Sunday, September 27, 2009

Lifesized Farmhouse Dollhouse

read the full story here!




via all the mountains...

Ann Wood

I am familiar with the work of Ann Wood, especially her birds, but I had kind of forgotten about these gorgeous paper mache pieces and have never seen her cardboard castles. So magical!

ann wood handmade
ann's blog

about: I live in Brooklyn New York near beautiful Prospect Park. I make things, paint, and draw for my life and livelihood. I work with mostly found, and salvaged materials, many of them vintage or antique garments. There is a kind of affection and tenderness in the re-use and re-purposing of things that were once personal and perhaps treasured possessions. Much of my inspiration comes from these materials as well as from many of the ideas I have been infatuated with my whole life : smallness, intricacies, miniaturization, collections, repetition; lost or abandoned things discovered and rescued; the idea of haunted and enchanted places, things and creatures; the setting of a tiny stage.






Friday, September 25, 2009

Cool New Artist: Alison Hall Cooley

I love the abstract work of Alison Hall Cooley.

Here's an artist's statement:
My work focuses on memory of spaces. Expansive color planes, shooting and falling lines, and etchings overlap and move within an underlying composition suggestive of landscape. Textures and values interweave to create a suspension of visual spaces reflective of memory construction. As color fields stack and unfurl delicate markings orient the viewer and provide a handle for the eye. This dislocation produced by plane and color is steadied by navigation of line.









Sunday, September 20, 2009

Strength & Honor

My little brother Thompson and I did this hand-lettered sign for his apartment at Auburn. His small group calls itself the Iron Men and their tag line is "strength and honor." He really wanted to paint it onto this board and hang it next to this painting that my grandmother (mom's mom) did years and years ago. I think it turned out great!

Edit: Thompson said "Strength & Honor" isn't actually their tag line; he just stole it from the movie Gladiator. :)

Latest landscape painting

I've been working on this the past couple of weekends. The sky had yellow undertones, which I really liked. I think next weekend, if I have time, I might try to build a few frames for some canvases around the house and varnish a couple of paintings.





Saturday, September 19, 2009

2009 Joyride

Yes, I do have mad poster-whipping-out and fall festival branding skillz.

I pulled this together for our friend Brent's bash coming up in Oct 16. (we're doing a postercard, too.) His band is opening for Act of Congress and there will be hayrides, bonfire, camping out, etc at a farm out in Jasper. It'll be a fun time!



Thursday, September 3, 2009

Cool New Artist: Erik Johannson

Love these nonsensical photo manipulations by Erik Johannson featured on daily mail. Thanks to Jeff for featuring them first!

See more of Erik's work here.






Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I want to dive into a Letitia Quesenberry painting and never come out

I love the work of Letitia Quesenberry!! She does beautiful atmospheric paintings and drawings. Below the art I've included a couple of artist's statements and a little about her.
















































































































































































































































































"something seen momentarily as though from a window while traveling"-John Cage

These drawings are an exploration of the process of making, with attention to surface, materiality, and the transformative aspects of scale. The images intended to question the recollection of experience and the relative nature of perception, taking a vaselined view to embody contradiction: painting/photography, still/moving, specific/ambiguous.

Letitia Quesenberry
until
The work in ‘until’ conjoins transience and stillness, an effort to seize the fugitive nature of perception. Using thin layers of muted plaster to embed and then expose graphite within the surface, small figures emerge from vast disorienting landscapes. Definition of form emanates without outline: shadows and highlights merge. Representation and scale are simultaneously emphasized and understated, relying upon the viewer’s ability to infer. This lag in perceptible information mirrors liminal experience, the transitory struggle to comprehend the unknown. Success hinges upon the subtleties of surface, a minute exchange between material and process. The intention is to investigate and refine this exchange, giving license to the obscure in order to reconstruct representation.

Letitia Quesenberry graduated in 1993 with a bachelors degree in fine art from the University of Cincinnati. Upon graduation, she traveled extensively in Mexico and Europe. She has exhibited work at the Kunsthalle in Mainz, Germany and in numerous group shows including "Images of the World" at the Speed Art Museum and the "2007 DePauw Biennial" at DePauw University. She has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Pace Trust, as well as an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She recently participated in a collaborative film project entitled MULTIPLY, which was shown at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her work has been published in NEW AMERICAN PAINTINGS and PITCH MAGAZINE. She was born in 1971 in Louisville, Kentucky, where she lives and works.