Charlie Levin // Background
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A visual artist at heart, Ms Levin creates interactive artworks integrating many artistic forms—painting, drawing, performance, installation, sound, text, artist's books, set design, and sculpture. Her work frequently utilizes very textural materials, transparency and multiple viewpoints and often deals with ideas of perception and point-of-view. Starting from the immediacy of pencil drawings and a love of the human figure, her figure drawings evolved into paintings, which in turn led to installations in which the role of the figure was played by viewers exploring the space in real time. Interactive installations included collaborations with Greek photographer and fine artist Kostas Dimitreas (Kardamyli, Greece). Further developing the idea of live-person as the figure in a visual context, she began collaborating with performing artists, eventually forming the materials-based visual theater company Local Infinities with theater-maker Meghan Strell (Chicago). Local Infinities performed throughout the midwest in venues including Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art as well as international theater festivals in Ukraine and the Netherlands. They also curated performance series at Chicago's celebrated Links Hall, hosting artists from Brussels, the United Kingdom, and Croatia. Highlights include performances incorporating 800 pounds of dirt, 80 gallons of water, raw electrical current, painting live onstage, and encasing performers in shells of wax.

Leaving Local Infinities in 2002, Levin began creating large-scale interactive paintings and performances, including Second Sight (2003) and Second Place (2004) as well as an installation about predatory direct mail (Handle with Care, 2004). She has incorporated interactive technology into her installations designed by artists/programmers from Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Laboratory. She and audio artist Monica Ryan received grants from Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio (2004) to continue their work with Second Place. Ryan further developed the project as a ambisonic presentation with the University of York, eventually presenting it as part of Sight Sonic Sound festival in the U.K. (2005) and again at Soundwalk, Long Beach, CA (2007).

Since 2007, Levin has been exploring the intimate relationship between artist and subject in the process of portraiture, fulfilling private commissions, and working on a narrative re-working of the script for Second Place.