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I met Erica Mahi­nay this past fall at the Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter while we were res­i­dent artists. I thought her work was amaz­ing in per­son, and so this morn­ing I was very excited to see a press release from her in my inbox.

Erica’s work is play between paint­ing and sculp­ture, and what I really love about it is how ambi­tious it is. Ambi­tion can­not always be met, but her pieces — a com­bi­na­tion of paint­ing on can­vas sup­ported by phys­i­cal objects and instal­la­tion, really cre­ate an envi­ron­ment for the viewer. A por­tion of Erica’s artist state­ment:

As an emerg­ing artist, it is my ambi­tion to amplify the scope of my work through com­pelling visual play, exten­sive dia­logue, and exam­in­ing my rela­tion­ship to the his­tory of paint­ing. In my work, I explore the psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional weight inher­ent in our con­struc­tion of “home”. My painting-constructions uti­lize the famil­iar­ity of the home to explore notions of long­ing, dis­place­ment, inver­sion, truth, self-deception, and per­se­ver­ance. By com­bin­ing a vari­ety of mate­ri­als, I am allowed to cre­ate a sys­tem of clues that cre­ate an imme­di­ate sense of famil­iar­ity, but in a way that is shifted and uncanny. Dense lay­ers of sub­tly col­ored paint and stripped away por­tions act in con­junc­tion with found objects and painted rep­re­sen­ta­tions to cre­ate visual play between his­tory and inven­tion, dreams and mem­ory, and the past, present, and future.

If you are local to Kansas City, Mis­souri, Erica has a show at the Cocoon Gallery from March 4th to the 26th.

First three images via her web­site. Last image via the Cocoon Gallery

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Often times, con­text is what gives things mean­ing, or gives us license to express proper emo­tion about some­thing. In Michael C. Hsiung’s draw­ings, it’s not only the draw­ings I love, but his titles and expla­na­tions for his work as well — the writ­ing ele­ment helps to give his work the con­text to prop­erly appre­ci­ate and respond to his work.

All images via his web­site. Check out his Bio page for an awe­some FAQ.

His titles really added to the expe­ri­ence of view­ing his work, so I am pair­ing them with each drawing!

What really hap­pened in the bunker.


Scenes from Hitler’s Child­hood Doo­dle.


On the teach­able­ness of cer­tain air tosses


In which the crew and cap­tain exchange harsh words and how the sad fate of the row­boat HMS Goliath


Exam­ples of per­sons who have been defeated and how they come back

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In col­lege, I took a class cen­tered around the films of Alfred Hitch­cock. We watched some of his clas­sics, and it fos­tered my love for his films. When I saw Daniel Zender’s Hitch­cock movie posters, it instantly had me adding the films to my Net­flix queue (again).

Daniel has really pulled off these screen-printed posters very nicely. They have an eerie yet cool feel to them, which I think com­pli­ments Hitchcock’s films. He famously builds his plots on sus­pense rather than sur­prise, as does Daniel in these posters. The essence of the films has been cap­tured with­out giv­ing too much away. I’m glad this film series included Ver­tigo, which I find to be most dis­turb­ing Hitch­cock work!

All images via his web­site.

Oh, and just because I am dream­ing of warm weather, here are some addi­tional Daniel Zen­der illus­tra­tions from a sum­mer fun guide. Wish I was rid­ing my bike right now…

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Always a fan of Gaia’s work, he recently emailed me with some new work that’s up around Bal­ti­more. Hap­pen­ing upon his work is always great — it’s like find­ing money in your pocket. His newest pieces are large and ambi­tious, with even some doc­u­men­ta­tion of the actual appli­ca­tion of work.

The fol­low­ing process shots were taken by Larry Cohen:

The fol­low­ing pic­tures are all from Gaia’s pho­to­stream:

Gaia writes that the rooster cradling the head of St. John is as depicted by Guido Reni. Another loca­tion:

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Last week­end I had the delight of meet­ing with Elena John­ston, an artist based in my home city of Bal­ti­more. Upon meet­ing her, I was instantly excited by not only her work and work space, but beau­ti­ful, light-filled apart­ment (and her cat). Her home is nes­tled in a neigh­bor­hood with some beau­ti­ful old houses, like this one:

A cou­ple of weeks prior, I sent Elena the first half of a col­lab­o­ra­tive piece, with the inten­tion of a real-life Art Together project. Unfor­tu­nately, I for­got to doc­u­ment my half, but here is what she came up with:

My half mostly con­sisted of the back­ground col­ors with a few shapes. Elena explained that my shapes gave her the inspi­ra­tion to try and mimic what I had done (in her own way of course). She also added that the back­ground col­ors reminded her of the Fall sea­son, which influ­enced some of the imagery used as well.

