The Complete Players List | Red Dot Challenge, Season 1

10/23/2024

We are super-excited to post the Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 players list. As you scroll down read a little bit about each player's background and get their Instagram link. Those Instagram links will come in handy during gameplay!

The players are listed below in alphabetical order. The order of the list is no indication of which player is associated with which fantasy art collection. The players' numbers, fantasy art collections and budget amounts will only be disclosed at the public REVEAL event in February, 2025 (details TBA).

Why, you ask?

Well, one of the ways you can participate in Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 is to follow the players' Instagram accounts to see if you can match up what the players are posting on Instagram with what is being posted in the official Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 collection albums HERE on Facebook. Match players with their fantasy art collections to WIN!

Gameplay begins on November 1, 2024. Gameplay ends on January 31, 2025.

Follow #🔴player to find players and #🔴roc to find posts related to the game on Instagram.

Follow & comment on the fantasy art collections on Facebook.

Use what you learn to participate alongside the players. INFO HERE

Ludmilla "Luda" Begley & Michael Munn (Playing as a team)

Follow @lunar_berserkr_art on Instagram for game updates from this player

Luda is an artist and a poet with a multicultural and multilingual background. She moved to Rochester five years ago after a lifetime of nomadic adventure and an array of careers stretching from advertising creative director to Royal Shakespeare Company interpreter, from university professor to freelance fiction editor. Currently her studio is located upstairs from Rochester Contemporary Arts Center.

Michael is a serious financial professional during office hours, a rock star by night, and a passionate punk poet around the clock. With a solid filmmaking and musical background, he has been prominent on the Rochester music scene for over two decades with his main band Cavalcade and other alternative projects. He is currently exploring and expanding his artistic palette, branching out into new milieus and genres.

Luda & Michael are playing as a team. They are considered ONE player in Season 1.

Instagram: @lunar_berserkr_art (Ludmilla Begley)

Susan "Su" Begy

Follow @susanbegy on Instagram for game updates from this player

Su is an interdisciplinary artist with an MFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC (2010). She creates stone and steel sculpture, graphite drawings, and collaborative projects. Her most recent work explores what we share as humans, what connects rather than divides us.

Su has lived in New York City, Los Angeles, Colorado, Santa Fe. She returned to Rochester (her hometown) about three years ago. Su says she has been fortunate to share studio space, collaborate, and exhibit with some amazing artists in the cities she's lived in. She also tells us she's traded for some fantastic artworks over the years!

Su likes to ski, hike, and read science fiction. She also loves to attend all types of live performances. She can spend hours and hours in art museums. Su and her husband, Clay Simmons, raised 3 children and now live in Brighton.

Instagram: @susanbegy (Susan Begy)

Jappie King Black & Richard Black (Playing as a team)

Follow @jkbreddot on Instagram for game updates from this player

Yes, her name is Jappie.

Her grandfather’s name was Jasper and his nickname was "Jap". He had 4 daughters. Jappie's mother was the youngest. Jap invented the name "Jappie" for her mom and her mom gave it to Jappie.

King was her father’s last name and Black her husband’s. All together they are what she considers her real name. Her husband suggested that she add his name to hers so that when names were alphabetized for exhibitions hers would be first. That doesn’t always work since her name is sometimes placed with the Ks. She says she doesn’t hyphenate her last name because that costs extra to print.

Jappie moved around a lot as a child with her parents, 1st to Argentina then back to the states, later to Mexico. She's a graduate of the Ateneo Fuente/Universidad de Coahuila and the Interlochen Arts Academy and has a BFA in Textile Design from Rhode Island School of Design as well as a MFA in Fibers from Syracuse University. Jappie was a tenured professor commuting to NJ from Brockport for nearly a decade. She may have felt somewhat rootless in the past, but at this point she has lived in New York longer than anywhere else in her life.

Jappie is now retired from teaching and spends her creative energy making and exhibiting her visual art.

Instagram @jkbreddot (Jappie King Black)

Bay State born and bred in Worcester, MA (the “Heart of the Commonwealth”). Richard earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, RI. After college he wrote and illustrated educational children’s animations near Boston. Later, he co-founded Sunspot Studio, Conn.

