Marthalicia Matarrita bio

My photo
New York, New York, United States
Biography Marthalicia Matarrita Born and raised in Harlem, New York City. Marthalicia has many art disciplines such as drawing, sculpting, painting and creating large murals and is always expanding in new mediums. Current area of art dialogue is based on educating the harmony between animals and humans, in many unique presentations. Marthalicia early stages: Sharng "black books" graffitti art journals as well as comic books were her past time. Encouraged by faith to persue the art form, Marthalicia entered La Guardia High School of Performance and the Arts, and upon graduating high school, she enlisted in the Army National Guard. She enrolled in S.U.N.Y. New Paltz for B.F.A. in Fine Arts. Her art resume further in her new art journey "Live Art Performance" Today, Marthalicia has broaden her art experiences to many difference avenues in art venues, and oppourtunites where she builds with her community and others.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Art Battles Ala Prima








"OH, it is so on! Hand over your milk money, you beret-wearing, art school romantics. Outta the way, wine- and-cheese-eating, card-carrying MoMA members.

ArtBattles gets under way January 23 at (le) Poisson Rouge in the Village - and the fast-paced "live art" show is all about trash-talking, in-your-face painting - albeit among polite skinny kids who genuinely seem to like each other.

Basically, it goes down like this: The artists are each given $100 to paint whatever the moderator assigns.� The competition? Faux fierce.

"It's not as much a sterile environment as 'Iron Chef,' but that's something we talk about," says ArtBattles founder Sean Bono, who has organized more than 100 of these fast-paced battle royales since 2001. Competitions have occured in alleys, apartments and wherever else he could find space. Thanks to an MTV segment in May 2007, ArtBattles' surge in popularity has brought it to more mainstream venues.

More about palettes than palates, this ArtBattles showdown features a half-dozen contestants who don't know what they'll be working on. Previous contests have seen participants limited to just a couple of colors, confined to themes like love and hate, asked to use live nude models or - on the MTV show - paint a new version of MTV's logo.

"It's changed my paint steeze and made me a better artist . . . it's made my style iller," says 28-year-old Concep, who won the MTV battle. (Translation: The nature of the contest has made him more prolific, enhanced his work and improved his methodology greatly.)

The flashy New Orleans native, who now resides in Crown Heights, Brooklyn will be gunning for fellow Pratt grad and art battler Ben Angotti, 27. "He's beaten me bad before and I had my girl with me, and you know what I'm saying?" asks Concep. "I can't have it go down like that again."

Angotti feels no remorse.

"I would say it's friendly, but there's always some longtime rivalries," says the Angotti.

Karioki Crosby, a 33-year-old Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn resident, likes that ArtBattles helps him "exercise" his arm for the calligraphy-inspired, continuous-motion Asian-style painting he enjoys. But all Zen aside, if a competitor gets frisky, he jokes that he just might "push them off a stage."

The only female participant this time around will be

Harlem-raised Marthalicia Matarrita, 30, who teamed up with her brother and won a doubles ArtBattles competition a couple months ago.

"Hell yeah," Matarrita says the audience feedback makes painting a little more exciting, if not sometimes distracting.

Like Concep, Matarrita says ArtBattles has not only helped her work, but it's aided the art community as spontaneous street art continues to gain in popularity.

Leif McIlwaine enjoys a home-field advantage when

his Greenpoint, Brooklyn graffiti art store Alphabeta Shop occasionally hosts ArtBattles. McIlwaine has won about a half-dozen competitions.

Cash prizes rarely top $200 and may sometimes be a plaque or art supplies.

Art collectors who want a piece of the action can view the pieces at artbattles.com, where works sell for $100 to $500.

ArtBattles takes place Friday night at 11 at (le) Poisson Rouge, 158

Bleecker St.; 866-558-4253." ~New York Post








http://www.vjiam.tv/videos/8649eea7660e













Monday, March 23, 2009

Frida Khalo


I felt that I needed to do this. Very strange to explain, but its true. I do have so much admiration for her, her art works and what she has become as she faced the most difficult of outcomes.

There are the impulses to say, yes I have some simillarities such as: Latina, painter, surrealist, *potential mother {her miscarrage}, me being a mother, her political views, and my military involvement.



Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in the house of her parents, known as La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán. At the time, this was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Her father, Guillermo Kahlo (1872-1941), was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Pforzheim, Germany. He was the son of the painter and goldsmith Jakob Heinrich Kahlo and Henriette Kaufmann. Kahlo claimed her father was of Jewish and Hungarian ancestry,[4] but a 2005 book on Guillermo Kahlo, Fridas Vater (Schirmer/Mosel, 2005), states that he was descended from a long line of German Lutherans.[5] Wilhelm Kahlo sailed to Mexico in 1891 at the age of nineteen and, upon his arrival, changed his German forename, Wilhelm, to its Spanish equivalent, 'Guillermo'.

Frida's mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, was a devout Catholic of primarily indigenous, as well as Spanish descent.[4] Frida's parents were married shortly after the death of Guillermo's first wife during the birth of her second child. Although their marriage was quite unhappy, Guillermo and Matilde had four daughters, with Frida being the third. She had two older half sisters. Frida once remarked that she grew up in a world surrounded by females. Throughout most of her life, however, Frida remained close to her father.

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 when Kahlo was three years old. Later, however, Kahlo claimed that she was born in 1910 so people would directly associate her with the revolution. In her writings, she recalled that her mother would usher her and her sisters inside the house as gunfire echoed in the streets of her hometown, which was extremely poor at the time. Occasionally, men would leap over the walls into their backyard and sometimes her mother would prepare a meal for the hungry revolutionaries.

Kahlo contracted polio at age six, which left her right leg thinner than the left, which Kahlo disguised by wearing long, colorful skirts. It has been conjectured that she also suffered from spina bifida, a congenital disease that could have affected both spinal and leg development.[6] As a girl, she participated in boxing and other sports. In 1922, Kahlo was enrolled in the Preparatoria, one of Mexico's premier schools, where she was one of only thirty-five girls. Kahlo joined a clique at the school and fell in love with the leader, Alejandro Gomez Arias. During this period, Kahlo also witnessed violent armed struggles in the streets of Mexico City as the Mexican Revolution continued.

On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability.

Although she recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She underwent as many as thirty-five operations as a result of the accident, mainly on her back, her right leg and her right foot.


After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career. The accident left her in a great deal of pain while she recovered in a full body cast; she painted to occupy her time during her temporary state of immobilization. Her self-portraits became a dominant part of her life when she was immobile for three months after her accident. Kahlo once said, "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best." Her mother had a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed, and her father lent her his box of oil paints and some brushes.[7]

Drawing on personal experiences, including her marriage, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works often are characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

Kahlo was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her use of bright colors and dramatic symbolism. She frequently included the symbolic monkey. In Mexican mythology, monkeys are symbols of lust, but Kahlo portrayed them as tender and protective symbols. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work.[citation needed]

She also combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with surrealist renderings. Kahlo created a few drawings of "portraits," but unlike her paintings, they were more abstract. She did one of her husband, Diego Rivera,[8] and of herself.[9] At the invitation of André Breton, she went to France in 1939 and was featured at an exhibition of her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame, which was displayed at the exhibit. This was the first work by a 20th century Mexican artist ever purchased by the internationally renowned museum.
As a young artist, Kahlo approached the famous Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, whose work she admired, asking him for advice about pursuing art as a career. He immediately recognized her talent and her unique expression as truly special and uniquely Mexican. He encouraged her development as an artist and soon began an intimate relationship with Frida. They were married in 1929, despite the disapproval of Frida's mother.

Their marriage often was tumultuous. Notoriously, both Kahlo and Rivera had fiery temperaments and both had numerous extramarital affairs. The openly bisexual Kahlo had affairs with both men (including Leon Trotsky) and women;[2] Rivera knew of and tolerated her relationships with women, but her relationships with men made him jealous. For her part, Kahlo was furious when she learned that Rivera had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple eventually divorced, but remarried in 1940. Their second marriage was as turbulent as the first. Their living quarters often were separate, although sometimes adjacent.
Active communist sympathizers, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky as he sought political sanctuary from Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Kahlo's home, where they reportedly had an affair.[2] Trotsky and his wife then moved to another house in Coyoacán where, later, he was assassinated.

