MP About


ABOUT

 

Marcus Parsons


Marcus creates digital art (painting, drawing, photography, graphics, video), literature (prose—the Squeezeshot Saga—and verse), and music.

Venues for his art include this website, his YouTube channel, two illustrated ebooks (parts of the Saga), and a monthly newsletter. He also displays his art and photography in juried exhibitions in galleries and online (EXHIBITIONS, below), open studio events, and as outdoor public art. SQUEEZESHOT was chosen for 20+-page articles in two biennial issues the ART Habens Art Review, and his work has appeared several times in the Maine Arts Journal. His formal arts training took place at Amherst College (B.A,) and the NYU School of the Arts (M.F.A.)

 

 


Squeezeshot website logo
WEBSITE

The SQUEEZESHOT.org website has received visitors from every state and the District of Columbia, and 114 countries. It has been admitted to Artbase, the Rhizome database of new media art (“contemporary art engaged with technology and the Internet”). Rhizome is an affiliate of the New Museum in New York City.

 



EXHIBITIONS
(partial list)

NOTE: A few years ago, after being juried into a good number of group shows (below), I stopped applying. I found them to be a mishmash of styles and quality, often cluttered, not suitable for good viewing. I continued showing my work via my monthly mailings and my web galleries, as well as Newton Open Studios and FenceART.  — M.P.

  • Landscape Invitational (Newton, MA)
  • FenceART Public Art Project (Newton, MA)
  • Griffin Museum of Photography Annual Juried Members’ Exhibition (Winchester, MA)
  • Newton Open Studios Winter Juried Show
  • RED, Cambridge (MA) Arts Association national juried exhibition
  • Three summer shows at the Corner Gallery, Washington, Maine
  • The Annual Maine Photography Show (3 times), Boothbay Harbor, ME
  • art open houses in Newton, MA.
  • Cambridge (MA) Art Association’s Summer Exhibition,.
  • ART Off The Wall, Brookline (MA) Arts Center
  • Newton Open Studios Spring Juried Show
  • annual Newton, MA Open Studios, 2016-present.
  • Up/Rooted, national juried exhibition at the Brookline Arts Center, Brookline, MA 
  • ITERATION, a National Juried Exhibition at Gallery 263 in Cambridge
  • Gallery 263’s Fall Regional Juried Exhibition
  • Beyond Choreography: Visual Interpretations of Movement, Art League Rhode Island’s Regional Juried Exhibition
  • Gravity, Brookline Art Center National Juried Exhibition
  • Newburyport Art Association Annual Regional Juried Show
  • Harlow Gallery’s Annual Regional Juried Show, Hallowell, Maine.
  • PIVOT, Newton Open Studios Spring Juried Exhibit 
  • LOVE, an exhibit in honor of Valentine’s Day, at the NewTV Gallery, Newton, MA
  • Newton Open Studios Fall Juried Art Fest
  • Annual Postcard Show, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
  • Saving Beauty, art show to benefit the Somerset Woods Trustees and Sebasticook Regional Land Trust, Canaan, Maine, 2015
  • School of the International Center of Photography SLIDEFEST: [IN]FLUX, New York City


BIO

Marcus was born in Maine. Son of an Army officer, he grew up in many parts of the U.S. and world (Yokohama, Paris, San Francisco, Washington DC, Colorado Springs, El Paso, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Kansas, Georgia, New York).

He attended Amherst College, where he earned a B.A., cum laude, in English and Dramatic Arts; and the NYU School of the Arts, where he earned an M.F.A. in Theater and Film Directing.

Based mostly in New York City, he spent a number of years playing leading and supporting roles in plays and movies, directing several (see Songs for the remarkable story of one), and co-producing a winter season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival (Stockbridge, MA) and a feature film involving many “superstars” from Andy Warhol’s Factory. Between takes of films he was acting in, he took up the guitar, and soon began writing songs and doing session work on the side, as a singer, guitarist, and hand drummer (dumbek, timbales, djembe).

He left a promising theater and film career in the city, and moved to the Berkshires, where he embarked on a decade-long career as a songwriter and musician. He performed solo, in a duo, and fronting a rock band called Old Duh-duh. He recorded several records, and performed around the Northeast at music and arts festivals, colleges and universities, clubs, bars, radio and TV stations, and elsewhere.

He conceived and built Phonesong, a service that played his original songs to callers. It gained local and national media attention, and for several years attracted 15,000 calls a year.

In the late 1970s, in Cambridge, he began working in professional audio, providing sound equipment to professional users. In 1989, he founded Parsons Audio (Wellesley, MA), which became (and remains) one of the nation’s leading professional audio suppliers to colleges and universities, broadcast networks (CBS Radio, NBC Olympics, ESPN), radio and TV stations, recording studios, bands (Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Boston, Talking Heads, Cars, New Kids), symphony orchestras (BSO, NY Phil, Chicago), corporate AV departments, museums, government agencies (Library of Congress), opera companies (the Metropolitan), and others.

He sold the company in 2010, and resumed artistic pursuits, creating SQUEEZESHOT, which has occupied him ever since for 50-60 hours a week.

Marcus and his wife, Ellen Kaplovitz, live near Boston; also, frequently, in Maine. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.




INFLUENCES & INSPIRATION

    • beloved wife, children, grandchildren, parents, brother, pets, and other family; 
    • friends and neighbors, near and far; 
    • teachers at every stage;
    • Beckett, Camus, Genet, Gide, Artaud, Picasso, Cezanne, Ray (Man), Cocteau, Yeats, Blake, Dickinson, Thoreau, Emerson, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Dante, Petrarch, Ovid, Milton, Joyce, Proust, Pirandello, Lorca, Williams (Tennessee), Lawrence (DH), Minions, Disney, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Raphael, Rodin, Wallace (DF), Baldwin (James), Dostoevsky, Kafka, Tolstoy, Frost, Lao Tzu, Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich, Chopin, Liszt, Gershwin, Dylan, The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Bowie, Coltrane, Cage (John), Mantle (Mickey), Ruth (Babe), Bird (Larry), Santa, Homer (Winslow), Hokusai, Hiroshige, Basho, Austen, O’Neill, Welles, Bogart, Chaplin, Bruce (Lenny), The Beats, The Living Theater, Jefferson, King (ML), the Buddha; 
    • countless others: people, places, creatures, objects, works, myths, ideas, and other residents of the heart and soul.


PUBLICATIONS

ART Habens Art Review


Maine Arts Journal


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