August 2019 - Click here for a write up in the Vegconomist for our launch of The Ultimate Designer Vegan Sneakers

March 2019 - Gorgeous article in the Chronogram on my live/work loft: https://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/artist-kelli-beckmans-vibrant-live-work-gallery-space-in-saugerties/Content?oid=7631016&showFullText=true

Hudson Valley Magazine feature “Big Time Artist” http://www.hvmag.com/Hudson-Valley-Magazine/February-2019/Kelli-Bickman/

Mural dedication ceremony for the M & T bank project summer program with the Saugerties Boys and Girls Club: https://www.dailyfreeman.com/multimedia/photos-saugerties-mural-dedication-ceremony/collection_c28383b2-c8df-11e8-9d69-4f8120285a55.html

Daily Freeman article on the Mural Arts program at the Odd Fellows Temple: https://www.dailyfreeman.com/news/saugerties-mural-arts-project-allows-youngsters-to-create-large-work/article_0c8bce26-853e-52bc-a396-08d7e8dace2e.html -

November, 2017 - Interview by Thea Fiore Bloome in Professional Artist Magazine for a piece titled "2018: The Year of Video Marketing. You can get the issue here:   http://bit.ly/2gG29TO - It is an excellent tool for anyone wanting to use video for sharing their art.

Sept, 2017 - The Color of Love: An interview where I talk about dropping out of my first painting class, love, heartbreak, the healing power of art, the estate of painter Frederic Church...and more here:  https://www.renderforest.com/blog/kelli-bickman-interview

Nice article in the Huffington Post by Kristin Meekof on the World Peace Mural:  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-meekhof/peace-is-the-way_b_8582228.html

Integral Life featured gallery: https://integrallife.com/author/kelli-bickman/

“Gods tend to be larger than life – and the Gods and Goddesses of artist Kelli Bickman’s series, ‘Pop Deities’ are no exception. In vivid color, Bickman’s spirituality is reflected in her work, which draws on religious figures from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Native-American philosophy.”
-Folio Weekly

“Kelli Bickman’s work taps into and reflects the aesthetic of the scavenger in all of us. That part of us that makes us draw mustaches on newspaper photos and tack photos to our cubicles. More than that, Kelli’s pieces draw on a level of recognition beyond the automatic or mundane and illicit thoughts of grand American mythologies that have surpassed verbal dissemination.”
-Knitting Factory Records, NYC 

“Bickman dares to mix — color, theme, mythology — and she does so with respect and humor at the same time. A difficult feat…Kelli Bickman, a serious artist to be sure, proved to me that art produced from a sense of joy could lead to an artist’s life — you know, the kind we all dream of, where our art is our living and our living is our art. I think art such as Bickman’s is actually the most “serious” of all in that it expresses something joyful and ecstatic about being human. I think, too, that art like this can only come from a certain kind of soul — a happy, broad-minded, and delighted-with-life soul.”

-BlissChick.net

“There is a wonderful resemblance in Kelli Bickman’s work to the paintings of Marie Roberts and other Coney Island artists. It’s brash and makes a big “look at me” kind of statement. Like the Coney Island crowd there is an avoidance of fine art issues. Left behind are the years of art history and canons of fine painting and what is left is a raw pictorial instinct….There is a lot to like about her work.”

-Robert Sievert, ARTEZINE 17.25

“With great energy and flair, Bickman invites us to soar beyond the mundane to find inspiration in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences that make up our lives. Her work is “larger than life” and she proves, once again, that art can illuminate the recesses of the human soul with both joy and beauty.”
-Ann Niven, Sage Woman Magazine

‘Kelli Bickman’s sparkling images, with their clarity, beauty and delight, have graced our pages. What a treasure!”
-Margery Cantor, Inquiring Mind

“Kelli Bickman is a wonderfully talented painter. She has an ease of technique, grace of arrangement and a depth of vision; her many series often portray nature symbols, along with universal or ancient elements in skilled, updated narratives. Her unique talent spans fine art and illustration, and we are proud to have her work in our collection.”
-Artist Amy Zerner & Author Monty Farber

"There are multiple cosmoses, and they are all floating and spinning around us, we are soaring through them, they are beyond words but not beyond meaning, many meanings, deep meanings, transcendent meanings, eternal meanings, infinite meanings...your paintings tell me that my consciousness must expand in order to contain, embrace, engage these cosmoses, and the paintings lead me to this expansion of my consciousness."