A few days before Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, she wrote in her diary: "I hope the exit is joyful - and I hope never to return - Frida".[2] The official cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism, although some suspected that she died from an overdose that may or may not have been accidental.[2] An autopsy was never performed. She had been very ill throughout the previous year and her right leg had been amputated at the knee, owing to gangrene. She also had a bout of bronchopneumonia near that time, which had left her quite frail.[2]

Later, in his autobiography, Diego Rivera wrote that the day Kahlo died was the most tragic day of his life, adding that, too late, he had realized that the most wonderful part of his life had been his love for her.[2]

A pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán. Today it is a museum housing a number of her works of art and numerous relics from her personal life.[2]


[edit] Later recognition
Kahlo's work was not widely recognized until decades after her death. Often she was popularly remembered only as Diego Rivera's wife. It was not until the early 1980s, when the artistic movement in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, that she became very prominent.[10] This movement recognized the values of contemporary Mexican culture; it was the moment when artists such as Kahlo, Abraham Angel, Angel Zárraga, and others became household names and Helguera's classical calendar paintings achieved fame.[10] During the same decade several other factors helped to establish her success. The movie Frida, naturaleza viva (1983), directed by Paul Leduc with Ofelia Medina as Frida and painter Juan José Gurrola as Diego, was a huge success. For the rest of her life, Medina has remained in a sort of perpetual Frida role.[11] Also during the same time Hayden Herrera published a determinant and influential biography: Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo, which became a worldwide bestseller.

Raquel Tibol, a Mexican artist and personal friend of Frida, wrote Frida Kahlo: una vida abierta. Other works about her include a biography by Mexican art critic and psychoanalist Teresa del Conde and texts by other Mexican critics and theorists such as Jorge Alberto Manrique.[10]

On June 21, 2001, she became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp.[12]

In 2002 the American biographical film, Frida, directed by Julie Taymor, in which Salma Hayek portrayed the artist, was released.[13] It grossed US$58 million worldwide.[13]

In 2006, Kahlo's 1943 painting Roots set a US$5.6 million auction record for a Latin American work.[14]




These photos are of courtey of
Gigi Bio
http://www.gigibio.com
http://www.flickr.com/6161810
http://www.myspace.com/Gg8x10
http://www.styleportfolios.com/GigiBio
http://www.theBellesAndWhistles.etsy.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gigibio


Alex Bershaw:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/nine6sevenfour
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nine6sevenfour
http://www.linkedin.com/in/abershaw
http://www.jpgmag.com/people/nine6sevenfour

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Environmental Escape. New Painting


Been aware of nature and how majestic it is in comparison to how fragile we are; us humans are to it. Nature, earth, and what it provides us with so much that we don't even see. We are so infatuated with ourselves and the meaningless things that spend time faster, rather then living life with nature. Our ways have built a irreversible negative effect on where we live that everything we need to sustain life, our lives is in danger. No more clean water, our crops are in low number an in bad health, millions of people dying of hunger, our earth had raised up by changing the climate and progressive reactions to earth quakes, tsunami, hurricanes, wild fires, ice caps melting in an alarming rate, and many other unbalances of our planet.

So I have been voicing how I feel via paintings.
I am developing art conversations over finding solutions to prevent furthering damage of our land, and I am doing it by painting them.

Above is a sample of a painting that is in progress. Hope you can relate or understand where I am heading with it.


Blessings
~Martha

Monday, March 16, 2009

I am on the cover of BRONXNET magazine


BRONXNET and their crew were graciously added me to the front cover of their magazine! I was also interviewed at "OPEN", one of the many programs BRONXNET has under their tv production.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

I am Painting LIVE at: "Gimme Art: April Fools Day/Art Play"


Gimme Art is a show case of expression. A night of Art, Live art performance, music, dance and so much more. The range of talent at this showcase is most unique and you Will defiantly leave this majestic place with pleased.This event is sponsored by:
Brooklyn Brewery. Do swing by to witness such an event. Gimme Art will feature the following:

Brown Girls Burlesque
Ironedale Theater
New Trad Octet
Ricky Powell the photograper
Wasabassco Burlesque
Polaroy Album Release Party,
*Marthalicia Matarrita* I am painting LIVE there

Art that is on Display:
Ricky Powell
Alina Smirnove
Flear Vaknim
Armen Danilian
Sam Ferri
Erica Purnell

and the list of musical and as well artist goes on in this huge renovated church. Its breath taken! beyond my imagination! Hope to see you soon, to celebrate a festive night in Brooklyn!


