Secret Still

One of the things that I really love about Matt Haber’s work is that each painting clearly has a much larger story behind it, and they all seem to tie into an even larger universe where all those stories take place. I’ve talked to Matt (read the interview here), and this is, in fact, the case. He leads a rich life of story in his head and brings that into the light of day on the canvas. After having seen Nicole Gustafsson’s work, I’m going to once again jump to that conclusion. She lives in story and through her work she gives those stories new dimension. All the backyard forests you ever played in as a kid, chasing pirates, building traps, or just staring at ants building bridges across a creek, they’ve come home to roost in all their larger-than-life glory in Gustafsson’s paintings. They dip into the spring whence all childhood adventures come. Because nostalgia for lost treehouse afternoons can make us use a word like whence, and because we never really came in for dinner when our moms called, the song of these stories is always being sung in our heads. It takes a true synesthete like Nicole Gustafsson to see that melody in its undiluted form and translate that to her canvas.

Nicole Gustafsson

Probably one of the only artistic mediums that I don’t really cover here is textile. Not only am I not even close to an authority on creating or wearing textiles, but there are about a million other sites that cover that topic better than I ever could. I wear the same pair of pants for days at a time, assuming they don’t get too dirty. I am not the person to talk about fashion. I can barely sew a button back on. I have no understanding of textiles. BUT. Sometimes there are things so amazing in their magnitude that, regardless of my lack of experience, I still have to mention them here. It’s my duty as a netizen (remember that term from back when everyone used Prodigy and Compuserve?) to inform you of things that are completely incredible. Like a cape and scarf made entirely of spider silk.

Yeah. Just give that a second to sink in.

This project took over a million spiders and 4 years to complete.

Take a second. Ok.

And the color of the textile is actually just the color of the silk.

Now. Feel free to jump up and exclaim and just kinda hold your head in your hands because you can’t believe how fucking ridiculously beautiful that is. Oh mankind, you poetic monster, you give my brain every reason to keep holding on.

Spider Cape

There’s probably nothing that gives me a bigger art-boner than excellent draftsmanship. Well, I’m gonna need to find some metaphorical books to put in front of it, because the work of Melissa Cooke goes beyond excellent into some realm that I don’t even have a word for. Perfecterrificent. Nailed it. Prepare for mental explosions and awkward pants times.

Melissa Cooke

You’ll have to forgive my use of hyperbole (or don’t, it really doesn’t matter to me), but I’m calling it….art is over. I’m afraid that you can all pack up your brushes, pencils, chisels, welders, or whatever you use, and just call it a day. Ryusuke Fukahori has beaten you all. He has created something beautiful, complex yet simple, and so mind-blowing that I had to lay down after seeing it. “What is this marvel?,” you might ask. Goldfish. Just some goldfish. Suck on that MC Escher. The thing that makes Fukahori’s work so incredible is the process. He pours clear resin into wooden boxes (usually wooden boxes anyway) in layers, and paints goldfish on each layer to create a more 3-Dimensional image, similar to the way a 3-D printer works. The results speak for themselves. So just in case you were getting a canvas gessoed for a new painting, or ordering some fine Italian marble for a sculpture of Lady Gaga riding Richard Nixon like a donkey, you can go ahead and quit now, because art…art is over. Feel free to watch a video of Fukahori being way more awesome than you after the jump.

Ryusuke Fukahori

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As a tattooed person, I’ve never really been too into the American Traditional style of tattooing, what most people would think of as the Sailor Jerry style. I don’t hate it, but I don’t particularly love it either, although I do respect what it represents and means to tattooing as an artform and an industry. However, all that is about to change, as today I will get my first and last traditional tattoo. It’s just an impulse that I have; an impulse with a week’s worth of planning because that’s how I do impulsive. But I think that french artist Odö is partly responsible. Nico Odora’s paintings are complexly built of traditional tattoo imagery coupled with all that pop goodness the French love so much. The other half of my tattoo’s impetus is that I have a friend who specializes in traditional tattoos, so let’s not go giving the French all the credit. That’s just what they want us to do. So while you’re giving Odö’s work an eye-bathing, you can think of me sitting in a shop somewhere getting a needle driven into my hand thousands of times per minute. Lucky me.

Odö

What do you call someone that combines naturalist paintings with surrealism? Surraturalist? Nasturrealist? Clearly I’m not going to inventicate a new word to describe this style of painting, so I’ll just lead with an artist’s name: Amy Guidry. I could’ve said Josh Keyes, too, but he’s more of a dystopian than a surrealist. Guidry’s got all your surrealist bases covered — life, death, sex, love — but her subject matter is photorealistically depicted animals and landscapes. It’s got that really delicious weirdness of surrealism, and the belly-filling beauty of Audobon-like naturalist works. Jesus, why are most of my metaphors food based? It’s because inside this skinny body is a fat dude trying to eat his way out. It just so happens that both of them are art lovers, and they are definitely smitten with Amy Guidry’s work. That just means that few things will have to change in the world of my aesthetic preference once the fat dude bursts out of my stomach all Aliens-style and asks for some chicken wings. Wait, how did I get to this point?

Amy Guidry

If there is one thing that I have never stopped loving in art and illustration, it’s the cutaway. If you have drawn a cutaway, I will be in love with you forever, even if everything else you’ve ever made is crap, even if your cutaway is crap…mostly because I don’t believe it’s possible to make a shitty cutaway. Each one is a magical little window into the overall operations/layout of something. It’s like an architectural schematic with the added character of something that’s already built and in use. I can’t completely explain to you why they’re just so amazing to me, but they are. And Domitille Collardey has more than one in his repertoire. Thankfully everything else he makes is also incredible, so I don’t have to make the tough choice of whether or not to love his work just because he made a cutaway. The answer is always the same, but that never makes the choice any easier.

Domitille Collardey

As someone who has been a lover of amphibians and reptiles since literally before I can actually remember anything, I’m not hard to convince that snakes are beautiful. From their fluid movement and delicate texture, to their bright color and silent nature, there’s a lot to be loved about the real inspiration for the word sibilant. So I practically giggled with glee when I found Mark Laita’s collection of photographs titled “Serpentine.” Laita takes amazingly brilliant photos of these incredible animals, capturing their beauty and their character. The execution is simple and elegant and supremely successful. I’d like a giant, full-color print of one of these to put on my wall and stare at, but I will just have to settle for the book that’s coming out in Fall of 2012 like all the other poor schlubs. Fine, that’s fine, I’m gonna turn those pages back and forth until the whole thing falls apart in my hands.

Mark Laita: Serpentine

Because I’m going to be gorging myself along with millions of other Americans in the coming week, I will just leave you with the work of Laurie Lipton. If you examine every detail of one of her paintings per day, you still won’t be done looking at all of them by the time I come back. Visual feasting is a great compliment to stuffing your belly, so put your eyeball’s fatpants on, piglets.

Laurie Lipton

Just because your last name is the same as a diabolical financial con job, doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in life. Emiliano Ponzi takes a cursed moniker and covers it in delicious layers of illustrative goodness, topped with solid textures, and slow roasted in a mind that loops through visual metaphors like a spider monkey on cocaine. The result is a visual meal that leaves you full, happy, and probably ready for a nap on the couch with your pants unbuttoned.

Emiliano Ponzi