological Collections of the Vatican Museums, with the support and collaboration of the National Museum of Australia through the work of Senior Indigenous curator Margo Neale and Katherine Aigner; and with the assistance of Nadia Fiussello.

The objects of the exhibition were prepared and organised thanks to the care and competent restoration undertaken on the works of art displayed by the Poly-Material laboratory of the Vatican Museums, coordinated by Stefania Pandozy. The exhibition “Rituals life” is permeated by spirituality and allusions to the ancestral world. The centrality of the indigenous art is strongly connected to their spirituality and you can find part of the spirituality in the exhibition “Rituals life”.

ROME — After 26 years of restoration work, the Temple of Venus in the Roman Forum is set to reopen tomorrow. A monumental temple will be returned to the city of Rome.

The space between the Basilica of Maxentius and the Valley of the Colosseum is taken up with the remains of the great temple of the two goddesses Venus and Roma. This was built according to the wishes of the Emperor Hadrian on the entrance hall of the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden House.

The whole project was conceived by the Emperor on the model of Greek temples and it emphasizes how greatly he was inspired by the Greeks in creating his own image as sovereign ruler. The temple was constructed with a separate “cella” for each goddess. The revival of the worship of Venus, the mother of Aeneas and of the Julian family, and the inauguration of the cult of the goddess Roma Eterna were fundamental aspects of Hadrian’s political and religious policies. Hadrian’s power was founded on the worship of Rome and of the Emperor himself.

In the past the abandonment of the building and the subsequent looting of the facilities beginning in the VII century, when Emperor Heraclius grants to Pope Honorius (625-638) tiles on the roof of the brass to use them to St. Peter. Today it’s possible visit the Temple of Venus again.

NEW YORK — When new acquaintances learn that Anna Hrachovec knits professionally, she receives varied responses. “Some people say ‘oh, that’s nice,’ and I often hear that their aunt knits, or their sister knits,” she says. “And then some people get very excited about it, which is fun.”

Hrachovec (huh-ROCK-uh-vic) maintains the knitting website MochimochiLand.com, which, in the parlance of the hip, is not your grandmother’s sweater. Since launching the site in 2007, Hrachovec has shared and sold patterns for knit toys of her own design. Her book of knitting patterns, “Knitting Mochimochi,” was released in June, and she most recently produced a knit installation, “Greetings from Mochimochi,” for Gallery Hanahou in Manhattan.

The installation is a culmination of Hrachovec’s inspired and occasionally twisted mind. Spread across a table in the gallery space (with a few rogue characters climbing windowsills and walls), Mochimochi Land features rat-infested skyscrapers, a rainbow covered in unicorns, a hot-pink God with Elvis sideburns sitting on a cloud, imposter Santas, self-actualizing snowmen, and swamp monsters. The installation was built around a model train — with a knit cover, of course — that she calls a “giant freakshow of a worm,” which follows a fixed route, occasionally malfunctions, and “enjoys British sitcoms and pistachios.” Many of the inhabitants are no bigger than your thumb, and most inanimate objects — cacti, bulldozers, gravestones — have little black eyes that stare back at you.

Hrachovec began knitting while she was an exchange student in Japan, and she cites Japanese kawaii design as a primary inspiration for her patterns. “I like the genre of Hello Kitty that’s extremely simple design, and I do like the big vacant eyes,” Hrachovec says. “The simplicity and smaller appendages — it does have an automatic cued response in your brain that it’s something you want to love. But I think the simplicity also means that you can read a lot of personality into the thing you’re looking at, because then it’s kind of ambiguous — if it’s something that’s just cute or something a little bit sinister.”

A Tulsa native, Hrachovec studied film and Japanese language at Dartmouth. Following another stint in Japan, she landed a job in New York at CWC International, a creative agency that finds placement for illustrators with magazines and advertising agencies. When CWC decided to launch a Soho gallery, Hrachovec turned their new logo into three-dimensional toys for her colleagues, which got her excited about other toys she could create.

“I do think a lot of people appreciate that I design toys but they’re not, like, dolls, or anything specific that would just be for children or just for girls,” she says.

Hrachovec began posting her toys on Flickr in 2006, and a few people noticed and offered to test-knit patterns for her. Soon after she launched MochimochiLand.com, which she named for the Japanese phrase “mochi mochi,” which dually functions as an onomatopoeia and an adjective for when something is sticky and squishy, like a mochi rice ball. The transition from working for CWC International has been gradual, but now Hrachovec primarily designs knitting patterns for a living.

While her anarchistic characters may sometimes seem to run the show, her website asserts that Mochimochi Land is “a place where knitted toys and people can live together in a spirit of tolerance.” In that vein, New York has been inspiring for Hrachovec, since it is home to so many creative people and galleries that can give her work broad exposure. Before deciding on the fantastical Mochimochi Land installation, she considered knitting a map of New York. “I love looking at maps of the city and different neighborhoods, and seeing things coming together in a very chaotic sort of way,” she says.

When asked how her parents describe her chosen profession to their friends, Hrachovec laughs. “I don’t know exactly. I think that they probably make a funny face, and are like, oh, you know, she lives in New York and likes to be creative,” she says. “And they always use that word, ‘creative,’ which is like patting me on the head.” She says the publication of her book helped legitimize her newly found profession, and her parents recently visited to see the gallery installation.

“I guess I knew that knitting was popular again this decade, but I was really surprised to see how many knitters are online, and they also very much use the internet for their hobby,” Hrachovec says. “I often get photos of the stuff that they make from my patterns, so it’s really fun to see.”

“Greetings from Mochimochi” is on view at Gallery Hanahou now through October 29.

ROME — Italy’s STEN & LEX present their work in the United States, in New York, at the Brooklynite Gallery together with another street artist called Gaia.

They prefer black and white using half shades and therefore dots and lines, because, observing the art from a distance, there are chiaroscuros that make the images realistic. But in their more recent work, however, they have used the four-color process which involves using superimposed transparent colors. Sten&Lex fall exhibition in New York City is a big step for their work.

They are widely considered to be the pioneers of “stencil graffiti” in Italy. Best known for introducing their “halftone stencil” technique, these two self-proclamined “Hole School” artists spend ample time hand-cutting pixel dots and lines to compose their imagery which is best viewed from a distance. For the first time, starting this weekend, they’ll be showing with Gaia ‘Portraits’ at Brooklynite Gallery.

The subjects of portraits comes from the historic Italian archives they’ve rescued from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Just go to the exhibition and try to discover what does it mean the art of stencil for them.

The exhibit runs at the Brooklinite Gallery, 334 Malcolm X Blvd. Brooklyn from Saturday through November 13, from 7-10 p.m.

ROME — Barberini’s is one of the city’s most beautiful and imposing palaces dating back to the baroque.

Palazzo Barberini, on Quattro Fontane street, last weekend celebrated the inauguration of the recently restored gallery. The public’s focus is centered on one of the highlights of the collection, Raphael’s enigmatic painting "La Fornarina." Known in English as “Portrait of a Young Woman.”

Palazzo Barberini was built in the first half of the 17th century for the Barberini family, and three architects were involved in the building’s design. The first was Carlo Maderno, who began work in 1627 and was assisted by his nephew Francesco Borromini, while it was Gian Lorenzo Bernini who oversaw the building’s completion in 1633. Until recently, in addition to the palazzo being home to the state-run National Gallery of Ancient Art, a section of the building was used by the officer’s club of the Italian armed forces. Palazzo Barberini is a very interesting museum to visit. Also who likes Raphael should go just for admire "La Fornarina" portrait. The woman is pictured with an oriental style hat and bare breasts. She is making the gesture to cover her left breast, or to turn it with her hand, and is illuminated by a strong artificial light coming from the external.

The collection of the National Gallery of Ancient Art of Barberini Palace is mainly of Italian painting with works by Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea del Sarto, Perugino, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Guercino, Pietro da Cortona and so on. Newly renovated, this museum offers paintings from Italian artists, as well as Dutch and Flemish works. If you have the chance, just visit this beautiful museum.

ROME — On the occasion of the fourth centenary of Caravaggio’s death, many of his works of art will tour Italy and the world. In Rome, for example, there are only a few days left to admire his art at the Scuderie del Quirinale (until June 13).

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 — 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His intensely emotional realism and dramatic use of lighting had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting.

Neither the cursed artist not the atheist, this is a new Caravaggio, differing greatly from the stereotypes, a man of profound spirituality and one of art’s greatest innovators, who emerges from the documentary investigations of the National Committee for the celebrations of the fourth centenary of his death, which will be made public in exhibitions, conferences and publications throughout 2010.The anniversary of the fourth centenary provides an opportunity for redefining through highly scientific initiatives the Maestro’s real human and artistic profile and for providing moments of in-depth analysis and reflection on his extraordinary pictorial production. Thanks to the flourishing of studies, Merisi’s biography had largely been reconstructed, although the stereotypes formulated overtime often run the risk of reducing his complex personality to the easy and inappropriate image of a "cursed artist" (a description borrowed from the end of 19th century "cursed poets").

The objective of the many events, is not to make known Caravaggio, perhaps the most appreciated artist in history, but rather to better investigate his work. Recent studies have in fact provided a significant increase in the number of sources, and diagnostic testing on his paintings are revealing unknown and fundamental details of the techniques he used. This includes the manner in which he used drawing in a number of paintings, of which, for example, there are a number of traces in the "Boy with a Fruit Basket."

The Banksy buzz has been building around Boston since the subversive street artist’s film "Exit through the Gift Shop" opened at Cambridge’s Kendall Square Cinema in late April, but over the last few days the hype has reached new heights, and with good reason.

Finally, Boston has been blessed with some Banksy of its own. On a wall adjacent an Essex Street parking lot at the border of Chinatown in downtown Boston and on another Essex Street over the Charles in Cambridge on the side of a Super Cuts building, graffiti has surfaced that is widely believed to be the work of the ever-elusive guerrilla artist himself.

The works resemble traditional Banksy pieces in terms of style, satire, and social commentary, but no one can ever really be sure what’s authentic and what’s imitation. However, most of the people I talked to today seemed convinced that these were legitimate. And I am on board with the believers. Even if they really are the work of the anonymous artist, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was the one who actually put them up; it’s well known that Banksy has a team and isn’t solely responsible for everything that goes up in his name. Still, I’d like to think the illustrious Banksy, himself, was crawling the streets of Boston at ungodly hours, hooded with cans in hand, searching for the perfect places to play his pranks.

This Boston resident is happy that Banksy has left his mark here, but we’ll have to wait and see how other citizens respond—namely the owners of the buildings he tagged. I will say, though, that when I went to both sites today, there were small crowds at each taking pictures and discussing the work; build on Banksy buzz, build on.

To read more about Banksy, check out this issue’s feature, "Banksy: A Postmodern Pioneer."

For photo licensing rights e-mail newsroom@blastmagazine.com

MIAMI — On a hot day in April, on the West end of Wynwood, I visited the Center For Visual Communication on the edge of what is referred to as the Fashion District of Miami. Enter the main gallery and ask the attendant to take you next door to the Project Space, a temporary venue showing the exhibition Beyond the Daily Life: Guerra de la Paz and Teresa Diehl curated by Julian Navarro.

Walking around the three-room exhibition, you would probably over look this work. It is an all white installation, on the floor of an unfinished room, with a low level audio track playing. Escape the warehouse wasteland of hot dogs and bulk bling and absorb this cool contemplative landscape.

The installation, Hover, by Teresa Diehl is made of three inch figurines of humans and animals standing around a mini mountain. The sound of a helicopter comes in and out making it impossible not to think of Vietnam. Spotlights cast long shows of the mound against the wall, highlighting the details in the figures. You realize they are women carrying baby sheep, the fragile, and including the landscape the whole work is made of the same destructible material, glycerin, or soap.

