Justin Neely : Artist, Etc.

Justin Neely

Justin Neely shown in medium closeup wearing glasses and a plaid shirtJustin Neely is a polyglot, polymath cynophylist and artist with a studio art practice based in Brooklyn, New York. As an artist, Neely paints in a variety of media and creates conceptual work. Neely's artwork has been exhibited in gallery shows in New York, Berlin and Toronto. A few pieces are currently available for purchase through Gagné Contemporary. Download a copy of Neely's artist CV for more detailed information on past activity.

As a technologist and business operations enthusiast, he has decades of professional experience applying systems thinking to digital project design, management and optimization. He has also worked as an editor, nonfiction writer and lecturer.

Neely's most recent business adventure was serving as Director of Digital Operations for Headline Studio at Advance Local, tackling platform strategy, process design, programmatic content monetization and performance measurement. He has previously worked on technology and communication initiatives for companies including Time Warner Inc., DFJP, Prince Hotels, Wiley and Harvard University.

A lifelong xenophile and logophile, Neely has formally studied Spanish, French, Latin, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Cantonese. Adopting Duolingo as a gateway for more casual exploration, he's also pursued independent study of German, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Irish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Vietnamese and Yiddish.

Photo courtesy of Gordon Eriksen


Latest News

Read about Justin's recent projects and activities.

Red Hook Open Studios 2023

Along with other artists from The Feinberg Studios complex, Neely opened his working space to the public for RHOS 2023 on October 7 and 8, 2023. He displayed new prints created for the day from two separate bodies of work. The first source, Pictures at an Exhibition: Moray Hillary's 'Selective Memory', is a series of photos taken in September at the opening of Scottish artist Moray Hillary's solo show "Selective Memory" at the Hampden Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The second set of prints were generated from the series 複雑 (agus vanskelig). These are digital collages and abstract digital paintings, most of which were originally distributed on social media.

Some documentation of the day is available at @jn33ly.

Podcast Interview September 2023

Justin Neely pictured within a Spotify screen showing a summary of an episode of the pre-made podcastAt the end of September, Neely was the featured guest on an episode of one-time Amherst classmate Matt Collins' The Pre-Made Podcast. In a candid, hour-long conversation, Neely spoke with Collins about his fairly accidental path to their shared alma mater, an equally unexpected transition into work as a technologist and the challenges of pursuing an art practice without ambition to be classed as an investment vehicle.


More Information

Projects and Education

Justin Neely seated on a bench with a golden retriever In the period between 2016 and 2020, Justin Neely created thousands of digital paintings, originally distributing many on social platforms. Losing interest in the constraints of social media as a subject for interrogation and context for distribution, he has since sought other ways to make that art available.

In early 2016 Justin Neely supported the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders with a political street art project called Signs4Sanders. Neely created more than 100 one-of-a-kind, hand-painted signs and placed close to 70 around Manhattan and Brooklyn, with additional work distributed to Florida, California, Vermont, Scotland, and Japan.

Neely's hand-drawn digital lettering adorned celebrated pianist and jazz scholar Ethan Iverson's award-winning blog, Do The Math, from 2012 to 2016. Iverson's 2018-launched jazz listing and review project Do the Gig NYC currently features a Neely logo design, as does his subscription newsletter, Transitional Technology.

Neely is the cowriter, with Ai Tatebayashi, of A Good Life in Hell (2015), an illustrated book about the life of Sumiteru Taniguchi, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic blast, and his wife Eiko. In 2017, Neely was one of the principal translators for Russian-language poet Alex Galper’s 2017 release, 4th Astral Plane: Poet in New York (Propeller, Berlin: 2017).

A self-taught technologist, he taught information design and web architecture as an adjunct lecturer at New York City College of Technology (CUNY). Neely has an undergraduate degree from Amherst College in French and English, with a concentration in film studies. He completed a master’s degree in international policy studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (now the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey).



Contact

email: art@justinneely.com     phone: 718-306-9914     social: linkedin | instagram (@jn33ly)

Esoteric Communication 62

Artwork and Projects

recent artwork: @jn33ly

book: A Good Life in Hell (2015)

To review an archive of miscellaneous past work, please visit www.n‑‑ly.com.

Studio

The Feinberg
Red Hook Waterfront
Brooklyn, NY