Looking at the absurd illustrations — dogs and dolphins sharing a beer, cats wearing raincoats, dolphins eatin watermelon — I was extremely amused and delighted. I also love the smile that is plastered across everyone’s face.

All images via his website.

All images via Flickr.

I’ve spent a good part of my Monday en route to Baltimore and am exhausted! See ya’ll tomorrow.

I operate somewhere between the sentiments: “It’s all right…but it’s not okay,” building narratives and arriving at paintings and videos that operate between the two points; straddling the sides like a drag queen, Slimer, and Mr. Stay Puft alike navigate the faux realness and hilarious spectacle. I strive to capture viewers jumping to conclusions, finding themselves implicated in the madness; a constructed world that triggers and confounds assumed sensibilities and tendencies, thus provoking repulsion and wonder. I invest in the process of exploring our human existence, our collective identity and my personal identity as a vehicle for creating a world where the unspoken rules, accepted codes, and vast generalizations encoded in our daily ritual are played with, remixed, and broken. To put it simply, the dangerous, mysterious, and all powerful “crossing of the streams.”

I watched Ghostbusters a couple of weeks ago so this seems especially relevant to my life. All images via her website.

You can see there are some differences from Lianne’s collage for the Scrap Exchange and her other illustration work (below). Despite the challenge of creating with foreign paper scraps, you still see Lianne’s visual language shine through. The style of the horse, small details, and combinations of papers and patterns all speak true to herself.

One aspect of Lianne’s illustration work that I enjoy is her use of space. She creates illustrations that are three dimensional (just look at those shadows!). It feels like a vignette out of an animation and is very lively.

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

Of course, I like some of this work better than others. What I am particularly enjoying are Kohei’s portraits that take advantage of the medium of painting. I find his paintings that mix paint on its surface offer a distortion that is grotesque and slightly eerie. The monochromatic pieces highlight stroke and texture in such a way that I am reminded of Stephen Gammell’s illustrations from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

All images via Flickr. Thanks to Stephen for introducing me to this artist.

I’ve seen Mina’s work on numerous occasions, and it was really wonderful to hear her talk about her it. I think it was especially inspiring to young artists to see and hear the progression of her work towards the Polipop series.

Referencing pop culture in her paintings helps to make them more accessible and reach a broader audience. Mina infuses references to movies, celebrities, and the Internet and addresses more complex issues between media and political conflicts within Asia and Asia’s relationship with the Western world.

Mina stated during her talk that the Internet creates its own unintentional political pop art. It’s true– think about memes and other manipulated images pervasive in our culture. In 2011, she collected the “image of the day.” Everyday she would save an image from the internet that was constantly shown that particular day. I love this idea, especially when you think about all the images you are bombarded with on a daily basis. It would almost be hard to choose just one!

Mina’s paintings are bright, glossy, and oscillate between humorous and sad. Polipop is at the Maryland Art Place until June 30. I’d be sure to check it out!

All images via the David Kordansky Gallery. Hat tip to the drawdrawdraw Pinterest for turning me on to his work.

Sophiajacob is a BRAND NEW contemporary art space directed by David Armacost, Jordan Bernier, and Steven Riddle. I am super excited for them in this new venture, and was equally as excited to see what they had included in their first show, aptly titled inaugural.

Zach Storm is someone who I’ve recently written about on here, and I really enjoy all of his work. Included in the show were drawings of brightly colored hair. Spread on a table, it was easy to look and appreciate the graceful strokes and details.

inaugural is a show that emphasizes individual approaches to studio practice, which was evident in comparing the selected artists. Ariel Dill explores painting through various applications of the medium. I see it, in a way, as a meditation on painting.

Leah Mackin created a zine in an analog fashion, which on her Tumblr she describes the process as “using half-tone transparency layers and a lot of photocopy magic.” The zine was large and beautiful and the prints a bit hypnotic.

Nudashank, was impeccable, as always. They paired up with Western Exhibitions out of Chicago and curated two cross-program exhibtions.

If you’ve never been to Nudashank, there is a front space and back space. The front space was given to Geoffrey Todd Smith for his show, FEEL HARDER. For someone who loves patterns and bright colors, I was in heaven. Geoffrey’s paintings were extremely detailed and had influence of traditional repeat patterns I have seen before.

The back part of the space was dedicated to a group show, The Art Formerly Known as Prints. Somehow, I only caught a few shots of the work in this space. I was really amused by Adriane Herman’s over-sized post-it notes, as I am a compulsive list maker (and have an affinity for post-it notes).

Lisa Perrin

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez. Perhaps you remember a variation of this piece from Nudashank’s Paper Chasers last fall.

Stan Shellabarger

This table had prints and zines. Wish I had brought cash with me.

Upstairs from Nudashank was Gallery Four. The closing reception for Colin Benjamin’s show, Feeding On Abstraction While Fending Off Distance and Lots of Pants. The sheer amount and repetition of prints in this show was striking. The images were made from screen printing and obviously varied despite the same technique used. My favorite prints were ones that had texture to them and inconsistent covering of ink.

In her label, these pieces are described as erased lithographs, which is a really great way to think about them. On her website, she’s placed them in the category of Green Screen. I like to imagine that the paper is the green screen of sorts — making it possible for things to disappear.

All images via her website.