This work resonates- you can flip through our chapters of vulnerability- war and natural disasters, and the piece still speaks to the present. The mind flashes to Haiti, the land of undrinkable water, sick soil, and poverty.

The longer you spend in the room, the long shadows, low audio, and white sculpture, you realize what is missing from the piece is the hysteria. There is no frenzy. The figurines are not pushing to the top like one would expect, there is just a natural force swirling them up were we naturally seem to want to go. The work is a beautiful and subtle mediation on impermanence, loss, the human condition and the repetition of time.

Guerra de la Paz, the collaborative team of Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz, the other artists showing in the exhibition, like always, do not disappoint with their meticulously woven, playful sculptures commenting on contemporary culture. The colorful pieces provide a nice contrast to the ghost white work of Teresa Diehl. As you leave exhibition, take note of the irony of Guerra de la Paz exhibiting in the heart of Miami’s Fashion District.

Center for a Visual Communication
Beyond the Daily Life: Guerra de la Paz and Teresa Diehl
541 NW 27th St. (Next door at the Project Space)
Tuesday through Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday: Noon to 5 p.m.
http://www.visual.org/index.html
The show is up until the space gets rented

Postmodernism is a term that gets tossed around a lot these days, usually by people who are trying to sound intellectual, hip, or otherwise superior to the average conversationalist. My ears always perk up when I hear someone drop the pomo bomb, because I can’t help but be curious as to what their interpretation of the term is. Classifying anything as postmodern is a difficult task in and of itself because the aesthetic, genre, movement, period, and all other referents of the word inherently resist definition and thrive on instability. Even so, I find myself moved to attempt such a classification, mostly because I’ve found a subject that seems to personify it so perfectly.

You may have heard of Banksy as a subversive street artist, a vandal, an existencilist or a revolutionary, but I like to think of him as a pioneer of the postmodern project. Of a similar nature to the movement itself, the graffiti artist is seemingly unidentifiable and always becoming in response to the now.

Termed a guerilla artist, his distinctive brand of satirical street art can be found all over the world in socio-politically significant places like post-Katrina New Orleans, the wall dividing Israel and Palestine, and the happiest place on earth, Disneyland. And he doesn’t restrict himself to solely exterior venues. There are videos of him subverting his work in several prominent museums, and his art has shown up in the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, along with London’s Tate Britain Gallery and the British Museum. His combination of pop, prank, art, and accessibility has led to renown on an international scale.

Although a rising force in the art world and somewhat of a pop phenomenon, the illustrious and intriguing Banksy chooses to keep his identity a mystery to the masses, making his increasingly popular persona mostly a product of perspective. There is no public figure with which to associate the images, and in this sense, he exists largely as representation. How pomo of him, right?

What is often referred to (by those snobby Modern-era enthusiasts) as low form, or even anti-form art, graffiti is Banksy’s chosen medium for many, seemingly obvious, reasons. The process, which is often championed over the product from a postmodern perspective, complements his anti-establishment message perfectly—its being illegal and all. Embracing irony and surviving on an anarchic, law-breaking process, he’s stretching the boundaries of genre and form while appearing to disregard them all together. He talks about the issue of form in his book, “Wall and Piece:”

Despite what they say graffiti is not the lowest form of art. Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission.

A wall has always been the best place to publish your work.

Banksy’s art is living among us in our streets speaking boldly and defiantly to the masses, to the passerbys, to the everyday man. There is no singular original housed inside some museum that we must pay to view, but rather copies externally posited and exposed to the same forces of nature as we. The pieces are participating in the real right alongside us.

In his book, “Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall,” Banksy writes:

Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren’t listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they’re having a piss.

His mass-produced pieces set out to affect the people—to make them notice the flaws of their society, the irony in their virtues, and the hypocrisy in their policies. To do this, the art must live amongst the people it is trying to reach and interact with them. It is a palimpsest; it can be written over. It’s impermanent, susceptible to change and destruction (usually carried out by peons of the system that it’s speaking out against). The work participates in the real in order to engage in conversation with it, to see what that real will do to it. Immanent in the elusive entity comprised of the name Banksy and the works associated with it is a vital vein of the postmodern movement. And in true pomo fashion, that vein is ever-evolving and still manages to shock those that follow it.

The latest shock came in the form of Banksy’s new film billed "The world’s first street art disaster movie." Serving to amplify the Banksy buzz, the documentary Exit through the Gift Shop showed up rather surprisingly on the Sundance schedule in March. Despite the film’s absence within the fest’s catalog and its late addition to the lineup, Banksy fans lined up outside the 446-seat Library Center Theatre in the below-freezing weather hours before the 8:30 PM screening hoping they would catch a glimpse of this, the premiere American showing of the film rightly rumored to actually feature (albeit as a hooded, shadowy figure using a voice synthesizer) the man of mystery himself. The audience—including the likes of Adrian Grenier, Jared Leto and Danny Masterson—was prepped by the reading of a message from the film’s creator who, curiously, couldn’t be there to address the crowd himself:

Ladies and gentlemen…and publicists: Trying to make a movie which truly conveys the raw thrill and expressive power of art is very difficult, so we haven’t bothered. Instead, this is simply an everyday tale of life, longing, and mindless vandalism. Everything you are about to see is true, especially the bits where we all lie. Thanks for coming. Please don’t give away the ending on Twitter. And please, don’t try copying any of this stuff at home. Wait until you get to work.

The documentary, narrated by Rhys Ifans (Hugh Grant’s quirky roommate in Notting Hill), at the start seems to be a documentary of street art featuring some of its most prominent practitioners, but quickly evolves into what the LA Times rightly called "a sly satire of celebrity, consumerism, the art world and filmmaking itself." This film is unlike anything I’ve seen. Banksy manages to put together a film that is smart, expository, honest, stunningly ironic, funny and a sort of saddening all at the same time. Sundance Director, John Cooper, said in a statement before the actual screening: "The story is so bizarre I began to question if it could even be real… but in the end I didn’t care. I feel bad I won’t be able to shake the filmmaker’s hand and tell him how much I love this film. I think I will shake everyone’s hand that day and hope I hit on Banksy somewhere. I love his work in all forms." As do I, Cooper. As do I. Luckily for us Bostonians, “Exit through the Gift Shop” has finally made it to a theater near us, and for a mere ten bucks we can see it at Kendall Square any day of the week. Make the trip to Cambridge to see the latest from our beloved postmodern pioneer and form your own opinions. I’m convinced you’ll be glad you did.

ROME — The countdown has begun, and a month before it opens to the public, on May 30 for the MAXXI designed by Zaha Hadid with its exhibitions and its guidelines.

The MAXXI, the National Museum of 20th Century Art, is a foundation set-up by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. Inside the MAXXI there are two different museums. One dedicated to art and the other to architecture. The museum is in synergy with all Rome’s international realities, starting with a cooperation agreement for establishing a partnership currently being negotiated with Fendi, the legendary maison that has always been sensitive to art and the signs of contemporary life.

The museum is a starkly 21st century building that stands out in B.C. Rome.

The opening of the MAXXI will mark a great moment for contemporary art as well as for Roman and Italian culture, involving all the more important state and private institutions. Together with the Music for Rome Foundation, a musical pathway has been created that will accompany visitors during the inauguration on May 28th and 29th. There will be more musical surprises for viewers with a project by the American Academy in Rome on May 30th. Furthermore, the National Gallery of Modern Art, together with other institutions belonging to the AMACI circuit, is participating in the museum inaugural exhibition loaning works of art. The MAXXI’s art and architectural collections, inspired to Zaha Hadid’s fluid shapes, interpret the museum’s interdisciplinary characteristics.

ROME — "Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving" said J. W. Goethe in 1787 in Rome.

The Vatican has a very detailed, three-dimensional, Flash tour of the Sistine Chapel. There’s nothing new about the technology itself, but the implementation new for the historic chapel.

The wall paintings were executed by the most respected painters of the 15th century: Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and their respective workshops, which included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta.

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace.It is famous for its architecture, evocative of Solomon’s Temple of the Old Testament, and its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Sandro Botticelli. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. He resented the commission, and believed his work only served the Pope’s need for grandeur. However, today the ceiling, and especially The Last Judgement, are widely believed to be Michelangelo’s crowning achievements in painting.

The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored the old Cappella Magna between 1477 and 1480.

Now it’s possible admire the Sistine Chapel online. Of course it’s a different view but it’s a nifty experience, a 360-degree, zoomable simulacra of the legendary chamber, with its assorted frescos, some of the most famous religious artworks in history.

Paola Dias’ pregnancy resulted not only in the beginning of a beautiful new life but also the birth of a successful new business. She and her husband, Mike, moved from Northern California to bucolic New Hampshire recently.

"We live on a farm in a rural area," Dias said. "There aren’t a lot of jobs here, you kind of have to create your own. It’s a place where you just get really imaginative."

When Paola found out she was expecting, opportunity came knocking, organically. With the original goal of tracking the growth and shape of his wife’s belly month-to-month, Mike started tracing her bump against the wall, like parents do with their children to track their height. Both Paola and Mike grew up in creative families; Paola paints and Mike’s mother is an artist. For these two parents-to-be, pencil wasn’t enough.

"Tons" of art supplies made the trek with them across country and so they began to utilize what they had around the house and kept the creative juices flowing. "First of all, we started to make a mess," Paola laughed. But with some Japanese "shumi" ink that they had, what was created was "…so beautiful, it was this graceful outline." They then experimented with ground earth ochres mixed with water, which produced vibrant colors. Calligraphy brushes painted polished lines.

Paola wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of her nude body decorating their home, so baby belly photographs weren’t an option.

"I wanted something I could frame and put in my baby nursery or around the house, something more subtle,” she said. “So we decided to pursue it." The couple realized that the quality of their supplies was directly linked to the beauty in the product, so they ordered paper from Thailand, all-natural ochres, and calligraphy brushes.

Paola and Mike were so thrilled by their results that they decided to design some "kits" for some friends who were also expecting.

"We put them together because we thought we had come up with a great idea." Eventually, people they didn’t even know were asking for kits and the Dias’ realized they had stumbled upon something beautiful, with just a bit of creativity and some household supplies.

Not exactly the next Picasso? Doesn’t make a difference, according to Paola. "It’s really easy," she said. People who have never done it before paint amazingly and each woman expresses her creativity differently. "It was so great to see it with other people; they all have the same reaction, like ‘Oh my gosh, that is my body.’"

Not only does "Art Bellies," the official name of Paola and Mike Dias’ business, give you a tangible and visible memory of your pregnant belly, the physical act of creating the art enables the expectant mother to be more open and at peace with her body.

"When parents find out they are having a baby, everyone rushes out to buy stuff, not many people create,” Dias said. “It’s nice to slow down, be more mindful and love your body. It gets you grounded with your body. That’s something that is really joyful for us to see."

Art Bellies kits have been a success as a baby shower gift and/or game. Dias said women love to help each other create a beautiful outline of their bellies. A lot of parents, after the baby is born, stamp the baby’s footprint on the belly sketch, which makes for a special keepsake. Paola has seen women display the prints in offices, nurseries, and living rooms. They even had some silhouettes on display in the maternity ward of a New Hampshire hospital. One of the OB/GYN doctors loved them so much he took one home for his office.

Paola and Mike Dias are very optimistic about the future. Having started the business during one of the toughest economic times this country has seen in years, they feel fortunate to have created a business from simply doing something they love. They hope to expand Art Bellies as any small business might grow, focusing on the here and now.

They’re currently working on the packaging, making it more retail specific. Each Art Bellies kit comes with one white handmade paper, a color paper of choice that goes with the elements (air, earth, fire, water), all made of recyclable material, as well as the calligraphy brushes and ochres.

Only one year old, this budding business is destined for success. After all, women will always be having babies, right? Paola Dias teaches Spanish part-time and cares for their nine-month-old daughter. Her husband, Mike, is a technical writer. The couple is inspired by the natural art all around them in their small New Hampshire town, and hopes to continue to share their inspiration with parents-to-be around the world.

