Boston could not ask for more great drama this weekend. Even before a certain athletic competition commences against a team from a certain noteworthy adjacent metropolis, our fair city offers us one last chance to see three remarkable productions of deservedly award-winning plays.

“God of Carnage”

by Yazmenia Retha (translated by Christopher Hampton)

directed by Daniel Goldstein

presented by Huntington Theatre Company

The playwright who brought us “Art,” the tale of two men shifting out of a mentor/protégée relationship and into contention in their middle age, thanks to the catalyst of an expensive abstract painting, comes another tale of squabbling grown-ups.

Off-stage, two children have an altercation on the schoolyard. One has knocked a tooth loose from the other with a stick.

The aggressor’s repressed mother and ostentatiously unscrupulous, cel-phone-addicted father pay a visit to the parents of the victim: two liberals, dripping with self-righteousness, in an apartment cramped with pretentious artifacts which advertise their simultaneous affinities for  the primitive and the sophisticated.

As the couples jockey to see who can come off as the most magnanimous, veneers are stripped bare, alliances are formed and trashed, booze is swilled, insults are hurled and furniture is vomited on and anesthetized. It’s a beautiful spectacle of the socially grotesque, all the more amusing in that you know each and every one of these people—in fact you probably are one of them.

Karl Baker Olson (left) and Thomas Derrah (right) in a scene from the SpeakEasy Stage Company production of Red. Photo: Craig Bailey.

RED by John Logan

directed by David R. Gammons 

presented by Speakeasy Stage Company

RED is a story about Mark Rothko, the great modern painter whom you may, if you’re honest, know as the” solid-color-with-solid-color-stripes, guy. If you’ve seen “a Rothko” in person though, there’s a good chance you were moved by it. They are almost eerily soulful, passionate and affecting compositions.

Through the eyes of a young apprentice who lives out a classical, role-reversing servant/master relationship with Rothko, we watch the artist confront his defining challenge:  fulfilling a commission from the Seagram’s Corporation to create a series of murals for an obscenely posh restaurant in it’s shiny new skyscraper headquarters. Painting is holy for Rothko, and commerce heartless and filthy. It’s another classic conflict.

John Logan is a playwright at heart who has sold an impressive number of trashy screenplays to Hollywood, so this is a conflict with which he’s familiar. He paints Rothko as a capital “A” Artiste in way that can sometimes feel a bit contrived, but he—and Speakeasy’s inspired team of designers and actors—capture painting as a sacred ritual as compelling as an epic athletic competition, with the same strange, irrational feeling of gravity and consequence.  In the role of the eccentric tortured genius, Tommy Derrah shows off his tremendous presence, emotional range and self-effacing humor.

Superior Donuts, Lyric Stage

Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts

Directed by Spiro Veloudus

Lyric Stage Company

Two other masterful former mainstays of the A.R.T., Will LeBow and Karen MacDonald, join some fresh talent in making the characters in this slice of Chicago life unforgettable. LeBow plays an aging hippie of Polish descent, who since the untimely death of his wife, is languishing behind the counter of his recently vandalized donut shop, oblivious to the flirtations of MacDonald’s salt-of-the-earth, Irish “lady cop.”

That which the near-destruction of his shop fails to accomplish—a true shakeup of his life—is initiated by the arrival of a young, black, trickster figure, who is either an unappreciated novelist, a con man, or some combination of the two.

Steven Barkhimer is amusing as always in the role of a the winkingly Chekhovian Russian shop owner,who wants nothing more than to buy our hero’s donut shop in order to expand his adjoining electronics store.

Like RED, Superior Donuts falls back on it’s share of clichés, including some clunky soliloquies, but at its heart are completely winning characters who illustrate the positives and negatives of urban culture clash, and, like “God of Carnage,” “Superior Donuts” is genuinely and consistently funny.

As technology advances, the quality of art within video games is expected to become more and more realistic. As such, studios are becoming increasingly interested in high talent artists to heighten the graphic quality of their games. Nick Heitzman, a game developer, said “As gaming continues to rise in popularity, cross gender and social boundaries, and expand in what defines a gaming experience, artists of all types will be in high demand to provide all the visual elements we as game consumers expect and at the quality we demand.”

Video game artists are faced with the challenge of creating an experience, rather than just something to look at. Matt Carofano, art director on “Skyrim” said “It’s interactive. It’s different than if you are making a sculpture or a painting. You know that people are going to play this art and not just see it from one specific angle. They are going to walk around it and make up their own story as they look at the work you’ve made.”

