The Bronfman Gallery at New York University proudly presents Extremely Recent and Not So Recent Works by Jonathan Blum. A Washington, D.C. native, Blum studied art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (while attending Emerson College) and at the Central Art School in London. He has had one-man shows all over the world, including Washington, D.C.; Provincetown, MA; Boston; New Orleans; London; Berlin; Tel Aviv; and Prague.

Blum considers himself, first and foremost, to be a portrait painter; his work "ranges from the fanciful to the classically realistic." He traces his career back to a cartoon he created for Stuff magazine in Boston in 1986. The cartoon depicted Blum's own forehead -- a caricature of his face from the eyes up. From there he began painting "forehead portraits" that captured his subjects only from the eyes up. He has since left the cartoon element behind, but his focus on the top half of the face remains.

In 1994, Blum's studies with an inspirational rabbi in Israel bore a new series of portraits: a fictitious orthodox rabbi. Blum explains, "These were a stylistic breakthrough for me. The elongated, bearded visage of this rabbi conveyed so much history and so much wisdom, I felt that I couldn't do justice to him without giving him a mouth. So with these fictitious rabbi portraits, I began to expand my cropped portraits to represent more of the face." Now, in Blum's first official New York exhibition, the rabbi encounters a special new face --that of an Imam -- in the 2002 work entitled Cousins, a piece that Blum describes as being "sweetly confrontational."

In addition to "extremely recent works" like the Rabbi and Imam piece, the NYU exhibition will feature an array of Blum's ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts) and other Judaica designed by the artist.

Although Blum has had a number of gallery shows over the years, he has chosen to bypass the gallery system at large by making his living chiefly by selling his art directly to the public at outdoor markets, art fairs, and on city streets all over the world. Blum's philosophy is simple: art should be affordable and readily available to the public.

To find out more about Jonathan Blum, you can check out his website: www.jonathanblumportraits.com. Or, if you are in New York City, you can visit Jonathan on the streets of SoHo -- on West Broadway between Prince and Spring -- every Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting.