{ Monthly Archives }
March 2009
Videos
It’s all downhill from here.
H. Mathis
Thank you, random emails, for turning me on to the works of H. Mathis. I tend to shy away from most forms of performance art (I’m not saying that’s entirely what Mathis does), but Mathis’ projects are so damn entertaining and straight-faced that I can’t help but enjoy them. Take, for instance, his Super Secret Art Interaction. He sends out a call on Craigslist for participants to give him their codename and description, draws them, meets them in disguise to give them their portrait, and goes on his way. That is the limit of their interaction. Then, months later all of the participants are contacted about an art show that features their photo and codename. How can you not want to participate in a Super Secret Art Interaction? And that’s only a small part of his nonsensical arsenal of projects. Regardless of their medium, I’m down for any artist who can make me look at the world differently. Except you, Matthew Barney, you should stop right now.
Coloured In
It has come to my attention that Secret Still Gentleman’s Club with Ladies member for life Will Scobie has joined forces with a super, crime-fighting design team. The Coloured In collective is made up of artists spanning all major illustration styles, fully capable of designing anything and everything for anyone, while stopping bullets and throwing cars at monsters. Am I building them up too much? I guess you’ll find out the next time you have an event that needs a poster, and a giant, man-eating lizard that needs defeating. Which should be tomorrow if all goes according to my plans.
Nirrimi Hakanson
You see that beautiful photograph up there? The photographer that took that is sixteen, possibly fifteen when it was taken. Is giving everyone more talent than me God’s way of testing my mettle? I’d rather take the written exam, Yahweh. Damn, that girl is good.
Videos
We make your weekend worthwhile.
Brock Davis
A little design goodness coming your way from the portfolio of Brock Davis. A name that manly wouldn’t make you think that his work is chock full of cleverness and humor, but you would be wrong. Dead wrong. Sorry, but that seemed like the appropriate thing to say for someone named Brock Davis. Whether he could kill you with his thumbs or not, I can’t say, but I can say that his work might kill you with inspiration. It is very possible that the top of your skull might pop off and your brains will come boiling out over the rim if you spend enough time looking at his work. These are just the kinds of risks you have to take if you’re gonna hang out with me for very long. I live life on the inspirational edge, so strap in and let Brock Davis take you for an adrenaline fueled, jet-powered shark ride through T-Rex laser bot infested skies over burning oceans of blood. Or just look at his portfolio; that’s good, too.
Frank Gonzales
When I was a kid I would lay in the grass in our front yard and look up at the trees overhead with my eyes barely open. The sun would shine down through the branches, and everything would look like it was made of little blocks of matter through the slits of my eyelids. From that point of view the world was in between creation and destruction, pieces of a puzzle that I could probably move around with the tips of my fingers. Clearly I wasn’t the only one to have these revalations about the nature of my own 8-year-old reality, because the work of painter Frank Gonzales is shot through with the same ideas. Gonzales takes natural forms, for the most part birds, and deconstucts sections of them dynamically while painting. I dig that it looks like he’s removing pixels, a digital property, from something that is natural, or call it analog. I’m not so sure how I feel about the dots and swirls that makeup his backgrounds, but they do give everything a nice Blaine Fontana kind of vibe. Either way, Gonzales’s work helped me to remember what it was like when the world was malleable in my mind, and that there’s no reason that it can’t still be. All I need to do is close my eyes a little to see it.
Lottie Davies
While I’m still getting used to/breaking in my new camera, the internet is providing me with plenty of photography inspiration. Lottie Davies is better than I will ever be, and not just because she has equipment that I will never be able to afford, let alone rationalize purchasing. Her best works are personal, even if they have nothing to do with her. She seems able to create any mood and any aesthetic, which must make translating her ideas into image that much easier. Or harder. What do I know? I just like to take pictures of flowers and dogs.
Borja Bonaque
Spanish designer/illustrator Borja Bonaque creates some incredible cityscapes, and even translates those images to skate decks. You show me some fantastic art that I can bolt my trucks to, and you’ve won a special place in my good graces forever. The idea that I can skate the city on the city isn’t lost on me either; that’s just the kind of meta-bullshit that tickles my nerd boner. And to top it all off, Bonaque’s style is really similar to Charley Harper’s, giving him the hat trick for the win. He understands, like Harper did, that it’s not about the detail of the image, but the shapes and their interactions. The greatest artists can tell their stories with 3 brush strokes just as well as with thousands. I’m dropping gems of wisdom on you today. You should be writing this down.