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The work of Brooklyn-based illus­tra­tor Mor­gan Blair is inspired by motion graph­ics on VHS tapes from the 80’s and 90’s (oddly spe­cific, but I know exactly what she speaks of), Lisa Frank, and Tetris.

To fur­ther her work with nos­tal­gia (at least my nos­tal­gia), she also imple­ments holo­grams into her work. I feel like I’m back in 1992, at the movie rental sec­tion of the IGA gro­cery store, wait­ing for my mom to fin­ish her shop­ping. I love it.

Mor­gan also does work on walls and murals. Below is one that she painted in a pri­vate res­i­dence in New York City.

All images via her web­site.

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I always knew that Lizzy Stew­art could draw. But, when she was kind enough to send me one of her lat­est endeav­ors, Toska, I really got to see her draw­ing prowess first hand, not just on the inter­webs. Her beau­ti­ful style has been trans­lated into a black and white litho printed, 20 page book that is sta­ple bound.

Lizzy com­pleted the illus­tra­tions for Toska after two weeks in Jan­u­ary spent with inhu­man activ­ity. The con­cept for the book is based on a quote by Vladimir Nabokov:

No sin­gle word in Eng­lish ren­ders all the shades of ‘Toska’. At its deep­est and most painful, it is a sen­sa­tion of great spir­i­tual anguish often with­out any spe­cific cause. At less mor­bid lev­els it is a dull ache of the soul, a long­ing with noth­ing to long for, a sick pin­ing, a vauge rest­less­ness, men­tal throes, yearn­ing. In par­tic­u­lar cases it may be the desire for some­thing, of some­thing spe­cific, nos­tal­gia, love-sickness. At the low­est lev­els it grades into ennui, boredom.”

–Vladimir Nabokov

Lizzy started her book off with this quote, and upon read­ing it really set the tone for the entire thing. Look­ing at the images she had drawn, one does really get the feel­ing of toska. I spent some seri­ous time with this dur­ing a gray morn­ing, and the feel­ings con­veyed in Lizzy’s illus­tra­tions were some­thing that I could relate to. Iso­la­tion, mean­der­ing, con­tem­pla­tion — all what I gath­ered from this beau­ti­ful book.

There was some seri­ous care taken into the con­struc­tion of this book. Heavy weighted paper and high print­ing qual­ity make this some­thing pre­cious. Below are some of my favorite spreads out of ‘Toska’:

I found Lizzy’s work so relat­able that my orig­i­nal inten­tion with this entry was to take sort of my own form of toska, but to jux­ta­pose her draw­ings with my urban neigh­bor­hood, match­ing pho­tos with images in the book. Unfor­tu­nately it just couldn’t come together, but one image (of my sup­plies) is a take on a spread:

You can buy the book in Lizzy’s Etsy store. I would highly rec­om­mend you do this!

Thanks, Lizzy!

If you have a pub­li­ca­tion, book, etc., that you’d like me to review, email me! I’d love to talk.

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Rebecca intro­duced me to the work of Caitlin Ducey, and I’m really taken by her explo­ration in the use of plas­tic straws in sculp­tural forms. Caitlin has used them to cre­ate work that is pleas­ing on many dif­fer­ent lev­els. She writes a bit about her series:

These three sculp­tures rep­re­sent an explo­ration of mate­r­ial, process, and pat­tern. They are made pri­mar­ily from plas­tic drink­ing straws. The abun­dance and acces­si­bil­ity of straws were ini­tially attrac­tive to me, as well as how com­mon, yet dis­re­garded they are in every­day life. The project evolved from this ini­tial curios­ity as well as an inter­est in the aes­thetic poten­tial they pos­sess. The straws were cut in half and then stacked in the frame. There is no glue or adhe­sive hold­ing the pieces together; they sim­ply rest on top of one another. As the frame is filled, the weight of the thou­sands of indi­vid­ual straws gives the pieces more sta­bil­ity, but they are still very fragile.

