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July 31, 2010 Rebel HQ Open House Gallery with Marylou Butler

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Dear Friends,

Please join us for the next Open House Art Gallery on Saturday, July 31, 2010, starting at 6 pm.

Please welcome an amazing photographer and writer Marylou Butler www.maryloubutler.com whose work has been most notably featured in the popular magazine SO Rhode Island
“…Marylou captures wonderful reflections that turn the world up side down all in lush colors…” says AS220 about her latest show.

As always Wayne Bridge and Dorota Streitfeld are the accompanying host artists; and Rich Streitfeld is our host of honor and whimsy, bank of information and network advice. All art is offered for sale, discussion, comments and ice breaking.

Bring pot luck food, drinks, and musical instruments, if you play. By popular demand we will have a fire pit outside, so hot dogs, franks, wursts, sticks etc. will be nice.

And as usual kindly forward the invitation to friends and foes!
With love to all,
Marylou, Dorota, Rich and Wayne

May 29, 2010 Rebel HQ Open House Gallery with Diane Hoffman

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Dear Friends,

Please join us for the next Open House Art Gallery on Saturday, May 29, 2010, starting at 6 pm.

We will be showing an extremely vibrant, energetic, deep thought provoking work of Diane Hoffman, www.dianehoffman.net

As always Wayne Bridge and Dorota Streitfeld are the accompanying host artists; and Rich Streitfeld is our host of honor and whimsy, bank of information and network advice.

All art is offered for sale, discussion, comments and ice breaking.

Bring pot luck food, drinks, and musical instruments, if you play. By popular demand we will have a fire pit outside, so hot dogs, franks, wursts, sticks etc. will be nice.

And as usual kindly forward the invitation to friends and foes!

With love to all,
Diane, Dorota, Rich and Wayne

January 30, 2010 Jill Tyler Open House Gallery and March 27, 2010 Rebel Headquarters Exhibit with Lucy Stevens

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Dear Friends,

Please join us for the next Open House Art Gallery on Saturday, March 27, 2010, starting at 6 pm. We will be hosting unforgettable art of Lucy Stevens, www.blucystevens.com

Lucy almost always paints on scrap wood. She likes the texture of wood more than paper or canvas. Her EXTREMELY HIGH-TECH process is to smear the paint around with her hands and carve into the wood with a cheap, bent-up potato peeler. The world she creates is magical, unique and hysterically whimsical.

As always Wayne Bridge and Dorota Streitfeld are the accompanying host artists; and Rich Streitfeld is our host of honor and whimsy, bank of information and network advice.
All art is offered for sale, discussion, comments and ice breaking.

Bring pot luck food, drinks, and musical instruments, if you play. By popular demand we will have a fire pit outside, so hot dogs, franks, wursts, sticks etc. will be nice.

And as usual kindly forward the invitation to friends and foes!

With love to all,
Lucy, Dorota, Rich and Wayne

November 28, 2009 Rebel HQ Open House Gallery with Kelly McCullough

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Dear Friends,

Please join us for the next Open House Art Gallery on Saturday, November 28, 2009, starting at 6 pm.

We will be showing paintings by Kelly McCullough (www.kellymccullough.net), an artist with amazing talent, personality and accomplishments. She is a portrait artist and still life painter, who’s art is loved and admired by many.

As always Wayne Bridge and Dorota Streitfeld are the accompanying host artists; and Rich Streitfeld is our host of honor and whimsy, bank of information and network advice. All art is offered for sale, discussion, comments and ice breaking.

Bring pot luck food, drinks, and musical instruments, if you play. By popular demand we will have a fire pit outside, so hot dogs, franks, wursts, sticks etc. will be nice.

And as usual kindly forward the invitation to friends and foes!

With love to all,
Kelly, Dorota, Rich and Wayne

Rebel HQ in the East Side Monthly magazine in October. By Mark Binder.

