Matt Leines is an artist whose work I have cov­ered here before, and whose work I like very much. His paint­ings (espe­cially the inte­rior scenes) sug­gest an odd future, a prim­i­tive yet mod­ern world ref­er­enc­ing art move­ments past.

All images via his web­site.

Matt has an Etsy store where he is sell­ing prints, paper dolls, and t-shirts. I am espe­cially excited for the unique, hand-colored paper dolls and the You Are For­given color print:

All images via Etsy.

I’ve only recently begun to learn about cyan­otype, which is a pho­to­graphic print­ing process that cre­ates a cyan-blue print. Pho­to­sen­si­tive solu­tion is applied to a sur­face (such as paper or fab­ric), and left to dry in a dark place. Based on the inten­sity of the ingre­di­ents in a solu­tion, dif­fer­ent tones of blues can be acheived. Casey Robert’s work exper­i­ments with this process, using it as an con­cep­tual ele­ment of his work. He writes:

My work illus­trates a fan­tas­tic land­scape. It rep­re­sents nature’s sub­tle way of deal­ing with the pecu­liar aspects in the rela­tion­ship with mankind. A giant glow-in-the-dark heart, or a pile of pre­cious gems tells us that we are loved, just as blood squirt­ing from an oak tree trunk says, all is not well. I am inspired by my con­ver­sa­tion with the land­scape, I imag­ine long mono­logues when pine forests make me laugh and moun­tains test my patience.

All images via his web­site.

Laura Gee intro­duced her­self to me, and upon vis­it­ing her web­site I found an illus­tra­tor who not only illus­trates, but cre­ates instal­la­tions and curates as well.

Laura’s own work uti­lizes sim­ple, bold images and sup­port­ing text that’s often short and sweet. I espe­cially liked this one:

Paper is also some­thing that Laura explores in the three-dimensional sense, cre­at­ing popup let­ters and hand cut and assem­bled. She curated an exhi­bi­tion, Toy Shop where she made minia­ture houses to pro­mote the show.

All images via her web­site.

It has been a while since I have talked about the work of Ky Ander­son, but I love it all the same. I enjoy Ky’s use of color, and despite their more muted char­ac­ter­is­tics, they are not mud­dled. And, if they are mud­dled, Ky explains in her state­ment that they are that way by their very nature:

If you stop what you are doing and look as far away as you can, even if it is just in the other room, or if you are lucky enough to be out­side, look as far away as you can. There are so many things/stuff/objects in your way of see­ing far into the dis­tance. Those dis­trac­tions, objects, pat­terns and the small­est open­ing that lets you see even fur­ther are what my paint­ings are about. They are about the things in the way of see­ing as far as you can. Some­times these objects in my paint­ings are from mem­o­ries, mem­o­ries of the color of a room or shape of a hill. The com­bi­na­tion of the strug­gle to see in the dis­tance and flashes of mem­o­ries make up the sto­ries within my paint­ings. Out of these thoughts comes work that looks almost abstract, but in my eyes the com­bi­na­tion of shapes and col­ors have stories.

All images via her web­site. Ky also has a blog detail­ing her art col­lec­tion, which I really enjoyed view­ing as well.

Print­maker and illus­tra­tor, I first saw the work of Cor­nelia O’Donovan on one of my favorite Tum­blrs, F Yeah Women Artists. Her draw­ing style is loose but together as she focuses much of her prints on nat­ural life, ref­er­ences to his­tor­i­cal dress, and pat­tern. What’s inter­est­ing to me is the jux­ta­po­si­tion of ele­ments in her prints — not nec­es­sar­ily an inter­ac­tion of a flower and lady, for exam­ple, just the impli­ca­tion of it based on how Cor­nelia has arranged the composition.

All images via Flickr. Check out her blog/website as well!

Also, for the curi­ous, Cor­nelia has pro­vided us with a glimpse into her stu­dio space:

New work by the Bel­gium artist/illustrator, Brecht Van­den­broucke, below. I am con­tin­u­ally amused by Brecht’s illus­tra­tions. They are truth­ful and weird with a nice sense of irony to them. His char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is inher­ently funny with all-too-flexible limbs and dis­pro­por­tional bodies.

Also, the lush, full color and full bleed illus­tra­tions are lush and extremely sat­is­fy­ing to view.