The tech­nique is a reflec­tion of older forms of art mak­ing. I like to think of it as pointil­list sculp­ture, as it is made up of many small parts that make a cohe­sive image together and it exhibits a sim­i­lar ten­sion of being per­ceived very dif­fer­ently up close and at a dis­tance. It is also unde­ni­ably influ­enced by craft tra­di­tions such as quilt­ing, which uses pat­tern and brings together dif­fer­ent pieces to make a larger pat­tern, and weav­ing, which starts from one end and cre­ates a pat­tern in a lin­ear pro­gres­sion from one end to the other. There is also a con­nec­tion in the obses­sive qual­ity of the work and the time required.

All images via her web­site.

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This video from Ryan Mauskopf sat in my inbox for too long. I finally watched it the other day and smiled the whole way through. The con­cept is sim­ple, but the char­ac­ters and music are so delight­ful and work so well together. I couldn’t stop watch­ing the spirit quest jour­ney– a build­ing up to some­thing more grand.

Ani­ma­tion and music both by Ryan.

Pro­fes­sor Soap — Spirit Quest Jour­ney from Pro­fes­sor Soap on Vimeo.

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Amber Kempthorn’s work employs the use of myth­i­cal crea­tures and birds to con­vey a nar­ra­tive that is often times a quest, the begin­ning or end of it. Absurd sit­u­a­tions and char­ac­ters help to make their sto­ries believ­able and endearing.

I really enjoy her care­fully col­laged works, which use graphite, ink, pas­tel, and other papers. The works, while huge are extremely detailed in scope and con­struc­tion. Amber has clearly con­sid­ered each piece of her images, which range but can be as large as 60 inches in length! If you look closely, you can see that the paper comes off its sur­face a bit, giv­ing a nice and sub­tle three dimen­sional effect.

All images via her web­site.

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Con­tin­u­ing a bit of typog­ra­phy on Brown Paper Bag today, I am really enjoy­ing the word paint­ings of Wayne White. Wayne is not new to the art scene, as he’s had a fairly long career, start­ing out as an illus­tra­tor in New York City and later becom­ing a designer for Pee Wee’s Play­house. After mov­ing to Los Ange­les, he con­tin­ued to design sets for TV shows.

More recently in his work, he has cre­ated Word Paint­ings that are, accord­ing to his web­site, “…world paint­ings fea­tur­ing over­sized, three-dimensional text painstak­ingly inte­grated into vin­tage land­scape repro­duc­tions. The mes­sage of the paint­ings is often thought-provoking and almost always humor­ous, with Wayne point­ing a fin­ger at van­ity, ego, and his mem­o­ries of the South.“

All images via his web­site.

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Would you want to live in Maz­zarella Thomas’s world? While I like his work, I won­der if I could hack it. It’s the appli­ca­tion of paint that gets me. While his paint­ings don bright col­ors and open space, there is also a chalk­i­ness to his work, and leaves me feel­ing like I was in Los Ange­les. A sunny place with haze and smog abound.

I espe­cially like his open fields of color set against minus­cule fig­ures. It’s a reminder of just how small we are now mat­ter how impor­tant we may think.

All images via his web­site.

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My friend and fel­low artist Amanda turned me on to the work of Adam Weir. Using gouache and water­color, he paints dis­jointed envi­ron­ments. His statement:

Through works on paper, I explore ideas of dis­place­ment, con­sump­tion, and the envi­ron­ments in which we live. By com­bin­ing every­day expe­ri­ence, nos­tal­gia, and urban visual cues I cre­ate absurd con­struc­tions within my paint­ings to try and under­stand the com­plex inter­ac­tions between peo­ple, spaces, and things. Rec­og­niz­able imagery sur­rounded by a vast expanse of white cre­ates a dream­like space that may or may not exist. The place­ment of such quo­tid­ian objects in unnat­ural or fan­tas­tic sit­u­a­tions ques­tions the real­ity of the world in which they reside.

All images via his web­site.