Dr. William Buschell, Tibet House, Ishar

"People like Kelli help to make the world a better place. We are lucky to have such an amazing Ambassador to the Arts. Kelli’s zest for the arts and her community is infectious.~ 

-Lori McNee, Power Artist

A simple Question,  A Multitude of Answers.  by Jeremiah Horrigan <jeremiahhorrigan@gmail.com>

Kelli Bickman’s first attempt at creating a public art project was almost comically misunderstood.

It was six years ago and Bickman was living in Peekskill, NY. She’d been awarded a grant to create a mural on a city facade. She put out a community notice, hoping to attract young people to the project. 

And she did. On the appointed day, four young people -- three young men and a young woman ranging in age from 17 to 20 -- arrayed in gangsta regalia, skilled in graffiti and street artistry, showed up to give her the once-over.

Bickman, a slender young multi-media artist who exudes 1,000-watt enthusiasm when she talks about her many art projects, explained to the foursome what she wanted them to help her do -- paint an eight by 36-foot mural. When she was finished, they looked at each other in surprise.

“They thought I was an undercover cop trying to entrap them,” Bickman recently recalled.

The four joined Bickman’s community paint brigade.

“They became the champion artists,” she said with a smile. “And mentors to the younger students.”

The mural took the better part of a year to complete. It galvanized the community, giving a dismal city a bright new look, as well as serving as a launching pad for three of her champions: two went off to college and a third went to work for visionary artist Alex Grey.

Bickman's experience confirmed Bickman’s lifelong conviction that if you want to do something badly enough, the universe will find a way to help you achieve your goal. A person’s thoughts, she believes, create their reality.

Bickman, who now lives and works in a sprawling space in the center of the tiny Village of Saugerties, NY, is an artistic polymath. Her works grace the private collections of author Neil Gaiman, singer-songwriter Tori Amos and humanitarian Meera Ghandi.  She’s also created her own clothing line of wearable art and is a veteran of a clutch of other public art projects.

Her last public project is a nine by 36-foot mural originally designed for display in Woodstock, NY to celebrate World Peace Day 2015. As in Peekskill, she looked for and found scores of people to contribute their thoughts, images and experiences in answer to the question "What does peace mean to you?"

World Peace Day — also known as The International Day of Peace —  is celebrated very year n Sep 21. It was established in 1981 by resolution of the United Nation and is edicated to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples. 

Every year, there’s the hope that the day will somehow be the occasion for temporary ceasefires across the globe, a hope that is annually overwhelmed by the endless variety of wars, rebellions and attacks the world has to offer.

The mural was created on a vast canvas sheet spread across the hardwood floor of a 5,000-square-foot space that used to be an Oddfellows Temple. Artists, arts groups, children and adults have already contributed their answers to the project’s question.

Amid the hundreds of contributions of drawings, prayers and poems from adults and children from around the world, the contributions of several children from places in the world where peace is a distant memory stand out:

“I want game maker, and I want to have a country without captures. I am afraid of losing hopes about my country.” -- Dana Muhammad Rasheed, 13, Kirkuk, Iraq.

“I want to see my country rescued from war and terror and I hope to become a police officer in future to safe my country from terror and do good deeds.  I love peace and I hate terror.”   -- Ari Kakawla Ali, 13, Kirkuk, Iraq

Bickman took the mural to Salt Lake City for exhibition at the Parliament for World Religions conference Oct 2015 where ore than 10,000 people from 80 countries and 50 faith witnessed it.

All world religions are represented in this project.

It’s pure serendipity that Bickman should find and forward these statements of yearning among the hundreds of contributions she’s already attracted to the mural. Maybe there’s an echo there of those four inner-city kids checking out the “undercover cop” who helped turn their lives around six years ago in Peekskill. Maybe their testimonies will bring a bit of light to the world, or even to their own lives. Maybe not. But Bickman would be the first to tell you that in war and peace, in Peekskill, Saugerties or Kirkuk, the universe has a way of working in strange and sometimes wonderful ways.

Jeremiah Horrigan is a freelance writer whose essays and stories have appeared over the years in The New York Times, Miami Herald, Salon. com and The Huffington Post.