Videos
It’s pronounced Vidyas.
{ Monthly Archives }
April 2009
Sabra Krock
If you’ve been reading this website long enough, then you know how selective I am about photography. It takes a lot to impress me photographically, and generally a breadth of style and subject matter is required. So, you’ll understand how good Sabra Krock must be if I decide to feature her as a photographer, but not only a photographer, a niche photographer (that’s not an insult, I’m sure she’s equally amazing at shooting everything else, too). Krock creates some of the most beautiful imagery of food I’ve ever laid my pupils on. I mean damn, girl. I think my eyes and my stomach tried to climb their way out of my body simultaneously just to get closer to those photos. If you’ve ever wanted to know what kind of difference a real passion for subject matter can make in an artist’s work, then look no further. You can also read Krock’s blog for recipes of the various foods that she photographs. She has made my day.
Matt Duffin
A starkly contrasted world of furniture, mules, and roller coasters drawn with encaustic wax? Yes, please. Thank you, Matt Duffin, for doing something that I’ve never seen before. And doing it so damn well.
Sam Songailo
The puzzle pieces that we use to construct images, whether interpretation by the eye and brain, or creation with the hand, are always the same — shape, color, and depth. Through a combination of shape and color any image can be rendered two dimensionally, and with depth the third level of dimension is added, at least in our physical space. The reason that I appreciate the work of Sam Songailo is that he uses only the first two elements in their most basic forms to communicate visually. His work is very Brazilian in its color and shape– bright and simple, pattern driven, with motion provided by a varying geometry. Following principles of visual communication so ingrained in us that we don’t realize they’re there, Songailo creates his meanings along the intersecting lines of his forms, and with the juxtaposition of his hues. I enjoy it, because it begs the question: How simply can we communicate visually? What is the barest visual way to transmit meaning from image to viewer? Songailo provides a good answer.
Yuta Onoda
Most of us try to hang on to that limbo between sleep and wakefulness as long as we can. It’s a place where ideas come unbidden and connect fluidly, where we’re aware enough of our control to create new dreams consciously, where the warm fog of dreams is slowly roiling with shafts of daylight just beyond our closed eyes. That’s the sort of in-between that the work of Yuta Onoda occupies. Between Classical Japanese and Art Deco in style. Between Impressionism and Surrealism in meaning. The rising sun meets metropolitan modern in the strange clarity of that very last dream before we open our eyes.
Richard Perez
LA-born, Bay Area transplant Richard Perez caught my finely tuned internet eye recently with his colorful posters, clean type work and clever branding. That’s three adjectives that begin with “c”, and I’ve got like 30 more in the chamber ready to fly. You’d all do good to remember that if you ever decide you want to get into an adjective battle with me. I got an 800 verbal on my SAT way back when, and then I fell asleep during the math part. I was more than a little hungover. Why bother to tell you all this rather than talk about Perez’s work? Because it’s good enough that you can see for yourself; my adjectives are unnecessary.
Videos
Getting stuck in your teeth.
Thomas Doyle
I’ve seen and posted about a similar project in the past, but Thomas Doyle’s snowglobes were just too fantastic to pass up. They depict tiny slices of suburban worlds, askew and eerie, while their inhabitants look on in shock. I’m always amazed by two things: that suburban scenes are so normal and bland that almost anything can make them seem weird, and that anything other than a little model of a landmark looks creepy inside of a snowglobe. Actually, those little landmarks are kinda creepy. Snowglobes are just off-putting in general.
Videos
Putting the hanky back in Thank you.
Justin David Cox
When thinking about moving back East (far in the future), I always end up with three or four towns as my finalists, and one of those towns is Austin. It’s got decent skate, art, and music communities, and, barring the overflow of SXSW every year, it maintains a nice, small town vibe. One of the things that most people probably overlook, but is pretty significant to me, is that Austin also has a really strong design community. In fact, it’s almost eerily solid on design in a way that even major cities can’t compete with. All they need now is for Jason Munn from The Small Stakes to relocate there, and that’s pretty much got the whole poster design market sewn up for Austin. Further cementing their dominance in this design field is Justin David Cox whose work is simple, clean and clever; everything that I want to see from a poster. Hell, it’s everything I want to see from a website. And, on top of that, he’s a helluva photographer. I’ve got to quit finding this kind of inspiration, otherwise “far in the future” is going to become “randomly in the middle of the night very soon”. Anyone got a couch in Austin I can crash on?