I have one question and one piece of advice for you, Harvey James. What the fuck is wrong with you? Advice: whatever it is, don’t fix it. A single long page full of illustrations that would make Jamie Hewlett jealous, chaotic, weird, and sometimes awesomely twisted. It’s like the greatest sketchbook I’ve ever seen. This motherfucker is my muse for the next few weeks.
Wagner Pinto is a damn charming name. It sounds like the name of a trying-to-do-his-awkward-best high school movie hero played by Michael Cera. In reality, Wagner Pinto is the name of a Brazilian artist who’s taken the styles of the world around him and made them his abstract own. Bright colors, mad lines, and a playful jumble like kids wrestling in the grass. What are you even doing still reading this. Go check it out. Go.
Bro for life Will Scobie chirped me on the virtual two-way to let me know about his friend Ashley Mackenzie and his illustrative powers. And, like always, I was not disappointed. He calls himself an amateur illustrator, but there doesn’t seem to be anything amateur about his skills. The only thing that I was disappointed about was how little work I got to see. I need more, Ashely. You can’t just tempt me with talent and then leave me hanging. Apparently he might be moving to the Bay Area, so we could be neighbors. Isn’t that nice?
I never thought that I would find a comics artist who amazed me nearly as much as Chris Ware. I guess you never think you will until you do, and now I have. Joseph Lambert’s lines, form, direction, and framing make me want to put down my pen and pencil for good. Or never put them down. It’s hard to tell. Either way, Lambert’s comics, as well as his illustrations, are fantastic. Someone out there with the resources needs to put him on a permanent paycheck. A big paycheck. Like Bill Gates big. Too much? Ok, then just Richard Branson big.
At first I was really frustrated by Eleanor Yap’s website. The text is so light I almost didn’t see it. Just as I was set to rant about it, I realized that it fit perfectly with her work. Yap’s pieces are wonderfully colorful and intricate. Adding anything else to the site around them would detract from that instead of accent it. And you will definitely need the full attention of both eyes to try and take in all the color and shape. Yap’s work looks like a kaleidoscope made from plants and flowers, or like a nice riotous acid trip in the heart of the jungle. Like her website, I won’t say anymore about the work; I’ll let it speak for itself.
NYC artist Michael Mararian sent me an e-mail about his new show that just opened at Corey Helford Gallery in LA. And thank God. I wish the rest of you would give that a try. Save me the 8 years that I spend every day tracking down good work. True, I might not like your stuff, but I won’t tell you that. I’ll just let it pass on by. It’s like hitting on someone in a bar; either it works out or it doesn’t, no one gets hurt from trying. If Mararian’s work came up to me in a bar it would clearly be getting lucky. Or I would run the hell away. It’s hard to tell. In his own words, Mararian’s Inky Dreadfuls “is like the sensibilities of Edward Gorey meets the Americana of Norman Rockwell,” and I’m gonna throw in: with the draftsmanship of Durer. In his new show titled Phobias, Foibles & Fiends, M.M. takes on the world of fear and folly with a cast of morose moppets (dude, I am hitting the alliteration hard today). The works are all black and white brilliance except for the occasional blood red or infernal fiery orange, and many come in their own ornate Edwardian frames. There are still a few available for you to purchase and hang above your steampunk LCD TV. That’s right, I mocked steampunk. Now take off those waistcoats, assholes.
One of my favorite things in coming across artists and designers is when I find one whose work inspires me, astounds me, what have you, and the artist in question is still in school. Do you even know what that means? It means that they’ve got the rest of their lives to get better. It also means that they generally haven’t been weighed down by the millions of conventions that plague the creative world. And on top of all that they probably haven’t been rejected enough to really give a shit what anyone else thinks yet. That last one is a pro and con. But such is the untainted, potential-filled, already wonderful work of Toronto’s Jan Avendano. Her patterns and doodly, scribbly illustrations make me all kinds of glad. I’m really into her complex pen work most of all. As someone with almost zero patience I am always amazed by anyone who can draw in so many lines and curves. I’m usually thinking about the next project before I’m halfway through the first. But this isn’t about me, it’s about Avendano, who’s work is great. Great, god dammit, and it’s only gonna get better.
Quiz question of the day: What do you get when you give a small, Japanese child a bunch of acid and some paints? Answer: Ginette Lapalme’s magical mystery works. She creates paintings and drawings that feel like if you knifed your dreams in the gut and tried to mop up all the blood with gumdrops. Yeah, that’s a pretty good description. Let’s go with that. I could see myself laying shirtless on a shag rug reading one of her zines and drinking Grape Drink from a goblet. Zappa will be covering Barry White on the Hi-Fi. And just like that I’ve got my weekend planned out.
Daniel Zeller’s abstract inkwork falls somewhere between close up shots of Nudibranches and aerial photos of the Nile, but more importantly it falls right into the radical section of my brain. It’s a big section, but it’s on the underside so it’s hard to get to. But anyone who has enough discipline to convey concepts through such rigorous detail gets a gold star in my book. I can’t even imagine the almost trance-like state he has to occupy while creating these modern mandalas. Along with the intricate drawings comes a color pallette that is both simple and perfectly suited to the task. The contrast between each color creates almost a vibration in the eye that gives the patterns depth and dimension. Capital job, sir. Capital.
Nick Gazin makes these subtly twisted (sometimes not so subtle) little paintings that remind of why I laugh at dead baby jokes or fat people. His style is that rough paint over sketch thing that I liked so much in Mark Penxa’s work (mentioned here). Unlike Penxa’s baseball heroes, Gazin takes an acid trip down the wrong side of the American Dream, covering things in blood and day-glo disasters. I keep expecting Dennis Hopper to step into one of the paintings and flick a lit cigarette at my face right before kicking me in the knees. I like it. It’s like “If The Strip Club Floors Could Talk”. Someone will probably see that and turn it into a reality show.
Nick Gazin
He’s also got a sketch blog.
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