Bev Richey/Artist Bio
My undergraduate degree in psychology is from the University of Connecticut and in 2008 I began advanced studies in art history at UW-Milwaukee. From 1978 to 1994, I had an active public art career in the New Haven, Ct area.
A 1995 move to a rural Wisconsin farm town, from this east coast urban center within commuting distance to NYC, allowed me to rest and recuperate.
My early art life included many socially conscious and feminist site-specific performances, installations, exhibitions, and social engagement projects. I worked as an arts administrator, an arts organizer, and an artist. While creating in a variety of transient media and later influenced by Judy Chicago I became best known for working in the feminist medium of cake.
In 2020 ARTSPACE a contemporary gallery in New Haven, Ct included a retrospective exhibit of one of my large-scale works (1988) called “The Amazing Bureaucratic Birthday Cake” serving the people in a group exhibition titled “Who Governs?” That same year The New Haven Museum included another early project of mine in an exhibition titled “Factory”. This work was a group exhibition I organized titled the “First Show of 1984” based on George Orwell’s novel.
“Later, experimental artist Beverly Richey took over PMVI and developed groundbreaking work in feminist art and the subject of food as a political statement. She was the driving force behind PMVI's legendary one-day “1984” exhibition in the former factory, which had crowds of visitors lined up around the block.” NHM
"PMVI- The Papier Mache Video Institute, New Haven’s premier DIY avant-garde artists collective that hosted the legendary “1984” exhibition, the largest Elm City underground art show in the 1980s." The New Haven Museum 2020
Relocating from a populated urban area to a rural Wisconsin town (in the Driftless Region) of under one hundred residents, resulted in developing an intimate relationship with natural time and space. This led to a deep interest in nature’s impact on the human experience. Now after several decade-long investigations into these insights, my work identifies as the “Human/Nature/Series”. These interests in psychology and the natural world, have given birth to my current creative process and project.
In 2015 I added a “painting” practice to my studio life. Shortly thereafter I introduced the “FIRST HUNDRED PAINTING SERIES” 2015-2022 In this project, I committed in advance to painting a hundred paintings as a way of trying something new. I recently completed #50 of the series. These paintings range in size but average around 3x4FT. They are organic abstract forms in a wide range of colors that reflect a variety of psychological concepts including Carl Jung's theory of missing psychological parts to contemporary ideas about brain plasticity.
More about my 4 decades as a working artist:
