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This site is a living/changing/growing site for the clients, partners and friends of Duffy & Shanley. Duffy & Shanley is an advertising, public relations and marketing firm based in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence, Rhode Island, is located 50 minutes south of Boston and is New England’s second largest city. Cities are incorporated municipal centers with high concentrations of residents. The Residents are a seminal performance-art band from San Francisco who made waves with their parody of the Beatles.

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Rebel Headquarters

It’s a warm, early autumn night and you walk past a well-lit house on Hope Street. It looks like the house has cracked open and the contents of an odd party have spilled out over the porch and onto the streets below. A banjo, some guitars and a didgeridoo drone from an impromptu porch band. You can’t quite classify the crowd. It’s baby boomers and babies. Providence Roller Derby and Providence Geeks. Richard Merkin and Richard Dreyfuss.

The spillage from the house is so inviting that you find yourself climbing the steps past an assembly of random dogs and musicians and into the glow of Rebel Headquarters: Part art opening, part networking event, part circus. The concept is a distant cousin of the Yard Art idea. The idea of a private house opened up as a public nexus.

The roots of Rebel Headquarters grew out of a motivational painting group led by painters Wayne Bridge and Derota Streitfeld at the Warwick Museum. This is art in a relaxed setting. People are encouraged to bring instruments, children run amok and the dining room table is spread with Rebel-contributed potluck including the wares of Iris the Pie Lady. Fire performers light up the backyard. Belly dancers gyrate in the parlor. A dance floor emerges. And the later it gets, the more the event transforms.

Bridge and Streitfeld’s husband, Rich – Rebel HQ promo team as well as residents – say the bi-monthly events are an alternative to the anesthetized white walls and wine of the art gallery.

“I think people like it because it’s in a home,” explains Bridge. “It’s also a place to establish working relationships. Artists are terribly flaky.”

“The idea germinated in Derota’s head,” he continues. “We needed to have this show, so we repainted that room, hung a few pictures in there, invited some people over – and it has exploded.”

“I stopped painting and started hosting,” laughs Rich, who is also credited as Rebel HQ’s Host of Honor and Whimsy, Bank of Information and Network Advice.

Billed as an “Open House Gallery,” Rebel Headquarters has featured the work of a several visual and performing artists since the inaugural show in May 2008, including Cory Clinton, Heather Adel, Frederika Sumelius, David Tobin and Kerry Smith.

Providence has a lot of rebel artists. At least more than our collective walls and refrigerators can hold. But opening your home to the general public isn’t easy. To prep for an HQ event, things get moved, the HQ gets a scrubdown, emails go out, xenophobic dogs get care, invitations are posted on social networking sites, and the living space downstairs is transformed.

And how did the name come about? “I just blurted out ‘Rebel Headquarters’ and it stuck,” explains Bridge.

And now, a whole community is taking shape.

“We have the entire age spread– we have humanity covered. It’s an extremely diverse cross-section of humanity,” muses Bridge. “It’s very active and proactive, and the name definitely pushes a lot of that. It’s turned into a very strong community network of people who interact with each other on a regular basis in a very creative way, and having had anything to do with making that happen or making that stronger is pretty humbling and cool.”

All images borrowed from the extended family of RebelHQ: