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 ...

Kyle James Dunn is a senior at MICA and sent me some of his work, which includes both draw­ing and sculp­tures. The sculp­tures include intri­cate plasma-cut steel, which is stun­ning. Kyle has an upcom­ing solo exhi­bi­tion, Because It Is Bit­ter, in Bal­ti­more in Jan­u­ary, and he has some words about his own work: I am inter­ested ...

Alex DaCorte uses mate­ri­als within pop­u­lar cul­ture and turns them over on their head. Some­times, quite lit­er­ally, as he cov­ers them in glue, tape, paint, resin, and more. It trans­forms them into grotesque sculp­tures that are both amus­ing and cynical. All images via his web­site. ...

Letha Wilson’s photo sculp­tures are a com­bi­na­tion of C-Print pho­tog­ra­phy and other ele­ments such as cement, joint com­pound, and wood. Letha cre­ate pieces that are steeped in mul­ti­ple real­i­ties, and a chal­lenge on pho­tog­ra­phy offers. She presents a real place in her pho­tographs (as it actu­ally exists, but we are not there), then alters what ...

Last week, I made a visit to the stu­dio of Her­monie Only. Housed in the base­ment of the house in which she lives, it is dark and a bit haunt­ing, but also serene and authen­tic feel­ing to the work she makes. Her­monie, a b-grant award win­ner, uses both sculp­ture and paint­ing to explore ideas preva­lent ...

Lynda Benglis has been cre­at­ing art­work over the past 40 years, but I am just now dis­cov­er­ing her brightly col­ored poured sculp­tures. Cre­ated in the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s, the images below reflect the period in which she worked as well as her con­tem­po­raries. Her recent ret­ro­spec­tive was at the New Museum in ...

Betsy Odom is a Chicago-based artist work­ing with a vari­ety of mate­ri­als to cre­ate small and large sculp­tures. Con­cep­tu­ally loaded works, the beauty is in the details of these pieces, as Betsy uses her dif­fer­ent skills (such as tool­ing leather!) to make these works both thought-provoking and exquis­ite. From her artist statement: My work explores ...

Ear­lier this week I updated you on Nathalie Chikhi’s work, which utl­izies every­day objects in her sculp­tures and instal­la­tions. Work­ing in the same vein, Ana Bidart carves and cre­ates forms out of rolls of paper, foam, and wooden sticks. Ana’s work is uses both nat­ural and unnat­ural mate­ri­als, and what I find the more com­pelling ...

Nathalie Chikhi (pre­vi­ously fea­tured here) cre­ates sculp­tures and wall hang­ings out of things that are in our every­day life. She com­bines and trans­forms col­ored paper, bam­boo sticks, poly­styrene balls, among other things into large scale work. Who knew poly­styrene balls could look ele­gant with a lit­tle trans­for­ma­tion? Con­text and con­sid­er­a­tion for the han­dling of mate­ri­als goes ...

I’ve posted about other Kick­starter projects on Brown Paper Bag before, and this one involves a friend (and for­mer class­mate, room­mate), Jaime Ben­nati! I’ve known Jaime since our first days at MICA, which now seems so long ago! It’s been really amaz­ing to see her pro­gres­sion as an artist, mak­ing the most of the oppor­tu­ni­ties ...