Interview with Bo Gehring, winner of first prize at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2013 for his work "Jessica Wickham." This video portrait can be viewed here, in its entirety: http://vimeo.com/62003620

Bo Gehring writes, "The idea of my portraits is to record intimately emotional response over time as the subject listens to a favorite piece of music. For her portrait, Jessica Wickham, a precision woodworker in Beacon, New York, chose Arvo Pärt's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten."

"A precisely controlled video camera hovering inches away from the subject travels the length of her body, timed to synchronize with the length of the piece of music. The camera, nearer than the eye can focus, captures minute actions like breathing and pulse as living elements of the portrait. The camera also closely explores the drape and wear of clothing, expressions of personal choice that Jessica (like each of us) has chosen to present to the world."

The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is a juried exhibition of portraits at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition includes 48 works created from both traditional media like oil paintings, drawings and photographs as well as more surprising materials such as rice, glitter, thread and video.

The museum received over 3,000 entries in a variety of visual arts media. The competition and exhibition are made possible by the vision and generosity of Virginia Outwin Boochever.

Bo Gehring was interviewed on March 22. 2013 at NPG.  

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"Jessica Wickham" by Bo Gehring / HD video (5:05 minutes), 2010 / Collection of the artist

Music: "Budding" by Broke for Free: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Bro...

https://soundcloud.com/broke-for-free

Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.