Junkmonger Laura Levine's eclectic background as a
cross-disciplinary visual artist has led her to pursue
a variety of projects in photography, filmmaking, painting,
illustration, television animation, and now.......clutter.
Laura Levine’s iconic music photography portraits have
appeared in countless magazines, album covers and books, as
well as dozens of exhibitions, photography anthologies and
published collections of fine art photographs. Laura Levine: Musicians, a one-person show of her work, opens this summer at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea. Ten of her photographs
were recently featured in the exhibition Looking at Music 3.0 at The Museum of Modern Art. Her photographs were recently included in the exhibitions Who Shot Rock and Roll:
A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present, which originated at the Brooklyn
Museum and is currently travelling to six other museums across the U.S. (Memphis Brooks Museum
of Art, Akron Museum of Art, et. al.) and Backstage Pass: Rock and Roll Photography at the Portland Museum of Art, for which
she also contributed an original essay to the exhibition catalogue
published byYale University Press. Her work is in
the collections of the Rock & Roll Hall
of Fame and Museum, The Rudin Foundation/Beth Rudin DeWoody, Jerome de Noirmont, Michael Zilkha and numerous
private collections. In 2005 she was the recipient of the Aperture Award from Rave Magazine in India, and her cover for the premiere issue of Blue
Magazine was recently named one of the forty top magazine
covers in the past forty years by the ASME (American Society of Magazine Editors).
From 1980 - 1995, Levine's career as a music photographer
enabled her to work with everyone from Björk to James
Brown for magazines such as Rolling Stone, The
New York Rocker (where she was Chief Photographer/Photo
Editor), and Sounds UK. She directed
music videos for Lisa Germano and Giant Sand, and worked with
R.E.M. and other Athens, Georgia musicians on the Super-8
underground film, Just Like A Movie (1984).
A self-taught artist, for over a decade Levine has been painting
an ongoing series of portraits of contemporary music’s
pioneers, which she developed and adapted into a series of
children’s books. Honky-Tonk Heroes and
Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music,
and Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of
Rock & Roll (Houghton Mifflin). Her first picture book was Wig!,
a collaboration with the B-52's (Hyperion Books for Children).
Levine’s award-winning illustrations have appeared in
the pages of Time, Rolling Stone, Blab!, and The New Yorker as well on the covers of numerous
books and CDs (Richard Thompson's Rumour and Sigh, Alessi's Ark, the Verve Essential Series,
Leo Kottke).
Levine’s paintings have been exhibited worldwide and
are in the permanent collections of the Museum of
International Folk Art in Santa Fe, The House
of Blues, and the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna
e Contemporanea in Rome. Her work has been shown at La
Luz de Jesus, Copro-Nason Gallery, Kunstmuseum Luzern (Switzerland), the Museum of American Illustration, the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art and is in numerous
private collections, including those of Harry Shearer &
Judith Owen, Nora Ephron, Lisa Bonet, Tom Freston/MTV, Laurie
& Larry David, and Cher. The original artwork Levine created
for Shake, Rattle & Roll spent a year on exhibit,
touring some of the country's finest cultural institutions
and galleries including the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame and Museum in Cleveland, The Experience
Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, Yard Dog
Folk Art in Austin, and the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas. Levine’s work in animation
has been screened as part of the 2000 Animation Festival at the Museum of Television & Radio, and
she was commissioned to create and develop an animated series
pilot for MTV.
Levine’s first documentary short film, Peekaboo Sunday -- the brief and hilarious tale of one woman and her
six disobedient miniature horses—had its World
Premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival as an official selection in the Short Film competition,
and has gone on to screen at the Florida Film Festival, the Atlanta Film & Video Festival, the Lake Placid Film Forum, the Short Attention Span Film Festival, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the New York Comedy Film Festival, among others.
Her first documentary feature film, Digging for Dutch:
The Search for the Lost Treasure of Dutch Schultz, had
its International Premiere as an official selection of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2002,
and its World Premiere at the 2001 Woodstock Film Festival,
where it won the Kodak-sponsored 2001 Torchlight
Award for Best Feature-Length Film, presented by
the New York City Film Project. The film has been the subject
of feature articles in the New Yorker, the New York
Times, The London Sunday Telegraph, Harvard Magazine,
and the National Examiner.
In her spare time, Levine, who grew up in New York
City's Chinatown and graduated from Harvard University
is the proprietress of Homer & Langley's Mystery Spot, an unusual antique/ junk/oddities shop in Phoenicia,
New York.
Our Motto: "Clutter My World"
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