I’m a painter, troublemaker, terminally ill with cancer, and part-time record label chick. My work has been called everything from Surrealism to Biomorphism to Magical Realism. Did I mention I have a bionic right leg?
I’ve shown my art all over the world and have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Plain Dealer, The Harvard Gazette, SF Weekly, Dallas Arts Review, Cincinnati Magazine, Juxtapoz, Creep Machine, Supersonic Electronic, Hi Fructose, HyperAllergic, CAN Journal, The Portland Review and more.
I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before moving to Laguna Beach (luckily I went to high school there before the reality show) and received my BFA from CalArts. Bummed around the California desert, was a Hollywood scenester, and was even in Boston for a second. I’ve lived and worked in Cleveland, Ohio since 2004. I do art stuffs, travel, and spend a lot of time at the hospital.
There’s a novelist and rock ‘n’ roll historian named Ben Vendetta I’m married to, and we have two kitties named Ike and Tina.
More @ www.arabellaproffer.com
You can purchase books and original art at: www.arabellaproffer.bigcartel.com
Arty Farty 
love your work, whats refreshing is that you don’t seem to take yourself too seriously or put on those pretentious airs that most people with your talent do.
hey girl…so I just found this off Kathleen Cerveny’s blog…thought it was pretty damn cool….wasn’t sure which you were from: Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids. Now I know.
I’m impressed….is the town as cool as this vid makes it look?
Treena
I love your work. You remind of a young Marie Howe
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/howe.html
Hi! I found you through Ali Uher and I love your work! I’m looking forward to seeing more!
[…] the past couple years, local painter Arabella Proffer has learned probably too much about Cleveland-area powder rooms, documenting them on Instagram […]
Arabella, Hi!
Very sorry bothering you.
I’m a videoartist living in Russia.
Right now i working on video of Joseph Brodsky birthday party may, 24, 1990.
I need to ask Ellendea Proffer, your mother who was at this party, – who is who?
I talked with Ann Kjellberg, Roman Kaplan and the others but they couldn’t identify all guest.
I absolutely need your mother help.
May i ask you to send this letter to your mother?
My contacts:
divsters@gmail.com
Sorry for my request.
All the best,
Dimitry.
I found you while looking up Q Lazzarus & William Garvey. I am dumbstruck, elated, awed, and crushed. Firstly, you are one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen: those cheekbones, that hair, those eyes, those lips, that round luscious body. Sex and love may be the last thing on your mind, but I think you should use your physical and mental beauty till your hips can longer rhythm celestially; it guts me that you are dying; it really hurts, I know I don’t know you but but I don’t care: this is a tragic fate, and I commend your advice to an increasingly cowardly, neurotic, anti-Eros society: ” GO OUT OF THE HOUSE.” Damn Right. I love your “aristocratic” portraits as so many of the punk rockers WERE “Aristos” in Aristotle’s sense, meaning the “best that nature offers,” that is nature, not some gilded kook savoring petty power. You really are a beautiful person and your work shows it. My mom was from Cleveland. When I played the Pretenders song My City Was Gone, she said “that’s all too true, especially the bit about the ‘government that has no pride,’ this was in 1983 when The Pretenders we’re on tour; my mother was from Collingwood, from an Italian-Irish-German neighborhood, her father’s family related to Joseph Buonaparte (later Bonaparte) and driven from sections of Abruzzi and Molise over vindicative and petty factions between 1897-1900, and her grandmother ( her dad’s mom) having been relegated to “The Mistake On The Lake” refused to speak English, speaking only Italian or French, except for a single phrase: “I will never speak the language of these barbarians called Americans.” I learned these facts in my late teens and early 20s, yet I was already in exile by then . I felt better somewhat knowing why. My punk idols from Flipper adopted me, and now am helping record their story. Again, I’m sorry you are terminal, but you still look great, your eyes shine your soul, and I hope the healthier and happier Gods, Gods who fuck and make merry and dance and sing like Aphrodite-Cytherea, Dionysus, Melitta, etc., all take your side. You are a wonder. Au Revoir Belle et Delectable Femme.
Wowie! Thank you!
Hi Arabella
I came across your blog because I want to do a little 90 second video about Goodbye Horses and you have the greatest obituary dedicated to your friend William Garvey. You have very interesting content and material. I’m so sorry about your health and I will pray for you. Thanks for sharing your art!