I'm a contemporary artist with a bit of an unexpected background. I was in my 20s before I ever went to an art museum. I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road in rural Arkansas, an hour from the nearest movie theater. And I think it was a great place to grow up as an artist. Because I grew up around quirky, colorful characters who were great at making with their hands. And my childhood is more hick than I could ever possibly relate to you. And also more intellectual than you would ever expect. For instance, me and my sister, when we were little, we would compete to see who could eat the most squirrel brains. But on the other side of that, though, we were big readers in our house. And if the TV was on, we were watching a documentary. And my dad is the most voracious reader I know. He can read a novel or two a day. But when I was little, I remember, he would kill flies in our house with my BB gun. And what was so amazing to me about that -- Well he would be in his recliner, would holler for me to fetch the BB gun, and I'd go get it. And what was amazing to me -- well it was pretty kickass; he was killing a fly in the house with a gun -- but what was so amazing to me was that he knew just enough how to pump it. And he could shoot it from two rooms away. Because he knew how to pump it just enough to kill the fly and not damage what it landed on. So I should talk about art. Or we'll be here all day with my childhood stories. I love contemporary art, but I'm often really frustrated with the contemporary art world and the contemporary art scene. A few years ago, I spent months in Europe to see the major international art exhibitions that have the pulse of what is supposed to be going on in the art world. And I was struck by going to so many, one after the other, with some clarity of what it was that I was longing for. And I was longing for several things that I wasn't getting, or not getting enough of. But two of the main things: one of it, I was longing for more work that was appealing to a broad public. That was accessible. And the second thing that I was longing for was some more exquisite craftsmanship and technique. So I started thinking and listing what all it was that I thought would make a perfect biennial. So I decided, I'm going to start my own biennial. I'm going to organize it and direct it. And get it going in the world. So I thought, okay, I have to have some criteria of how to choose work. So amongst all the criteria I have, there's two main things. One of them, I call my Mimaw's Test. And what that is is I imagine explaining a work of art to my grandmother in five minutes. And if I can't explain it in five minutes, then it's too obtuse or esoteric and it hasn't been refined enough yet. It needs to worked on until it can speak fluently. And then my other second set of rules -- I hate to say "rules" because it's art -- my criteria would be the three H's. Which is head, heart and hands. And great art would have "head": it would have interesting intellectual ideas and concepts. It would have "heart" in that it would have passion and heart and soul. And it would have "hand" in that it would be greatly crafted. So I started thinking about how am I going to do this biennial, how am I going to travel the world and find these artists? And then I realized one day, there's an easier solution to this. I'm just going to make the whole thing myself. And so this is what I did. So I thought, a biennial needs artists. I'm going to do an international biennial; I need artists from all around the world. So what I did was I invented a hundred artists from around the world. I figured out their bios, their passions in life and their art styles, and I started making their work. I felt, oh this is the kind of project that I could spend my whole life doing. So I decided, I'm going to make this a real biennial. It's going to be two years of studio work. And I'm going to create this in two years, and I have. So I should start to talk about these guys. Well the range is quite a bit. And I'm such a technician, so I loved this project, getting to play with all the techniques. So for example, in realist paintings, it ranges from this, which is kind of old masters style, to really realistic still-life, to this type of painting where I'm painting with a single hair. And then at the other end, there's performance and short films. And indoor installations like this indoor installation and this one. And outdoor installations like this one and this one. I know I should mention: I'm making all these things. This isn't Photoshopped. I'm under the river with those fish. So now let me introduce some of my fictional artists to you. This is Nell Remmel. Nell is interested in agricultural processes, and her work is based in these practices. This piece, which is called "Flipped Earth" -- She was interested in taking the sky and using it to cleanse barren ground. And by taking giant mirrors -- and here she's taking giant mirrors and pulling them into the dirt. And this is 22 feet long. And what I loved about her work is, when I would walk around it and look down into the sky, looking down to watch the sky, and it unfolded in a new way. And probably the best part of this piece is at dusk and dawn when the twilight wedge has fallen and the ground's dark, but there's still the light above, bright above. And so you're standing there and everything else is dark, but there's this portal that you want to jump in. This piece was great. This is in my parents' backyard in Arkansas. And I love to dig a hole. So this piece was great fun because it was two days of digging in soft dirt. The next artist is Kay Overstry, and she's interested in ephemerality and transience. And in her most recent project, it's called "Weather I Made." And she's making weather on her body's scale. And this piece is "Frost." And what she did was she went out on a cold, dry night and breathed back and forth on the lawn to leave -- to leave her life's mark, the mark of her life. And so this is five-foot, five-inches of frost that she left behind. The sun rises, and it melts away. And that was played by my mom. So the next artist, this is a group of Japanese artists, a collective of Japanese artists -- in Tokyo. And they were interested in developing a new, alternative art space, and they needed funding for it, so they decided to come up with some interesting fundraising projects. One of these is scratch-off masterpieces. And so what they're doing -- each of these artists on a nine-by-seven-inch card, which they sell for 10 bucks, they drew original works of art. And you buy one, and maybe you get a real piece, and maybe not. Well this has sparked a craze in Japan, because everyone's wanting a masterpiece. And the ones that are the most sought after are the ones that are only barely scratched off. And all these works, in some way, talk about luck or fate or chance. Those first two are portraits of mega-jackpot winners years before and after their win. And in this one it's called "Drawing the Short Stick." I love this piece because I have a little cousin at home who introduced me -- which I think is such a great introduction -- to a friend one day as, "This is my cousin Shea. He draws sticks real good." Which is one of the best compliments ever. This artist is Gus Weinmueller, and he's doing a project, a large project, called "Art for the Peoples." And within this project, he's doing a smaller project called "Artists in Residence." And what he does is -- he spends a week at a time with a family. And he shows up on their porch, their doorstep, with a toothbrush and pajamas, and he's ready to spend the week with them.