READING, PA – GoggleWorks Center for the Arts (GoggleWorks) announces $7.25 Project by Summer Artist-in-Resident Bartosz Beda.
Painter Bartosz Beda recently traveled from Moscow, Idaho to Reading, PA to take part in a 10-week Summer Artist-in-Residency Program at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts. The program, created to infuse new, creative energy to the GoggleWorks community has an emphasis on facilitating cross-disciplinary experimentation, providing each resident personal studio space and access to GoggleWorks’ seven communal studios.
Upon arrival, Bartosz Beda, announced his plans to develop the $7.25 Project, “During my summer residency at GoggleWorks, I have decided to engage with the issues and challenges that minimum wage workers face every day. After researching about Reading, PA prior my arrival to residency, I decided to focus on immigrants from Mexico and Puerto Rico, who’s population is growing in Reading, as well as represent in this project a struggle of all people who need to meet the demands of daily needs by getting a position that often is minimum wage. In some cases, the language barrier also limits an individual’s capability to get a job in the profession they were trained, resulting in them being underemployed in low-paid positions. For this occasion, I decided to paint one hour per day throughout my residency at GoggleWorks. Each day, the resulting painting, produced in one hour of work, will be offered for sale at $7.25, or Pennsylvania’s minimum wage.”
Every day a new, original painting will be displayed in the GoggleWorks lobby from 9am to 9pm and available for purchase for $7.25. The project will conclude on August 10th and ultimately encompass 64 individual works. Each painting will only be available for purchase during its respective day on view. At the end of the project, all proceeds will be donated to the GoggleWorks’ youth scholarship fund.
Born in Poland in 1984, Bartosz Beda relocated to the UK in 2008 to study at the Manchester School of Art. After graduating in 2012 with a MA in Fine Art, Beda was selected for the 2012 Catlin Art Guide as the most promising emerging artist in the UK. His works are in private collections throughout Europe, the United States, South Africa and Asia. Beda’s art has been widely interviewed and referenced for The Independend, Studio International, Expose Art Magazine, Creative Times, Radcliffe Times, A-N Magazine, Mastars at Axisweb, Arteon Art Magazine, Expose Magazine, Spokesman Review, BuzzFeed, Daily News and featured in The Guardian, The Telegraph and Money Week., NatWest, and Inlander. He was also mentioned on BBC Radio 4 in February 2013 as ‘one to watch’. He now lives and works in the United States.
To purchase a painting from the $7.25 Project, visit GoggleWorks’ information desk at 201 Washington Street, Reading, PA 19601. Learn more at bartoszbeda.com/7-25-project, where images of each day’s paintings will be posted. You can also follow along on Instagram using #minimumwageproject #bartoszbeda.
Any unsold works will be made available on August 10th, at Spotlight Night from 5:30-7:30pm. An exhibition of work completed by all three summer residents, Bartosz Beda, Joseph Cavalieri, and Karina Mago will also be on view in the Schmidt Gallery that evening.
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