annie vought

July 30th, 2010

Annie Vought does some really inter­est­ing cut outs with paper. Using jour­nal entries, she manip­u­lates orig­i­nal text and draw­ings to cre­ate large-scale multi-layered pieces.

I am espe­cially fond of the way Annie uses accent­ing lines to cut a hor­i­zon­tal plane. Design-wise, it cre­ates pock­ets of shapes and abstracts the let­ters even fur­ther. The light­ing of the piece also dis­torts the let­ter­ing even more to cre­ate nearly a sep­a­rate work of shadow art on the wall behind the cut outs.

I’m in awe of how neat Annie’s work is, despite the obvi­ous lim­i­ta­tions of cut­ting out paper. Her words and images are fluid and free. I’d love to know the sto­ries behind these let­ters. Some seem more per­sonal than oth­ers. Per­haps they were found objects?

All images via her web­site.

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vice: still lifes

July 30th, 2010

When I received Vice Magazine’s 2010 Photo Issue, the first word that came to mind was vis­ceral. The cover itself is a photo of rot­ting fruit, a ref­er­ence to Dutch still life paint­ing from the 15th and 16th cen­turies. Not a small printed pub­li­ca­tion, the fruit is enlarged with tex­ture. And, thumb­ing through the rest of the mag­a­zine reveals a sim­i­lar atti­tude. Drugs, excess, and dis­truc­tion are just some of the themes in this Pho­tog­ra­phy Issue, curated by Jerry Hsu and Vice Editor-in-Chief Jesse Pearson.

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Eileen Myles sets the tone for the issue by explor­ing the his­tory of still lifes (and not­ing just how wrong it seems to say “lifes”). She talks in an author­i­ta­tive tone, and poses ques­tions but doesn’t ask them. It’s more of a med­i­ta­tion on still lifes, which is fit­ting based upon the long, rich his­tory of them. It seems bet­ter to reflect on the past and relate it to the future rather than try­ing to carve a com­pletely new inter­pre­ta­tion on the genre.


Over­all, I found the pho­tog­ra­phy both amus­ing and off-putting, which I am sure was part of the intent. Each pho­to­graph ref­er­ences a way of see­ing. Through the curat­ing of Jerry Hsu and Jesse Pear­son, we are pre­sented with pho­tog­ra­phers that have a tie to counter-culture and see excess. Some­times they cel­e­brate excess, while other times point­ing out the ridicu­lous­ness of it all. I enjoy where this issue takes the idea of still life. From the roots, thee things were a mem­ory, often of brighter times. They’ve sense mor­phed into some­thing larger — heav­ier in mean­ing, arguably more effec­tive in their mes­sage. Arrange­ment and our object-driven cul­ture will never go tired of the pho­tographs pre­sented in this issue.

All images via the Vice website. From top to bot­tom, in order: Slava Mogutin // Jaime Lee Cur­tis Taete // Vito Fun // Sandy Skoglund // Les Krims

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thursday round up: sketchbooks

July 29th, 2010

For the record, I don’t use sketch­books effec­tively as I should. Mine tend to be filled with scrib­bles, non sequiturs, and aren’t very exper­i­men­tal. The best sketch­books help artists to refine their style, and make it a safe place to “mess up” and try new things. For this Thursday’s round up, I’ve included some sketch­books that I really enjoy. I can only image what the rest of these books look like.

The Sketch­book Project is like “a con­cert tour but with sketch­books”, and avail­able to every­one. Par­tic­i­pants sign up and choose a theme to their book and use it as a basis for imagery. From there, each indi­vid­ual fills the book with draw­ings, col­lages, paint­ing, writ­ing, etc. until the project dead­line. After it’s been sent it to the good folks at the Art House Co-op, all of the sketch­books tour the United States until they are put in per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Brook­lyn Art Library. If you are inter­ested, you have until Octo­ber 31st of this year to sign up and choose your theme!

From top to bot­tom, in order: Andrea Posada // Jesse Draxler // Lizzy Stew­art // Lili Scratchy // Tyler Parker

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owen gatley

July 29th, 2010

Owen Gat­ley is a UK-based Illus­tra­tor who has a really great way of mak­ing his graphite draw­ings full of impact.

Owen’s port­fo­lio includes some color, but I am really inter­ested in his graphite draw­ings. There is a bit of nos­tal­gia for me; when I see pen­cil draw­ings with knights and beasts, I am reminded of draw­ing dur­ing my younger years. And, appar­ently, I am not far off from Owen — dur­ing an inter­view with The Work­ing Proof, Owen says that as a boy, he was obsessed with King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table. His draw­ings come from a sim­i­lar place.

Have you heard of The Work­ing Proof? If not — it’s a great cause. Each print to be sold on the site pairs with a char­ity of the artist’s choice, donat­ing 15% of the sale to that cause. Owen cur­rently has The Slay­ing of the Beast for sale.

All images via his blog.

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tim gough

July 28th, 2010

Another artist on the east­ern US seaboard, Tim Gough has been liv­ing and work­ing in Philadel­phia the past eight years as both a designer and art director.

Tim is influ­enced by the process of screen print­ing (color sep­a­ra­tions, off­set images) and mid-century graph­ics. These things are very evi­dent in his work. Even when he’s using gouache, there are flat appli­ca­tions of color, with some dry brush­ing to accent — it’s extremely rem­i­nis­cent of illus­tra­tions from the mid 20th cen­tury. The ges­tures of his sub­jects and flat depic­tion of space is extremely effec­tive in con­vey­ing a bold and play­ful message.

