Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Boone Williams Tobin Bennison Recycled art is enjoying a vogue right now, but artist Boone Williams has been riding it long before it was fashionable. Constructed from scavenged parts of destroyed and retired skateboards, Boone’s raptor-like “skate creatures” have intrigued locals since they first appeared last year at shows and events like “Robot Love,” the Close to the Edge music festival, and the traveling Bandwagon Roadshow, of which he is an active member. A native... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
David Hale To David Hale’s way of thinking, many of us use only a small fraction of our sensory powers. As children, he says, we were more attuned to the language of experience. As time progresses and our lives grow busier, our perceptive abilities atrophy from neglect, and “listening” to the world around us becomes more of a chore than it should be. For multi-talented artist Hale, listening connotes an openness to a variety of stimuli that’s unbound by aural limitations,... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
CHRIS HAMER Asking an artist to define his or her aims can be a touchy business. Those who don’t resist an outright verbalization of what, to their minds, should remain an open-ended mystery tend to clothe their principles in layers of academic terminology, technical obfuscation, and theoretical mumbo jumbo. So it’s refreshing to hear Chris Hamer jump joyously at the chance to share his artistic statement and the experiences that helped shape it. Even more refreshing is the simplicity... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Becky Beerensson Referring to her painting style as “photo-, or possibly enhanced realism,” Merritt Island artist Becky Beerenson finds inspiration in the mundane objects she sees each day. “I have to see it to draw it,” she says. “I cannot work in the abstract, intuitively dredging a composition up from within. I just don’t function that way.” But Beerenson, who is originally from Wichita, Kansas, credits intuition for her impressive compositional skills,... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Stephen Wilson By Tobin Bennison Since our last major redesign two years ago, photographer Stephen Wilson has supplied The Resident with five cover images. Though we didn’t rework the cover layout with Wilson’s pictures specifically in mind, the match has worked perfectly each time. His photos appeal to us for many reasons — their minimalism and muted colors; their sense of quietude — but above all for their dreamlike qualities, which are rooted as much in reality as they... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Michael Gray Multi-talented artist Michael Gray is part of a highly influential cadre of beachside artists who were at the forefront of the east coast surf art scene during the ’70s. Over the years, The Resident has met with many of the other major players in that scene, all of whom are still active — people like Henry Lund, Mike “Nemo” Nemnich, Bruce Williamson, Fred Cheney, and Joe Twombly. Though they all continue to work in a range of different styles with different media,... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Rick Piper • Tobin Bennison • Most discussions about Rick Piper’s paintings tend to revolve around their distinctive visual characteristics — elastic vistas, contorted perspectives, and acutely colorful tropical backdrops. These facets are what have made him one of the most recognizable and cherished artists in the area. Piper’s unique vision, in many ways, has become our own, and legions of residents have come to view their environs with similarly heightened perception. But... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Satellite Beach artist Heather Everett took to painting relatively late in her life, but that hasn’t stopped her from making up for supposedly “lost” time with a densely creative portfolio scores of other Florida artists could only dream of producing. A South Dakotan by birth, Everett could be said to have stumbled on her new calling while visiting a friend in Manhattan after leaving her position as a Chanel executive. At that time she and her husband Mike were already parents... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Jeff “Cynic” Noble • Tobin Bennison • Most visual artists will tell you that their most precious creative tool is imagination, the ability to give shape to formless thoughts and emotions. Imagination certainly plays a major role in artist Jeff Noble’s eye-popping, graffiti-informed work, but he’s more likely to cite everyday observation as the true mother of creation. “I’m constantly observing,” he says, “and not just visually, but listening,... [Read more...]
Tobin Bennison
Article Category: Skilled Labor
Derek Gores • Tobin Bennison • There’s a good chance you’ve seen some of Derek Gore’s work without realizing it. Having spent more than a decade in the corporate art world after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Melbourne-based artist has produced designs for clients like Lucasfilm, U2, Sublime, the NFL, ESPN, Major League Baseball, and Reebok, to name a scant few. Gores was also one of fifteen artists selected for the 2009 Manifest Hope exhibition prior... [Read more...]
