Joe Vollan

I feel like Joe Vollan’s work is a love-it or hate-it affair. But if you’re feeling the well-rendered, cutesy details of his pieces, chances are you’ll be feeling them a lot. Below, a couple pieces that serve as throwbacks to another time, complete with costumed, skeletal figures.

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Jose Rodriguez III

I don’t know much about this artist (and the internet is a bit confused as well), but if these geometrically-fragmented samples are any indication of what to expect, it should be a pretty rad show.

I really like what Brooklyn artist Mark Dean Veca is doing with himself. He takes poppy street art characters and combines them with intricate patterns and ornamentation to create some large, pretty raw illustrations that kind of make it feel like you’re residing within someone’s innards.

Beyond that even, though, he has some pretty creative installation works under his belt, and his ability to transform space into an unreal cartoon domain is commendable.

Sign me up for this show! Together Gallery’s offering for the Last Thursday’s art walk on Alberta tonight has an opening running from 5:00pm to 10:00pm. What is it? Nothing short of FANTASTIC. Including musical performances by BRAINSTORM and ASTROLOGY as well.

hannah stouffer

An L.A.-based artist who explores themes that are much larger than ourselves and capture, in one fell swoop, the darkest and brightest themes in existence (they’re almost metal in that way). Don’t miss these exploding rainbows of creatures and form!!

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jay howell

Howell and Stouffer might share similar color palettes, but their works could not be further apart. Howell’s light-hearted illustrations waver between Muppet-like blobs and newspaper comic strip residents. Also: the release of the IDEA BOARD 2 limited edition skateboard, which Howell contributed art for.

Let me just start off by saying.
I LOVE SKINNER.

He’s one of my favorite artists, as evidenced by my bio. Pretty much infallible evidence.

Anyway, the title of this post pretty much leaves very little to be expressed here other than what can be shown in the photos below. Skinner will eat you up. Skinner will blow your mind. Skinner will burn patterns into your retina. Skinner, Skinner, Skinner, Skinner, and even better to see Skinner at a gallery as awesome as White Walls. This Fear You May Know opens Saturday, August 14th, 2010, from 7:00pm to 11:00pm, and runs through September 4th, 2010.

Yes, I say! Yes!

It’s clear from her paintings that Gala Bent has a keen eye for detail, but a closer look into the writings on her blog reveals an equally impressive and inquisitive mind. Gala provides her audience an intimate and intriguing view into her methods and inspirations, and her already striking paintings are made even more forceful for the added context. Gala described this series, “Overgrown,” with her usual eloquence:

“Well, my main meditation when making these pieces was the tension between boundaries that we make and use as humans–classification, categorization–and the things that challenge those stalwart convictions or structures (thus, “Overgrown”). Without being a proper philosopher, they are my own way of thinking about epistemology. The influence of childrens’ books and animators like Hayao Miyazaki are in here as well, probably mostly as a tribute to the role that imagination has in our understanding of the world and its players.”

Painted and illustrator Jen Lobo depicts animals living in a world that is rife with love and beauty. Scientifically accurate drawings displayed with pastel color palettes creates soft environments in which creatures live and play delightfully.

Blake Haygood’s paintings are fields of soft washes strewn with shapes that seem almost ready to coalesce into identifiable objects. Walking the line between the organic and the mechanical, Blake commands our attention by presenting us with subjects that promise to become recognizable if only we stare at them long enough. It’s a bit of a tease, really– us viewers are left fixating at an indistinct horizon that will never quite come into focus, but somehow we’re still satisfied.

By taking illustrations — often portraits — and cushioning them in variously-colored line art, fine artist and designer John Malloy has created a signature style for himself that radiates with energy and contrasts.

Many of his music-related clients include but are not limited to KEXP, Minus The Bear, Paste Magazine, and These United States.