girlcharlie (charlie levin)
Relatively new to the Bay Area, Charlie Levin creates installations, performances and interactive paintings. Originally from Washington, DC, Charlie co-founded the Chicago-based visual theater company Local Infinities creating materials-based visual performances with things like 800 lbs of dirt, 100 gallons of water, or dipping people in giant vats of wax; curating international performance series and performing at festivals in the Netherlands and Ukraine. Her installations have utilized overlays of light, color, shadow and film in labyrinths of transparent materials. Her original text piece Second Place has been presented live with performance artist Natalie Brewster Nguyen in Chicago, as a surround-sound installation created by audio artist Monica Ryan at Sight Sonic Sound Festival in the U.K., and the Long Beach sound festival SoundWalk. Collaborators include slit-shutter photographer and fine artist Kostas Dimitreas (Greece) and Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory (Chicago). Her set designs complemented performances by dance and theater companies in Chicago, including the renowned Lookingglass Theatre. Recently Charlie has been creating installations of interactive wax paintings, using arduino microcontrollers to change images using light and the presence of the viewers. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2010, her work has been seen at Fort Mason as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, at the Performance Art Institute’s show “Keeping an Eye on Surveillance” curated by Hanna Regev, and at Classic Cars West in Oakland, curated by Rebecca Kerlin. Her class on painting with wax on glass will be coming up in June at Wax Works West in Santa Cruz. Charlie lives in Oakland and has a studio in Berkeley.
