Red Jellies in Williamsburg

 First seen @ Brooklyn Street Art. 

photo © Jaime Rojo

photo © Jaime Rojo

 

Frida's Sketchbook

My sister sent me this image of Frida Kahlo's Sketchbook yesterday, with the message "this looks a lot like your work". It really does. You can see some similarities if you check out my sketchbooks on Cuttlefish Hiccups, though I think it looks more like stuff I haven't posted.

Allison Schulnik

So LOVE4U just posted some work by Allison Schulnik and I must share. Schulnik's work is populated by these disturbing clown people who have holes for eyes and strange amorphous  bodies. They remind me a lot of my father's doodles I watched him make as a kid, which may be why I'm so drawn to them. She has some incredible work in claymation-- I'm in awe of this video she did for Grizzly Bear.

Her website (linked to above) has some great detail shots of her oil paintings which are composed of an impressive amount of layering. The surface of her paintings look wet and the colors she uses are super vibrant, making the work look juicy. But I'm not talking of erotic Rubenesque "juicy", I'm talking, like, disfigured carnies saturated with rainbow snow cone syrup juicy. They bring to mind the De Kooning exhibit I just saw at MoMA.

"Clown With Hands"

Procrastinating with Miranda July

I am completely enchanted by July's work. I first discovered her on Netflix, when I decided to watch "You, Me and Everybody We know" on a weeknight procrastination inspired whim. After that I was hooked.

I also just saw her at Symphony Space reading from her most recent book "It Chooses You" about a series of interviews she had done with the ad posters in "The Penny Saver", the classifieds booklet she gets in the mail at her home. As July read her part as Narrator, she had several actors read the parts of her interviewees as she projected photographs of them on a large adjacent screen.

A not so good quality shot
    of Miranda July @ Symphony
Space, taken with my droid.

This project, July explained, was not planned or intended. Reading the Penny Saver was actually a way of procrastinating and distancing herself from her most recent film, "The Future" while she experienced a creative block. Through the Penny Saver, July meets Joe, an 81 year old retired painter who amongst other quirks, writes dirty limericks for his wife and has a grave yard for all his dead pets on his back lawn. His character actually ended up making its way into "The Future"-- what had started as method of avoidance actually informed her film in a new way.

Here is a deleted clip from "The Future" about  procrastinating. Go figure.

Seth Kinman: bad ass mountain man

Seth Kinman, California hunter and trapper, liked to make chairs out of animals. He was actually renowned for it across the states and made chairs for Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan. His materials of choice: grizzly bears (now extinct) and elk horns (now endangered). I came across this image while doing research on California species for my apprenticeship with Bay Area Artist Lena Wolff.

I feel a mix of fear and amusement when I look at this photo. Being a longtime vegetarian and animal lover it is hard for me to avoid cringing.  But I just can't ignore that I feel a sense of admiration for Kinman. He's just such a bad ass mountain man.

There is a circulartory system walking through the kitchen.

Here is one of those images from my 'best' folder I was talking about. This is my favorite panel from Watchmen. I actually LOLed at this. Perhaps I was just really delirious....

What a fantastically strange book.

Finally.

For years I have been telling myself that I would start an art blog. Since I haven't, my image collection is a huge discombobulated mess scattered across my desktop, phone, facebook and various themed folders on my computer I have created on a whim. Though I will post some of these long lost images I've designated 'best' (reference to my folder title), this blog is primarily for the new. I will be starting school again in the Spring as an intended visual art/art history major. So I will be spending much of my time around this art stuff. So this is my place to put it.

In sum, let's get Charleston Chews.