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!

San Francisco artist Ehren Elizabeth Reed is a mixed media artist with some serious focus. All of her works feature the same materials — thread and paper (often in the form of altered books) — and the results are nothing short of remarkable. Her books, especially, seem to be three-dimensional mergings of craft and graphic design. Below are two pieces from her Modes Of Discourse series which quite literally reach off the page.

Until May 1st, multi-disciplinary artist Claire Burbridge and paper sculptor Matthew Picton have a really exciting show at Toomey Tourell in San Francisco. Burbridge entombs sculptures in blocks of resin, serving to capture a moment of human life in time. Picton creates his signature paper sculptures of three-dimensional city maps, only to burn them systematically to show the aftermath of destruction. It’s a show that explores humanity and how it deals with change — particularly harsh change. Highly recommended.

Tomorrow’s show at Flatcolor Gallery is going to be ridiculously awesome, so go, go, go, Seattlites! Portland residents Sohaila Adela and Mark Warren Jacques will be invading Seattle with new works galore.

New drawings by Adela, entitled Esoteric, will explore the same themes she’s been exploring in the recent past — mysticism, rituals, femininity.

Jacques’ For this, I would lean into it will showcase his thoughtful explorations of form and color, which are simplistic at first glance but hold minor detail by way of texture and technique. His work will also be exhibited at White Walls in San Francisco, in a group show, starting April 3rd.

Tonight, at the amazing 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco is a live painting and fundraising event to benefit The Luekemia & Lymphoma Society. The event will feature live painting by former REDEFINE interviewee Dave Crosland and is bound to be a socially-responsible (but still fun!) time. Music, art, raffles, drinks. Peep the flyer below!

With his most recent body of work, Adam Friedman combines traditional landforms with some truly interplanetary shit. His mixed media pieces initially come off a little like illustrations in a scientific textbook, but closer inspection reveals worlds where land is replaced by oceans and mountains by lava-like flows. It seems that physics as we know it doesn’t really apply to Friedman’s created worlds.

But let’s sum it all up with a quote Friedman himself uses on the front page of his website; the abstract concepts in this quote absolutely explain what is going on in these works.

“Grateful for our departure? One more expression of human vanity. The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, the (landscape) is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the (land). Let men in their madness blast every city on earth into black rubble and envelop the entire planet in a cloud of lethal gas - the canyons and hills, the springs and rocks will still be here, sunlight will filter through, water will form and warmth shall be upon the land and after sufficient time… things (will) take a different and better course.”

Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire, 1968

Friedman currently has a solo show up at the Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco. Check it out!

There’s only 10 days left to this epic show at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco, but if you haven’t scoped out Philly-based artist AJ Fosik’s new works yet, get over to White Walls right away!!! Fosik offers a brand new rendition of classic wall-mounted animal heads using thin sheets of cut wood, nails, and paint. The show, entitled Aliens In Our Midst, features mythical beasts crafted in a way that makes them reminiscent of ’80s neon color palettes meets Eastern architectural ornamentation. See more of his recent work on his Flickr or MySpace.

www.whitewallssf.com
www.myspace.com/aaaajaaaay
www.flickr.com/photos/36098170@N06/

With a style that embraces creatures as well as tribal influences and sophisticated patterns, Skinner is an artist who truly knows his style, yet never becomes boring. Skinner’s pieces, which feature everything from helmeted guards to reptilian creatures and evil castles with faces, might remind you of a nerd’s favorite fantasy book by description, but that is as far as the comparison goes. His illustrated works do indeed hint at a world of marvel and mystery beyond human eyes, but they do so in a way that is exploding with color, similar to a carefully-controlled psychedelic trip. Things as simple as houses, when turned out by Skinner, become intricate, geometrically-lined portals into starry universes.

On Thursday June 4th, starting at 6:00pm, the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco will house a solo show of Skinner’s works. Entitled Worship Thee Kindly The Dark Hand That Guides Me, the exhibit will run until June 27th and will be Skinner’s first major solo show, believe it or not. It promises to be an EPIC show with lots and lots of titles that are suitable for metal songs. So epic, in fact, that they even use the word epic on the flyer, to describe the gorgeous installations that are bound to happen. Go view them for yourselves.

www.theartofskinner.com
www.111minnagallery.com