Protest Art

The history of art has many star moments of protesting political events. Below Picasso protests a massacre in 1937, above is some contemporary examples of this very important and passionate genre.

Happy New Year

Right after posting about feathers and masks i showed up to the new years party to find everyone wearing feather masks, and there was even one for me :) Thanks Simon!

Happy New Year!

Feathery

Am having a fascination with feathers today am wondering what a feather costume might look like... not wings but a dress which uses feathers in order like a wing would... or perhaps a million tiny blue feathers applied to the skin like if humans came that way... it could be quite elegant if done right. i don't tend to like the way feather masks are made, i'd want something more integrated so it can be delicate, like putting on fake eyelashes... but everywhere and feathers
:)

Ode to my inhaler

Dearest inhaler I will never loose you again. I know i only want to see you like less than once a year, and that may make you think your not important to me, i admit i'd almost forgotten about yknow the you and me thing...i know it was me who put you in a bag inside a box at the bottom of a overfilled drawer... you certainly made your point and thanks for saving my ass anyway. If you weren't an inanimate object and i could make out with you right now i so would. I will never loose you again, I promise. xoxoxo

Time Warping

Me and my friend Simon found a fun series of videos last night on youtube, they're called time warping, Here's a compilation. They have these very accurate cameras which they use to study movement. In this clip my favorite is punching the red balloon. I like how the water just stays there for a second then his hand soars through the form. Its amazing how much more you can tell about matter and physics by slowing down and contemplating movement.

Kinetic Sculpture

There is a school of thought which believes art should be interactive, museums where people are encouraged to touch things. I am not into that. I like to get close to art, nose right up to the paintings examining every detail, but i feel like an alarm is gonna or should go off in the case of touching in a museum. I do however love when art interacts with wind. Kinetic sculptures are fascinating. Like wind chimes, but for the eyes instead. They sell some beautiful ones at the psu arts fest every year and i love to gaze at them and think of wind, my invisible friend waving hi.

In searching for examples of this craft i found the art of Theo Jansen of which i can only manage to say Holy Shit!

American Beauty

American Beauty the plastic bag moment

You wanna see the most beautiful thing i've ever filmed?
it was one of those days where its a minute away from snowing and there's this almost electricity in the air - you can almost hear it... right?
and this bag was just ... dancing, with me
like a little kid begging with me to play with it
for 15 minutes
that's the day i realized that there's this entire Life behind things
and this incredibly benevolent force who wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid
...ever...
the video's a poor excuse i know,
but it helps me remember
i need to remember
sometimes there's so much beauty, in the world,
i feel like i can't take it ...
and my Heart
is just going to
cave in

Where there's smoke...

I hate cigarettes, but aesthetically speaking there are few things more intriguing then smoke. The form swirls around creating this floating organic line, like hair curls, then it dissapates. We really are swimming in air, the atmosphere is like an ocean, only thinner, there are waves and current, and we often forget about air cause its usually invisible to us, but the heavyness of cigarette smoke in particular is like drawing pictures in midair. Like milk swirls in coffee only you can put your fingers through it. There are a lot of examples of film using smoke seductively, my favorite is the recent movie "the 300" which made good use of smoke's mysterious properties in the oracle scene. A girl is tranced into a magical state to talk to the gods, they use a lot of trick photography slow motion and backwards, and the whole time there's this marvelous smoke pouring over her. Good times.

Elemental

I first saw this photo on the wall at my friend Paul Reickhoff's apartment in alphabet city. It was printed large like 40 x 60 in and it just stopped me in my tracks. I was surprised and delighted to rediscover it on getty images, the photographer is Sam Basett. This shot is just all that and a bag of chips. What more could you possibly want from a photo. Check out his portfolio for an assortment of awesomeness.

My obsession with underwater photography

There's thousands of examples out there of underwater photography and why it completely rocks. If you can manage to get your model to not make that face - yknow the help i'm under water and there's no air here face :) The possibilities are just amazing. I especially like how fabric comes out. Also hair has extraordinary potential. You kinda need to take a million shots to come up with something good i imagine. Other underwater cherished artistic moments have taken place in film. See scenes from Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, or Kate Winslet singing underwater in Romance and Cigarettes, Or even the way they drew Ariel's hair in the little mermaid. Or Check out Gregory Colbert's zen like photo installation 'ashes and snow' which featured film of people doing flips under water next to an actual swimming whale. Mystical.

