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Thirty-eighth series:
See Me Tell Me Replacements, nos. 1-10
For this series I "borrowing" three inch square sections of media from the posters in the subway. Then in the studio I embellish them with new elements - papers, beads, glitter, sequins, text, and LEDs. Then I return the works to their original location. These works will be placed throughout December, 2011.
Did you see one? Tell me about it.

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Thirty-seventh series: See Me Tell Me Treats, ed. 20
This is just a little series to celebrate Halloween. Took little spooky added a little vanitas, and tied them all together into a mini boutonniere for you. I will be placing these works from October 25 through 31 in New York City.

Special Project - FACES OF MANHATTAN - 2011

FACES OF MANHATTAN series, ed. 40.
It was my great pleasure to present a lecture titled “Street Art and Me” on Thursday, Sept. 29 in Manhattan, Kansas at Kansas State University's Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art. The lecture focused on street art, the seemetellme series, and the use of social media to engage artwork collectors. The event was co-sponsored by the department of history, the College of Education and the Women's Studies Department. The seemetellme project was a source of inspiration for History in a Bag, a project developed by K-State's Heather McCrea, associate professor of history, as a teaching tool for her spring 2011 history course.

After the lecture I conducted a workshop on the seemetellme process. The participants took photographs of themselves “JR style” after the great Parisian photograffer which I printed out in long strips. Additionally they were asked to bring a few small items of their own to the workshop that related to them personally - a snippet of a newspaper, stamps, special papers, xeroxes of other images, feathers, hot peppers, string, beads, etc. I provided the magnet backed boxes. Then for about 2 hours we glued, and punched, and sewed, and collaged, and wrote notes to the people of the big apple (NYC) from those in the little apple (Manhattan, KS). About 40 works titled FACES OF MANHATTAN were created. The workshop artists kept one work for themselves and gave me one to put out into the streets of my Manhattan in the coming weeks.

My thanks for the success of this lecture and project go to my great long time friend Heather McCrea and my wonderful new friends, Cyndi Danner-Kuhn and Kathrine Walker Schlageck.

Special Project - Exquisite Corpse Festival - 2011

For the Exquisite Corpse Festival I placed 25 See Me Tell Me Shifts: Graffiti Series on the front gate of the Richmond Shepard Theatre at 309 East 26th Street on Thursday. These tiny dresses are fashioned after light summer frocks and decorated with graffiti seen in London, Paris, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Chelsea and SoHo this spring and summer.

Special Project - AiOP Festival - 2011

Each year, Art in Odd Places (AiOP) produces a thematic public art festival along 14th Street from Avenue C to the Hudson River in New York City. From October 1-10, the 2011 edition of AiOP will center on the theme of RITUAL, including ideas of ceremony, habituation, myth, obsession, superstition and liturgy.

Walker Evans stated that, “New Yorkers are members of every race and nation of the earth. They are of all ages, of all temperaments, of all classes, of almost every imaginable occupation. Each, also, is an individual existence, as matchless as a thumbprint or a snowflake.” Inspired by this great American photographer and in homage to the amazing energy, beauty, and variety of New Yorkers, a special seemetellme series titled Fourteenth Street Saints for AiOP 2011 was created.

For this series hundreds of amazing New Yorkers were clandestinely photographed along 14th Street. Then 500 collages were created, incorporating their portraits into accordion-style “prayer” books, complete with gold paint, “rosary” beads, glitter, found papers and objects. These books were then placed, like relics, inside small clear plastic boxes backed by magnets. 50 of these works will be installed daily along 14th Street on scaffolds, signs, subway stations, and light poles, for passers-by to admire, take, and own.

(See the map of placements below.)

The acquiring of any work of art is a very personal and exciting process. When a one of these works is discovered the collector is asked to comment below or email a note to seemetellme@gmail.com or tweet using the hash tag #seemetellme.

Exhibition - KEDAR STUDIO OF ART - September 16-24, 2011

First gallery exhibition of seemetellme projects
Monsters, Saints and Cool Summer Dresses

KEDAR STUDIO OF ART
585 Broad Street, 2nd fl, Newark, NJ 07102 http://www.kedarstudio.com/
September 16th to 24th. Reception for the artist September 16, 7-11pm

Monsters, Saints, and Cool Summer Dresses showcases three limited edition See Me Tell Me projects - Monsters III, ed. 50; Subway Saints III (mini), ed. 50; and See Me Tell Me Shifts (Graffiti) ed. 25.

The gallery is inviting viewers of the exhibition to participate in this series and acquire these works. Collectors register their acquisitions on the tag replacing each work and comment at the bottom of this page about the new addition to their collection or by emailing their comments to seemetellme@gmail.com .

Inspired by the social connectivity of the Street Art movement, social media, the work of photographer Walker Evans and a desire to free art from its function as commodity, artist Amy Young has conceptualized a series of works nestled in the art of giving and sharing, titled seemetellme. Since June 2010, Young has placed hundreds of tiny seemetellme street art works in New York, London and Paris. Using low-art materials and a strict time limit (an important part of her process); Young creates each piece in less than five minutes. Anonymity is not part of her working concept as Young identifies herself by putting her website address or QR code on each piece before she places it in public view.

The Little Monsters series is based on the Greek, Roman, Romanesque, and Gothic Revival faces and gargoyles you see on buildings all over New York, Paris, London, Rome, Venice, and Athens. A selection of these images was made into Little Monsters by mounting them on the front of clear 2 x 1 x 1 inch plastic boxes and lighting them with LEDs. They are filled with silver beads to reflect the light and to rattle, when shaken.

