Brown Paper Bag Just another WordPress site

 

 

Sarah Andreac­chio is an illus­tra­tor based in France. Her bright, shape-driven works appear in the children’s mar­ket, as pat­terns, as posters, and as edi­to­r­ial illustrations.

Her style is one that doesn’t have to have an overly-complicated analy­sis of it — they are sim­ply delight­ful images that make peo­ple happy.

All images via her web­site.

 

 

Thanks to Helen Dardik’s Pin­ter­est, I dis­cov­ered the illus­tra­tions of Alek­san­dra Niep­suj. They are gen­er­ally min­i­mal in color with use of some pho­to­graphic ele­ments in dig­i­tal collage.

Flat yet ener­getic, chaotic yet ordered, I find these illus­tra­tions nicely designed, well con­sid­ered, and excit­ing to look at!

All images via her blog.

 

 

Image via.

It’s pretty much a given at this point that you’ve seen Picasso’s paint­ings, but did you know that he also crafted ceramic works? I didn’t! And, you know I’ve been on my ceramic kick as of late.

It’s not so much that these are unusually-shaped vases  or objects, but Picasso employs his hand at sur­face design, giv­ing these objects a per­son­al­ity and a life of their own.

Image via.

Image via.

Image via.

Image via.

 

Image via.

I’ve been look­ing at my cohort, col­lab­o­ra­tor, and  best pal Lisa Perrin’s work all school year, and love what she has cre­ated. We installed our MFA the­sis exhi­bi­tions this week, and it was really incred­i­ble to see all of her work in one place, together for the first time.

Lisa’s work is informed by the humor­ous and strange world of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ish folk tales. While influ­enced by this facet of cul­ture, she merely ref­er­ences it, and there­fore allows a larger, more var­ied audi­ence to enjoy her illus­tra­tions. She’s mod­ern­ized the old world with inter­est­ing appli­ca­tions such as Yid­dish say­ings on post­cards and tea towels.

The image above and directly below are actu­ally silk scarves, and they are beau­ti­ful. I’m look­ing for­ward to her open­ing up her online shop this sum­mer. If you are around Bal­ti­more, be sure to check out her work in MICA’s Stu­dio Cen­ter (first floor), up now!

All images via her web­site.

These two images are tea towels!

Hey! If you live in Bal­ti­more, you should mosey on over to MICA’s Stu­dio Cen­ter in the Sta­tion North neigh­bor­hood this Sat­ur­day (March 30) between 2 and 4PM. I will be there with my pal Lisa host­ing a work­shop, Paper Fun for Everyone!

Together, Lisa and I form Píc­colo, a col­lab­o­ra­tive illus­tra­tion project. In January/February we launched a Kick­starter which got FUNDED thanks to so many of you won­der­ful peo­ple. So,  Paper Fun for Every­one dou­bles as a bash for all of our local Bal­ti­more back­ers, where they can pick up their rewards.

At the work­shop, you’ll learn how to make a thau­ma­t­rope, a Victorian-era paper toy that mim­ics ani­ma­tion. You’ll get to make your own. Every­one who par­tic­i­pates in the work­shop will get their pic­ture taken and be apart of our installation.

So, come to MICA’s Stu­dio Cen­ter, located at 131 W. North Ave on Sat­ur­day, March 30 between 2 and 4PM for some paper fun and sweet treats!

Image via.

I am fairly cer­tain I’ve talked about Balthus before on this blog, but at this point, it is prob­a­bly years since I have done so. But, last week­end I saw the movie Stoker and found the visual sim­i­lar­i­ties  between Balthus’ paint­ings and the visu­als of the film strik­ing. (Later, I found an inter­view with one of the actresses, Mia Wasikowska. She said that did indeed look at Balthus’ work to pre­pare for their roles.)

Balthus is a Polish-French painter who pre­ferred to be seen and not heard. Coini­cen­tally, there is lit­tle writ­ing about him, so the empha­sis of course is on look­ing at his works. Balthus pre­ferred the fig­ure, and his most famous paint­ings depicted young girls in an often erotic con­text. They were and still are con­tro­ver­sial because of this, although the artist insists that this is not his intention.

 

Two above images via.

Image via.

Above two images via.

Some stills from Stoker. Not a ton of them out there yet, but hope­fully you get the idea. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend see­ing the film! It also takes cues from Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. So, if you are a Hitch­cock fan like me, you’ll prob­a­bly really enjoy this.

 

My week will no doubt be insane because I am installing my the­sis exhi­bi­tion at MICA’s Stu­dio Cen­ter. My project (and newest endeavor), eyra, will be trans­lated from the web to a phys­i­cal space. I will have more details about the open­ing for you later.

