Contemporary artist Titus Kaphar is an interesting chap, who takes 18th and 19th century portrait paintings and reconfigures them to send forth some rather sophisticated messages. Watch the video below to see him speak, and check out some images which were lifted from his Blogspot. This guy is the real deal!

This is just a quick shout out to Portland, Oregon artist Andy Kehoe. Always set against backdrops rich with earthly hues and natural ornamentation, his ambiguous creature friends seem to infest a world that could either be seen as decaying or simply just aged with character, like an old photograph.

Acknowledgements in books always tease readers with their vagueness, their references so useless and anonymous that one frequently skips over them — despite the obvious importance they hold to the book’s authors — without so much as a second glance. Hence why it’s so interesting that Brandon McLean chose to think critically about these names in his new series, Acknowledgements. What happens when you match an unknown name to an unknown face? And more interestingly, how would different people differ in how they match up names and faces? One could practically write a thesis on this topic.

Last night was Portland’s lovely Last Thursday event, and Together Gallery had a fantastic show, as always, featuring Maxwell Loren Holyoke Hirsch, Irana Douer, Matthew Feyld, Theo Ellsworth, Jess Hirsch. The show, called It’s All In The Details, might not feature these exact pieces, but here are some highlights from Irana Douer and Jess Hirsch.

This post and these images are taken from Yanko Design.

Created by Yuree S. Lim and Jieun Yang, this might be a prototype rather than an actual product. I can’t be sure. In either case, I constantly have the problem of not knowing what to do with my teabags after using them (I generally resort to putting them bag into their original packaging). It seems these ladies have a more utilitarian — if one can say this is utilitarian — idea. Check out the Engrish-isms used by the designers to describe this loveliness:

As tea break become one of popular culture, tea lovers want to enjoy a cup of tea anytime, anywhere. The problem is there is no proper way to treat wet tea bags. While wandering around to find where to put it down, tea bag brew more bitter in a cup or dropping all around in the air destroying calm and zen atmosphere of the tea break.

Now, we proudly present Teabag Coaster. Teabag Coaster was designed to make a tasty cup of tea, and color your moment in everyday life beautifully.

Kevin Earl Taylor is a San Francisco based oil painter whose works often deal with somewhat macabre interactions of man and animal. Taylor melds masterfully executed, almost Audubon-esque paintings with a healthy dose of the macabre, and the end result is an arresting blend of naturalism and dark surrealism.