Art Bellies kits are sold online at their website and also at retailers in the New Hampshire area. They were recently featured in Pregnancy and Newborn magazines.

ROME — In a bar, sipping a cup of tea with Sten and Lex, two of the most famous street artists in Europe, we were provided with an opportunity to better understand the philosophy and language of their art.

The spoke with one voice in our interview.

BLAST: Introduce yourselves. Where do the nicknames Sten and Lex come from?

STEN AND LEX: Sten stands for "stencil" and Lex means "law" hence the pair is "the law of stencil".

BLAST: Could you digress and tell me what characterizes your style and what techniques you use?

STEN AND LEX: Unlike many street artists, we do not have a artistic background. Ten years ago we started using a stencil when the idea of street art did not have much legitimacy in Italy. The technique we use is called "hole school" and consists of stencils with many holes of different sizes that all together provide a highly photographic image. This technique was also often used for printing newspapers in the Sixties and Seventies. In addition to the "hole" technique, we also use the superimposed lines technique. Finally, what characterizes our work on the streets are the very light-weight paper posters, that adhere closely to the walls and that we glue on to the walls of the city.

BLAST What degree of experimentation do you use with the stencil technique and use of color?

STEN AND LEX: We prefer black and white using half shades and therefore dots and lines, because, observing the art from a distance, there are chiaroscuros that make the images realistic. In our more recent work, however, we have used the four-color process which involves using superimposed transparent colors.

BLAST: To what extent is street art political, and is yours?

STEN AND LEX: A famous street artist (Shepard Fairey) used Barack Obama’s face and certainly contributed to spreading his image on a large scale. In this sense he launched a political message almost equal to that of an election poster. In our stencils, instead, the contents tend to not include politics, with only a few exceptions, although the interpretation of our work is subjective.

BLAST: Is there an ancient, modern or contemporary artist who changed your perspectives of things?

STEN AND LEX: In the work we are showing at the exhibition that will open Friday, March 12th at the Gallery CO2 (Borgo Vittorio, 9 -Rome) we used a technique that consists of incorporating the stencil itself, which, since it is made of paper, remains only partly impressed on the paper. The destruction of the stencil becomes part of the work of art. Some have seen in this, references to Mimmo Rotella’s d©collage and collage work.

BLAST: Is it not a little contradictory to work anonymously and then also hold an exhibition in an art gallery and show oneself. Does it make sense?

STEN AND LEX: There is a contradiction. However, exhibiting our work in an art gallery allows us to establish contacts. Without that we do not get commissions seeing that in Italy there is still a very high barrier between street art and institutional art. Street art. in fact, provides one with the opportunity of having an immense audience, often far larger than the traditional one of an art gallery. In Italy however, this mentality still does not exists and hence we must often show our work in art galleries.

BLAST: Do your projects for the future include spending time in the US, the homeland of street art, and managing to leave a trace there too?

STEN AND LEX: (In) October we will be able to present our work in the United States in New York at the Brooklynite Gallery, where we will be given us a wall to work on together with another street artist called Gaia.

Boston might be more famous for its museums than its nightlife, but there’s certainly plenty of both.  When you combine the two, sophisticated Bostonians turn out in droves.  "Gardner After Hours," held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on the third Thursday of each month, is just such an event.

Maybe you’ve downed cocktails in a museum before?  If so, you might be expecting music along the lines of a string quartet.  But here, the atmosphere is completely different.  Once you get past the velvet ropes, you’re not greeted with Haydn or Mozart.  Instead you’ll hear the thumbing sounds of spin professionals like DJ Coralcola.  The subdued lighting and tightly-packed crowd adds to the relaxed and informal atmosphere.

Unlike many cocktail parties, there’s more to do here than eat, drink and talk.  On any given night there might be live musicians performing in one part of the museum, informal tours in another part, and people trying their hands at sketching somewhere else.

But best of all, there’s the collection itself.  Art by masters like Botticelli, Vermeer, and Rembrandt share the space with signed letters from George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt.  There’s so much to look at and talk about, boredom is impossible.

Once folks get a little loosened up (Bellinis are a cocktail of choice since the building is a facsimile Venetian palazzo), friends and strangers alike ask each other questions about the amazing stuff on display or share their theories about the infamous 1990 robbery, a still-unsolved heist that netted $500 million in art.

The party ends at just 9:30 pm, so think of this as a unique place to start your night before walking to a bar in Brigham Circle or hopping a cab to nightclubs on Lansdowne Street, in the Theater District, or wherever the spirit takes you.

Isabella Stewart Gardner, affectionately known as "Mrs. Jack," had a reputation as a party girl.  She’d be glad to know that her palatial former home, now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is once again host to music, laughter, and the sound of clinking glasses.

Gardner After Hours, Third Thursdays 5:30-9:30 p.m., see "gardnermuseum.org/afterhours" for price schedule

Here at Blast, we’re big fans of The Good Men Project, and we’ve put our pens to Shepard Fairey and his Boston drama.

In this video, the iconic artist discusses modern manhood for The Good Men Project during a panel discussion in Los Angeles.

ROME — The plaque is already there, the old sign for a “Museo di Roma” that was never really created on the ashes of the former Pantanella pasta factory in Via dei Cerchi.

The approval of this project, costing 100 million Euros and several years worth of work, was announced a few days ago by the Municipality of Rome’s Councilor for Culture, Umberto Croppi.

“The project has been approved, and the memorandum from the City Council has been passed,” Croppi said. “We now need to identify financial resources within a framework of creating partnerships with private sponsors and start operations with an international competition based on a meta-project presented by the Municipal Superintendence for Cultural Heritage. Designers will have to find architectural solutions that will work with the cultural and conceptual aspects outlined for this museum."

The future Museum of the City of Rome, with a planned 2013 inauguration, will not only be a container for art and will not only have on show the extraordinary Torlonia collection, but will also include didactic material and the reconstruction in 3D of a number of rooms from ancient Rome.

More than a museum, the project intends to create a center of orientation and communication to ensure an understanding of the Urbe, both ancient and modern, experiencing through interactive journeys the city’s stratifications and transformations.

Rhode Island artist Brian Fox put together an incredible portrait for the NHL Winter Classic going on today at Fenway Park.

As the Flyers take on the Bruins, it’s Fox’s impeccable style and attention to detail that stands out for the art buffs here at Blast.

His portrait will be featured on the limited edition gameday program, and the original will be auctioned off to fight cancer.

Brian has painted some of the brightest stars around, including the late Jackie Robinson, Keith Richards, Michael Phelps, Johnny Depp, Ray Charles, and Mixed Martial Arts Champion Georges St-Pierre.

As a photographer, Kate Engelbrecht is like a fly on the wall. She shoots spontaneously, capturing fleeting moments in time. Her passion for photography began in her early twenties while working in advertising in New York. There, she saw beautiful images for ads as they floated in and out the door of her firm. Soon after, Engelbrecht left that job, began shooting, starting her love affair with the camera.

She fell into wedding photography and later moved into working with families and children. Approaching the family portrait as a documentary, rather than in the traditionally stiff, posed manner, Engelbrecht was able to create cohesive images that told a story. This experience created the foundation for The Girl Project.

Englebrecht wanted to create a captivating coffee table book, but needed an equally captivating subject. She found it in her fascination with the growing media content focused on teenage girls. She was curious to discover if what she was seeing on television, in shows like "Gossip Girl" and "The Hills," was indeed accurate. and if today’s teenage girls were being correctly represented. She had a sneaking suspicion they weren’t and wanted a truer portrait. She needed to discover what could have gone so terribly wrong, or perhaps catch a clearer glimpse into the culture of today’s American girl.

So, about two years ago, Engelbrecht purchased 5,000 disposable cameras and sent them to teenage girls ages 13-18 across the country, asking them to simply document their everyday lives. The only guidelines were to take honest pictures, with parental consent of course.

When asked about the kinds of pictures she received, and what was most surprising. "The most shocking thing is that there is very little shocking material at all,” Englebrecht said. “One of the most important findings was how innocent these girls actually are, which is easy to forget with all of the images that are out there in the media now." The candid images were introspective, innocent, and serious in a most revealing way.

Along with the disposable cameras, Engelbrecht sent out questionnaires for the girls which were initially created to double check herself and make certain she read the images correctly. The words and sentiments the girls sent back far exceeded simple questionnaire answers and took on a life of their own. Engelbrecht plans to use snippets from these as text in her book.

"There is a lot of beautiful candor in these questionnaires that is really, really touching," she said.

Touching indeed — so much so, that Englebrecht has said that her goal for "The Girl Project" has totally changed. A coffee table photography book will not be enough. She said needs to add some narrative, so that the girls’ stories and perspectives are conveyed through both words and images. She is now actively pursuing the concept of a traveling exhibition.

Professionals are professionals because they have studied and mastered their craft. There is another interesting aspect, however, particularly when it comes to photographs. Englebrecht has proven that sometimes the most honest and truthful images can come from the innocent and untrained eye. No special lenses, lighting, angles or direction was needed. These girls just pressed a button and created a raw snapshot of their own lives.

The project has evolved immeasurably in two short years. Starting with a friend’s two daughters, Englebrecht has now had girls from every state take part, and even has a large presence on social media sites like Facebook.

When asked if she may ever undertake a similar venture with teenage boys or even adolescents from across the world, Engelbrecht responded with bright anticipation.

"We are all living very similar and very different experiences," she said.

MEDFORD — Else Eaton’s office is guarded by the Incredible Hulk — or rather, a solid, 7-foot paper mache replica, its algae-green torso rippling with muscles, its eyeballs bulging. The Hulk stands surrounded by walls of tribal-mask-like faces, and cityscapes built from neon shards. One wall oozes a mold-like protrusion speckled with beads. Overhead, an eclectic collection of objects hangs from a strand of fishing wire: deflated balloons, a blue plastic elephant, a brass menorah.

Eaton has found an artist’s office job — a management position that calls for raw creativity and that satisfies both her idealism and her longing for community. She is Project Manager of Outside the Lines, an art-based day program for adults with developmental disabilities run out of a giant warehouse on the Tufts University campus. The people served by O.T.L. are not simply given art projects to do, they are managed as artists — it is both a workshop and a gallery space in which participants’ artwork graces the walls and gets sold at shows.

"We’re different from other programs," Eaton explains, "because a lot of them are work-related programs where people mostly just do piece work."

O.T.L. is an experimental offshoot of the nonprofit organization, Resources for Human Development (R.H.D.). "We call ourselves an ‘alternative day program.’ We give them work that’s more meaningful, I would say."

Eaton and the staff she oversees are different from most social workers. They are themselves, artists, and they know how to treat their clients as such. Everyone in the building shares the same talents and obsessions, and they enjoy learning from one another.

"Hiring artists works, because we’re all sensitive, we’re intuitive. We’re free with them, and we can treat them like human beings, rather than, like, ‘You’re a patient and we’re going to analyze you,’ we can just be like ‘We are who we are and you are who you are,’ and we appreciate them for that."

Eaton is 30 years old. She is tall, and although she is soft-spoken, her stature and her constant state of calm make her a convincing figure of authority. She could not, however, be easily mistaken for corporate. While her office is the only closed room with a desk in the scattered warehouse, her speech and dress are informal. Today, she wears a short skirt over a pair of jeans, a dark blouse and a colorful silk scarf.

Eaton was not always specifically drawn to working with the disabled. She has, however, always been an artist. Before O.T.L., she struggled to find an artistic community that felt like home. At Mount Holyoke College, she majored in art and anthropology, and while these disciplines excited her, the "art crowd" she discovered, did not.

