An obese gray cat preens in a cardboard box marked "Sale $59.99." His
massive girth expands from all sides of the box. A giggling 22-year-old
Robyn Shecktor sits across from me on her couch in South Philadelphia.
Her demeanor changes as she beckons toward the walls.

"It feels so naked in here. All of my paintings are at the gallery,"
she says.

The young artist has just celebrated the opening gala for her first
solo show at the Kind Café located at 724 North 3rd Street in the
Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia, held in conjunction with the
city's First Friday celebration for February. Only the second show hosted at
the newly-opened café, the gallery showcases Shecktor™s 2002-2004
works-- fifteen of which were painted only last January.

A graduate of the Philadelphia magnet school CAPA (for the Creative and
Performing Arts), Shecktor concentrated on visual arts. She developed a
technique, which she terms, "abstract abstraction." This concept
utilizes layered color and the fusion of recognizable and distorted forms.
Rendering emotion while painting to music, the artist transcends the
world of concrete objects. The utility of physical articles becomes
employed in an abstract world.... Here, each form inherits a deeper meaning
whereby its everyday uses are transcended. She cites the day she painted,
"Seduction of Tranquilized Illusions," to illustrate how she has been
motivated to engage her technique. The work depicts two female forms,
one set atop a pill bottle and another, which morphs to form the
background.

"That's the exact actual day my doctor took me off of a two-year
prescription of Xanax," she explains. "You drop the bomb and birds are
flying. The girl's on top of the pill bottle. Look at it and think, it's
spinning out of control. And everything's coming to a complete halt. That
exact moment is now frozen in time."

Shecktor continued her studies at the Art Institute of Philadelphia as
a fashion major.

She laughs, "That was fun but I hate sewing. I liked designing, but I
got frozen at the machine and was constantly throwing bobbins
everywhere."

Shecktor received scholarships to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
for figure drawing classes. An early career highlight was winning a
94.1 WYSP contest juried by carnival-esque icon, Marilyn Manson.

The dark element in Shecktor's work was criticized by a local
politician. While the politician said he was a fan of the Kind Cafe© show on
the whole, he remarked negatively on Shecktor's "Rebirth of an Artist's
Print..." Shecktor recalls him commenting that the piece looked like a
dead body and not appropriate to be placed next to a table where someone
would eat." The gallery pulled the work-- to Shecktor's reluctant
acquiescence. However, "Rebirth of an Artist's Print," was later placed in a
corner.
 

The piece illustrates a female figure, painted in red, with photographs
of the artist's body affixed to the head and genitalia. Shecktor
described it as "life and death at the same time ... coming and going ... it
was a rebirth and a death of myself at the same time. Somebody could
buy my nude body, the graffiti of the new art."

Shecktor refutes that darkness is the underlying factor in her
paintings-- in the yellows, oranges, pinks, and overall color scheme alone.

"The piece, 'The Late Bloomer', started as a beautiful woman and it
turned gray. She's dead now. There is a flower, and I sporked it through
her. She fell into the flower and it's piercing her and forms a cross.
It's kind of a religious piece. You need to pick up the cross and go
through the meaning of that painting and hang it away from the wall with a
light behind it."

Shecktor maintains her online web gallery, located at
www.artisticinfection....com where she promotes her artwork and links to a network of
younger artists whom she terms, "The People's Art Movement." She is
working on a autobiography (so far, she says, her manuscript is 415 pages),
which she hopes to complete within the year.

Kind Café is located at 724 North 3rd Street. Its hours are Monday
through Friday 11 to 7. Its telephone number is (215) 922-KIND (5463).
Owner K....C. McQuillan has posted the menu and upcoming events at
 www.kindcafe.com

All rights belong to the author. Re-printed with permission.

Bio:
Bonnie MacAllister is I am the Membership and Publicity Chair of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Women's Caucus for Art and a freelance writer, filmmaker, and performance artist. You can find me at:
www.livejournal.com/users/bonniemac