The Amateurist

by Beth Pinsker, Senior Producer (see more from this contributor)

July was born in Vermont, but spent most of her life in Portland, OR, where she got into the punk/performance-art scenes and became something of a cult figure in the avant-garde art world. She's been showing her work and performing in clubs since high school, gaining more and more prominence and boldness as she moves forward (see more of her work and find out where to purchase it at her Website). She now lives in Los Angeles, but says her original edgy fan base hasn't gone away; they have just transitioned from seeing her work at underground clubs to fine-art museums.


While her style is difficult to categorize, one constant is that she typically plays most of the roles in her pieces. "What was most different about the feature film was that I worked with actors," she says.


In one of her earlier video works, The Amateurist, pictured here, she plays a "professional" woman and an "amateur" woman who she watches over a video screen. The 14-minute short film from 1998 played in numerous film festivals and art-gallery exhibitions.

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