A painting by Jose DeJesus, who was awarded "Best in Show" in a recent statewide exhibition at the capitol building for his piece Man from Burma

"I actually got really fed up with the whole ‘Art World.’ It can be really inclusive, if you’re in it. People are making pieces that are speaking to other artists—meaning that those other artists have prior knowledge of art history, or contemporary artists — rather than having an original vision of how to express themselves, with the idea that they can reach people through what they’re creating.

"But art for me is really just doing a thing that I like. Something that I feel like I always have to do — is part of my life in some way. I have to manipulate materials and make pretty things — well not necessarily pretty, but visually interesting. When I was at school though, I got involved with that whole scene."

Eaton spent her junior year studying photography in Florence, Italy. Her exploration of this new medium combined with her experience abroad and her studies in anthropology led to a new inspiration.

"I wanted to travel, I wanted to tell people about what’s going on in the world through art. I was idealistic, and I did do that for a while. I did travel the world and take pictures. I went to Southeast Asia. I went to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. That was pretty awesome. It was really amazing."

Before long, however, she ran into a barrier. Just as she hadn’t been able to connect with what she perceived as the art world, she came to feel that photojournalism prevented her from connecting with the people she found on her travels.

"I took pictures. I mean, I had my camera with me. I was a person with a camera. People would ask me for money for taking their pictures. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do."

Back from the States and out of college, Eaton continued to pursue her skills where she could, but there was a lot missing. "I was working for a jewelry designer and working as a house painter," she recalls with a laugh, "so the stuff I was doing was kind of isolating and I really felt like working on my own artwork was self-indulgent. I really wanted to be able to reach out to people and be creative."

Eaton heard about O.T.L. from a friend who worked there before it had a management structure. She began on the floor, as a "Direct Support Professional," and was prompted once R.H.D. decided a manager was necessary. Her first breakthrough with an artist did not come while working on an art project, but it did call for an important kind of creativity. She was working with a woman known for acting out.

"If she’s not getting what she wants she’ll do temper tantrum kinds of things like, screaming and whining. So she started to do that one day, and I started whining back, and I made it into like, oh, you sound like a seagull,’ Eaton remembers, laughing. "And it totally just threw her off. She thought it was hilarious. So she started doing it in a way where she was calling like a seagull, and then I was calling back like a seagull, and it was just really funny."

Eaton calls this "redirecting," and it is central to the work of O.T.L. where one of the defining practices in working with the developmentally disabled is never to punish, never to provide negative attention. As much as in designing art projects, this is where the creativity and sensitivity of the artist are called upon. It’s about finding ways to make abnormal behavior OK, to laugh together and direct focus back to the shared value of art-making. This seems to be exactly the atmosphere Eaton has been searching for, and she is not alone.

"There is a strong feeling of community here," says Allison Stroh, an Art Therapist, recently hired for the ‘Direct Support’ role. "Everyone here feels part of it. When Else walks in, all of the artists smile. She has a million tricks up her sleeve to make them feel at ease. Meanwhile, she’s got me singing, dancing, working on giant monsters– stuff I never thought I’d get to do at work."

"We really try to make it so that everyone here just feels comfortable being who they are. No matter who they are," says Eaton. You know we’re all awkward and weird in some ways and we just let that be. Both the staff and the clients, their personalities really come out here."

Outside of Eaton’s office, a heavyset man wearing an unattached pair of earphones is showing off his brand new cowboy boots — from L.L. Bean, he boasts — to a bespectacled twenty-something in skinny jeans. The subject exhausted, he shows off his latest glowing cityscape. The kid looks impressed. So does The Hulk.

This article was written and reported by Lauren McCombs, Jessica Elford and Pasquale Augustine.

LA JOLLA, Calif. — We’re very happy to have Dr. John F. Asmus, noted professor at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) with us for this story. Asmus brings to The Power Behind Closed Doors staff an exceptional technical and political background as an Internationally known expert in the dark and mysterious world of Laser Technology.

After a diverse career between working for the government and various businesses, Asmus invented the technology to use lasers to restore art and is one of the few people in the world allowed to touch the Mona Lisa. We have known Dr. Asmus for a long time and acknowledge one of his government recognized abilities a s a “Keen Observer of Events.” Asmus is constantly traveling to other countries technical laser conferences which he attends as an active participant. UCSD has always appreciated his abilities as an international representative of UCSD.

Recently Asmus told us that he had received an invitation to deliver the keynote address at the international conference, “Il Reunion International: Optica, Vida y Patrimonio” at the Capitolio Nacional in Havana, Cuba. American travel to Cuba, a one party communist state, has been restricted, and travel there has been almost nonexistent. This conference appeared to be an excellent opportunity for Asmus to see, firsthand, what Cuba is like and how the average Cuban is doing under the current political system.

Asmus’ first observation, before he started his adventure, was to realize the strong and somewhat emotional feeling in unison among his wife, family, friends, and associates. They all pleaded with him to ignore the invitation. Everyone believed that if he went it would be the last time anyone would see him.

In terms of the conference Asmus said that the invitation was completely unexpected . Not only on the fact that he, an American, was invited to give the Key Note Speech at a Cuban Conference but the fact that Cuba itself would be hosting an international conference on laser technologies for the conservation, restoration, analysis, and presentation of the artistic and cultural heritage of the countries comprising the Western Hemisphere.

Asmus said that he had been completely surprise the previous year when he discovered Argentinean and Greek art conservators employing Cuban-manufactured lasers in their work. “For years following my 1980s work in Xi’an it had been his expectation that economical Chinese lasers would become the world standard in conservation studios” he said, reminiscing about his restoration of the Emperor Qin Terracotta Army. Initially, Asmus said that he was bemused by the idea of economical Cuban lasers competing in the world’s high-tech commercial market, although this thought seemed to be purely based off the ongoing Political Embargo the United States has had on Cuba. Eventually, Asmus discerned that the Cuban success in the commercial laser field was due to a spin-off of Fidel Castro’s medical treatment initiatives of the 1960s and 70s.

Upon arriving at the Capitolio National for the laser conference, Asmus had an opportunity to scan the conference program. There was at least one paper by a Cuban author on almost every current topic that is featured at the laser-society conferences held in the USA, Europe, and Asia. Asmus said that, “Later that week, it turned out that Cuban presentations were of the highest caliber although like all conferences, others were superficial and elementary” he said.

The second startling feature of the program was the geographical representation. Latin Americans were to be expected. However, almost every European country was represented, as well as a scattering of representatives from other countries. Asmus was the only American who attended the conference.

Asums’ third revelation was the degree of Russian influence, both direct and indirect, which was prevalent at the conference’s technical and social activities. This is in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world economic recession, the termination of massive Soviet assistance to Cuba, and the travel distance between the two countries.

As for the conference, a feeling of deja vu swept over Asmus as the program revealed familiar names such as Vadim, Parfenov, Kaloshin, Shevchenko, Irina, Shikunova, Vladimir, Kurlov, Volkov, Viktor, Loschenov, Galina, and Nemova. Chatting with these authors at coffee breaks led to many new revelations. Mentors, collaborators, past publications and scientific issues as well as mutual friends of a bygone era were recalled. Although Asmus had never met these people, he discovered that their resumes bore eerie similarities. Asmus was well aware that that fifty-five years ago this world had been the focus of his professional career.

At one level the Havana laser conference resembled the end of a spy movie or novel where the opposing operatives meet and reminisce about their respective roles and tactics in playing the game. Some sort of bond can develop between contentious old “Cold Warriors” in reliving the moves and counter moves; in recognizing the implementation of similar strategies. Nevertheless, one significant difference in outcome bubbled up. Several of the Soviet Cold War scientists whose research Asmus had tracked during his Washington years had immigrated to countries such as Australia, Canada, Finland, and Brazil. Toward the end of the conference Asmus found himself chatting with Professor Maxim Tomilin of St. Petersburg State University. It appeared that they had attended all of the same meetings on the merits of neutral particle beams, charged particle beams, excimer lasers, blue-green lasers, etc., only on opposite sides of the world.

Since its inception in Venice 37 years ago, laser-implemented art conservation has been spreading across much of the globe. A major factor has been academic and professional exchanges involving Western European, Chinese, and American conservation scientists. While this was taking place many failed to notice that the Soviet Union was filling a void that opened upon the departure of the US from Cuba. While we in America were focused on cigars and missiles in Cuba, Cuba’s best and brightest were going to the Soviet Union for advanced studies. The Cuban laser accomplishment is one fruit of that protracted academic exchange. The successful laser-implemented restoration of the H.M.S. Swift by Dr. Alberto Orsetti, and the ongoing laser restoration of the fascist interrogation cells in Argentina (as historical memorials) by Professor Gabriel Bilmes are examples of their reducing the science into practice.

Asmus commented that during a coffee break during the conference, “both Dr. Tomilin and I agreed that the new blood in the field was discovering possibilities far beyond our imaginations.” This can be seen in the joint Mexican-Cuban initiative that has developed an automated laser system that selectively blasts thorns from the agave plant, thereby improving both the efficiency and quality of Tequila production. Better tequila, now who can complain about that?

Blast, based in Boston, has a bureau in San Diego with entertainment and political reporting.

Graffiti artist or malicious property destroyer? Boston authorities simply say “criminal,” and the talented Frank Shepard Fairey got two years probation today for a graffiti case from 2000 in Brighton and two charges this year in Back Bay.

Prosecutors, in return for a guilty plea on the three charges, dropped 11 other defacing property cases against him.

“I am very pleased that a reasonable resolution to my court cases in Boston has been reached,” Fairey said in a statement. “I want to apologize to the City of Boston for posting my art in unauthorized spaces without the consent of the owner.”

“I believe in the importance of making art accessible through many avenues, and I will continue to advocate the use of legal public spaces for meaningful artistic expression and communication,” he said. “Freedom of expression is the bedrock of our democracy. However, I also believe it is important that people respect private property.”

“Shepard looks forward to continuing to bring his art to people everywhere whether it is inside a museum or in publicly available spaces,” said Jay Strell, a spokesman for Fairey. “As an artist with a traveling exhibition surveying two decades of his work, which includes many examples of public art and the iconic Obama ‘Hope’ poster, Shepard believes that it is important for artists everywhere to have access to public spaces to display their work, but do so in a respectful manner.”

Fairey will return to Boston on July 31 for a closing party at the Institute of Contemporary Art to celebrate the end of his exhibition there, which ends August 16.

“We are thrilled to learn that Shepard Fairey’s legal issues with the Boston Police have been resolved,” said Jill Medvedow, director of the ICA. “With this matter now behind him, the focus of the conversation can return to where it belongs: on Fairey’s artistic accomplishments.”

According to Strell, the show has drawn more than 100,000 visitors. The Fairey show will next turn to Pittsburgh’s Warhol Museum in the fall.

He’s holding the truck’s steering wheel with both paws. His orange and white face is contemplative, distracted. The caption reads: “Bob drove home slowly, deep in thought; he’d made up his mind”¦but how to tell Bernice he wasn’t going through with the neutering?” In another version, the same cat’s pensive expression holds a more sinister meaning: “It all happened so fast, a blurr (sic) of fur, a yelp of pain, the thump under the truck bed; Spot was dead, and Fluffy knew there were few options.”

Fluffy may have few options when it comes to disposing of Spot’s body, but for Icanhascheezburger.com enthusiasts, the possibilities for funny captions are endless. And that’s essentially all the site is: pictures of cats with funny captions. Simple? Genius? Lucrative? Yes, yes, and yes.

Since its debut in 2007, the site, which began as a joke between two friends, has exploded into an empire with a cult following. Pet Holdings, Inc., the company behind the site, has 18 spinoff sites, including Ihasahotdog.com, Totallylookslike.com, and Failblog.org. Ten of those sites, such as Thisisphotobomb.com, Pictureisunrelated.com, and Ugliesttattoos.com, all debuted this June, spreading humor like dogs spread fleas and giving us ten more excuses to put off doing anything productive”"not that writing funny captions isn’t productive in its own creepy-I’m-obsessed-with-my-cat-and-dress-him-up-in-cute-little-outfits kind of way.