Despite the challenges, there are definitely benefits to the designing of video games. According to Game Developer magazine’s 2010 annual industry salary survey, artists make $71,354 a year.

There is nothing better that seasonal ale just before the fall hits and what better way to top it off than by being shocked. “Shock Top”  was introduced in 2011 as a seasonal belgian-style wheat ale and has been working with well known “Earthwork” artist Stan Herd to develop three unique piece.

One of these pieces was showcased on August 25 at Legal Haborside. It was a great night with fellow artist Stan Herd  greeting spectators as his piece arrived by boat on the water.

For more information on “Shock Top” Beer please visit shocktopbeer.com and visit them on Facebook at facebook.com/shocktop

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 — 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.

ROME — Exhibits from the two great empires, the Eagle and the Dragon, comprise more than 400 works on Roman and Chinese empires, spanning second century BC to fourth century AD, on display now in Rome at Palazzo Venezia. It marks Year of Chinese Culture in Italy

For the first time, an exhibition that compares the two seminal empires in world history: the Roman Empire and the Chinese Qin and Han dynasties from the second century BC to the second century AD.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and China’s State Administration for Cultural Heritage. It has already been seen in Beijing, Luoyang and Milan.

Kicking off at Beijing in July 2009 at its World Art Museum, the more than 300 works of art will be on display from both cultures aim to draw parallels between the cultures and mechanisms of both empires, while also highlighting their differences. Terracotta warriors, sarcophagi from Mawangdui and Han frescoes will stand alongside Roman funerary altars, mosaics and marble statues. The extraordinary ceramic statues showing the costumes, fashion and military arts of ancient China, will be compared to gladiatorial weapons, mythological figures and other archaeological artifacts that attest to the social habits of ancient Romans.

ROME — Starting Tuesday, the exhibition “Laboratory Schifano” will open at the MACRO museum, realized in collaboration with the International Film Festival in Rome. In “Laboratory Schifano” will be presented for the first time over two thousand pictures taken by Mario Schifano, displayed in a setting aimed at involving the public in the artist’s creative flow. The exhibition is made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Archives of Mario Schifano and the Museum MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art, Via Reggio Emilia 54, Rome. http://www.macro.roma.museum/ ).

Mario Schifano was born in Homs, in Libya, on September 20, 1934. Immediately after World War II, his family moved to Rome where, after soon dropping out of school, the young Schifano first worked as a shop assistant and then worked with his father, an archaeologist restorer at the Etruscan Museum in Valle Giulia. Meanwhile, he also started painting. He made his debut within the informal area with canvases thick with matter and furrowed by insightful gestures, and also marked by some drips. With works like this he opened his first solo exhibition in 1959 at the Galleria Appia Antica in Rome. It was however during the exhibition he held the following year with Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio and Uncini at the Galleria La Salita that the critics started taking an interest in his work. Having abandoned an informal approach, his painting evolved radically within the space of a few years. The painting became a “screen”: a point of departure, the space of an event refused in which, a few years later, numbers, letters and fragments of symbols of consumer civilisation, such as the Esso or Coca Cola logos would emerge. In 1994 he took part in “The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968”, put on by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which moved the following year to the Triennale di Milano and to the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

The exhibition that will open on Tuesday is by Massimo Barbero, Francesca Pola and the Archives Mario Schifano and is an amazing dive in the heart of the creativity of Mario Schifano, one of the most innovative international art scene of the second half of the twentieth century.

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 — From Mesopotamia to our table today, from the rite of communion to lewd drunkenness, from a distasteful habit to the gates of spirituality, wine and the vine are the protagonists of this exhibition "Vinum Nostrum" in Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. Original artefacts, sculptures, frescoes and mosaics, accompanied by multimedia and video installations, recount the history of the grapevine and of wine across thousands of years, as well as the important influence they exerted over ancient culture.

Following a chronological arrangement, the exhibition illustrates the origin of wine-growing in the Near East, its success and its related symbolic, religious and cultural significance in the Hellenic world, up to the production and wide-scale diffusion achieved by the Romans.

ROME — Chinese art has landed in Rome and risks never leaving the historical Roman palace of Palazzo Venezia.

The Beijing government will, at least for the next five years, manage an area in a Roman museum with an ancient history. After offering Italy 1,000 square meters in the new Museum overlooking Tienanmen Square, the People’s Republic wishes to have an equally large space in the building from which Benito Mussolini used to speak. It is precisely from the entrance of this palazzo that one is going to perhaps access "China’s Museum in Rome”.

