Displacement

One of the first shows that inspired me was at New Image Gallery, when New Image was a small room on the 2nd floor, atop an old T.V. store. Back then, the artist went by Christopher Ruess, he now goes by Alex Kopps (or sometimes emuse) and walking into his installation, I felt like I walked into exactly I wanted art to make me feel. The incorporation of yarn, paintings, sewn art; it was just ideal.

He now makes these beautiful paintings and its been a long time since I've walked into one of his installations but I look forward to the day I can walk through one again. (The lettering he does is pretty rad too)





I want these surfboards, from Mandala




Now he's coming out with a film, Displacement, and I'm excited to see it. It looks like a great incorporation of his painting aesthetic with the moving image.


They are having a benefit art auction for the film on Saturday, June 28th at the Luggage Store in San Francisco. Seems like it'll be a great show, not only would you be buying great art but you'll be supporting a good cause too.

Bike to Beach

I apologize for the slow posts... It's been a busy end-of-the-month, where many projects have arisen and are coming to the deadline mark. It'll be a busy summer, I think and I'm more than excited about it all. I'll be posting a lot more work-in-progress as soon as I am able to.

In the meantime, my goal of going to the beach as much as possible this summer has started. We rode our bikes from our house here in Brooklyn all the way to Jacob Riis Beach, a total of a 24-mile bike ride. It was amazing.

Miss Rockaway

I love the water, whether its rivers, oceans, lakes, puddles... ok, not so much puddles, but big, open, nature filled spaces of water. I think that has something to do with my intrigue of boats, surfing, etc which I guess has had influence on my nautical flag series. So as I was doing some research on the web, I came across Mass Moca's website and immediately something caught my eye. There was this huge, diy raft on a river. And I found this.


It's called the Miss Rockaway Armada. They are a collective of performers and artists from all over the country who decided to converge and build a raft to float down the Mississippi RIver. Funny thing is, they don't really know how to build rafts (nor have the money to build it), they get their supplies from trash or by throwing benefits. As they float down the river and dock, they do performances and have workshops. One of their influences for this project are bookmobiles from their childhood days... Its a really neat concept and looks pretty rad. I'm in awe of people who come up with ideas like this and fully execute it, it seems like a great adventure and experience to be a part of.

KAWAIIIII

Ok, this post isn't going to be about "kawaii" (cute in Japanese). I couldn't think of anything, my brain is fried from a very busy weekend.

I apologize for the lack of attention I'm paying to this blog, I've been working on an project for Readymade Magazine and that, in addition to other projects, have been getting the majority of my attention.

I went by the Brooklyn Museum this weekend to check out the "Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770–1900" Exhibition that ended on Sunday. I've been recently more and more inspired by these Ukiyo-e prints. The composition, the color, the techniques. It amazes me you can look at these prints and be in complete awe of just the beauty of them, but if you sit and think that they these are woodblock prints.... it literally takes my breath away. One of my favorites is Yoshitoshi and they had a couple of his prints there that I was happy to see in person. His work is normally very dark and violent and although they didn't have a many of those prints up, they had a fairly good selection. Here are a couple...


Toyoharu. The prints are fairly small, but if you look at the people in them they are teeny, tiny!!!






Here's an example of Yoshitoshi's "dark" prints, which they didn't exhibit at the museum but I thought I'd show....


I also stopped by the Murakami exhibit and the Ghada Amer exhibit, both worth checking out!

I'm into porn... Food porn, that is...

I think I've become unhealthily obsessed with food. I mean, I've always loved food but I think as I've become older (and perhaps my palette has "matured") its become an obsession. For instance, when I'm eating breakfast, I'm thinking about what to eat for lunch and at lunch, I'm thinking about what to eat for dinner. I look at food blogs all the time (tastespotting, 101cookbooks, being some of my favorites), I like finding new eateries to exercise my palette, cooking, baking, and on and on.



I recently found MattBites, the photographs are amazing, the recipes are something I'll have to try and the writing is so fun. I particularly love this post, because yes, I too, love tacos.





Here's another food porn photographer, I mean photographer.... Jen Altman

Visual Candy

Like most creative types who are stuck to their computer, I have a long list of bookmarks of my favorite visual candy. I just happened to look through a couple of them recently and noticed Clare Shilland, a photographer out of the UK, has updated her site. There are some really great new photos up. A lot of her work evokes something in me. I especially love her "Picadilly" series.



Some of my favorite...

Richie Tenenbaum

Saw this post from DesignSponge last week about these great sculptures from Chris Bettig, inspired by Richie Tenenbaum. One of my favorite movies is "The Royal Tenenbaums," so I'm a total sucker for this.



Check out his art and design as well! Some of his drawings are very reminiscent of Ed Emberley.