The flagship site is visited monthly by 2.1 million LOLcat fanatics around the world, and approximately 10 million humor-loving Web surfers also check out the spinoff sites each month. So who exactly are the Cheezburger obsessed? According to Quantcast.com, the site”"ranked at 1,124^th for most visited by U.S. Web surfers”"has a demographic mainly of educated young adult Caucasian women who shop at Hot Topic. Who knew that purple-spiked-haired, all-black-wearing goth chick who sat behind you in chemistry class had such a soft side?

But it’s not just casual entertainment for some registered users of the site, which has reached subculture-esque proportions. Take user “jimincairns”, who has created a whopping 1,527 captioned pictures (known as LOLz), or user “Thecat” who has 1,917 friends on the site and 11,900 favorite LOLz. And take a peek at “10puppyluv10″‘s profile: “i luvs goggies, and we has wun, but den mai kitteh ran awai. Iz so sad! ["¦] dis iz wun uf meh top favurit sites! i luvs hoomans, so feel free to rekwest meh as a frend.” Ummm, what?

Ah yes, LOLspeak, a few funny pictures away from taking over the English language as we know it. Some common words and phrases? Goggie (dog), fud (food), ohai! (greeting), nom (verb meaning “to eat” also sometimes substituted for “fud” as a noun), interwebs (Internet), kthxbai (goodbye).

Clearly, this empire has attracted more than the attention of sullen cat-loving goth chicks. Icanhascheezburger.com won a 2008 Blogger’s Choice Award for Best Animal Blogger, and that same year won two prestigious People’s Voice Webby awards for the Humor and Weird categories. In 2009, Failblog.org won two People’s Voice Webby awards for the same categories as its predecessor.

It may seem to be at the top of its game, but Icanhascheezburger’s popularity isn’t about to dwindle. The site has a page on Facebook, a surprisingly difficult and addictive online game called NomNomNom4Fud, an application for IPhones, and even a book.

Blast wanted to peek inside the genius minds behind the LOLcats, so we spoke with Pet Holdings, Inc.’s CEO, Ben Huh, who answered our tough, probing questions about this growing empire.

Blast: Can you briefly tell us how Icanhascheezburger.com began?

BH: Icanhascheezburger.com was started by two friends in Hawaii back in January of 2007. They exchanged some LOLCat pictures over IM and the site was born the next day.
Blast: So. What’s with this elusive cheezburger? Do cats like burgers? Did I miss something?

BH: It takes a cat to understand the mind of a cat… I’m pretty sure we’re missing everything.
Blast: Do you know about the online LOLspeak glossary? And do you foresee this taking over the English language as we know it? Can people actually misspell LOLspeak, or is it constantly evolving?

BH: We started speaklolspeak.com. It’s an evolving Internet-based language that’s incorporating parts of text-speak, IM-speak and l33t-speak [a language that substitutes numbers for letters, as in "n00b" for "newbie"].
Blast: There are “Star Trek” conventions, “Star Wars” conventions, “Lost” conventions… will there ever be a LOLcat convention? And if so, will there be cheezburgers?

BH: *shrug* I don’t see why not?
Blast: Do you have a favorite LOL? If so, what is it?

BH: I have lots of favorite LOLz here:‚ http://cheezburger.com/pictures-by-I-Can-Has-Cheezburger/favorites
Blast: Do you make LOLz yourself, or just sit at a desk reading them all day? Oh, and are you hiring?

BH: I do make them myself, but NOT A SINGLE ONE has ever been voted on to the homepage. And yes, we’re hiring.

Blast: So who invented much of the LOLspeak? Geniuses over at corporate or obsessed fans? Or both? Any you are responsible for?

BH: I think we’re all a little bit responsible for LOLspeak. Like any real language, it’s a cultural evolution.
Blast: Why do you think your sites have become so insanely popular and have attracted such a following?

BH: I think there’s a great sense of community behind them. They’re powered by the very people who enjoy the content. That tells you about what a little bit of effort can do for Internet culture.

He has photographed soldiers in Vietnam. He has filmed news in the United States and the Middle East. He has painted Saudi Arabian kings as well as his young granddaughter, portrayed in a frilly nightgown flying over Nantucket, sprinkling stardust onto the twinkling land below.

Award-winning artist Peter T. Quidley deserves a prize for versatility. You can see his range for yourself at Quidley & Company (118 Newbury Street), where his works are on display through June 25.

It is difficult to believe that this Boston native taught himself how to paint. His signature technique, glazing, involves applying very thin layers of oil paint to paneling, allowing light to shine through. He then applies varnish and finely sands the piece, buffing it to a glass-like shine. Without knowing about his technique, it would be easy to bet (and lose!) that some of his pieces, especially “The Sketch” (see picture at right) are set behind glass.

The glazing effect also gives his pieces a luminous quality, as if they are bathed in sunshine. The effect can seem as somewhat of a purposeful contradiction. Take his piece “The Storm” in which two women are walking on a beach; one woman is in a long, flowing dress, and the other is wrapped in a towel. Their backs are turned to the viewer, who acts as an observer walking behind them. The scene is in soft focus, with light wisps of pink, blue, and white. It’s serene and airy, save for the gray clouds entering the scene in the distance, competing with a light blue sky. The women, linking arms, walk slowly toward the storm clouds, not seeming to notice or care. The painting’s luminescence causes the viewer to almost have to search for any sign of the storm after which the piece is named.

“Stardust” which features Quidley’s granddaughter, nearly sparkles off the wall. His subjects, as in this piece, are often in nightgowns or in long, flowing dresses adorned with lace, which adds to the ethereal quality of his works. The women in his life “" his daughter and granddaughter, for example “" are his muses. His paintings act as windows looking out on moments in time, whether real or imagined. His eye for detail and composition speaks to his experience behind the camera lens.

His works take up only a small space in the back of the modestly sized Quidley & Company “" which is owned by the artist’s son, Chris “" but putting together a show at all is a challenge, said Rob Giacchetti, managing partner of the company.

“His work is so sought after that it’s unusual to have this many pieces” he said.

Because of the intricacy of his technique, Quidley paints only eight to 12 works a year. And unless you’ve got as much money as a Saudi Arabian king, his prices will astound you; “The Storm” is priced at $8,500, “The Sketch” at $42,000, and “Labor of Love”? $67,500! But can you really put a price on a work of art? For the rest of us, many of his prints can be found on the artist’s website, www.Quidley.com, for $25 to a few hundred dollars.

And though relatively speaking the exhibit may house an impressive number of Quidley’s works, don’t expect to spend all day there; it is a small collection that deserves a look while spending the day shopping or dining on Newbury Street.

For a long, long time it has been widely accepted that the mentally ill and immensely talented Dutch artist, Vincent Van Gogh, chopped off his own earlobe with a razor. People have made jokes about it for decades and it’s been a pop culture reference for just as long.

But it may not be true.

A new book, based on the original police report of the event, suggests that Van Gogh’s friend, French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin, may have swiped off Van Gogh’s ear with a sword during a rift outside a brothel.

Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, the authors of “In Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence”, argue that the original historical account is inaccurate and contains several irregularities.

Kaufmann and Wildegans looked at witness reports and letters exchanged between the artists, and have since concluded that Gauguin was the one responsible for carving Van Gogh’s lobe clean off his head. The German scholars also claim that Van Gogh then wrapped his severed ear in cloth and handed it to a prostitute named Rachel, according to the BBC.

Kauffman says they do not know whether the act was intentional, however they are certain that the legendary artists agreed to invent and push the story that Van Gogh cut it off himself in order to protect Gauguin. That makes it sound like it was an accident, though I don’t see how you can cut someone’s ear off by accident.

In the legendary tale, Gauguin was not present when Van Gogh cut his ear off. “As for Van Gogh, he didn’t confirm anything. Their behaviour afterwards and various suggestions by the protagonists indicate they were hiding the truth” Kauffman told France-based Le Figaro newspaper.

So did Gauguin force Van Gogh to go along with the myth that he de-eared himself? Or was it really an accident that Gauguin, an avid fencer, chopped it off outside a brothel? It may never be known.

Van Gogh later moved to Tahiti, and then to France where he died after shooting himself in the chest. Maybe that was Gauguin, too.

CHESTNUT HILL — Imagine walking into someone’s home and seeing a child’s drawing on the refrigerator. It’s filled from edge to edge with bright colors, wobbly lines and adorable depictions of everyday scenes. Now imagine taking a closer look at that drawing and noticing that in it there is a helicopter shooting bullets at a person who’s lying dead on the ground with blood coming out of his head. Meanwhile, a lime green and pink tank spits bullets at a cozy yellow and orange home made up of the most basic of shapes.

A child who escaped the nightmare in Darfur drew this disturbing image coated in candy colors.

That drawing is among a set of 500 others done by child refuges of Darfur as part of a traveling exhibition called Waging Peace.‚  The event is sponsored by Boston College’s center for Human Rights and International Justice, and the Center for the Arts and Social Responsibilities.

In 2007, Waging Peace member Anna Schmitt went to the country of Chad to learn about the living situations and humanitarian rights of Darfuri and Chadian refugees. Schmitt began collecting testimonials from adults in these areas when her focus turned to the youth, who had witnessed just as much terror as their elders. Schmitt handed out paper and pencils to kids between the ages of 6 and 18, and asked them to draw their future hopes and their strongest memories. What she found were honest depictions of the horror that these children witnessed in their everyday lives.

The government of Sudan’s story of the events that have unfolded in the past four years is not surprisingly very different from the pictures drawn by the children. What makes this exhibit fascinating is that the viewer enters with the back-of-the-mind thought that children have no reason to dramatize or fabricate their illustrations. At this age they are naƒ¯ve to the workings of politics and of government and its role in the gore and terror that they witnessed.

They just drew what they saw.

The sketches in the exhibit feature a number of elaborate events. Just as an American child might draw a scene from their home or school, the Darfuri children depict villages on fire, men on horseback shooting machine guns into crowds, and tanks and helicopters shooting into the air and dropping bombs on towns. The one common element that ties all of the drawings together is the blatant, and obvious red scribbles. Thick red smudges draw the viewer’s eye to outlines of adults, animals, and babies that lie on the floor of the representational villages, unmistakably and brutally murdered.

The images serve a duel purpose. While serving as a form of therapy for children that have obviously been emotionally scarred, the pictures also serve as an eye opener to audiences that may be unaware of the crisis that has taken over Darfur. The illustrations also provide evidence that there is much more brutality happening in Darfur than is being represented by its government. Therefore, many of the pictures will be submitted as evidence to the International Criminal Courts in the proceedings against officials of Sudan that have denied policies of genocide. The drawings certainly bring a level of awareness of the tragedy in Darfur to Boston, and shows how art therapy can be a useful tool when helping children and others deal with a crisis.

CAMBRIDGE — In artist Heide Hatry’s exhibit “Heads and Tales,” at the Pierre Menard Gallery there is a table. It is a long, slender, metallic and sturdy table often seen in a hospital operating room. The table symbolizes all that we know and are comfortable with.‚  On top of this table, however, is an idea of much contrast. A decaying body lays on top of it, as though abandoned at her time of death by an entire room of hospital patrons, left to rot and decompose.

And this isn’t even the most disturbing piece at the Harvard Square Gallery.

Around this body, and around the rest of the gallery, hangs images not so monstrous but equally disturbing. On the walls are pictures of women, shot from only the shoulders up, framed in thick black frames. A closer observation reveals that the women look as if they are not present. They have features that make them look like a woman — pouty lips, all different styles and colors of hair, big black eyes, and some even have nice clothing and accessories. Their eyes are large and dilated, and seem to be fixed on something that is not there. Their skin looks creamy and soft, but at the same time it looks awkward and pale — too pale for the living. That is because they too are dead.