Okay! Enough about that. These paint­ings are by Alek­san­dra Wal­iszewska and make me stop in my tracks to exam­ine how both mys­te­ri­ous and dis­turb­ing they are. I can’t turn away despite feel­ing uneasy about their grotesque beauty and blood and death-ridden scenes. I’m very intrigued.

First two images via her Flickr. All other images via her Tum­blr.

Zach Storm’s stu­dio is located in a tree-line neigh­bor­hood at the edge of Bal­ti­more City. It seems to be a peace­ful set­ting, full of detached single-family homes. Here, in a large shed (with no heat!) is where Zach keeps his stu­dio. Per­son­ally, I’m jeal­ous; his space has amaz­ing nat­ural light, airy, away from dis­trac­tion. It really feels like a place to escape.

I first wrote about Zach’s work after I saw these paint­ings in a show at MICA. They are vibrant and glitter-full (Lit­er­ally. He used glit­ter spray paint in these works on paper.):

Look­ing at his work then (2012) to now (2013), I still see the same artist’s hand, but with his new series of works, they are more refined. Zach said he has a ten­dency to over­work things, and the paint­ings cur­rently in his stu­dio are a result of the sys­tems of he’s cre­ated when work­ing. This guards against this incli­na­tion. The paint­ings are worked on simul­ta­ne­ously and sequen­tially in an orderly fash­ion, and give Zach the free­dom to move from piece to piece if he’s frus­trated or feel­ing stuck.

Cur­rently, these paint­ings are on alu­minum, using auto­mo­tive primer, pig­ment and ure­thane. Despite my ini­tial assump­tion that Zach knew a lot about mate­ri­als, he said he didn’t! The process of learn­ing and react­ing to the mate­r­ial reac­tions with each other is very much apart of these works. At times, he calls the reac­tion between mate­ri­als “unnerv­ing,” such as the way the pig­ment slides or resists primer, but ulti­mately an impor­tant to the painting’s development.

Before I vis­ited Zach’s stu­dio, I went through his past work on his web­site, writ­ing down words that I asso­ci­ated with his work. I described them using “ethe­real” and “splen­dor” — there’s sort of a whimsy (dare I say) to be asso­ci­ated to those words, which is actu­ally what he tries to cap­ture in these paint­ings. He said he gets “excited by light shin­ing through the trees,” and tries to repli­cated emo­tional states like that.  This lead to an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion. Zach col­lects old ani­ma­tion cells, specif­i­cally the back­grounds. Think of car­toons like Looney Toones or Ren and Stimpy. They have amaz­ing and beau­ti­fully painted back­grounds that color fields inspire him. There’s also a rhythm to ani­ma­tion, a rep­e­ti­tion and way of work­ing that is akin to Zach’s process, too. Not only that, but the act of paint­ing in a Bugs Bunny car­toon also makes Zach con­sider the way he works. Watch the first 10 sec­onds of this clip and you’ll understand:

As some­one study­ing illus­tra­tion, I loved that ref­er­ence. I would have never thought of that when look­ing at his work, but it makes per­fect sense.

Zach has his first solo show, Solitare, open­ing soon at the Johannes Vogt Gallery in New York City. If you live in the area, head to his open­ing on Thurs­day, March 28, from 6PM — 8PM. More details on Facebook.

Some tools of the trade. Pig­ment, primer, inks.

Noth­ing is too pre­cious. You can always peel it off, sand it again, and start over!

Thanks, Zach!

When­ever I have a busy day/week(s), I think of this episode of Super­Mu­tant Magic Acad­emy by Jil­lian Tamaki. (Read the rest. You won’t regret it.) Do you ever feel this way?

 

Between my gen­eral school work load, THESIS exhi­bi­tion instal­la­tion start­ing Sun­day, and keep­ing up with Brown Paper Bag, some­times I fall behind.

BUT! TOMORROW! I will fea­ture a stu­dio visit with Zach Storm. Here’s one of my favorite shots from it:

The Shock of the New is a BBC tele­vi­sion pro­gram that was pro­duced in 1980’s. Nar­ra­tive by Australian-born art critic Robert Hughes, it addresses the devel­op­ment of mod­ern art start­ing with the Impressionists.

I haven’t watched all of the 8 episodes (yet), but I have enjoyed them so far. They are a good refresher if it has been awhile since you’ve taken a for­mal art his­tory class, or, bet­ter yet, not ever taken an art his­tory class.

AND…

Not so old, but still worth a watch is PBS Off Book. It appears exclu­sively on You Tube and talks about trends in art, design, and inter­net cul­ture. The videos aren’t that long so it’s easy to binge on them! As some­one who spends a major­ity of her time in front of the com­puter, I find these top­ics inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant to the things I’m think­ing about.