Dur­ing my visit, the topic of sea­sons, mem­o­ries, and play came up in con­ver­sa­tion. Elena has been using col­lage in her work for about two years, using old mag­a­zines such as National Geo­graphic to drum up imagery. Some­times, she sim­ply cuts out tex­tures, other times it is ele­ments from the spreads them­selves. I love Elena’s most recent paint­ings, which are a com­bi­na­tion of both col­lage and paint­ing with acrylic ink. They are bright and lively, with a feel­ing of ease about them.

Elena told me the color of her walls are the same color she had in her room grow­ing up.


The base of this piece was made by rub­bing a rough paper (out of an old paper-sample book­let) onto the paper used in paint­ing.


A cou­ple of pieces that Elena has com­pleted recently. A zine and the album cover for Adven­ture.

We dis­cussed how the act of exper­i­men­ta­tion and play is impor­tant in any artis­tic prac­tice. Near the end of our time spent together, she showed me col­lages that she had cre­ated with oth­ers. Their process is sim­ple as flip­ping through old mag­a­zines and cut­ting out shapes and pat­terns. But, as we both agreed, the new ideas that can be dis­cov­ered from these exer­cises is priceless.

Elena is cur­rently work­ing on a new body of work that she hopes to show this sum­mer. She is also work on a music project, BAMBOO, with Jor­dan Bernier (pre­vi­ously fea­tured on Brown Paper Bag!)

I am jeal­ous of that flat file. Thanks Elena, for let­ting me visit!

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Today? More por­traits! Or, maybe not exactly por­traits, but depic­tions of peo­ple. It’s Irana Douer’s work,and I like it.

Irana’s rather sim­ple line draw­ings are com­pli­mented by accents of color and shape, inter­ject­ing sym­bols. There’s a con­nec­tion made with nature reminds me a bit of Eve.

Irana also runs Ruby Mag­a­zine, an online pub­li­ca­tion pro­mot­ing artist’s work every month. Look to that for some great inspi­ra­tion! (Also, I love see­ing the per­sonal work of peo­ple who run online mag­a­zine and blogs!).

All images via her web­site.

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I enjoy these por­traits by Lou Ros because they are a skew on the stan­dard por­trait. While they don’t offer a dif­fer­ent angle to the human face, Lou has made his work visu­ally inter­est­ing by frac­tur­ing the fea­tures, repeat­ing lines and shapes, and using expres­sive mark-making.

There is just enough infor­ma­tion given about the sub­jects that we can start to under­stand their per­son­al­i­ties, which I think is indica­tive of a suc­cess­ful por­trait. There is a cer­tain light in the eyes.

All images via his web­site.

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With pho­to­graphic col­lages, you can expect a cer­tain level of absur­dism. That qual­ity can go either direc­tion — it can be humor­ous or a bit more intro­spec­tive, using sym­bols to com­mu­ni­cate a larger, more seri­ous theme. I think that Masha Rumyantseva’s works lean a bit more on the humor­ous end of the spec­trum, as she plays with scale to cre­ate sit­u­a­tions that are rather light hearted.

It’s nice to see a bit of color inter­jected in her work as well!

All images via Flickr.

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I find these draw­ings by Mike Lay to be an inter­est­ing exam­ple of lifestyle illus­tra­tion. They are con­scious of trends and fash­ion, expres­sive at the same time, encom­pass­ing a cer­tain feel­ing from draw­ing to drawing.

The use of bright, elec­tric accent col­ors high­lights a hyper­ac­tive, high energy, yet dete­ri­o­rat­ing lifestyle. The sub­jects of Mike’s draw­ings seem worn out but not inter­ested in giv­ing up what they have. This is espe­cially appar­ent in the eyes — blank stares like they are possessed.

All images via his Flickr.

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Tom Moglu has been pretty pro­lific in his col­lage mak­ing. Each day he cre­ates col­lages out of bills, books, among other things, using a vari­ety of col­ors and papers.

Tom’s Flickr set includes more than 130 col­lages, often arrang­ing them into small groups of five or six smaller col­lages. They look great as a set, which you can view here.

I look at these and think “land­scape”. What about you?

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