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They gather at an undisclosed location
on the East Side. One by one, in pairs and clans, young and old, insured and un, they come to this house near the peak of College Hill, sometimes carrying musical instruments, always bringing good will and bearing gifts of food and wine. They call themselves “Rebels” and this is their headquarters.
For just over a year, Rich and Dorota
Streitfeld and Wayne Bridge have been hosting an art party dubbed “Rebel Headquarters” at their house on the East Side. Sometimes they have a featured artist; sometimes it’s a group show. In September, the art was a collection of elegant bonsais that turned the nooks of this large New England house into a sparse miniature thicket.
The walls of their home are thick with hanging paintings; tables become pedestals
for sculptures and every so often a poet breaks into verse or a belly dancer begins to shimmy. While the grownups talk, there is a second party that consists solely of children, even teenagers, hanging
out with their friends without the grownups in another part of the house.
“We started Rebel in May of 2008,” Dorota explains to me a few days after the September event. Originally from Poland, Dorota came to Rhode Island to visit the Providence Zen Center, met Rich, and has never left. Her European-accented English produces a rushing torrent
of words. “We were part of the Art Motivation meet-up group, started by Stephanie Shechter and realized we had a lot of friends who are artists but who barely ever show their work. We are creative, out of the box thinkers. We also have all these walls so we figured we could hang art on them and invite people over.”
Wrapped in a pink blanket and trying to ward off the first cold of the season, Wayne nods. “There are a lot more artists
than galleries around Providence.”
Wayne and Dorota cleared the walls themselves, painted them in vibrant colors, banged nails, made postcards, and began inviting people. Rich, the third ringmaster, fortunately happens to be a passionate networker, taking special pleasure in meeting people and helping them make connections.
“For me,” Rich says, “Rebel has deepened my appreciation
of art, and helped me to make deeper connections
with people I already knew but hadn’t had a chance to develop a friendship with. Our back door neighbor, Eric? We never saw him, but now we’re buddies. I’m always surprised at the people who come. People who I think might be too busy or too important,
they come, find it unique and just want it to continue.”
While one of the driving missions of the Rebel Headquarters is to display the art, clearly just as important is to present it in a living and breathing environment. “We are committed to equating art with a pleasurable experience, which is not something you always get when you go to a gallery,” Bridge explains. “[We like to think we’re] changing the way people view and respond to art. [Even if that’s all] we can do, I think we’ll have achieved our goal.”
What makes the process so fascinating is that every show at Rebel is unique. One evening there were fire performers
spitting and dancing with real fire. Another month there were photographs by Fredrika Sumelius of gypsy refugees in Macedonia. Last November saw a “Post Thanksgiving” show with works by David Tobin. In January, Jim Barfoot brought in constructions of wood and industrial mind teasing puzzles. One night, Cory Clinton’s chicken wire sculpture of a shark, it’s maw open, floated from the ceiling of the front porch.
The group at Rebel doesn’t play it safe either. Dorota described Deenie Pacik’s work as “very strongly set in gay activism,”
while Eva Stosik-Moers and Kerry Smith’s nudes made some of the adults uncomfortable given the presence of children running underfoot.
“It can be sometimes shocking,” Dorota
admits with a shrug, “especially in a house where everything’s really close. In a gallery, you can [achieve some] distance, but here, it’s right in front of you.”
For her show this past summer, Heather Adels filled most of the walls with paintings of man, beast and flowers, and then went on to create a new body of work that she called, “Fifty-Eight Paintings/
Sixty-One Days.”
“We had to create new ‘walls’ for the 58 by hanging burlap from the ceiling,”
Adels explained. “The living space, eclectic in its own right, is a wealth of color and texture and so it took easily to the accommodations we had to make.” As a result of the Rebel event, Adels sold some of her pieces, secured several other private showings and a show at the 5 Traverse Gallery.
Adels’ experience aside, Rebel is not something
that’s easy to monetize. While sales and shows are desirable, the impetus and driving force behind the art parties is to inspire and collect the people who will meet, blend and then spawn new combinations.
For the first year, the gatherings happened
every month, but after a while the burden simply got to be too great. Cleanup was a chore and one month, Dorota was so exhausted she actually fell asleep in her bedroom and missed the whole gathering. So now, the Rebels gather a bit less frequently, though they remain committed to filling their walls and the tables with art and their home with new visitors and viewers.
“People bring their most rebellious and change-oriented selves to our events and make things happen,” Wayne points out. “The number of connections that occur here is pretty phenomenal – every kind of connection, creative artistic, work. People meet lovers here. That kind of thing just keeps happening. That’s the best part of it, I think.”
The Next Rebel Headquarters will feature
work by Kelly McCullough on Saturday,
November 28 from 6pm until late. We won’t tell you where, because getting there is half the fun. If you go, don’t arrive empty handed. Be courteous because it is a private home. Bring food and drink – enough to share. More info is available at www.rebelhq.us or www.rebelheadquarters.blogspot.com
Mark Binder is an author, storyteller and nice guy. He lives on the East Side and writes a semi-regular column for this paper.

July 2009 Rebel HQ Open House Gallery with Heather Adels

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Dear Friends,

Please join us for the next Open House Art Gallery on Saturday, July 25, 2009, starting at 6 pm.

We are honored to be presenting the creative works of Heather Adels /www.adelsart.com/, whose talent, imagination and beautiful soul shows through her vibrant paintings.

As always Wayne Bridge and Dorota Streitfeld are the accompanying host artists; and Rich Streitfeld is our host of honor and whimsy, bank of information and network advice.

All art is offered for sale, discussion, comments and ice breaking.

Bring pot luck food, drinks, and musical instruments, if you play. By popular demand we will have a fire pit outside, so hot dogs, franks, wursts, sticks etc. will be nice.

Bring pot luck food, drinks, and musical instruments, if you play. By popular demand we will have a fire pit outside, so hot dogs, franks, wursts, sticks etc. will be nice.
And as usual kindly forward the invitation to friends and foes!

Heather, Dorota, Rich and Wayne

Important Notice—No Rebel HQ Open House Gallery in June!

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Notice to all Rebels:

The rebellion is strong. The rebellion is proceeding according to plan.

However…

Our Rebel Headquarters gatherings will only be held every other month until further notice. Our next gathering will be held on July 25th.

…So save up your party juices (or squander them elsewhere) and be doubly ready for the next one. We have chosen our guest artist already and cannot wait to tell you about her… Aren’t you just dying to know?! Stay tuned for further notices.

Thank you for your continued heroics,
HQ (Wayne, Rich, Dorota)