Thus China will bring to Rome ancient and contemporary works of art. An interesting event that will build a bridge between Italian and Chinese art.

District resident and developer Emerson College has just announced ArtsEmerson: The World Onstage, an initiative that will both bring in some of the world’s most celebrated theater artists and also provide space and resources for the development of new works from some theaters most exciting new innovators.

This exciting venture will be programmed by Robert Orchard, Emerson’s new Executive Director of the Arts, a founding member of the A.R.T. who spent 30 years as a managing director and then executive director for the avant garde company in residence at Harvard.

Said Orchard in a statement: "We’ve grouped these artists into two programming streams: legends and pioneers. Legends are established, highly-regarded companies and artists whose work is celebrated around the world, such as The Abbey Theatre, The New York Theatre Workshop, Peter Brook, Tectonic Theater Project and F. Murray Abraham, among others. Pioneers include a new generation of artists whose ideas are redefining theatre, such as Elevator Repair Service, 7 Fingers, Rude Mechs and Basil Twist. We will also host a wide variety of performances for people of all ages. Some of these works will be developed at the Paramount Center for Boston audiences and travel the world."

ArtsEmerson will be housed at the Majestic Theater, and at the newly revamped Paramount Center, a beautiful Art Deco-style former movie house at Downtown Crossing, which now sports a 590-seat theater with an orchestra pit, a 150-seat black box, and a cinema, the Bright Family Screening Room. It also features a new, scene shop, rehearsal studios, a soundstage and nearby apartments for resident artists.

In contrast to the often prohibitively expensive Broadway in Boston series housed in the other glamorous venues in the area, ArtsEmerson is selling season tickets to it’s first season for just $60, with tickets to one show thrown in for free. The season covers a broad range of ground from new comedy, to documentary drama, from the investigative cabaret of The Civilians, to the literary explorations of Elevator Repair Service (who brought us Gatz at the A.R.T.). There will be an Irish Festival, featuring the celebrated Abbey and Druid theater companies. The great Peter Brook will mount some Boston premiers of his work. F. Murray Abraham will take on Shylock courtesy of Theater for a New Audience.

As Orchard said, "It’s an exciting time to be a theater fan in Boston."

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

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

ROME — The Lysippus will return to Italy.

The statue portrays a victorious, naked and full-sized athlete and is attributed to the proto-Hellenistic sculptor Lysippus. Bought in 1977, the statue is currently on exhibit at the Getty Museum in Malibu, California.

The story of this ancient statue is complicated. From the Greek mainland the Athlete, for mysterious reasons, ended up in the sea and was pulled out of the water in 1964 off Fano by fishermen who found it entangled in their nets. Carried to shore, the ship owner buried the statue to hide it from customs officers. Sold for three million Lire to an antique dealer from Gubbio, the Athlete exchanged hands many times between Milan, Brazil and Munich and was eventually bought by the museum in California.

Francesco Rutelli, Minister of National Heritage for the last Prodi government, had entered an agreement in September 2007 with the Getty Museum, allowing dozens of masterpieces to return to Italy. At the end of that year, for example, the Venus of Morgantina was returned to Sicily.

In 2007, the Getty Museum returned many works of art, but not the Athlete. In recent days a judge decided that the Lysippus to must return to the country where it was found.

Video games are a perfect representation of what the modern day consumer wants out of their entertainment.  They evolve as we evolve (with technology), they entertain, and they make a lot of money.  These three factors are necessary for any business to be successful in the world of entertainment.  It’s been a long time coming for video games to garner their rightful place in terms of a respected societal medium that up until about fifty years ago hardly existed.  Music and movies and television have been around for over one hundred years, for the most part, and at their emergent times they were the pinnacle of discussion.  Musicians like Elvis Presley or Johnny Cash pioneered their respective genres with innovation and currency, very similar to the most brilliant games of our time.  Directors like Steven Spielberg or even actors like Brad Pitt all remain relevant and current due to their relation to their audience.  However, these art forms are passive for the crowd.  The same clich©s seen in movies and music and even books are repeated over and over, but with video games, these same clich©s cannot be repeated.  The gamer is an active participant in the development.