He moved to western NY in 1977 as Art Director for Itek Corporation's Graphic Products Division. He left Itek in 1984 to become the Director of the newly created Office of Design and Production at SUNY Brockport. Over the years he taught art, design, and photography in public schools as well as in higher education. Not that he was counting, he (mostly) retired in 2016 after 32 years, 8 months and 9 days.

Richard has been a photographer since high school and 3D shooter for 25 years. He has also been a collector of 3D images since the ’50s.

Richard shares a home (and occasionally) a studio with Jappie where they are held hostage by a knuckleheaded dog named Tala.

Jappie & Richard are playing as a team. They are considered ONE player in Season 1.

Instagram @jkbreddot (Jappie King Black)

Richard Glaser

Follow @richardglaser on Instagram for game updates from this player

Richard Glaser is a community activist and organizer. Richard is passionate about emerging artists from under-represented communities in Rochester and is the founder of RocGrowth. He proudly sports a tattoo with the Flour City logo containing a heart. He lives downtown and calls it his neighborhood.

Instgram: @richardglaser (Richard Glaser)

Reaghan McCann

Follow @reg_droid on Instagram for game updates from this player

Reaghan is a fiber, ephemera, and microscopy artist focused on the re-use of found materials and tactile art. He is a proud volunteer for Rochester Contemporary Art Center and an avid art collector. A voracious book nerd, he spends his free time researching human-made disasters.

Instagram: @reg_droid (Reaghan McCan)

Michelle Miller & Paul Wood (Playing as a team)

Follow @mlmgraphic on Instagram for game updates from this player

Michelle is an analog collage artist and art psychotherapist living and working in Rochester, NY. Her collage work has appeared in exhibitions internationally, including: Mexico City; Brussels; Cork; Birmingham; Paris; Tartu, and in the US in: CA, GA, WA, ID, NJ, and NY.

Michelle's work is published in multiple fine art publications, and was even chosen to be printed in two playing card decks. Her work incorporates vintage imagery, mixed language texts, and sourced objects. In 2023 she was honored to be selected for the 68th Annual Rochester/Finger Lakes Exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery for her collage work. She hosted her first solo collage installation and a community collage self care event at The Yards in March, 2024. Michelle enjoys collaborating with artists in her community and across the world.

As a collector, Michelle is drawn to the art of her collage colleagues, various etching work, abstract expressionism and color field work, surrealism, experimental photography, and vintage ephemera.

Instagram: @mlmgraphic (Michelle L Miller)

Paul began his art career photographing people and still life in high school. With his entire family working at Eastman Kodak, it came very naturally to him. He completed his degree at RIT in Professional Photographic Illustration, and started photographing professionally in 1989. From 1989 to 2003, Paul concentrated his business in Rochester, NY, photographing for clients including Wegmans Food Markets, Eastman Kodak, Chase Pitkin, Circuit City, and other local businesses. In 2003, Paul took a job in the Federal Government and moved to Washington DC, where he currently resides.

Paul's current position is Lead Photographer/Videographer for the U.S. Department of Education, where he has worked for 21 years. He splits his time between DC and Rochester, where his family continues to reside.

Paul has explored the intersection of fine art and photography for some time, exhibiting in DC, Rochester, Colorado, California, and various other states.

Michelle & Paul are playing as a team. They are considered ONE player in Season 1.

Instagram: @mlmgraphic (Michelle L. Miller)

Mike Molaire

Follow @mikemolairefineart on Instagram for game updates from this player

Mike was born under the sun, inches from the ocean: in the coastal Haitian city of St Marc. His involvement with photography started at age 14. By seventeen, he was already doing on-site portraiture as a business.

Mike came to Brooklyn, NY in July 1971. He used my his first paycheck from a summer job to buy a photographic darkroom set that he used at night in the bathroom while everybody was sleeping. (He was enrolled in a correspondence photographic course with Modern Photography.) By September, while attending New York Technical College to study chemistry, he had started a (successful) wedding and portrait business.

Upon graduation Mike was recruited by Eastman Kodak Company and moved to Rochester, NY in 1974. Mike traveled extensively as a Kodak employee around the US and on a few international trips. On every trip he arranged a vacation day to photograph each city he visited. He has amassed a large library of landscape scenes.

Mike describes himself as a photo-artist, not a photojournalist. He does not report, inform, nor teach unless a particular project draws him to that approach. He wants to evoke your senses, your emotions, your feelings. He wants to stimulate, project, induce, provoke, excite, perk up, animate, arouse.

Mike had a successful scientific career as a chemist and executive (Michel (Mike) F. Molaire | LinkedIn):

A prolific inventor holding 67 US Patents. Author of numerous scientific publications and presentations.
Senior Research Associate Chemist/Project Manager at the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories (36 years).
CEO and Founder of Molecular Glasses, Inc., developing novel organic semiconductors materials for OLED television (nine years).
CEO, EarlyDetek Inc, developing screening tests for early detection of cancer and other diseases, to save lives and reduce health care cost (7 months).
Principal, and Founder of Molaire Consulting LLC (14 years).

Mike is author and publisher of:

African American Who's Who Past & Present, Greater Rochester Area 12/1/1998.
Shadow of Dreams (poetry) 12/1/1995.
Plus Pres (Nearer) (poetry) 12/1/1968
La Vie des Oiseaux Morts (The Life of the Dead Birds) (poetry) 12/1/1965.

Instagram: @mikemolairefineart (Michel (Mike) Frantz Molaire)

Susan Mandl & Seth Oser (Playing as a team)*

Follow @sethoze on Instagram for game updates from this player

Susan & Seth are now fully retired and loving it. They enjoy art, traveling, reading, and walking.

Susan taught art in public school for 30 years. She creates art and also is an art collector.

Seth formerly owned and operated a Rochester-based printing company for 30 years. His dog is named Cayenne Pepper and he drives an EV.

Seth & Susan are playing as a team. They are considered ONE player in Season 1.

Instagram: @sethoze (Seth Oser)

* Susan & Seth participated in the Pilot Season of Red Dot Challenge in 2023-2024.

Nancy Valle

Follow @nancy.valle.1 on Instagram for game updates from this player

Nancy has been a working artist and educator in the Rochester area for too many years for her to count. Her professional experiences have included teaching visual arts at the elementary, middle, high school, and college levels as well as leading professional development workshops for teachers and art workshops for adults in the community.

Because of her many wonderful art experiences and interactions with other artists, she has come to greatly value Rochester's extraordinary arts community.

As a working artist, Nancy has engaged with many visual art forms & media including painting, graphic design, sculpture, metal-smithing, glass, ceramic sculpture and, most recently, printmaking.

Nancy maintains a studio/gallery in Rochester in Village Gate as well as an outdoor studio in rural Greenwood, NY, a source of great inspiration for her work.

Instagram: @nancy.valle.1 (Nancy Valley)

Matt Vanderlee*

Follow @matt_vanderlee on Instagram for game updates from this player

Matt is an artist, curator and New York State certified educator practicing in Rochester, New York. He also creates artworks; facilitates arts programming; writes about art; talks about art and curates art exhibitions in collaboration with a variety of local organizations that include The Yards Art Collective, Rochester Artist Collaborative and Frank’s Chop Shop.

Matt owns Hungwell Art Services which specializes in installing art in homes and businesses; packing & shipping art for clients and developing unique frames for works of art using handmade and found materials.

Instagram: @matt_vanderlee (Matt Vanderlee)

* Matt participated in the Pilot Season of Red Dot Challenge in 2023-2024.

Two players dropped out during gameplay

Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 is a program of Rochester Art Collectors.

Participating in Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 is FREE and open to the public. None of the players are paying to play or receiving any compensation. The program is privately funded and entirely non-commercial. Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 is not a fundraiser of any kind for any organization.

The works of art chosen by Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 players for their fantasy art collections are not being purchased with real money. Red Dot Challenge is a FANTASY art collecting GAME. Players are having fun PRETENDING to buy/collect the art and modeling art collecting behaviors.

In all instances the artists retain the copyright for their work as well as all other rights and privileges provided by the law.

If you are interested in purchasing a work of art you've seen during Red Dot Challenge, Season 1 gameplay, please inquire at the venue where the work is exhibited.

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