Bio: "Born and raised in Miami, I attended New World School of the Arts high school.

"For the past 5 years I've been studying and working in Providence, RI. I graduated from Brown University, where I studied broadly: painting, art history, comparative literature, and Spanish language, among other things.

"After graduating, I was an educator at the Providence Children's Museum via their AmeriCorps program. I designed hands-on science-based after-school programs, and learned about the general goings-on of a non-profit museum, especially the exhibit design process.

"Home in Miami again, I coordinate an art studio and exhibit space in downtown Miami -- the Flagler Arts Space. I also work as an art conservator, patiently cleaning and repairing paintings with Rustin Levenson Conservation.

"Next year I'll head to Boston to get an MFA.

"Then, inevitably, I'll be back in Miami.

"And a bit about my artwork:

"The artworks I've been making for the past several years, mostly paintings and drawings, document invented rituals, adventure-performances I create with my dearest friends. The 'Full-Spectrum Auto-Baptism' exemplifies what I mean: Six women emerge from the sea, dressed in long white dresses, almost indistinguishable from each other on this cloudy day. They step into depressions in the sand: vats of dye. They stand still, holding hands, all in a line. Slowly, color seeps up their dresses. Red, orange, yellow -- a whole spectrum. The women baptize themselves in a patient painting process, each becoming more completely herself, more completely individual as she is colored.

"I learned to paint at New World School of the Arts High School. Our mantra there was Faster, Bigger, Brighter. We painted intuitively, un-self-consciously, constantly, manically. I still value this painting style, and seek to integrate it into a more thoughtful process. So this year, my painter friend Geddes and I have performed a monthly painting conversation: we sit facing each other, surrounded by paints and water buckets, piles of white paper and colored scraps. We each paint twelve paintings over the course of twelve hours: Geddes paints for an hour, then sets her painting before me. I respond to her painting with a painting of my own, and then deliver my response to her, etc. The process helps us work through ideas, free images from our glutted subconscious, re-combine images and ideas in permutation after permutation, communicate with and pay attention to each other in a language un-stymied by social convention, patterns of speech, and linear thinking. We each have 168 one-hour paintings piled in our rooms, paintings that are both seeds for new works (the project is a performance designed to generate other performances) and evidence of a meaningful painting ritual. The project has left me full of ideas."

Website: annieblazejack.com