Once upon a time i joined a gym to make a photo shoot involving fabric underwater, they were not thrilled at the idea, the search for a good venue continues...

Photorealism

After achieving a successful career in photorealistic painting, large scale insanely detailed portraits of regular looking people, chuck close suffered a spinal arterial collapse and became paralysed from the neck down, but somehow manages to keep at it, he got through enough therapy to recover minor movement in his arms and amazingly was able to continue to paint by strapping paint brushes to himself. His later work uses a series of dots in a gridded pointalism technique which morphs photorealism into a pixelized opt art style, still maintaining the format of large scale portraiture of everyday regular looking people.

Talk about overcoming adversary. There's that dude who says he can't paint til he can afford a bigger space to work in, there's the chick who doesn't have time because of her day job, there's the mope who feels discouraged for lack of clients so watches tv and balks, .... and then there's THIS GUY the lance armstrong of the painting world, remove even his ability to manuver his limbs and he'll find a fucking way to paint. Beyond being a talented artist with a vision, he's livestrong, he's a symbol of surmounting the insurmountable

So get Off your Ass!

Camera rockin pastel moves

Speaking of sexy check out this photo, the blur they captured in this saucy yet non explicit pose has an almost pastel quality. Check out how similar the delivered effect is to the below pastel drawing. The rendering has a sortof gentle intimacy. I'd bet good money that the photo's effect was accidental. Accidents are often awesome.

Swingin

Surrealism is not just a way to paint. There are all sorts of ways to make dreams into reality. Obviously none of us are planning on running away with the circus any time soon, but if you're bored of the movie / bar / restaurant lifestyle you may want to spice up your life by trying something absurd. Trapeze classes are available here in manhattan. Not too pricey and they teach group beginners classes. Fun, novel, and its said to be v addictive.

Here's how to sign up http://newyork.trapezeschool.com

Trancending Reality

The Circ du Soleil costume designers, body painters and set creators deserve a special nod. Contortionists are kinda freaky, watching some chick tie herself into a pretzel could potentially be rather creepy, but the brilliance of Circ is through costuming they transform the performers into other worldly artworks, the results are memerizingly beautiful. The bright colors and often animal or elemental themed decorations encourage the audience to suspend disbelief and get on board for a surreal mind blowing performance.
Also take a tip from them in searching for models, gymnasts and dancers can make anything look good.

Fitting In

I have been a fan and advocate of body painting for years, in college i used to draw intricate designs on people at parties and festivals. I even considered being a tattoo artist for a time. Lately I have been creating paintings of tattooed people. Anyway here are some camoflage images i found online which i find inspiring. I like the idea of the subject being painted or dressed in a way that they blend into the background. Its an interesting way to create a surreal or almost abstract looking image while maintaining representational integrity. I enjoy works that combine media.

The Legend of Creepy Trees

There's this forest in central pennsylvania, not far from where i went to school, which has a very creepy air to it. When you look around there's something not quite right about this group of trees. They appeared to have been planted, since they're almost grid like, and they have few branches which make them look like a bunch of telephone poles on death row. The canopy provides shade but as non of the leaves grow at a mid level the overall color as you gaze across is a muted grey. Me and emily went there a few times and were going to create an awesome photoshoot. There was going to be a woman in a dres, something colorful like red, and the fabric was going to boldly flow like a drop of color in the form of a damsel scurrying across this grey cold world.
That was me and em's last collaboration, this is the current one, dueling blogs - check out her keen eye for interior design at http://www.ruleof3s.blogspot.com/

Andy Goldsworthy Rocks

Ephemeral art and work made from nature are seriously special. The buddhist monks who create paintings out of sand spend months perfecting their mandelas and upon completion blow their work away and its gone. The lesson being the everything is temporary and the artifact you create when you are creating is not nearly as important as the act itself, of creating. You can say goldsworthy's work is an amazing example of the temporary beauty of nature and the fragile temporary nature of his arrangements is poetically exemplery of life itself.