June 18, 2013
Bill Nye (b. 1955) is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, and scientist who began his career as a mechanical engineer at Boeing. He is best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children’s science show ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.
Nye was born in Washington, D.C., to Jacqueline Nye, a codebreaker during World War II, and Edwin Darby Nye, also a World War II veteran, whose experience in a Japanese prisoner of war camp led him to become a sundial enthusiast. Bill is a former fourth-generation Washington resident through his father’s side of the family. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where one of his professors was Carl Sagan).
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June 17, 2013
Joey Skaggs (b. 1945) is an American prankster who has organized numerous successful media pranks, hoaxes, and other presentations. He is considered one of the originators of the phenomenon known as ‘culture jamming’ (subverting media culture).
Skaggs has numerous aliases including: Kim Yung Soo, Joe Bones, Joseph Bonuso, Giuseppe Scaggioli, Dr. Joseph Gregor, and the Rev. Anthony Joseph. When not pranking the media, Skaggs earns his living by painting, making sculptures and lecturing.
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June 17, 2013
Mark Dery (b. 1959) is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about ‘media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture.’ From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University. In 2000, he was appointed Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. In 2009, he was awarded a scholar-in-residence position at the American Academy in Rome.
He identifies his politics as ‘unrepentantly leftist’ and his religion as the parodic Church of the SubGenius. Dery’s books include ‘The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink’ and ‘Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century.’ He edited the anthology ‘Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture’ and wrote the monograph ‘Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs.’ His essay collection ‘I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams’ was published in 2012.
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June 14, 2013
Nathan Sawaya (b. 1973), is a New York-based artist who builds custom three-dimensional sculptures and large-scale mosaics from popular everyday items and is best known for his work with standard LEGO toy bricks.
His unique art creations are commissioned by companies, charities, individuals, museums and galleries all over the world.
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June 7, 2013
David Lynch (b. 1946) is an American filmmaker known for his surrealist films. He has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed ‘Lynchian,’ characterized by dream imagery and meticulous sound design. The surreal, and in many cases, violent, elements contained within his films have been known to ‘disturb, offend or mystify’ audiences.
His work often exposes dark undercurrents in seemingly mundane people and places: ‘My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it’s supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there’s this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast.’
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June 6, 2013
Roberto Matta (1911 – 2002) was one of Chile’s best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art. Born in Santiago, he initially studied architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, but became disillusioned with this occupation and left for Paris in 1933. His travels in Europe and the USA led him to meet artists such as Arshile Gorky, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, André Breton, and Le Corbusier. Matta was of Spanish, Basque, and French descent.
It was Breton who provided the major spur to the Chilean’s direction in art, encouraging his work and introducing him to the leading members of the Paris Surrealist movement. Matta produced illustrations and articles for Surrealist journals such as ‘Minotaure.’ During this period he was introduced to the work of many prominent contemporary European artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.
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June 4, 2013
Nathan Myhrvold (b. 1959), formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder and 40% owner of Intellectual Ventures, a patent portfolio holding company.
Myhrvold, usually with coinventors, holds 17 U.S. patents assigned to Microsoft and has applied for more than 500 patents. In addition, Myhrvold and coinventors hold 115 U.S. patents assigned mostly to The Invention Science Fund I, LLC.
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June 4, 2013
Chris Bathgate is a self-taught metal sculptor working and residing in Baltimore. He has spent the last several years learning how to build and use a variety of metalworking tools. In addition to exploring the finer intricacies of both manual and computer-assisted machining, he also has applied electroplating and heat coloring techniques to his intricate and precise sculptures.
Bathgate’s sculptures are as much about the processes he uses as they are about his imagination. He is represented by Gallery Imperato, located in Baltimore, and a member of Viridian Artists Inc, an artist cooperative in the Chelsea District of New York City.
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June 3, 2013
Stetson Kennedy (1916 – 2011) was an American author and human rights activist. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world.
His actions led to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan’s national corporate charter. Kennedy wrote or co-wrote ten books.
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May 31, 2013
Kathryn Schulz is an American journalist and author, and the book critic for ‘New York’ magazine. She also wrote ‘The Wrong Stuff,’ a blog on ‘Slate,’ and contributes to the ‘Freakonomics blog’ at ‘The New York Times.’ Schulz began her career in journalism writing for the now-defunct ‘Feed Magazine,’ one of the earliest online magazines. From 2001 to 2006, she was the editor of the online environmental magazine ‘Grist.’
Before that, she was a reporter and editor for ‘The Santiago Times,’ of Santiago, Chile, where she covered environmental, labor, and human rights issues. She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now the International Reporting Project), and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan and the Middle East. Schulz is a graduate of Brown University. Schulz was born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and currently resides in New York state.
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May 29, 2013
Gary Baseman (b. 1960) is a contemporary artist who works in various creative fields, including illustration, fine art, toy design, and animation. He is the creator of the Emmy-winning ABC/Disney cartoon series, ‘Teacher’s Pet,’ and the artistic designer of ‘Cranium,’ a popular board game.
Baseman’s aesthetic combines iconic pop art images, pre- and post-war vintage motifs, cross-cultural mythology and literary and psychological archetypes. He is noted for his playful, devious and cleverly named creatures, which recur throughout his body of work. Baseman’s art is frequently associated with the lowbrow pop movement, also known as pop surrealism.
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May 24, 2013
Jason Freeny (b. 1970) is a New York-based artist specialising in sculpture and computer-generated imagery. He is the owner of the Moist Production studio, which acts as the primary publisher and distributor of his works. He is best known for his anatomical art, where he produces cutaway drawings of (typically toy) inanimate objects such as a Lego man, Barbie doll, the animated fish Nemo or a balloon art dog. Jason’s sculptural and illustration work has been the basis for several mass-produced toys.
He has collaborated with Hong Kong-based Toy2R (working on the Qee figurines), Hong Kong-based Fame Master toys producing Gummy bear anatomical toys, United States-based Jailbreak Collective producing the ‘CAPSL’ collectable series and United States-based Marbles the Brain Store creating Freeny’s Brain Cube puzzle.
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