If I turn my X-box 360 on today and want to play the most current, most interesting game I can think of, I’m not going to be playing Halo.  In 2001, I would be playing Halo, but its 2010 and it has changed.  I can’t pick up my copy of Fight Club and expect for the content within the book to be different nine years later but with a video game I can.  Downloadable maps, patches, and game modes make playing even the oldest game somewhat fresh.  Halo was an amazing game during its initial release and subsequent years, but it also represents how video games evolve and adapt to what we want.  It is unavoidable.

In a movie theatre I can shut my eyes and fall to sleep, or watch intently and feel like I’m in every scene, but at the end of the two hours I stand up and walk away feeling like I watched something, and didn’t do anything, to the form of entertainment I was experiencing.  I can also opt to tune out the whole experience at the movie theatre all-together whereas with a video game I have to pay attention the whole time in order to experience it.  A video game shares some of the main features of film and music and literature, but combines it all with an even more innovative way to entertain a society geared towards instant gratification.

The gamer has complete control of the world they experience.  In a First Person Shooter, the gamer controls every move the character makes from the virtual characters own eye level, causing the whole experience to require complete immersion or else someone else in the game, immersed in the world more fully will capitalize on the lack of dedication and commitment to the world.  This type of entertainment/ art genre, where the audience is given complete control of their experience, aside from stylistic limitations, represents what society wants of their escapism.  Because of so many other contributing factors out in the world that cause us as humans to generally feel without control, the strongest way to mediate this would be to develop some form of coping with this emotion, this drive to control something completely.

This is the case for most video games, apart from their legitimate story-telling ability, their flawless graphics and game play mechanics, their cheesy soundtrack and voice acting.  Aside from all of that, video games create complete control.  This is why there are so many people shelling out $60 every time the next Call of Duty comes out or the next WoW expansion.  So many people feel taken advantage of that modern video games garner towards safety and justice.  Look at the difficulty of a normal campaign of Call of Duty MW 2 and you’ll see that while the whole experience is intense and dramatic and overwhelming, it is still relatively easy to control the action on screen.  CoD: MW2 is an exception in most other cases with the constant story changes, but the gameplay mechanics all play towards a sense of control and security.

Although I could make the case using Halo, I want to look at a more current and more direct game that isn’t showing any signs of exhaustion even though it’s been around since 2004.  World of Warcraft  is responsible for bringing the world of casual and hardcore gaming together in a persistent online world, filled with rich lore and quests and upgrades that have the gamer feeling completely immersed in the world, sometimes without realizing it.  Where World of Warcraft succeeds in regards to other games is in its ability to remain current (partly due to the monthly fee).  My extensive history with MMORPGs has led me to conclude one thing about all of them until I played World of Warcraft.  They eventually lose their fun because there is nothing left to do in the game after a certain point that wouldn’t substantially cut into my daily routine (most MMORPGS feel more like work after awhile).  Innovation is key to quelling this, because other games in the genre like Everquest or FFXI or even the old Dreamcast hit PSO eventually grow old from the lack of new quests to do, new areas to explore, new items to achieve, new everything.  World of Warcraft saw this and capitalized on it with periodic expansions and updates to the world that keep even the most dedicated and addicted (if you call it that) gamers still signing in day in and day out just to see what else the game has in store.

Blizzard would not have noticed this if they themselves weren’t gamers and if their fans didn’t give them feedback.  By giving players the opportunity to make a character and exist in a fictional world where they invest time and effort to achieve virtual gains, the response to the content is so direct and honest that it’s hard not to listen to the voice of a gamer.This speaks volumes in favor of video games as a new and emergent way to tell a story and entertain the audience.  People need things to communicate through.  Language, like English, puts words into our heads and mouths and into the air to help us relate to the world around us.  The way a gamer plays their video game is another form of language.  Each gamer plays differently or the same, but either way, it represents the way they think.  In WoW, it is incredibly easy to notice the differences in the way each player plays just by the way they name their character, by the way they have them look, and by the weapons and areas they spend most of their time in.  The gamer controls all of this.  The gamer communicates in WoW by deliberately picking and choosing how their characters look as well as through a headset or by typing on a keyboard.  This causes the players around the gamer to have an experience with the world that is eerily similar to walking down to the mall or the nearest Wal-Mart to buy groceries.