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I am very excited to share the lat­est install­ment of Art Together, a col­lab­o­ra­tive inter­view. It works like this: I cre­ate a piece of work and then mail it to the par­tic­i­pat­ing artist. They, in turn, respond to it some how– this could be: adding, sub­tract­ing, cut­ting, past­ing, paint­ing. What­ever they see fit to what I’ve started. After that, I write some ques­tions based on our collaboration.

Ethan Hayes-Chute was an artist that I met while at the Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter last fall. Always up for an adven­ture, Ethan was a lot of fun to get to know, and I’m really happy that he was able to par­tic­i­pate in this with me!

With­out fur­ther ado, here is the piece I sent Ethan:

And, here is what he sent back to me:

Firstly, have you done any explor­ing recently?

I spent nearly three months this win­ter in Ice­land, on the east coast at an artists res­i­dency pro­gram (www.skaftfell.is), and there was a bit of explor­ing going on there. Win­tery weather and lack of access to a car stymied that a bit, but I still saw some great things. I plan to swing by Ice­land again for a bit this sum­mer. I’m also going to be explor­ing a bit of the west coast of Nor­way in a few weeks, and hope­fully I’ll be able to be a bit more mobile there– though I’ll be pretty busy, so per­haps that’s a bit overly optimistic.

How was the deci­sion made to respond to my piece with some­thing a bit less abstract?

Well, indeed, I don’t really work abstractly, at least not lately, but I wanted to make some­thing that tied into what I am work­ing on now. I tried out a few more solu­tions before I set­tled on what I ended up with, some more abstract. A few were aban­doned mostly on a mate­r­ial level, mean­ing I didn’t have access to the right media to do what I ini­tially wanted while I was work­ing on this in Iceland.

(The fol­low­ing images cour­tesy of Ethan.)

“Home­stead (Turn­buckle) ” Graphite on Paper, 15 x 10.5 cm, 2010


“Home­stead (One Chan­nel)” Graphite on Paper, 15 x 10.5 cm, 2010

Do you see our pieces as hav­ing a con­tin­u­ing nar­ra­tive? Do you think they exist in the same world?

I do. What I saw in your piece was some sort of storm, per­haps envelop­ing, or shroud­ing, the scene I even­tu­ally pulled out of it. When the storm died down, you were able to see what it had been cov­er­ing up.

“Sug­gested Worm­house” Graphite on Paper, 7.5 x 10.5 cm, 2010

Your piece has a feel­ing of des­per­a­tion — depres­sion, Grapes of Wrath feel to it. Is this a theme you see in your other work?

Cer­tainly, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I sup­pose I was a bit taken aback at the loose­ness of it– At first I had a hard time think­ing what I could do other than use it as a back­ground for some­thing else. I looked fur­ther, of course, and found some shapes and forms that I responded to. The stitch­ing imme­di­ately brought to mind an old needle-point that was always in the bed­room I slept in at my grand­par­ents’ house. I think my mom made it when she was young. It was of an old wooden post stick­ing out of the ground, with grasses and weeds around it –I need to ask where that ended up– I knew I wanted to use your care­ful stitch­ing in my response; the col­ors evoked wood and boards, as well as those dried weeds in my mom’s needle-point. I also responded quickly to this triangle-shaped por­tion you stitched, on the left hand side. It reminded me of a bulk­head used to get down into a cel­lar, and I knew I was going to incor­po­rate that as well. The col­ors of paint you used are also famil­iar to me, so I decided to take those mate­ri­als, forms and col­ors out (in the case of the stitch­ing, lit­er­ally) of the orig­i­nal piece and incor­po­rate them into a new piece. I had started sketch­ing out some things on this old piece of paper and left it on my desk for a few days. Appar­ently there was an oily spot on the desk and it soaked into the paper. The splotch was rem­i­nis­cent of the stitched shapes you had made on the orig­i­nal piece, so I decided to con­tinue with that paper. The oily splotches acted as a marshy area for the thread-plants to grow in. I imag­ined that the struc­ture I drew has a cel­lar– and that enter­ing through the bulk­head is the only way into the rest of the house as well. The small peb­bles lit­ter­ing the scene are painted, matched from var­i­ous col­ors in the back­ground, and there are two col­laged ones, cut from the purple-y color you had col­lage into the piece.

