Some of my favorite artists

		bill viola is a video artist, born in 1951. he grew up in both queens and westbury new york and received his bfa in experimental studios from syracuse university in 1973. after graduating he worked in florence, italy for 18 months as technical director of production at art/tapes/22, one of the first video art studios in europe. he later traveled to record traditional performing arts in the solomon islands, java, bali, and japan. in 1977 viola was invited by cultural arts director kira perov to show his videos at la trobe university in australia. a year later, perov moved to new york, where she and viola married. they have lived and worked together ever since. in 1980, they lived in japan as part of a cultural exchange where they studied buddhism under zen master daien tanaka. during this period, viola was also invited to serve as the first artist-in-residence for sony's atsugi research lab. his work has been shown at the museum of modern art in new york, the national gallery in london, guggenheim berlin, guggenheim new york, the whitney museum of american art, getty los angeles and the metropolitan museum of art in new york. viola was also selected as the u.s. representative for the 46th venice biennale, where he showed ' buried secrets', a collection of five installations including 'the greeting'. viola has served as a scholar in residence at the getty research institute in los angeles in 1998 and was elected to the american academy of arts and sciences in 2000. he currently lives and work in long beach, california.