Another exception to the general claim that video games are just about expressing complete control over something is with the numerous updates and expansions of MMORPGs like WoW.  These updates and expansions exist in a game built around a false sense of accomplishment.  The gamer in most MMOs doesn’t have complete control of their environment.  Almost never is the game necessarily easy.  The monsters and quests given to players put up an equal fight, reestablishing a sense that the gamer in an MMO is not in complete control.  They may be able to make their character unique, much like the real world, but they do not shape and dominate the world around them.  Not completely at least, not as much as a FPS or an RTS.  With most MMOS there is PVP and an auction house, which could have the most entrepreneur hungry players at the top of the list.  Guilds and advertisements populate the virtual worlds too.  This perpetuates a parallel fictional universe where players don’t feel the physical and real pain of existing, and instead plant themselves in Loch Modan slaying polar bears and building up their own story and virtual accomplishments.

Not that playing any game is a complete waste of time.  If you are a gamer, you know the energy and dedication you put towards the game; the thought processes, the amount of micro-managing or macro-managing, maintaining a social life within the context of the game, putting in the time and effort to achieve something.  These are all beneficial practices.  If you take all of that effort and energy out of the game and supplant it in the real world, you’ll find that both approaches are very similar.  These thought practices are reinforced in video games and when applied to real world situations have the potential to be effective.  I commend games for this, because without it, people might get rusty just playing a mindless game over and over.  Before people pass judgment on the next person playing a video game, they need to realize that that person could be sharpening a knife in their head.

Like any new art form (Heavy Metal, Jazz, etc.) video games have had mountains of critics.  People who criticize without empathy, people who criticize for the sake of their children, and it’s about time those people realize that their comments and squabbles are unfounded, and that video games are a staple of modern technology, art, and entertainment.  You could watch the same movie a million times and all of the parts stay the same but video games have endless possibilities thanks to online play and a dedicated online service.  Video games are constantly evolving just like any genre of art, just like us.

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.

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.

Egypt has severed ties with Paris’ Louvre museum in an argument over artifacts antiquities chief Zahi Hawass claims were stolen by the world famous art museum.

“We made the decision to end any co-operation with the Louvre until they return [the works],” Hawass announced today, the CBC reports.

Hawass claims the museum has failed to return several pieces, namely steles (ancient engraved stone slabs) that were supposedly purchased on the black market after being stolen from a Valley of the Kings tomb near Luxor.

Hawass told AFP that he believes Louvre officials knew the pieces were stolen before making the secretive purchase. France’s Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand told the same news agency that they would indeed return the artifacts if proven to have been stolen, Voice of America reports.

Before returning anything however, the museum needs national approval and proof the pieces in question were smuggled out of Egypt.

In 2002, Egypt launched a sweeping campaign aimed at having countries return artifacts that had been stolen, smuggled or purchased suspiciously. Many of the objects Egypt’s Supreme Council is trying to retrieve are on display at some of the most well-known museums in the world.

A serious accusation made against one of the most famous and reputable museums in the world. Regardless of what happens with these specific artifacts, hopefully the feud between Hawass and the Louvre is resolved so the flourishing partnership between the two can live on.

It would be a real shame if there ceased to be any Egyptian artifacts and pieces at the Louvre from here on.

The four steles in question are still on display in Paris.

When Casey Cohen and Matt Stotland had little money and even fewer industry connections when they started their musical charity, The Yellow Bird Project.

The friends, who met as high school students in Montreal, essentially began cold-calling musicians they admired and asking them to participate by creating designs for T-shirts, the proceeds of which would go to a charity of their choice.

“It was really that kind of DIY approach” Cohen said. “We knew nobody.”

“The key was getting that first band to sign on” Stotland added.

That initial “yes” came from Devendra Banhart, and many others soon followed.

“I didn’t think we would actually (get the project off the ground), but if he’s willing to do it, there’s no reason why we can’t” Cohen remembers thinking after getting an enthusiastic note “in all caps” from Banhart in response to their request.

Soon, they found that word of mouth about their project was spreading like wildfire among the insular indie rock world. Some artists they contacted had been working independently on illustrations; others, including The National, already had T-shirt designs prepped and ready to go.

But they heard some “no”s along the way, too.

“Most of them have a reason that’s justifiable” Cohen explained. “Some said they don’t have artistic inclination.”

Thus far, the Yellow Bird Project has raised money for organizations like Art for Change, AIDS Society of Canada, Safe Space, and Free Arts for Abused Children.

Cohen and Stotland recently expanded their venture from clothing to create a children’s activity book dubbed the “Indie Rock Coloring Book.” Parents looking to up their “cool” quotient will be glad to hear that the finished product includes music-inspired illustrations and activities from indie darlings like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver and Rilo Kiley. (Cohen and Stotland like to quote The National’s Matt Berninger, who once said “I’ve decided to have kids just so I’ll have somebody to give this book to.”)