“went to get wood” Wood, found objects, 300 x 250 x 260 cm, 2008

Your body of work involves a lot of dif­fer­ent liv­ing spaces. Some are 2D, but you con­struct other spaces as well. What draws you to this? Do you think your trav­els influ­ence the way you think about home and struc­ture, both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively?

I’ve got­ten very inter­ested in the idea of some­one build­ing their habi­ta­tion the way they want it to be– not sim­ply con­tent with mov­ing into a pre-designed space. I imag­ine peo­ple who have decided to start from scratch, using their own ideas of what a house or a home should be, and inves­ti­gat­ing what pos­si­ble forms may come up as a result. I sup­pose my trav­els must have influ­ence in such ideas, but they also do make me go back and think about how it is ‘back home’ and I find I recen­ter my thoughts on those ideas and struc­tures. My draw­ings, which I view as stand-alone works, but also as ‘sketches’ for 3D struc­tures I’d like to build as well. In many ways I wish I could be sim­ply liv­ing the life these build­ings are cre­ated for, but that might also way-lay my inves­ti­ga­tions into other struc­tures and archi­tec­tural inter­pre­ta­tions. That is, unless I can get a big tract of land and build my own town on it.

“Frag­mented Cabin Study in 1:10 scale” wood, paper, plas­tic, metal, fab­ric, foam, paint, 15 x 14 x 2 cm, 2010

Art-wise, what’s on the hori­zon for you?

From April till July I’ll be artist-in-residence in Nor­way at the NORDISK KUNSTNARSENTER DALSÅSEN (nkdale.no), which I am look­ing for­ward to greatly, and while I am there, I’ll have a solo-show in May and June in Bergen, Nor­way at a great space called Entreé, where I’ll make a fully-interactive cabin struc­ture, fur­ther­ing the ideas of another piece I did a few years ago in Berlin, went to get wood. (http://entree-visningsrom.blogspot.com)

Also in May, I’m show­ing a selec­tion of draw­ings from my series “Sev­eral Exam­ples of Home­steading” at Mai­son des Arts, Malakoff, France in a group show with some great artists themed around the idea of houses and homes. (http://maisondesarts.malakoff.fr/ )

After all that, I’ll have a show in August at the Cen­ter for Maine Con­tem­po­rary Art in Rock­port, Maine which will fea­ture draw­ings and instal­la­tions through out the build­ing, a con­verted barn and fire sta­tion. It’s a great space and insti­tu­tion, so I can’t wait. (http://cmcanow.org/)

Thank you, Ethan!

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This past Sat­ur­day I attended the open­ing for Conec­tado: Con­nect­ing at the Cre­ative Alliance in Bal­ti­more. I per­son­ally know the artists col­lab­o­rat­ing on the piece, Jaime Ben­nati and May Wil­son, and I was really impressed with the instal­la­tion they had put together. Jaime and May had really trans­formed the space, with a totem-like struc­ture of cement cylin­ders (casted by May) and ship­ping pal­lets, inter­twined with wire. Not only was this a visu­ally com­pelling piece to view, but also was inter­est­ing to look at the indi­vid­ual assemblage.

Both artists have spent time in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (with Jaime spend­ing upwards of a year there), and Conec­tado: Con­nect­ing is a reflec­tion on the vibrant street cul­ture present in this city. Wires present in the fave­las, candy and fruit sold on the street — Jaime and May have ref­er­enced it in their instal­la­tion. The large pal­let and cylin­der struc­ture felt mon­u­men­tal, lum­ber­ing over the atten­dees of the show, a remark on the rapid speed of Brazil’s grow­ing econ­omy. Also, pro­jected on one wall (which I failed to cap­ture), were bus routes on Google Maps, flip­ping through dif­fer­ent streets at a rapid, almost dizzy­ing pace.

Cast out of resin.

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