Welcome to Perceive Me

Our first NEWS!!!

We're going to Start Up Art Fair 2026.

Coming Soon: Perceive Me at Start Up Art Fair

February 27 - March 1, 2026

The Kinney Hotel, Venice Beach

So this is happening.

Three rooms at Start Up Art Fair. Not a booth. Not a corner. Three actual rooms at The Kinney Hotel in Venice Beach where something transformative can unfold.

Room one: 60+ artworks from Perceive Me—paintings, photographs, sculptures, all these different artists seeing my plus-size body as worthy of attention, celebration, interpretation. The salon-style installation that's been traveling since 2020, where viewers get completely surrounded by all these perspectives at once. The bombardment of how we're constantly told what bodies should look like, but flipped—here's proof that one body can be infinite when you remove judgment from the equation.

Room two (and this is the part I keep thinking about): nude portrait sessions all weekend long. Sign up for a 20-minute slot. Pose however you want. Professional artists create your portrait. You keep the artwork. You experience what it feels like to be truly seen without the weight of all that internalized shame we carry around.

I've been doing this at art fairs since April 2024—first at The Other Art Fair in Santa Monica (611 drawings created!), then at Brewery Artwalk in October. People describe removing "layers of self-talk negativity." They jump for joy afterward. They cry. They stand trembling with nerves before, then leave different.

Because something shifts when someone looks at your body—your actual body, not the one you wish you had—and treats it like it deserves artistic attention. When they create something beautiful from what you've been taught to hide.

Room three: my Call and Response project (more on that later).

What excites me most is making Perceive Me into infrastructure rather than just my story. The collaborative nude portrait sessions prove this vulnerable practice can scale, can become a tool others use for body liberation organizing. Not therapy. Not traditional figure drawing. Radical seeing as political practice.

Start Up Art Fair is February 27 - March 1, 2026 at The Kinney Hotel in Venice Beach. Sessions will be first-come, first-served throughout the weekend. Free to participate if you're over 18.

More details coming as we get closer. But I wanted you to know this is happening. That you can be part of it. That your body—whatever society has told you about it—deserves to be seen, celebrated, immortalized by professional artists who understand this as healing work.

You can follow along at @perceivemeart on Instagram and email perceivemeart@gmail.com.

This decade-long project keeps expanding because the need for it keeps proving itself real. Every person who poses. Every artist who collaborates. Every viewer who stands in front of these works and sees themselves reflected back—not in a mirror that lies, but in art that tells the truth about worthiness.

See you in February.

—Kristine