While the Yellow Bird Project is currently just a side project for both Cohen and Stotland, they each hope to turn music-related charity work (or is it the other way around?) into a full-time career. Stotland, who has a background in computer science, still lives in Montreal and does freelance computer programming; Cohen studied philosophy in college and now resides in London, where he works for a marketing agency.

The two 25-year-olds are still two unassuming music fans who can’t hide their excitement about working with artists they enjoy and admire.

“We just really like music” Stotland said. “This project just sort of fell into our laps.”

They celebrated the book’s September release with launch parties in New York City, Montreal and at the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco.

“It’s basically our favorite bands (who participate)” Cohen said. “To have people who want to be a part of that “¦ It’s quite cool where this has taken us.”

The Indie Rock Coloring Book is available at various online and retail locations, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and at www.yellowbirdproject.com.

The Need For Speed brand name has suffered as of late, but Electronic Arts hopes to buck the trend this fall when it releases “Need For Speed: NITRO” on Nintendo consoles Wii and DS. Blast sat down (kinda, sorta) with Gil Rimmer, Art Director at EA for the brand new IP and talked about the unique art director for the game (Wii) and how it plans to win our racing hearts over. Enjoy!

Blast: The Need For Speed franchise is one of the most famed, beloved, and recognizable racing experiences the video game world has ever seen, but since the coming of Nintendo’s Wii in 2006, the shiny white console has seen seemingly lackluster ports of high-end PS3/Xbox 360 versions. Can you explain the reasoning behind building a brand new IP from the ground up and designing it, visually, from the art style you chose to employ?

Rimmer: We set out to tailor the Need for Speed (NFS)‚  experience for the Wii, starting from the ground up, because we recognized the importance of understanding the console, which is very different from the PS3‚  or X360.‚  With NITRO, we studied and analyzed the Wii to capitalize on its strengths, delivering something new and unique. The art is there to complement and enhance the experience.

Blast: I’ve read the phrase “fresh and unique” as the main way to describe NITRO visually, can you explain what this quip exactly means, and how you’re going about achieving it?

Rimmer:Visually we are breaking ground as well. NFS is all about hardcore street racing in a realistically enhanced world. The Wii has a strong arcade foundation, stylized and bold visually. NITRO is all about bringing these two together. A good example is the vehicles. We pushed the proportions, aiming to achieve an extreme and aggressive visual edge, while at all times‚  maintaining the identity of each car. A NITRO Audi R8 has extreme proportions and added aggressiveness but still looks like an Audi R8.

Blast: Customization seems to be a trending topic across the entire spectrum of video games these days. What steps is NITRO making in the customizable department in regards to the vehicles in-game?

Rimmer:We wanted to not only provide the extensive range of customizing provided by traditional NFS titles, but to give the player something new and unique to the Wii.

Simply by manipulating the Wii remote you can choose brushes and paint your car like you would in a paintshop. Add decals and stickers or paint your own designs and apply them to your car.

For the ultimate bragging rights, you can design a unique art style to attach to your ride. As you overtake your competitors ,your art will overtake the world

To top it off we’ve collaborated with brands like tokidoki, I am 8-bit and Upper Playground! These brands provided NITRO with over 150 original designs including stickers, decals and preset cars.

Blast: I’ve always been a sucker for background environments as I cruise around at top speed, sometimes even stopping (when possible) to revel in the digital creation. What types of environments will gamers spend their time in in NITRO, and why should we be excited?

Rimmer: For locations we researched emerging race scenes. We also wanted to expose players to experience driving outside of a North American setting.

The cities we picked were Rio De Janeiro, Cairo, Madrid, Singapore and Dubai. Each city is visually unique so progressing through the game will be a fresh experience.

Blast: As a video game artist, what was your proudest accomplishment in the process of creating NITRO and why?

Rimmer: For me designing is knowing what you’re taking on, both artistically and technically.

I get the biggest kick from executing a vision successfully. So when I saw the lighting coming together after months of hard work from our talented art team, I was very pleased.

Blast: How does artistic design and its many faces change when constructing a “meant-for Wii” title, like NITRO?

Rimmer: Art and technology are co dependant on the Wii. Every time we wanted to add a feature or change a gameplay point we had to reconsider art and the visual impact. It’s a delicate balance and keeping artistic flexibility is key.

