ABOUT
Marcus Parsons
Marcus creates digital art (painting, drawing, photography, graphics, video), literature (prose—the Squeezeshot Saga—and verse), and music.
Venues for sharing his art include this website, his YouTube channel, two illustrated ebooks (parts of the Saga), and a monthly newsletter. He also shares his art and photography in juried exhibitions in galleries and online (EXHIBITIONS, below), open studio events, and as outdoor public art (Newton’s FenceART). 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.)
WEBSITE
The SQUEEZESHOT.org website has received visitors from every state and the District of Columbia, and 114 countries. It was 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)
- Landscape Invitational (Newton, MA)
- FenceART Public Art Project (Newton, MA)
- Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA)
- Newton Open Studios—annual shows, 2016 to present
- RED, Cambridge (MA) Arts Association
- 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
- Up/Rooted, Brookline Arts Center, Brookline, MA
- ITERATION, Gallery 263 in Cambridge
- Gallery 263 Fall Regional Exhibition
- Beyond Choreography: Art League Rhode Island
- Gravity, Brookline Art Center
- Newburyport Art Association
- Harlow Gallery, Hallowell, Maine.
- PIVOT, Newton Open Studios
- LOVE, NewTV Gallery, Newton, MA
- Newton Open Studios Fall Juried Art Fest
- A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
- Saving Beauty, art show to benefit the Somerset Woods Trustees and Sebasticook Regional Land Trust, Canaan, Maine
- 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 began writing songs and doing session work on the side, as a singer, guitarist, and hand drummer (dumbek, timbales, djembe).
Leaving behind a promising theater and film career in the city, he moved to the Berkshires, where he embarked on a decade-long career as a singer/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.
In the late 1970s, living in Cambridge, 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.
Also 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, The 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
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- 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
