Langdon Graves gentle, somewhat off-kilter drawings.
Louie Cordero’s Having Reached Climax at Age 28 … I am a zombie — made of styrofoam, acrylics, and cement, 2006.
Amborama on Flickr.
Michael Kenna’s Quixote’s Giants, Study 2, 1998
Paul Ulrich
Ah, Valentine’s Day — a dreaded holiday for some and the ultimate heart-warming day for others. In either situation, though, viewing some diverse art is a good remedy. Here are some good shows taking place on Friday the 12th, in Portland and Seattle. They’re group shows that show that it’s not just about selfish relationships on Valentine’s Day! Community love’s worth something, too.
Yet another event from Seattle art collective Artifakt
Damager by Grym.
Terror by BeeryMethod.
Lutjanus campechanus by Crystal Barbre. Oil on canvas. 42″ x 72″.
Matroyshka Dolls by iamintricate.
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For the fifth year in a row, the Portland Love Show will be taking place this year at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center (107 SE Washington St.) from 7:00pm to 12:00am.
Here are just some of our favorite pieces showing this year.
Inevitable by BMAC. 16″ x 20″, $100.
Love and Lust Contemplating Their Predicament by Chuck E. Bloom. 14″ x 18″, $950.
Tied by Kindra Crick. Encaustic mixed media. 10″ x 8″, $180.
last of the famous international playboys by John Gajowski. 17″ x 22″, $250.
A diptych by Levan Kakabadze
Hydrogen, by Schühle Lewis, which Lewis says is good for Physicists and Scientists and bad for Creationists. The image is based off of a quote by Edward R. Harrison, which can be found here.
Artist Morgan Blair is all about bright colors and abstract shapes. Her website is dizzying, but a lot of her pieces intersperse geometric shapes with well-drawn figures, and it is these that are most interesting. See below.
Recoat’s Good Wives And Warriors.
Caitlin Hackett combines beauty with decay in this amazingly illustrated Vulpes Masquerade.
Digital collage by Katty Bouthier that is simple but otherworldly.
A drawing by Chris Scarborough that turns this deer into quite a mound of shapes.
You’ve probably drawn on styrofoam containers before, or written your name on styrofoam cups a million times, but you’ve probably never done anything like Boey has. What’s more: he creates his cups in a wide array of styles; you would swear that a different individual made all of them, but you’d be wrong.
Tattoo-inspired khünbish.
Jury Duty. According to Boey’s quote on Flickr:
“foam cups shrink under pressure, and they become hard like plastic. thanks to Dave S., an oceanographer
from canada, these cups are able to travel deep down into the artic ocean to become 1/2 the cup they used to be.”
And lastly, check out the stippling on this:
fedor emelianenko, a mixed martial arts fighter.
I should make a mention that his journal is also extremely awesome. You can see it here.
These images by Gretchen Bennett, now on display at the Howard House in Seattle through the end of the month, definitely demand a double-take. For starters, ghosts of images are buried deep inside what initially looks like just a swamp of colors, but closer inspection reveals that the swamp is actually composed of Prismacolor colored pencils, making the images all the much more compelling. Colored pencils are already an underplayed medium these days, but to use them in such a manner is pretty much astounding.
Be
Ghost Dog
Bennett also has more installation and street art-oriented works, which you can see on her website.
Yesterday, someone clued me into Broken Picture Telephone, and I think it’s now my new favorite website. Remember playing Telephone as a kid? Remember how convoluted simple ideas got? Now imagine Telephone in visual form. Now imagine Telephone in visual DIGITAL form, and you have Broken Picture Telephone. Nothing short of genius. See an example below that made me literally laugh out loud. Many more gems where this came from. Go sign up and play!
Talk about an epic name for a show! One of my favorite galleries in Portland, Oregon, the Together Gallery, has an opening tonight for a show entitled The Mountains And Hills Will Burst Into Song. Featuring new works and installations by Anja Verdugo, Julianna Swaney, Rebecca Artemisa Urias, and Sarah McNeil, the show will be an all-female showcase of artwork that would feel right at home in a woodsy children’s book. Expect delicately-drawn lines, largely muted colors, and a hefty portion of animal art.
A largely black-and-white drawing by Sarah McNeil (minus the hearty nipple!).
Rebecca Artemis Aurias’ wicked mountain, which she describes on her Flickr account, saying, “traveling with little peb to calm the wicked mountain spirits with the milksweet moths.”
Juliana Swaney’s Foxhat, drawing doesn’t mess around; it tells it like it is. It’s a fox hat.
www.togethergallery.com
ohmycavalier.blogspot.com
www.flickr.com/photos/applecheek/
sarahmcneil.blogspot.com
Count on the Punch Gallery to do something different for fundraising. Instead of taking the traditional route of silent auctions and car washes and the like, the good folks behind the Punch Gallery are doing a “Winner Takes All” fundraiser. What that means: one lucky winner will win the entire October collection of works on display at the gallery. The show starts on First Thursday, aka tonight.
The contest is limited to 1,000 entries, so it’s not impossible to win, and there are three methods of entry. Two cost money. One doesn’t.
You can donate $10 to the gallery online via PayPal to receive an entry. You can stop by the gallery, check out the works, and donate $10 to receive an entry. You can receive one FREE entry by doing an original drawing and mailing it to the good folks of Punch Gallery (see complete details on their website at http://www.punchgallery.org/sweepstakes/#).
One winner will receive thirteen original works, and the prize will be awarded in a random drawing. An approximate value of $7,157.00! Holy shit!
Here are some of the things YOU might be able to win:
Howard Barlow’s From Good Stock features a cute little ol’ bunny rabbit on a rifle stock. How bout that for a great addition to your living room wall?
Continuing on with the Western theme, Justin Colt Beckman’s Untitled (John Wayne) features a digital collage of the artist’s face on a found photo.
Unicörn Fledermäus is a watercolor, pencil, and magic rendition of a fictional animal created by Justin Gibbens.
And sure, all the works are certainly thematically divergent, but they all match very well… making a potentialy great suite of additions to your home, your office, your whatever. Visit their website to find out more!
http://www.punchgallery.org/sweepstakes/#
www.beckman.ws
www.justingibbens.com
Seattle-based artist Ego is one of the most technically-proficient street artists the city has seen as of late.
Nonetheless, one might be able to argue that Ego has defined his style of dark, detailed renderings of skully things and creepers so well that one can kind of expect more or less what to see at one of his solo shows. Not so, kids!
His upcoming solo show at the new Flatcolor Gallery may feature pieces containing similar subject matter — after all, artists draw about what they like — but the style will feature a lighter color palette and an altogether different feel.
It’s guaranteed to be a great show, though; every time I see one of Ego’s pieces in a group show, I pretty much wish all the other pieces in the show would be replaced by his pieces because Ego’s attention to detail is simply astounding (I’d hope so; the dude’s a tattoo artist, after all). But as that fantasy has never become a reality, it’s exciting to see that he’ll be getting a show all to himself! Finally!
Check out the opening reception on October 1st, 2009 from 5:00pm to 9:00pm, or view it for the whole month of October.
Cutesy characters dreamed up by kids from France, Spain, and Germany are on display at the Jardín de la Ciudadela in Pamplona, Spain, right now. Inspired by one of the characters (center), created by Giacomo Nanni, the title of the show is Era La Dentadura De Mi Abuelo or I Was My Granddad’s Denture. The project is an interesting one, in which children write down their dreams and artists illustrate them. Visit their website at elmonstruodecoloresnotieneboca for more information!