Blast: Your publisher EA also has another team diligently crafting “Shift” another series reboot, this time with emphasis on realism. What does NITRO offer, in its stylized beauty, that Shift, in its photo-realistic manner, cannot?

Rimmer: SHIFT is all about an authentic racing experience, NITRO is pure speed with a strong arcade feel.

NITRO has some amazing cop mechanics, fast paced tracks and aggressive competitors, all coming together to deliver an exciting, high-speed racing experience. It really is addictive!

Blast: Mario Kart is the unquestioned master and commander of the Wii racing space, so are you aiming to appeal to Kart’ers longing for a more serious racing title to gravitate to, or are you skirting the Kart sensation and attempting to tap into a new market with NITRO?

Rimmer: NITRO carves out its own place in the racing game world, be it on next gen or Wii.

NITRO is for any racer who’s looking for a fresh twist on the familiar racing game and at 60 FPS it really thrusts players into the centre of adrenaline-pumping speed and excitement.

Blast: As an ender, please explain why NITRO, from an artistic standpoint, is an attractive option for Wii racing fans everywhere.

Rimmer: Visually, NITRO is like nothing you’ve seen on the Wii! Not only can you customize a car to your every whim and fancy, but you’ll have access to art from some of the world’s most celebrated lifestyle brands in tokidoki, Upper Playground i am 8-bit.

If you want to know what it’s like to race fast and stylized cars through the streets of exotic destinations at 200 MPH with a push of a button – I suggest you pick up a copy of NFS NITRO. You’ll have a blast.

Need For Speed: NITRO hits shelves for DS and Wii November 17.

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.

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.

Look for the name Don S. Davis in the credits of television shows and movies, in the corners of oil paintings, on a military badge and, soon, on a screenplay cover. He is a man of many roles, many talents and, appropriately, many fans.

People often don’t see the person behind the TV character or movie hero, but behind Davis — who has 134 acting credits according to IMDB.com — there lies a warrior, educator, painter and writer.

Davis has played many roles over the years, but he has been an artist his entire life.

“I started drawing and painting when I was a kid,” said Davis in a recent interview with BLAST. “I’ve always liked drawing and painting landscapes and buildings.”

Davis’ art portfolio is a combination of oil paintings, drawings, wood carvings and stage designs, all of which exhibit attention to detail and affection for the simplicity of the country life he grew up in. Originally from Aurora, Mo., Davis now resides in British Columbia, but he says the inspiration for his artwork is rooted in his rural hometown in the Ozark Mountains.

“It’s a small town filled with good people in a beautiful area,” Davis says. “It’s a beautiful area with picturesque towns and farms set among rolling hills, which are crisscrossed by many rivers,” he writes in his biography on his art website, donsdavisart.com. “The towns and farmsteads contain wonderful old homes, barns and other buildings that provide nearly limitless opportunities for artistic inspiration.”

Though the picturesque towns inspire his work now, Davis says that in college he was greatly inspired by abstract painters, including Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollack, who are still among his favorite artists. “I like abstract art. I still do a bit of it,” he says. “But spending 16 years teaching stage design and technical theater seemed to change my personal creative orientation toward more representational work.”

Perhaps most well-known for his roles as Major General George S. Hammond on the Sci-Fi Channel television series “Stargate SG-1″ and Major Garland Briggs on “Twin Peaks,” spaceships and eerie towns are not the only settings Davis performs well in. Before picking up acting in the late 1980s, he taught at the college level, served in the military and completed a master’s degree and doctorate in theater.

Davis’ hometown in the Ozark Mountains inspired much of his artwork, but the powerful, authoritative characters the 65-year-old actor plays best came from his years in the military during the mid-1960s, when he was stationed in Korea. He entered the US Army with the rank of lieutenant and left as a captain with a collection of memories to fuel his acting career.

“I draw on my experiences in the military and the unique people I met and worked with in a lot of my work as an actor,” Davis said.

Now that “Stargate SG-1″ is no longer in production after 10 seasons, the general has retired his Stargate Command badge and picked up his paintbrush. Painting will not become a new career for Davis, who says he does not sell his work — yet.

“Over the years I’ve often thought of opening an art gallery — I still think about it,” Davis said. He is entertaining the idea of marketing select prints of his paintings if he can find an arrangement that suits him well.

For now, painting is just a way to relax and forget about the aliens left thwarted in his path.

“I paint for myself and my family and my friends,” he says.

