Charlie Kearns aka Beijing Charlie

A postcard from CHARLIE KEARNS a.k.a. Beijing Charlie, sent from Zanesville, Ohio. Charlie was born in Zanesville. He graduated from USC 1998. Lived in Los Angeles from 1976 to 1988 and In 1994 appeared in The Shawshank Redemption. Back to LA again from 1996 to 2002. In 2008 created the world's largest single letter art installation and also became "Beijing Charlie" after a residency in China, 2012.

Charlie is a humorist, actor and video-performance artist. I met him 2011 at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson,VT. At that time there were construction works on main street. It was a big deal and there were a lot of orange cones scattered in the small town. On this occasion Charlie and Alec MacLeod created the collaborative "Orange Cone Project", in which MacLeod -as critic Andrew White - critiques Beijing Charlie's large scale installation piece. The short video, "Chaos and Order in Johnson Vermont," satirizes contemporary art criticism. On the related cone-blog you can submit your images of orange cones. I did this, twice. Sometimes these cones are placed in the strangest spots, for unknown reasons.