The Dobelstein is Not Art movement was started in 1999 as a college project for the University of Florida's College of Fine Arts. While taking drawing, painting, and computer graphics courses, I came up with the phrase as a negative campaign against myself in order to promote my own gallery openings. This slogan was fed into dorm mailboxes, flyered over campus, spray-painted onto the 34th street wall, and adorned the bumpers of over 50 pizza delivery drivers vehicles in the town of Gainesville. The bumper stickers have been seen as far south as Orlando, and as far north as New York City! The project has spawned a video, a local art exhibit, a CD, and now this webpage. Since it's inception, I have been questioned by friends, relatives, and total strangers as to what the slogan means. Many Gainesvillians assume it is the title of an indy-rock band. Others have accused the logo as being slanderous to local artists or artisans, and a select few have the awful burden of having to explain it to their friends, family, and complete strangers. To them, I deeply apologize.

The idea for the slogan came around the time of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's controversial "Sensation" exhibit which was politicized between the rivals for the 2000 election to the New York Senate, Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. The efforts of the then mayor of New York to prohibit anyone from seeing the show brought record numbers to the Museum. The concept of censorship promoting interest, led me to the "Not Art" campaign, which alone has stirred up more interest than any of my previous gallery openings.

The slogan also brings up the basic question asked of any art student, or patron of an artistic production; "what is art?" Can a person dictate what has artistic merit and what does not, or is it all a matter of perception? Volumes have been written on these subjects, and there is no universal answer yet. In the end we all make up our own minds.

As it is no simpler to answer these questions as it is to explain what "Dobelstein is Not Art" is, I invite you to enter this website, and see my works in Fine Art, Web Designs, Flash Animation, and Film Editing. I hope you like what you see.