The Missouri native has come a long way from his childhood landscape sketches, on a journey that’s taken him to the far corners of the galaxy and back again. It was not until after the army, his own education and the subsequent years of teaching that he decided to pursue acting full time.

Davis may not be a space captain in real life, but he is a true science fiction fan. His favorite sci-fi shows are “Dr. Who,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “Lexx.” He is also a fan of Spider Robinson, the Nebula award-winning author of “The Callahan’s Series,” the Stardance trilogy, the Deathkiller trilogy, and other science-fiction novels.

Since starting out, Davis has appeared in numerous films and TV shows. He was the coach of the Racine Belles in “A League of their Own” and had roles in “Alaska,” “Best of Show,” “The West Wing,” and “The X-Files.”

His favorite role was Donald P. Carstairs from the Canadian television series “Slick Air.”

“Carstairs is a ‘tough-guy’ private eye. He’s a slob, and not the brightest bulb in the pack,” Davis said. The show, also starring Shannon Tweed and David Elliot, is about a couple who run an under-funded charter airline service. “When Carstairs is not repossessing their office furniture and equipment, he is often being hired by them to do bodyguard work,” he said.

Davis is currently involved in a number of projects, portraying starkly different roles in each. Set to release later this year are “Woodshop,” an indie comedy about making it through high school alive, “Viper,” a made for television horror flick and “Far Cry,” an action-drama.

“I am a character actor, and I enjoy playing a variety of roles,” he said.

Davis is also appearing in the straight-to-DVD Stargate movie, “Stargate: Continuum,” which will serve as a mid-summer fix for SG-1 addicts. Davis says he is working on his own screenplay, though he is keeping the details to himself for now.

His characters — past and upcoming — differ greatly but share one common gene that draws Davis to them. He is a sucker for “any well-written role that allows me to portray an interesting character in a good story, with a talented director and talented actors, who happen to also be nice people.”

“I’ve been fortunate to have this experience many, many times while working in both TV and film,” most notably, with “Stargate” and “Twin Peaks,” Davis said.

Charlotte Stewart is one of those talented actors and nice people. Stewart, who played Davis’ Catholic wife on “Twin Peaks,” has fond memories of the show and her fictional husband.

“I think Don got a great kick out of being in Twin Peaks,” said Stewart in a recent interview. When the show aired, she says, “he was like a kid enjoying a private party.”

“(He is) one of the most genuine, sweet human beings I have ever met,” she said.

The fans seem to have taken an equal shine to Davis.

“Mr. Davis will always be one of my very favorite people because he cares so much for Stargate and for the fans,” said Patricia Stewart, a fan from British Columbia who met Davis at a convention last August. “And when I saw him later that day, he remembered my name! He’s a real gentleman.”

Other Stargate fans say they’ve had similar experiences.

“I’ve always found Davis to be 100,000 percent professional when dealing with his fans,” said H.C. Taylor, a Stargate fan from Newburgh, N.Y. “He’s always been absolute aces.”

Taylor has been a Stargate fan for years, but she became a true Don S. Davis fan in 2004 at a convention where he spent time talking to her group and encouraged them to approach for pictures or a handshake throughout the event.

“You could have knocked our table over with a feather,” said Taylor. “Nobody does that at a convention.”

Like many Stargate fans, Taylor kept up to date with the actors’ post-gate lives, careers and interests, which included keeping tabs on Davis’ growing collection of original artwork. After inquiring about purchasing a print, a copy of Davis’ “Oregon Coast” arrived at her door, as a token of his appreciation of her Stargate tribute website, selmak.org.

The painting of a rocky coastline reminds of the coast of Maine, where she often visited with her father. The print has become a priceless possession and represents the growing appreciation among fans for the complexity of the man behind the role. It is a strong appreciation that binds people beyond a television show or movie set.

“If my house was burning, I’d grab my purse, my dog, cat, undies, and it,” Taylor said.

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.

The 20th anniversary edition of Clark Huling’s “A Gallery of Paintings” reminds us why we still owe our attention to fine art.

This oversized 150+ page book is the next best thing to going to an art museum and seeing amazing artworks yourself. The entire book is filled with large images of Hulings’ paintings and well narrated along the way.

Hulings is one of the best living painters, and it’s rare to find several of his pieces in one place — he rarely does solo exhibitions. If you missed his shows this spring, it’s just that more important for anyone with an interest in art to obtain this piece and add it to their library of inspiration.

The 2nd edition book has already won an Independent Publisher award and includes a new foreword by the artist and 15 new paintings.