They look as though they should be seen in a casket, not on gallery walls. Their makeup is heavy and waxy, and the gallery looks like a mortician’s portfolio.

What makes these woman look so life-like and yet no longer on this earth, are because of the unconventional materials used by Hatry. A sped up projection of the artist creating the pieces is shown on a gallery wall. She pulls apart pig skin and body parts. She unwraps fresh pig eyes from their sockets with the haste and regularity of unwrapping a piece of chocolate. She then carefully sculpts and molds materials that should be in your frying pan to a manikin like frame to give life to a dead woman.

Some of the women look less fearsome than the others. In the work titled “Head of Debbi Tale: What happened to her by Rebecca Brown,” the woman in the photo looks happy. She has a small smile on her face as she looks at the camera with her head slightly tilted. Her curly blonde hair playfully dances in her face. Other women in the exhibit are not so fortunate, however. One of the more grotesque images, aside from the body, is called “Head of Jennifer, Tale: Goes to the Dogs by Selah Saterstrom.” In this photo, Jennifer does not appear only to be physically dead, but the expression on her face is dead too. Almost her entire eye is black, dilated with a pupil fixed on nothing. Tiny flies crowed her lips, and attempt to cover entire her eyeball. She does nothing, she can’t.

But it is not only in appearance that Hatry gives the deceits a life-like quality. Juxtaposed with each woman is a frame of text from different writers who the artists asked to pick a woman and give her a story. This creates for a variety of tales for each woman, written as though the viewer has randomly opened a page in a large text book and started reading. Some are written in prose, others are written in the form of poems, stream of consciences, and screen plays, all as different as the women in the frames.

In the case of the work titled “Head of Nanny, Tale: Losing sequins by Jennifer Belle,” we can read only a snippet of one woman’s life story. The photo is of a darker skinned woman with plump rose-colored lips made of pig parts. Her hair is curly and a wild fiery red. She is photographed like so many others outside in front of leafy green trees. The prose starts of with the sentence, “Before she came to take care of the baby there were several before her who hadn’t worked out, mostly because they got on the nerves of the mother.” The story goes on to tell a short tale of Nanny’s interaction with the child and mother. “Head of Jill, Tale: Big With Child by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro,” we read her story in the form of a play. “Jill: I can feel it (presses the left side of her belly) right here it’s like a little knot. Steve (to audience) she asks me to feel it ten times a day.” We read on to learn that Jill and Steve are getting an abortion.

Some of the stories are simply small windows into a stranger’s life, and some are more dark and disturbing. By adding these stories to her pictures, Hatry does something that we do not often do in life. She forces us to acknowledge the fact that the dead do not simply become bodies, they were once women with a life, women with a story to tell. We realize that all of these women — sisters, girlfriends, nannys, rape victims, strippers, little girls and housewives will all end up like the woman on the table: dead and decaying, losing their story with their physical appearance.

The College Art Association is expressing anger and disappointment at Brandeis University over its recent decision to close the Rose Art Museum and sell off its rare works to raise money for the school.

“Neither Brandeis University nor the Rose Art Museum is on the brink of economic collapse, nor are they unable to maintain the collections,” the Association said in a scathing indictment of the school. “Given that no clear explanation has been offered on the school’s financial exigencies, the closure of the Rose Art Museum and the sale of its collection appear to be in violation of professional museum standards and of academic transparency.”

The CAA cites the Codes of Ethics of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, “which clearly state that works of art in museum collections are held as a public trust and that any proceeds of sales must only support the acquisition of new works.”

“However, perceiving an entire art collection as a disposable financial asset and then dismantling that collection wholesale to cover other university expenses is deeply troubling for all college and university collections,” the CAA said in a statement Thursday.

The closing of the museum at Brandeis will be devastating to the academic community, not only affecting our colleagues at the museum and students and faculty in the Department of Fine Arts, which offers programs in both studio art and art history, but also depriving the entire arts-loving public in New England and around the world. The teaching of art and art history in higher education is untenable without the direct study of physical works of art, and it appears the Brandeis Board of Trustees has disregarded the kind of scholarship and creativity that have been the hallmark of CAA members for nearly one hundred years.

The College Art Association is comprised of 14,000 artists, art historians, scholars, curators, collectors, educators, art publishers, and other visual arts professionals are individual members and 2,000 universities and museums.

The association has called upon the Brandeis University board of trustees to reverse the decision.

As a child his relationship with his grandmother was not the closest, but as he grew older and learned her history Adam Zeisel wanted to ensure his grandmother’s legacy lived through the ages. Zeisel is the grandson of Eva Zeisel, the Hungarian-born designer of curving pottery whose famous works grace museums worldwide and Crate and Barrel stores across America.

Zeisel, a 25 year-old Northeastern University graduate, decided to start representing his grandmother’s designs and selling them exclusively through her website. After receiving advice from his father in 2006 to sell a set of goblets Eva designed for her 100^th birthday, Zeisel put the business skills he was learning in college to good use. He sold the goblets online successfully and began to imagine how he could manufacture other designs.

“I wanted to find a niche for a woman who already had a name brand, but in smaller table top objects. I went to her studio and saw she had furniture designs that had never been made and I didn’t know she had them, after browsing through I knew the pieces would appeal to her customers and bring her into a new market,” Zeisel said.

Always the leader, starting a t-shirt business at Northeastern and being involved with many student groups, Zeisel put together a business plan to start selling pieces through a new site, EvaZeiseloriginals.com. He consulted college professors to learn what was the best way to sell his grandmother’s designs without harming her very respected image.‚  His family’s name was his biggest seller.

“I found this would be a great opportunity to have a chance to follow passion and be a leader. Its challenging because people say, ‘oh you’re her grandson’ but I enjoy the challenge,” the young entrepreneur said. “My first goal was to give Eva peace of mind and confidence that I was doing something worthwhile and with that I could pursue the marketing of the brand by using the family name to add to her legacy and not use her legacy. I didn’t want that to be the reason for why people bought, because we share a last name, but because it is her original pieces available to everyone.”

Complying a list of what made 2008 so special is pretty tough. You have a world view, a local view, perspectives on certain sectors of human interests, and analysis that favor a new trend. So much goes into 2008, that I wanted to do 2,008 memorable moments of 2008.

It would have been appropriate had our publication been a scholarly review of cultural and sociological studies. But alas, it’s BLAST! So I cut it down to the list to eight of the most memorable, and (if forgotten) important moments.

While I could list “Christmas” this, or “New Years” that; I’m not as festive for the season as most people are. But I do appreciate a look-back to what got us where we are in the first place. So on to the list and a brief explanation as to why these events were important:

8. The Beijing Olympics
You saw it on TV, or were one of the lucky ones to have been there. A vast majority of the global world, not the American world, tuned in to watch and support their respective country. You should find it memorable that a Communist Country opened it’s doors to the world and hosted such a prestigious event. With obvious controversy leading up to, during and follow the event, you have to admit that China handled such a momentous event with flying colors. No pun intended. Bringing together such diverse groups of people is truly one for the record books. Many of which were written that week.‚ 

7. The Phoenix lands on Mars
Not exactly covered like the Olympics, the martian landing of the Phoenix on the Northern polar ice cap on mars is just as important, if not just as costly.‚ ”Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light,”‚ NASA officials stated‚ earlier in the year.‚ Most don’t realize the true rocket science that goes into learning about our planetary history. So a worldwide effort of this magnitude rivals that of the Olympics, in that NASA is sending it’s athletes into space.

6. Bank Bailout
Many saw it coming, many even said it was already happening. But everyone can agree, it’s the most talked about debacle for Americans. Forget the billion dollar Hubble debacle, we had ourselves a far-reaching and horribly understated crisis of our foundations in finances. If we don’t learn how to control our credit, we end up licking wounds of debt and disarray. And if that wasn’t enough to mortally wound the triumph that was our mixed economy, we decided that we needed to bail out our banks. I guess we understood the hardships banks would face in a couple of months; compared to our lifetime of debt. I’m just glad our bailout money bought them a nice day at the spa. All 700 billion dollars of it.

If there is something people have in common is having that person who loves to take pictures. Whether it is birthdays, weddings or these holiday events, that special photographer is ready to capture the Kodak moment. So what to give them now when a Nikon camera may not be part of the budgeted gifts? There are other fun alternatives. One of them created by PhotoFiddle.com.

In their website, customers can upload their favorite shot, or that of their indie-professional photographer, and turn it into a piece of art, literally.

“Photofiddle.com was created to allow everyone to be an artist. All of us have great photos taken during the holidays or on vacations and special occasions. Those photos sit in a shoe box collecting dust or on our computer hard drives,” said Ira Gross, “Photofiddle users get to create personalized artwork from any photo on canvas or art print.”

The finishing product is great for personalized decorating of your home or office and makes for a unique gift. With over 30 finishing styles to choose from and prices starting at $14.95 there is a gift option for everyone. After a test-drive it was fun to discover the company’s system is easy to use and see the end result before buying it, making sure that you will like what you receive.

That photo aficionado who loves to shoot and share those special moments in your family or social circle will get a kick out of seeing their art in a new way… framed and ready to hang.

For a limited time Blast gets you a 15 percent discount to Photofiddle.com. Just enter the code: Blast15 at checkout until December 31.

If you like the site and want to get more gifts enter for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate too. Email your contact information to Giveaways@BastMagazine.com to enter by January 1st!

“I’m not homeless yet.”

It’s‚ a fairly low-key way to express the kind of professional success illustrator Grant Gould is experiencing.

Recently hired by Lucasfilm Ltd., Gould is part of a team that’s‚ working on The Clone Wars online web comics. Released in tandem with the television show, the comics will supplement the plots and characters found in the weekly episodes.

Star Wars fans are no stranger to Gould’s work. His art can be found all over the official site as well as illustrations and “How to Draw” tutorials, as well as on the Topps Revenge of the Sith Artist Sketch card series.

Gould thanks fellow artist >Tom Hodges, who is also working on the online Clone Wars comic, for his start in professional illustration in 2004. Hodges, who was working on an online strip for Hyperspace, a section of StarWars.com, told Gould about the opportunity to draw for the Topps series. As a fan of the Star Wars saga, Gould jumped at the chance to work on such a well known story.

“I enjoy drawing characters that people are familiar with, but giving them my own spin,” he said in a recent interview with Blast.

With his first professional illustrating job under his belt, Gould continued to work on other projects such as trading card sets for many popular comics and television series along with personal commissions.

“So I knew I had to make a decision — start cutting back on the illustration jobs, or quit my day job and try my hand at fulltime freelance illustration,” Gould said. “I guess I figured I’m still young enough where if I completely screw up, no harm, no foul — at least I can say I tried it out.”

“I took my chances and quit my day job, and dove headfirst into the scary world of fulltime freelance.”

Scary for many reasons,‚ not the smallest of which was the fact that Gould had little formal training and education in illustration.

“In college (Brown College in Minnesota) I had a few classes on ‘life drawing’ and such, but I would say for the most part I’m self-taught … Illustration is like any skill in that the more you do it, the more you learn and the better you get.”

Gould has had many informal‚ chances to learn, as well. “In high school, I was the guy who would draw silly cartoons and doodle Ninja Turtles in my notebooks.”

Gould was a graphic designer for about seven years and drawing in his free time before turning his attentions to illustrating full time. “I think anatomy books and tutorial books helped a lot, too, in my younger years,” he said.

Finally, Gould recognizing that the skill of observation as helped his artwork a lot. “Watching how people move, studying body shapes and faces (both in real life and in cartoons and movies), and really noticing how things fit together — I think all of it contributes to how I draw.”

And how he draws has gotten him where he is today.

“Now that I’m working on the Clone Wars online comic, it feels like I’ve graduated and am getting to play with the big boys,” Gould said.‚ He’s currently also working on a comic of his own. “I wrote and drew my own creator-owned graphic novel, and it’s coming out this November.” Wolves of Odin, as the name implies, focuses on Norse mythology with a bit of the supernatural thrown in.

“It’s genuinely exciting to wake up and work on something that you love…I think Young Grant would be very happy to see where I’m at today in my career.”

After all, he’s still not homeless.

Buy The Boston Globe or turn to Boston.com on Sunday to see John Guilfoil’s business spending column on executive pens.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing — actually writing with my hands, not a keyboard — more than usual. That’s because I’ve been testing out various executive and designer pens for a “Globe Tests” column.

I tested out four writing instruments, including a MontBlanc and a Cross, which you can read about tomorrow when the column runs, but for now, here are a few that didn’t make the cut:

Pierre Cardin Black Pen
$9.99

Pros: It writes. It comes with a free mechanical pencil and a nifty box to keep them in. They’re shiny and black.

Cons: This is a cheap pen. We had a good laugh at the stack of these on the store shelf, just knowing they’d be thrown into stockings and gift bags this year.

Overall: Pierre Cardin does make some decent pens. We say spend the extra money on something worth holding onto.

Classic Century Lustrous Chrome
$30 – $50

Pros: The recognized, slender shape of the Cross pen means something in the handwriting world. This is the equivalent of an E-class Mercedes, and it’s a way for you to own one without breaking the bank. (Read the Globe to see an example of one that does break the bank)

Cons: The large black tip gives it away as the “cheap” cross. You can get the pure silver model for about double the price

Overall: It’s a good pen. Maybe not great, but good.

Fisher Space Pen X-750
$30

Pros: It writes upside-down! Think of all the Seinfeld references! (Read the Globe to see another Space Pen example)

Cons: The ink is a little blotty.

Overall: The X-750 is a great gift, a perfect conversation piece and the ultimate writing-related novelty.

Cross Townsend Emerald Ballpoint Pen
$110

Pros: It’s a sturdy, solid pen that writes very well. Handsome design makes it a great gift.

Cons: Price may be a bit high, especially if you go for some of the precious metal-plated models.

Overall: The Townsend is Cross’ larger-sized mainstay. It comes in ballpoint, roller-ball and fountain.

Faber-Castell Pen of the Year 2008
$3,000

Pros: You may never find a more stunning looking pen. It’s shell is made of Indian satinwood woven into a parquet pattern that usually requires a flat surface.

Cons: It costs three thousand dollars.

Overall: I mean, seriously, if you can afford this pen, go for it.

SAN DIEGO — Attention “Twilight” fans, in addition to movies, music and video games, there’s something else at Comic-con that you may be interested in.

Comic books.

Okay, let’s be realistic, maybe they won’t be interested in comic books, but millions are, it’s the reason why Comic-con exists and we can’t get enough of it.

With the first full day of the con behind us, here’s a look at some of the best non-major label comics that have caught my eye so far at the sold out 2008 San Diego Comic-con International.

Of course, even after trolling the exhibit floor Wednesday for preview night and a good chunk of the day today, I’m sure I haven’t seen all the good ones yet, so don’t go crazy if your favs aren’t on the list.

Valentine
Red Eye Press
Daniel Cooney

“No matter how hard she tries, Valentine just can’t leave the killing game behind. Her life as an assassin has made her a liability to everyone she’s ever known — and the lingering mental effects of the CIA’s MkUltra program have clouded her memory, making her past a puzzle waiting to be pieced together,” states the premise for Dan Cooney’s “Valentine.” This sexy, bitchy killer provides for some classic comic entertainment. The new book, “The Killing Moon,” was unveiled at Comic-con, and it is very good, opening with Valentine crashing a car through some thugs’ living room and taking out the trash.

Headlocked
Visionary Comics Studio
Kingston, Valiente, Gravel

Sure it’s been a while since the WWE was cool, but that doesn’t change how good this story of a young man’s quest to make it in the world of professional wrestling. This color glossy book is well-designed and very impressive for a smaller outfit. When writer Michael Kingston approached me, I didn’t expect much out of a wrestling book, but the amount of work the team put into the comic shows.

Toupydoops
Lobrau Productions
Kevin McShane

Imagine a world where Hollywood was run not by studio execs but by comic book creators. Enter loveable blue Toupydoops and his half-bear, half-human sidekick Teetereater. This is a black and white book that’s well-drawn and nicely detailed. Despite the language and adult situations, there’s something wholesome and genuinely entertaining to be gleaned from reading the six books that McShane and company have put out so far.

GirlsDrawinGirls
Independent
Various Artists

Not so much a comic book as it is an art movement, GirlsDrawinGirls is a fantastic journey through time as some of the top female artists and animators collaborate to draw their gender from caveman days to Victorian times, through their visages of the future. I met with three of the ladies Wednesday, including Melody Severns, who currently works on “The Simpsons.” I also bought a wonderfully illustrated print of a girl playing Nintendo Wii done by Danni S. Lou.

How to be a Serial Killer
Viper Comics
Luke Ricci, Ramon Espinoza

This book was a Comic-con special one-shot deal previewing a movie that’s coming out later in the year. The title explains it all — a man becomes a serial killer and kills people. It’s brutal and violent, but I’m glad I got my hands on a copy of this promotional comic, because the color and drawings are so perfectly done that it makes me want to see the movie — or at least wish Viper could commission a full comic series.

Three more not to miss: “DMZ” by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli and on the major label side, Image’s “Suburban Glamour” by Jamie McKelvie and “Tales of the Starlight Drive In” by Michael San Giacomo et al.

At first glance, he’s your typical tattoo artist: stocky, built, arms and chest covered in vivid skin art, and a mug that could threaten your entire family without him uttering a single word. His dark, neatly-kempt hair and his rounded, strong and clean-shaven face suggest Michael Corleone on his most serious day.

But then he smiles. And if he was wasn’t wearing a t-shirt and ink-stained jeans – perhaps a well-cut suit and tie instead – he’d win your trust faster than you could say, “Stereotype.” Normally, though, it takes a brief, sit-down consultation for you to realize that he’s completely capable of professionally and skillfully marking you for life.

Natan Lin has spent the better half of his career battling stereotypes and turning people on to the safer, more respectable side of tattooing. Thanks partly to him, everyone in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can get tattooed safely and, perhaps more important, legally. He’s also produced – for six years in a row now – the annual Boston Tattoo Convention, through which he spreads the word about the artistic value of tattooing, and helps introduce talented artists from across the country to a greater following.

Foremost, though, Lin, 38, is an artist and business owner. Running two successful studios in the greater Boston area – with another, his biggest yet, on the way in Salem – Lin has gained a crucial understanding of what it takes to run a solid, lasting business in a relatively new-age profession. Twenty years ago, Lin’s career path would’ve seemed inconceivable, but today, his business is a “million-dollar baby.” And that, it seems, only makes him stronger.

“There’s a high degree of responsibility in what I do. People entrust me to alter them for the rest of their lives, so I take that pretty seriously,” said Lin. “And as a business owner, people entrust their careers and livelihoods to me.”

But before you peg him as all business, he’s got a self-admitted light side, too.

“Underneath the crushing weight of all that responsibility is the essential fact that I get to draw and paint on a daily basis,” he said. “That, in and of itself, is a miraculous and beautiful thing.”

Lin’s ascension to the top of the Boston tattoo game began sometime in the early ‘90s, when he flew to Amsterdam expecting a much-needed vacation. But, as any chick-flick would have it, he met a girl while in Holland, prolonging his original, brief visit to a stay of five years. But after some time in the land of flowers and windmills, the girl, Lin realized, wasn’t the biggest pull.

“I met some tattoo artists there,” said Lin, “and I started spending my time in the company of tattooers and people who collected tattoos who were interested in the art.”

Within a year, Lin – then a freelance graphic designer – had gotten his foot in the door at one of the very few shops in Amsterdam and began apprenticing under a Dutch artist, learning the ins and outs of the business while occasionally inking a willing customer for practice. While studying the art of tattooing, Lin connected deeper with his artistic side, which, although he always maintained, had never before been so stimulated. Still, however, he didn’t expect to carve a living out of a frowned-upon practice.

“I thought that this is a great medium that I wanted to work in, but I didn’t really consider it a career path,” Lin said. “I didn’t think I was going to become a tradesman or a craftsman of some kind.”

Meanwhile, tattooing in his native Massachusetts had been banned since 1962. The only people wearing tattoos had either traveled out of state to get them, or had endured an agonizing and shady homemade procedure, probably in someone’s basement. When Lin returned to the states in 1995, after years of polishing his new craft and now excited about the prospect of tattooing in his home state, he was amazed to find out that he’d have to stick with other jobs to get by. During that period, he found work as a musician, a bouncer and even as a stain glass artist.

But nothing, it seemed, was a substitute for tattooing.

In 1996, he created a website, MassInk.com, which promoted the practice of safe tattooing, as well as the overturn of the tattoo ban within the Commonwealth.

“Once tattooing did come out into the light, then I got pro-active about safe tattooing,” Lin said. “By creating the website, I was able to disseminate a bunch of information about the bare basics of what people should be looking for when they’re getting a tattoo.”

After several years of inaction on the Commonwealth’s behalf, Lin teamed up with a few fellow tattoo artists – including Boston-based Stephan Lanphear, whom Lin credits as the true figurehead of the legalization movement – and other advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union. Now with a substantial force behind him, Lin began speaking out more aggressively: He organized rallies, helped sponsor bills to the state legislature, and even spoke on Beacon Hill, vouching for the safety of tattooing.

On Oct. 23, 2000, State Superior Court Judge Barbara Rouse overturned the ban, and effective Jan. 31, 2001, tattooing in the Commonwealth would become legal for the first time in more than 40 years. For Lin and his advocacy team, the victory was groundbreaking – it was one that would change the course of his life forever.

“We struggled with it for a few years,” Lin said. “But one key idea applied at the right place and the right time made a massive social change.”

With tattooing in the clear, Lin was ready to pursue his newfound passion at home. He opened his first studio, Darkwave Tattoos, in Roxbury in 2001, followed shortly by his second, Lightwave Tattoos, in Saugus in 2003. A steady, dedicated following of clients provided for the growth of his businesses into some of the most well-known shops in the greater Boston area, and has allowed him to open a third – Witch City Ink, in Salem – later this spring. Lin’s successful combination of professionalism and dedication has made more than one mark on his customers.

“He has the skill, and a certain way about him,” said Tim Coady, a friend and longtime customer of Lin’s. “The conversation’s going along, we ask each other about our families, and next thing you know, the tattoo’s done and it’s just the way you want it.”

Over the course of eight years, Coady, 59, has accumulated 26 tattoos from Lin – two full sleeves, half of his back and half of his chest – and says he won’t let any another artist touch him.

“I’ve noticed that he gets respect,” Coady said. “He has that kind of a personality that you just know he’s a good artist.”

It’s no mistake that Lin has made people happy with his work. He says that his business is not only about giving people tattoos, but about making a greater statement in favor of the art and being responsible for its consequences.

“We have an extended circle of responsibility that includes ethical practice and raising the standards of not only what people perceive as tattoos, but what they perceive as people who get tattoos,” said Lin. “But getting paid to use your imagination and to make people happy when they’re doing something empowering for themselves is a great place to be in.”

Apart from advocacy and tattooing, Lin’s into activism – one of his children suffers from severe autism, and since her infancy, Lin has sought to increase awareness of the disease by donating a cut of the convention profits each year to autism charities, thereby promoting its research. He’s learned the virtues of caring and compassion on this whole other front – when Maya, 6, was diagnosed with the disease, the tattooer quickly realized the stakes of her illness. In the last year, he’s been trudging through a painful divorce from his wife of 10 years, Lily, over disagreements in their daughter’s treatment.

