Walk This Way

Wooden Textiles by Elisa Strozyk

Yes, wooden textiles.

I'm not sure why you'd make these, but they're fantastically appealing. She's interested in addressing the immateriality of our online culture and the lack of tactile stimulation. She likes these wooden fibers as manipulatable by touch, recycled, and unexpected. In this, she is successful. 

And the Cradle Will Rock

Boris Vallejo: one of the most committed artists of our time.

Boris Vallejo: an artist who knows exactly what he wants to paint and what he wants to do and commits to it fully.

Dungeons and Dragons is to Boris what Greek Mythology is to Renaissance artists.

He glorifies the human, the humanoid, the extinct, and mid-90s sedan.

I couldn't not share him with you.

all I want

Things I'm influenced by:

honesty.

You Mouth the Words by Heather Willems

the mundane.

from Target

the quiet.

Central Park by Scott Schultheis

the invisible.

me by me

and those things that happen when nothing is happening.

from Wormbook Ch 13

maybe it's because my life is radically changing in the next few months
maybe I'm just buying into "the knot, the nest, the bump" consumer culture
maybe I'm growing up
or maybe they're just a part of me.

I'm just not sure yet... but I'm fixated and obsessed and I'm working on it and through it.

that'll be the day you get back home

Although it'll be at least a decade before we'll have enough spending money to afford a six hundred dollar art book, Janfamily: Plans for Other Days looks amazing!

A how-to book on creating art in everyday situations, especially focusing on connections between people. Although I don't necessarily agree with it as a how to book, I love the photos. Honestly, I think this is funny.

a mind that knows itself is a mind that knows much more

I've been looking at these glitter (yes, glitter) paintings by Jamie Vasta for a few weeks and I still don't know how I feel about them.

Judith

Stepsister

Made of glitter on wood boards she recreates Caravaggio and Caravaggio-like paintings with herself as the female figure. If she were not in these paintings, they wouldn't be anything more to me than a modernization of Caravaggio's work: interesting in its novelty and execution but without depth. Similarly, if she had only recreated these works with herself as the subject, the implications would be interesting but the paintings would be too narrative for my taste. However, the combination of glitter and self-portraiture forces me to think past each element and view the works as something more. I still don't know if I like them or if they mean anything to me, but they're interesting. Very interesting.

Tattoo tears

I need to make temporary tattoos. 

 

lawn mower man found here

Need to. 

I've been thinking about it for months and with the turn my work is going (and with the print exchange coming up quick) it's time!

I'd like to consider myself a printmaker that still loves the idea of an original.

I love the idea of alternative printmaking and using printmaking elements in original pieces to bring them together. The idea of the body as a walking print is especially interesting to me and as someone who dislikes the idea of giclee prints as reproductions, this seems to be a way I can make originals AND let people take home (hopefully after paying a small fee) a piece of my work without making giclees.

I am very excited.

We can be heroes

Evan Lindquist etching

His works are so repetitive. They're beautiful in that overly tedious way but the repetition of themes makes them feel like overly elaborate sketches rather than fine art drawings... Why do these ideas need to be expressed en masse? What does each piece gain by being in a series with the others? Work like this challenges me to push to make my works distinct, to make them build on one another, and to not fall into the comfort of an already developed visual language (like I so often am tempted to do).

But they'd make great tattoos.

Run, run, run

I'm making very personal work right now. At least, I'm making work from a very personal place that I want to remain relevant to others. I love this quote from Emily Barletta about her art making practices:


"I have a spinal disease that has always been a present and physically painful force in my life. The majority of my art stems from this fact, but to say that I make artwork as therapy would be untrue. I make artwork and it is therapeutic. This is the same to say that I make art and I am in pain; instead of saying I make art because I am in pain. I cannot separate these ideas. The objects that result from this are the invented anatomical structures of my imagination and my biology. These structures relate to cells, veins, organs, skin, blood, and bones. But they tend to express themselves as flowers, plants, tubes, topography, diseases, bacteria, growths, mold, and organisms. They spread, spill, leak, and grow their way into existence through yarn and a crochet hook.”

Pelt and detail

Center

Her work challenges me: she makes pieces inspired by biology and the body, specifically her body. I struggle with her work: I'm not sure if I think her pieces are referential or illustrative, art or craft. The reasons that I struggle with her work are the same reasons I return to it again and again. If nothing else, I so greatly appreciate her craftsmanship and the endless hours she pours into her work. I like her process, the way she uses a crochet hook as a mark-maker, and the elements of time evident in her pieces.

fever to tell

Olivia Jeffries 


I'm always interested in this aesthetic. I like beautiful things. I like thinking about why things like this are beautiful. I like time. I like delicate things. I like pieces of her artist statement about things that move her: "the complex and unknowable nature of reality, an intimate moment which exists for just a second and is then forgotten or the impossibility of feeling how someone else feels..."

and you still refuse to speak

empty vessels

my secret self: you can't always be friendly, there just isn't time

In short: I don't like all of her pieces but I like thinking about them.

hey-ay-ay-ay

Anthony Zinonos

what a great name.
found him during my 3.0 minutes of free time today... enjoy!

Figures 56 and 42

Pill Head

Triangle Exchange

Maybe it's just the weather, or the mood I'm in, or the stress that seems to permeate everything and everyone right now, but this stuff makes me laugh. Right now, I really appreciate the lighthearted handling of the subjects. Although I often tire of work similar to this-- Urban Outfitters-approved photocollage-- but this guy is honest in a way I don't often see... He doesn't hide anything, he's straightforward, and he manages to bring to light some great ideas. His work is satirical in nature but not extreme past the point of utility.