~Marthalicia


Extra:
For Immediate Release Please contact Elena Scripps at 860-208-3853 or at yscripps@yahoo.com.
Gimme Art Irondale Celebrates Brooklyn Artistic Community with a monthly Festival

New York, N.Y. (March 08, 2009) – Gimmie Art, a brand new Brooklyn non for profit monthly art and music festival will launch April Fools Day at the historical Irondale Center. The festival is centered on celebrating and preserving original work that explores emerging themes in our society through art, music, film, live performances and new experimental media.
Gimmie Art’s first event, sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery, will consist of a book signing and viewing of original photographs by urban rap photographer and public access icon, Ricky Powell (www.rickypowell.com). Performing artists include Brown Girls Burlesque, Polaroy (www.polaroy.com) album release party, Wasabassco Burlesque (www.wasabassco.com), Jeff Newell’s New trad Octet (www.new-trad.com), and many others. The event will also give independent vendors a platform to distribute their products, build relationships within the artistic community, and meet prospective buyers.
Proceeds from the show will go to preserve the historic Irondale Center and support emerging artists. Up until it’s recent opening in October of 2008, The Irondale Center remained unused since WWII and was a major hub of freedom during the Underground Railroad, playing host to many freedom fighters such as Fredrick Douglass. Gimmie Art strives to create a platform and voice for emerging artists without a home as well as build an artistic community through exhibition of work, collaboration and networking. With the help and support of the Irondale Center we will allow the local Brooklyn art community to thrive and grow in a critical point in our history.
Please log on to www.gimmeartirondale.com for more information about the event and participants.

Irondale Center
85 South Oxford
Brooklyn NY 11217

A painting for Greg Leveto


I was so honored and proud to accepts Greg's offer to paint him a beautiful present for his new family member Hunter, who was born on early February. Now Greg is a new uncle, and a very proud of one, that he wanted to surprise his sister and Hunter with a painting of a young child, with the color blue as a theme.
I painted a portrait of my son Wesly as the subject matter, and this is how the painting ended up looking like.

Thank you Greg for such a wonderful experience to part take in your family lives in an indirect way, by creating you a piece of me via a painting. I am forever grateful and honored!

Your friend
~Marthalicia Matarrita

Friday, March 13, 2009

Our Earth. and the Death to us, by us.

Lets start now, and change! We dont have much time.

A United Nations panel in 2007 predicted the following future events would occur because of climate changes around the world.
2009: The world population nears 7 billion as more people now live in cities than in rural areas, changing patterns of land use and adding to smog


2018: Global oil production peaks between 2008 and 2018, triggering a global recession, food shortages and conflicts between nations over dwindling supplies.

2020: Flash floods increase across Europe. Less rainfall reduces agriculture yields by up to 50 percent in some areas. Population reaches 7.6 billion.


2030: Up to 18 percent of the world's coral reefs are lost as a result of the changing climate and other environmental stresses.


2050: Large glaciers shrink by 30 to 70 percent as a quarter of the world's plant and vertebrate animal species face extinction.


2070: As warmer, drier conditions lead to more frequent and longer droughts, electricity production for the world's existing hydropower stations decreases.


2080: Between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people experience water shortages and up to 600 million go hungry.

2040: The Arctic Sea is ice-free in the summer, and winter ice depth shrinks drastically. Some say this won't happen until 2060 to 2105.


2085: The number of people at risk of dengue fever from climate change increases to 3.5 billion.





http://news.aol.com/article/climate-changes/376821

Monday, March 9, 2009

Edgar Mueller

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1153004/Mind-crevasse-The-amazing-3D-pavement-art-pedestrians-edge.html

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

"Weird Al" Yankovic -TRAPPED IN THE DRIVE -THRU

Not much for posting videos that are music related, nor animation. But Since I'm a bit "Special" I just thought its a good day to smile.

Thanks Weird Al, for making music for anyone that needs it!
~martha

Monday, March 2, 2009

Danger Marc


Danger Marc,


This dude is amazing! I glanced at his work by passing onto one of my friends page. I did some research and I saw this. If you like his work, then go forth and get to know him. So far you wont feel disappointed. I sure didn't. Below is a short snip bit of his artist statement, but that doesn't begin with viewing his art. (Marc I am a fan of your style)~martha

"I spent my childhood in the aisles of New England Comics in Boston, where I consumed fantasy novels like Galactus consumes planets. I completed my first unsolicited commission in fifth grade when I sent I illustrations of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to author Douglas Adams. I’m still waiting for a response.

Now I love painting and creating illustrations. I work with people to create images that inspire them. I specialize in fantasy art, and do portrait commissions as well.

I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a BA in Computer Science from Harvard University. For samples of my work, and my Sketchblog, explore my portfolio (or click on the navigation to the left).

If you are interested in hiring me, please contact me via phone or email. I look forward to creating something inspiring for you
."

http://sketchbook.dangermarc.com/