All images via Flickr. Check out his blog as well.

Since I will miss the recep­tion tomor­row, I took the lib­erty of view­ing Search Engine: Lou Joseph 1998–2012 at the North Ave. Mar­ket on my own. I was blown away by amount of work on the walls, also enjoyed nav­i­gat­ing through the space with the Search Engine Field Guide (avail­able as a pam­phlet upon enter­ing the gallery).

A ret­ro­spec­tive of work over the past 14 years, the exhi­bi­tion (put on by the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Art Bal­ti­more) explores the var­ied work that Lou has pro­duced. Per­sonal his­tory reveals that he has lived many places (Tus­con, Venice, and Philadel­phia to name a few) before com­ing to Bal­ti­more in 2008. The exhi­bi­tion high­lights this fact by lay­er­ing every avail­able piece made by Lou since 1998.

What was most suc­cess­ful about this exhi­bi­tion was its sheer vol­ume. Every piece hung on the wall (or on the floor) was apart of Lou’s his­tory, good or bad. Indi­vid­u­ally, some pieces work bet­ter than oth­ers, but see­ing them all together cre­ates inter­est­ing jux­ta­po­si­tions that help to ele­vate what might be weaker.

In the Search Engine Field Guide, it high­lights the themes present in Lou’s work:

Bat­tles and con­flicts pre­dom­i­nate. Some pieces are car­toon­ish and bizarre visu­ally — as fights waged between repro­duc­tive organs or ten­ta­cled breasts– while other allude to sit­u­a­tions that are equally bizarre but increas­ingly com­mon sights culled from the news, like drones, cars on fire and tent cities. There is a steady pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with repi­ti­tion, not just of line and pat­tern, but as a way of under­stand­ing futil­ity and failure.

The recep­tion for this show will be tomor­row, Fri­day the 20th, from 6PM-9M at the North Ave. Mar­ket. It is located at 16 W. North Avenue in the Sta­tion North Arts Dis­trict. If you are artis­ti­cally inclined, you wil also walk around the show imag­in­ing what all of your work would look like dis­played in this way. I know I did.

For more infor­ma­tion on Lou Joseph, check out his web­site. Also take a look at his Tum­blr, too.

Fanny Rose is an artist work­ing out of Brus­sels. Via her web­site, she stud­ies tex­tiles, likes to draw, and take pic­tures. This is very evi­dent on her Flickr, and I, of course, am attracted to her draw­ings, which include short bursts of color and vary­ing types of line.

What she pho­tographs (flow­ers) often trans­lates into draw­ing, or some other vari­a­tion on the nat­ural world.

All images via her Flickr. Check out her web­site, too!

The bright and col­or­ful works of Mis­aki Kawai intrigued and excited me. I wanted to know more about her instal­la­tion, sculp­tures and draw­ings. Via Rove TV, I learned that:

Like many other ado­les­cent Japan­ese girls, she [Mis­aki] was influ­enced by west­ern pop cul­ture to a fanat­i­cal degree. She was greatly fas­ci­nated with 60’s fash­ion and hip­pie cul­ture, often fol­low­ing her mother’s exam­ple and hand mak­ing clothes for her­self. Although her mother’s needle­work was impec­ca­ble, Mis­aki favored a more hap­haz­ard hand­made look.

Later, they go on to say that Mis­aki still strives to keep an inno­cence of adols­cent, but at the same time to be on a more sophis­ti­cated level. If you look below, you’ll see evi­dence of that through large instal­la­tions and sculptures.

All images via her web­site.

Last Sat­ur­day at Nudashank was the open­ing of Jor­dan Bernier’s solo show, New Waves. I was hav­ing cam­era issues and only had my cell phone with me, but I absolutely loved the show. I’m always a fan of Jordan’s work, and was excited to see the large graphite draw­ings he produced.

One ele­ment of Jordan’s work is through sim­plic­ity, he is able to entrance you to soak in the details of his work. Below, a cou­ple of videos (shot on my cell phone, so sorry for the qual­ity) of his pieces. Check out Nudashank’s Face­book for more detailed (and clear) doc­u­men­ta­tion of his work.

Jor­dan Bernier, ‘New Waves’ at Nudashank from Sara Barnes on Vimeo.

Jor­dan Bernier, ‘New Waves’ at Nudashank from Sara Barnes on Vimeo.