Bradley Wester

Bradley Wester, visual artist, writer, and cultural activist was born and raised in New Orleans and lives and works in New York, Rhode Island, and Miami Beach. Bradley’s hybrid practice combines painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and digital photographic imaging. His recent solos include DISCOlour at the Newport Art Museum; DISCOrd #1 at farm projects, Wellfleet MA; DISCOurse #2 at Pavel Zoubok in New York; and DISCOurse #3 at Yellow Peril in Providence. Previously he worked on a ten-year project called “Ephemera & Culture: Italy, Turkey, and Japan—a Trilogy,” where he lived and worked in three disparate but geographically symmetrical cultures, resulting in three connected bodies of work. Other solo & group shows include Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Chicago, Jamestown Arts Center in Rhode Island, Margalef & Gipponi in Antwerp, PIASA Paris, Lyonswier Gallery and Artists Space in New York, and Future Tenant in Pittsburgh. Awards include Specialist Fulbright to Kyoto Japan, two MacDowell Fellowships, and a Pollock-Krasner Grant. Visiting Artist/Lecturer credits include CalArts, RISD, Dartmouth College, SVA, Tulane, Sint Lucas Antwerp, Kyoto University of Art & Design, The American Academy in Rome, and Ringling College of Art & Design.

Bradley, the writer, completed a creative nonfiction memoir, SHINY OBJECT, The Making of an Artist, represented by Talcott Notch Literary. Its title chapter, “Shiny Object,” has been nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. “Brothers Katrina,” the first chapter, won the 2016 Fresher Writing Prize in the UK for Best Creative Nonfiction. He read a third chapter, “Genderf*ck,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of the exhibition symposium for “Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983.” Wester is also an art and culture critic and is a contributing writer for FilthyDreams.org and Whitehot Magazine for Contemporary Art.

Wester has designed theatre sets for Off-Broadway & in Los Angeles for writer/director Eve Ensler of ‘Vagina Monologues’ fame, producers Mike Nichols, Fox Television, The Promenade Theatre, LaMama, Music Theatre Group in NYC, & The Court Theatre in LA. He created artwork for an Adam Sandler film and performed in a Robert Wilson production at Lincoln Center. He made his own performances at venues such as The Kitchen, St. Marks Church, PS1 in New York, the CAC in New Orleans, and Sarah Lawrence College.