“Autism is something that you don’t plan for and that you don’t expect. But when it comes along, like any severe illness, it changes the road map of your life in a pretty heavy duty way,” Lin said. “It’s a terrifying and heart-breaking thing to cope with, so it’s taught me a lot of things, but I suppose that a lot of deep sadness has a way of tempering your personality in a lot of ways.”

Although he only gets to see his children on the weekends – his son, Max, is 8 – Lin savors the time he has with them, and ensures that he’s still a big presence in their lives.
“He’s awesome with his kids,” said Gwendolyn Ditsch, 41, an employee at Darkwave Tattoos. “I see him with them all the time, and they just light up his life.”

Throughout the past six years, Lin has donated 10 percent of the Boston Tattoo Convention’s profit to organizations such as CureAutismNow and Realizing Children’s Strengths, the school his daughter attends in Natick. As long as his daughter is sick, he’ll be at the forefront of her development, ensuring that she gets the best care every step of the way.

There’s no doubt that Lin has enjoyed substantial achievement throughout his career, but he seems to simply shrug it off his shoulders. To him, business is business, and he’s just lucky enough that his passion is his business.

“As you go beyond, particularly in the larger movement of art, you realize how little you are in comparison to what you do,” Lin said. “I’m not a celebrity. I’m fortunate to do what I love and that I have a good shot at giving my kids a great future through doing something that I do well.”

Sitting on a stool inside his tattooing station, Lin carefully cleans and re-inspects each needle, looking for any imperfection that may lead to infection, or even the slightest change in ink color. He’s a perfectionist, and it shows.

Colin Rhys has got it figured out. At 23, he has successfully launched and promoted his own art gallery, and hops planes — whenever he feels like it, really — to far-off destinations to sling art to his many clients around the globe. He’s got no boss, no bedtime, and certainly nothing better to do.

Rhys owns and operates Rhys Gallery, in Boston’s elite, artsy South End. It’s an open, airy, 2,500 sq. ft. street-corner gallery that exhibits mostly paintings and 3D installations by artists from all over the world. It’s on the far fringes of the neighborhood — right across from the biggest homeless shelter in town — but he could care less about local clientele. When you’ve got buyers and artists waiting on you from Moscow, Berlin or Dubai, who would?

Essentially, Rhys — a youngin’ by age but a cool, calculated and driven businessman by rhetoric — sells art. He’s the middleman — the guy who hooks up with artists to sell their art for them. It may seem trivial, but Rhys makes it an art. He makes it cool.

A San Francisco native, Rhys comes from humble beginnings. Four years ago, he was selling artwork out of his little studio apartment for $300 a piece, if that. Today, it’s no big deal for him to sell a piece to a collector in Los Angeles for a slim $40,000.

Kicked back comfortably in his "office chair" inside a tiny niche behind a drywall in his gallery — he hides out back there to cut costs on unnecessary additional office space — Rhys sporadically checks his email and voicemail. He apologizes profusely, and in a tone that somehow conveys that he actually gives a shit about making me wait just another two minutes or so. He’s wearing tailored jeans and a sweatshirt, and sports a 5 o’clock shadow just to tack on a few years for good measure.

We sit down together — legs cramped and nearly sandwiched by two walls over 10 feet tall — to chat about the business of art, and what it’s like to be the young guy on the block.

Are you an artist yourself?

No, I’m just in the business of slinging art. I don’t believe in dealers that make art. I think it’s a really bad, dangerous situation, because what’s your agenda, you know? What’s your motive? If you’re an artist, are you trying to get your work into the gallery? Or if you’re a gallery director, why are you making art? Why aren’t you out schmoozing, meeting clients? I get really worked up about this, actually. I’ve had a lot of friends get fucked over doing it. My agenda is to sell as much work as possible, and selling and making money is a part of that. And it’s my only agenda.

So why, then, the business of art?

Well, my background was a double degree in business and in art — I went to Tufts and the Museum School — and marketing is my life. There are actually some artists that won’t work with me, because I push their work way too hard. I push their work like you would be launching a new product for a new company. I mean, that’s what you have to do. When you’re introducing an artist, let’s push the romance aside — this is a product you are selling. The artist is the person — that’s the vision. And the combination of the two — of your vision and their vision put together — is what the collector is buying, at least in my opinion. So I think that’s how we were able to get to this point.

How did you get started?

I was living in this little loft, paying rent, and it was really stupid. So I wrote up a plan for my parents; we put 10 percent down, and we bought the place. I was working another job at French Connection to make money for the basics costs. I started the whole thing in my loft, and grew and grew and grew it. Rhys Gallery was me at that point — for 2 and a half years I didn’t have any employees. I did the hanging, the postcard stamps, all that shit! Rhys Gallery was just some kid’s loft and his name and his vision. Then I started getting, like, 350 people coming to my openings.

What, in essence, is your gallery all about?

Well, it started as a project to provide people with an experience that wasn’t available anywhere else in Boston. I learned that people were really going to New York City to have this "real" experience, not just to see small photos on the wall. So when I built this space, it was my driving vision to bring in non-regional artists, and people who are unique.

How do you make your money?

Consignment. The artist will come to me with a painting and say, "I want to get $1,000 for it." So that means I’m going to sell it for $2,000. I take a thousand and they take a thousand. Simple as that.

So how exactly do you hook up with all these artists from around the world?

Get on a plane, bro. I went to Dubai last year. I was over there for an art fair, recruiting artists. And that makes peoples heads turn, like they say, "Damn, you flew 16 hours?" Yeah, man! Fuck it. I guess that’s where my age comes in. Like if I was 60 and didn’t have a private jet, I probably wouldn’t be doing that. But I’m all about the briefcase, the suit bag, and running through the airport. I love that shit, man. Jet-setting all of the time? Hell yeah! And you get to expense it. Plus I get to bring in huge diversity into the gallery.

You’re a young guy. You’ve got to admit — it’s pretty amazing how well you’ve done in only a few years, don’t you think so?

You know, people say that, but when you look at the art world, I think its one of the only industries, beside tech, where people are in the game at this age. You don’t really need a physical space right off the bat. You just need a good personality and a vision for work. It’s a relationship business. Using the internet, you can start off a fucking laptop and make a billion dollars! Now the art world is not like that, but you can get your foot in the door. People may not take you as seriously, but it’s definitely possible.

Well, you’ve come this far. So what’s next?

I’m getting really freaked out by this U.S. economy, because what goes first? Disposable income. And what goes first from disposable income? The most expensive, non-useful goods, which, in this case, is art. People will start to methodically eliminate stuff, and mark my word, art will be the first thing that suffers. So how am I going to counteract that? I’m making more phone calls to my UK collectors and saying "Hey! You’re buying this on 50 cents on the fucking dollar! Let’s do it. Let’s do two pieces right now!" I’m international now, like I’m going to Moscow in May to sell some stuff. I’m going to have a larger international focus and highlight the fact that now’s the time to buy good art from here. I mean, fuck, there’s not enough money in the United States anymore. If I’m going to fly seven hours, I’ll go to Berlin, not to San Francisco or something.

As the holidays approach, a unique gift idea emerges from DNA 11. Recently. the Canadian-based company introduced its new line of art portraits, which include DNA fingerprints and portraits of your lips and kisses.

DNA 11 offers three innovative and personalized products, and each one will never look the same because it’s unique to yourself. They are sure to make any empty wall look great while adding a personalized touch.

The portraits use customer’s DNA results, which tend to look like small or large rectangles. Customers can customize the portraits with color choice by logging on and choosing one of multiple setup options — such as one person’s DNA or as many as four people’s DNA displayed on one canvas.

The portraits start at $390 frameless and increase in price with people and options. Sizes include 18″x24″ ($390) 24″x36″ ($490) and 36″x54″ ($790). There are also 25 color presets and optional framing.

Personalized signatures and high resolution downloads can also be purchased. After selecting from these options, the customer receives a DNA collection kit, which includes a swab to collect cheek cells that get mailed back so the company can produce the DNA portrait.

DNA 11 also offers signature fingerprint portraits, which expresses a great deal of individuality.The collection and design process is similar to the DNA portraits where customers go online and choose from the standard 12″x12″ size ($190), 20″x20″ or the large 40″x40″ ($490).

Next, the customer must choose a color from the 25 presets or by choosing a custom color from the color palette. Similarly, to the DNA portraits, customers may opt to add a signature ($50) and may purchase a high resolution downloadable image ($50) and can choose from framing options.

DNA 11 also offers “kiss portraits” — outlines of a person’s lips.

The creation process is actually quite simple. First, customers select the configuration of their choice between a single lip outline, double lip outline, close-up or multiple lips. Prices range from one standard kiss portrait ($290) all the way up to kiss double close-up for two people ($390).

Next, customers can choose between the two available sizes 20″x20″ ($290) or 40″x40″ ($490). Once again, customers can choose their preferred color from the 25 presets colors or from the color palette and can then choose from the optional frames available for the selected size. The customer can choose to add their signature ($50) or purchase a high resolution image ($50).

The Kiss collection kit allows the customer to apply the included M.A.C VIVA Glam lipstick and kiss the included sheets until they get the perfect lip print.

DNA 11 products allow customers to personalize art and offer a unique way to decorate any wall where no two pieces will look the same.

A portion of money from Kiss portrait purchases goes to help purchase 1000 condoms in India or 16 HIV tests in Haiti.

This was the first article ever written in Blast Magazine and was part of the 1/1/07 launch.

In his youth, James Crotty may have qualified for the title of Youngest Professional Photographer in Dayton, Ohio.

A shy personality in a family of extroverts, he discovered his passion once he started messing around with a 35mm camera his father brought home one day when he was 10 or 11.

“That was my escape,” he explained. “I was more quiet, introverted, and more aware of my natural surroundings. It was a way for me to go out and explore nature.”

At 13, Crotty had already set up a makeshift darkroom in the basement of his parents’ house, where he developed the photographs he regularly took around the neighborhood and in the wooded area around his home. When he entered high school, he got a job working in a local frame shop. He talked the owner into displaying some of his photographs, and people started buying them.

“I started seeing that people were responding to what I was creating,” he said.

And they’re still responding.

In September, the 42-year-old was awarded a first place prize in National Wildlife magazine’s annual Photography Awards, in the category of New Life. The winning picture, which was published in the December/January 2007 issue of National Wildlife, was an image he snapped in May of two young house finches nesting.

The photo was also chosen by Nature’s Best Photography magazine to be displayed as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. through April.

Every spring, Crotty said, the birds build a nest beneath hanging ferns on his front porch. This year, after two days of anxious waiting, the eggs hatched. The hatchlings were less than an inch long in their early days, Crotty said.

“I started seeing if I could get a really good shot of them,” he explained. “I kind of know when the babies are the most photogenic, the most interesting. They’ve got this otherworldly look to them; they almost look like Muppets. It only lasts a few days because they grow so quickly.”

Crotty said he was able to get off a series of shots with his 35mm macro lens camera and hand-held flash before the birds ducked back into their nest, realizing they would not be fed.

“It’s just a very brief moment to get them up when they’re looking at the camera,” he said. “The whole look of new life–it’s just something I wanted to capture and I happened to hit it at just the right time.” The birds were only days old at the time the picture was taken, and the fact that their eyes had not yet opened would normally be detrimental to a wildlife photograph. But not in this case.

“Most wildlife photographs are so engaging when the photographer is able to capture the animal’s personality through their eyes,” Crotty explained. “What’s interesting about this one is their eyes are closed, but you can still tell so much about what these birds are going through and the challenge of being so new in the world and so dependent on their parents. [Their wide-open mouths] kind of take the place of the eyes.”

According to Crotty, the photo started generating buzz as soon as he posted it in an online album on Flickr. Complete strangers began marking it as one of their Favorites.

“That one just took off,” he said. “It got a huge amount of hits. I kind of had a hint that it was a good image when I saw that… It was an image that really caught people’s attention.”

After he came across the National Wildlife photography contest online in August, Crotty decided to enter the photograph on a whim.