Jenny Marketou is a Greek visual artist, teacher, and public speaker who was born in Athens, Greece and is based in New York City. She has an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and taught as an adjunct professor at The Cooper Union School of Art. Her work is made up of video, video installation, performance, public art, internet, digital media and tactical technology that aims to engage viewer participation and transforms universal issues into a physical and intensely personal experience. He work has been show worldwide.
This blog has a nice collection of her works: http://blog.art21.org/2011/10/28/inside-the-artists-studio-jenny-marketou/#.UugGHbROmUk
Patrick McDonough is a DC-based artist who does installation, sculpture, paintings, and video. His work was just on display at the Katzen Museum and G Fine Art. He’s currently an instructor at Corcoran and American University. He has planned works in Miami, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
His works can be found here: http://pkmcdonough.com/
Sharon Louden is a New York City-based artists whose work focuses around a whimsical use of line. Her paintings, drawings, animations, sculpture, and installations are often centered around lines or linear abstractions and their implied or actual movement.
Selected works can be found here: http://www.sharonlouden.com/work/
Jeff Spaulding is a DC-based artist and professor at American University. He is a sculptor whose work can be found at G Fine Art and the Corcoran Gallery’s permanent exhibition.
His work can be found here:
http://www.gfineartdc.com/artists-detail.cfm?recordID=14
The TED talk I chose was My 5 Lives as an Artist by Raghava KK. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_4IK8CiLg8 His talk focuses on his becoming an artist and how that has influenced his life. He was drawn to art as a child and then largely ignored it after being admonished by a nun until he got to high school. It was then he began doing caricatures for which he grew more well-known as he did many of different celebrities. When he did a cartoon featuring Osama bin Laden and the Twin Towers he received so much hate mail and negative press that he decided to change his focus. He decided to become a painter and his paintings gained notoriety. He began living the “fast life” of celebrity in India and London. His paintings sold well. He became a media darling until his mother fell ill and his artwork, which went from fun jubilance to harrowing and political. He lost the support of his Bollywood friends, collaborators, and collectors because of the change in his art. He decided, then to have a family. He and his wife – who was also his manager – decide to have a child and move back to the US.
What strikes me a great about his talk is his reinventing himself without actually doing so. He calls it his reincarnations as an artist but when you look at his work, his style, and what he is doing, it is like any other artist whose work goes through different phases, but I think what is smart about his approach is that it’s one that I agree with. I think that the starving artist has become a trope. Of course like all tropes it’s based on truth, but it’s still a stereotype nonetheless; I, however, do have many a starving artist friend and many friends who aren’t starving artists. I think it shows a balance that has to be based upon the reality of an artist, like anyone else, needs to eat. Artists are working people who need to make a living, and I think there are many ways artists can go about this that allow them to still share and have their expression expressed. It should allow for them to continue to do their work even if it doesn’t sell, even if it’s not exactly profitable. Raghava KK went through that, and each time he had moments when circumstance invaded his life, he along with his work changed to suit those circumstances. I think that’s what artists need to do especially the artist who isn’t making thousands or millions selling their work internationally or does not have that epic amount of notoriety. It’s a method that makes sense.
kkarlmcf 
Good research Kenny!