Tim cre­ates a limited-edition zine, which I had the plea­sure of thumb­ing through at Giant Robot LA. To phys­i­cally hold the zine is really sat­is­fy­ing — the pages are weighty and I loved run­ning my fin­gers across the ink. This, of course was all com­pli­mented by the high qual­ity of Tim’s work.

All images via his web­site.

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steven riddle

July 28th, 2010

Steven Rid­dle is an artist work­ing in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land. He uses col­lage to cre­ate abstracted, mixed media works.

Steven uses a com­bi­na­tion of orig­i­nal paint­ing with oil-based mono prints or silk screens, assem­bling sharply-cut shapes and jux­ta­pos­ing them on back­grounds that have a psy­che­delic feel­ing to them. The col­ors are bright and com­plex with a sense of orga­ni­za­tion. They are very well-considered and noth­ing seems out of place. It’s the arrange­ment of these shapes and design that really attract me to Steven’s work. His cut outs feel like the work of late Matisse — he’s paint­ing with scissors.

All images via his Tum­blr.

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time travel tuesday: alice neel

July 27th, 2010

Alice Neel was an Amer­i­can painter whose long career spanned from the Great Depres­sion to post World War II and into the 1960’s. Her paint­ings are noted for their expres­sion­is­tic use of line and color, and por­traits both psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional, cap­tur­ing what was impact­ing her and the world at the time.

Neel grew up in Penn­syl­va­nia, first work­ing in a high-paying cler­i­cal posi­tion the sup­port her fam­ily, and later attend­ing the Philadel­phia School of Design for Women. Upon fin­ish­ing school, Neel endured some per­sonal dif­fi­cul­ties; she wed soon after grad­u­a­tion and was preg­nant with her first child, whom died before their first birth­day. After hav­ing a sec­ond child, her hus­band left with child in tow. After­ward, Neel suf­fered a break­down and attempted suicide.

Forced back home with her par­ents after an extended hos­pi­tal stay, she com­posed her world of artists, intel­lec­tu­als, and polit­i­cal lead­ers of the Com­mu­nist Party, all of whom became sub­jects for her paint­ings. Her work glo­ri­fied sub­ver­sion and sex­u­al­ity, depict­ing scenes lovers and nudes. She sym­pa­thized with the Com­mu­nist Party, con­tribut­ing illus­tra­tions to their pub­li­ca­tions. In the 1960’s, she became an icon for Fem­i­nists and the Women’s Move­ment, her work gar­ner­ing more attention.

I have long been a fan of Alice Neel. Her work uses an abstrac­tion of facial fea­tures, slightly dis­tort­ing them and the ges­ture of the fig­ures. This, paired with her sense of color gives it a somber feel­ing indica­tive of the cul­ture sur­round­ing the Depres­sion, post­war, and Cold War era.

All images via the Museum of Fine Arts, Hous­ton.

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allison schulnik

July 27th, 2010

Alli­son Schul­nik is an artist liv­ing and work­ing in Los Ange­les. Orig­i­nally receiv­ing a degree in Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion from Cal Arts, Alli­son uses her really unique style in dif­fer­ent art forms.

I think the most strik­ing thing about Allison’s work is its sculp­tural forms. She uses paint to build up a sur­face that gives us not only some­thing to look at from a two dimen­sional stand­point, but to also look at it crit­i­cally from a three dimen­sional point of view. The amount of details Alli­son has between the moun­tains and val­leys of her oil paint­ings is stag­ger­ing. You can spend a long time with each work and still dis­cover new things to each piece.

The every­man seems to be a com­mon theme in Allison’s work, but not in the sense we’re all used to. A lot of her draw­ings and paint­ings are of hobos and face­less men — obvi­ously down on their luck and blend with the back­ground or land­scape. You don’t nec­es­sar­ily notice them unless you chose to acknowl­edge them.

All images via her web­site.


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sam wolfe connelly

July 26th, 2010

Sam Wolfe Connelly’s work is sub­tle, espe­cially in terms of tech­nique. His illus­tra­tions are a com­bi­na­tion of graphite, gouache, and a lit­tle bit of dig­i­tal work, and he pairs them with hazy, warm col­ors. They are accented by deep reds and other more sat­u­rated col­ors that work closely with the con­cept of Sam’s illustrations.

I enjoy how vis­ceral Sam’s work is, yet at the same time it’s not gra­tu­itous. His work seems to illus­trate a con­se­quence — of glut­tony, lust, want­ing it all. They are a beau­ti­fully haunt­ing fairy tale.

I don’t know about you, but I always enjoy­ing see­ing process. If you read Sam’s blog, he does a great job at show­ing his work from start to finish.

All images via his web­site.

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caroline gaedechens

July 26th, 2010

Car­o­line Gaedechens is an artist and illus­tra­tor work­ing in Ham­burg, Ger­many. Her pen and ink ren­der­ings are trans­lated into books/zines, as well as prints.

There is a lot of anthro­po­mor­phism in Caroline’s work, as well as trans­for­ma­tion in gen­eral. She’s ded­i­cated a book towards it, appro­pri­ately titled Shapeshifter. I am in love with her style and her will­ing­ness to show her process, how­ever messy it may be, or how many small “mis­takes” might have been made. I can imag­ine that Car­o­line works quickly. She mixes paint directly on the paper, and risks mak­ing things look mud­dled. Her knowl­edge of the media pre­vents this from hap­pen­ing, how­ever, and she has a nice push and pull of both glaz­ing and opaque paint­ing techniques.

All images via her web­site.

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