The Subway Saints series is inspired by an obsession with (and daily immersion in) the subway. They are also inspired by Walker Evans’ great work, Many are Called. In 1938, Walker Evans surreptitiously photographed people on the New York City subway. With his camera hidden in his overcoat he captured the faces of Depression-era riders, each wrapped in their own unguarded private thoughts. Evans’ work represents portraiture in its purest state. Inspired by Evans, 250 clandestine images were shot in the subway. To create a Subway Saint each portrait was printed in color and assembled into an accordion-style book, complete with gold paint, beads, glitter, found papers and objects. Each book is placed in a 2 x 1 x 1 inch clear plastic box.

The See Me Tell Me Shifts are based on the thin, simple, summer dresses worn by fashionable New York women. For the first two series of See Me Tell Me Shifts the little dresses were decorated with patterns found in museums, galleries, and art fairs and heat transferred onto the surface of paper. But the imagery for this newest series is the street art and graffiti seen in London, Paris, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Chelsea and SoHo this spring and summer. The front of each dress is made from Japanese rice paper cut in the shape of a shift or sundress. On the back is a snippet from a shopping bag.

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Thirty-sixth series: Transit Trinkets. Everyone likes to get dressed up - especially our dusty, dirty, smelly metro. I imagine the subway as a rather brash, little bit loud, big-boned, bohemian girl from Brooklyn with a marvelous accent so I fashioned her some nice clunky necklaces and bracelets. Just in case the subway cars get jealous I am making them some bracelets and anklets as well. (Shhh don’t tell the buses and ferries.) This work consists of multicolored plastic beads and/or bells on colored or elastic string. Their clasps are made of magnets. I will be installing this series in the subway stations and on the trains all summer long from mid May to the end of August. You will find them attached to station stanchions or wound about the hand-handholds and poles on the trains.

Did you collect one? Tell me about it.

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Thirty-fifth series: Rock, Paper, Scissors, non-editioned.

Rock, Paper Scissors is a game for two or more people played using the players' hands. The two players each make a fist with one hand and hold the other open, palm upward. Together, they tap their fists in their open palms once, twice, and on the third time form one of three items: a rock, a sheet of paper, or a pair of scissors. The winner of that round depends on the items formed. If the same item is formed, it's a tie. If a rock and scissors are formed, the rock wins, because a rock can smash scissors. If scissors and paper are formed, the scissors win, because scissors can cut paper. If paper and a rock are formed, the paper wins, because a sheet of paper can cover a rock.

These works consist of a 3 ½ x 2 inch poly bag or on a magnet sheet. Inside or on top are photographs of my hands in one of the gestures printed on either cardstock or fine white and colored papers. I have hand colored or embellished each of the images. At the top of the work is the statement “Your Name Here: _________ ." On verso is the seemetellme QR code, three photographs of hands, and the title and web-site address. This is a non- editioned series because it will be done in many medias and in many sizes. It will appear in variations and configurations: either singly for your own personal game against the world (pick your opponents wisely), in doubles as a mini-war, or in a triples as a statement by me of a political or societal statement. I will be placing these works all through the summer in New York city.

Did you see one? Tell me.

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Thirty-fourth series: van Gogh’s Chair inch by inch, set of 16 
When you visit museums abroad you see afresh art works you have been viewing by illustrations for too long. When I was in London last month I saw van Gogh’s Chair at the National Gallery. Amazing! This work was painted when he was working in the company of Gauguin for nine weeks in Arles. The bright yellow ladder-back chair with its cane seat was one of the twelve simple chairs he purchased when he furnished the Yellow House. The chair sits at a three-quarter view and his pipe and tobacco lie on the thatched seat. It stands on a red and orange tiled floor next to a closed turquoise blue door. A box of red onions, bursting from their wrappings, is in the corner. The colors are amazing, the characteristic icing-like impasto wonderful, and the sweet genre scene so personal. I examined the work inch by inch. And so I provide it to you in the same way. These works consist of a 3 ½ x 2 inch poly bag. I printed an image of the work at 8 x 10 inches and cut it up into 1 inch wide strips for the front image, included even finer detailed image in the center, and put a full image on verso. There is one sequin butterfly inside as a prize. I will be placing the works from April 30 and May 1 in New York City.
If you see one tell me.

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Thirty-third series: Free Ai Weiwei, ed. 20

When I was in London I went to the Tate Modern and saw he Unilever Series: 
Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei. The conceptual and politically based artist had engaged Chinese craftspeople to create for him 100 million tiny porcelain sunflowers, each handmade, hand painted, no two identical. He filled the entire main floor with these little works of art. The whole art world had been chatting about the work, there were many reviews, and other piles of sunflower seeds were turning up at art fairs. I liked visually how the work filled the huge turbine hall in a gentle sand-like way and loved all the metaphors it set off crackling in my head. Anyway, soon after we got back the artist, boarding a plane to Hong Kong was arrested, disappeared, taken into custody – no one really knows because no one has heard from him. I have signed all the petitions for his release, I attended the sit-in over by the East River, and like the rest of the art world I am watching the news reports to see outcome. Worried. So this series is my reaction to the whole mess. The work consists of a 3 ½ x 2 inch poly bag, color xeroxes of the work in turbine hall printed on fine papers, red string, and a scattering of (real) sunflower seeds. On the back are a couple of QR codes (Quick Response specific matrix barcodes) that hop right to The New York Times articles discussing the issue - this one from April 6, this one from April 11, and this one from April 20.This work will be placed from April 24 through April 30 in New York.

Did you see one? Tell Me.