(9 IMAGES TOTAL)

The Alchemist
“This is based on an image from a book called Alchemy and Mysticism. In the original work — from the 17th century I believe — the man in the foreground isn’t blue, but in the painting I wanted to make him into a Krishna figure or a water being. He’s there to water the trees and put out the fire. The entire image is open to interpretation, but in my mind, the symbol of the tree refers to our own feeling of being grounded — rooted within the body — or of being uprooted — lost in thought or egoistic delusion.”

Shaman

Snake Handler
“Some Southern Baptists use snake handling as part of their religious practice. My family on my mother’s side are Southern Baptists, and I like to work with images that relate to this aspect of my heritage. I also see this image in particular as a symbolic representation of male dominance and/or arrogance. The fact is that we are all female. Males are a mutant version of the female body template.”

Wedding Day
“This reminds me of Crazy Cloud (Ikkyu) who wrote a cycle of poems called “Skeletons” in which the world is populated with living skeletons. It is a profound meditation on impermanence and death. It is also not unlike the many “Death and the Maiden” images that Edvard Munch produced.”

Underwater Ali

Family of Trees

Miss Multiverse
“This painting is based on an Ellis Ruley painting. I was thinking about the Persephone myth as it relates to creativity. So in this case Persephone is a beauty queen with attendants. My reading of the myth: one needs a degree of innocence and childlike wonderment in order to make art that really connects with people and sustains itself.”

Just Between You and Me
“This is a painting of Kevin Richardson embracing a lion. Kevin is a South African animal behaviorist who has been accepted into a lion pride. I got the image as a screen capture from an Associated Press video on line. Coming to terms with our own animal nature — or how we are or are not a part of that nature — is a recurring theme for me.”

Not one of Mir’s works. :)

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Christopher Mir Makes Chicken Scratch Enticing.

Kyle Noble & Jamie Irvine – Collaborative Works (cont’d)

Kyle Noble

Jamie Irvine

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Worldwide Collaborations Between Kyle Noble and Jamie Irvine

Looking Through The Glass

(8 IMAGES TOTAL)

All works are mixed media, created from a combination of acrylic, ink, and gouache on paper — then mounted to wood and resin coated.

Dominance Games

Checkmate

Sacred Geometry

Hidden Places

See Mark Whalen’s 2009 Works

Warped Perspectives

Celebrating Astrology

Handball

(And a bonus reference.)

www.markwhalenart.com

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The Mad Multi-Dimensional Worlds Of Illustrator Mark Whalen

As a band member and the director of the music video, how much of your life would you say is rooted in art and music, respectively? Was this a new type of project for you?

I would say 100% of my life is rooted in art, and that’s the filter I make music through. A bonus of being in a band is that I get to make all types of visual things (live performances, videos, costumes, album artwork) under one umbrella. I’ve done lots of video projects for Family Band but this is the first one explicitly using my drawings, which made it really fun for me.

Was it always decided that the film would largely be in black and white?

Yes. Optical tricks and illusions are so fun in black and white. Also the video has a lo-fi, almost zine-like feeling to it, and I wanted to keep it that way. Once you start messing around with colors, making things look too hi-fi and earnest, the viewer’s expectations shift. I wanted the images dumbed down so that when a cat throws a ball to another cat it’s a big deal. The narrative depended on that simplicity.

Family Band – “Night Song” Music Video
INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW

There are a wide array of images presented, some more abstract and some very discernible and cartoonish. How were the projected drawings chosen, and was there any attempt at a narrative?

I initially thought this video would be all patterns, shapes, and trippy optical effects. But once I started messing around with the drawings projected on to the face there were too many weird and funny possibilities to pass up. The characters started coming out of nowhere and I just embraced it. Little narratives popped up here and there and I fleshed those out without getting tied into a linear storyline.

What was the approach you took to transfer the proportions from the drawing medium to real life? Was there difficulty in having the images line up as desired?

Every day I would work on the drawings, tweaking the shapes and the narratives. After dark we would project the drawings over my face to see how the images were lining up, and which parts of the storyline were the most fun to watch. I focused mostly on the eyes. If the eyes matched up, then just about any character would work, even Garfield or Yoda.

Direction, Art, Performance by Kim Krans
Technical Direction by Jonny Ollsin
Camera by Josh Allen

Below, you can see samples of Kim Krans’ artwork, which features a whole suite of illustrated tarot cards. You can view or purchase more HERE.

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Family Band – Night Song Music Video (w/ Director Kim Krans Interview)

PLEASE HOVER OVER ANY IMAGE TO VIEW IT HI-RES.

One who was looking at your work could easily think that certain sections were tree trunks or cobwebs or any number of other non-abstract things. Are there narratives or subjects to be found in your work, or are they simply geometric or pattern-based?

Yes, there are tree trunks and cobwebs. And they are also geometric and pattern-based. I love the perceived universe as a place where everything follows mathematical structures.

How much of your work is additive versus subtractive?

The drawings are 98% additive. Erasure dulls the lines and mars the paper, so I use it sparingly only to reduce occasional over-brights.

What kind of setting do you work in? I would imagine that work as contrasting and fine as yours would need a setting that would allow you to see well, spend a large amount of time, etc.

There is no art studio, so I work at home where it’s comfortable, chair or couch. On my lap is a pillow and on top of the pillow is a piece of foam-board supporting the drawing. I wear reading glasses and have a lamp nearby. A devoted time commitment is inevitable for these drawings. There is music on the stereo, always.

What is it about black and white and grayscale that most interests you? Do you ever consider working with colored paper or pencil?

Not sure why, but I flourish under the limitation of monochrome. I hope to offer an alternative to the abundance of sharp contrast and unrelenting bold colors that fill our urban situation. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the oomph of Helvetica signs and neon spandex; I just want to have another choice. There are a handful drawings I’ve made using red, gray, and brown paper with various colored pencils, but black paper is the mainstay.

ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

How do you feel about the spreading of your work upon the internet, as it
is obviously of a type which gets somewhat lost in translation?

Sometimes the internet is the only venue available. It’s nice connecting with people who appreciate what I’m up to. Without the internet exposure I wouldn’t have become acquainted with some wonderful Eastern European artists who I feel artistic kinship with.

I would like to talk a bit about Scroll; is that the largest piece you’ve
worked on, and how difficult was it to gain perspective on it?

Scroll was the largest before February, when I began working on Forest, a 30-foot-long drawing that is slowly building. Time makes perspective easier. When I work on a drawing for an extended period I become a lost myopic, so I hide the drawing from view for a day while I’m running errands. When I see it again portions become clear and the drawing tells me what to do next.

ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW
Bette Burgoyne – Forest (progress photo)

Bette Burgoyne – Scroll

Zhang Zeduan – QingMing ShangHe Tu

What led to the decision of using video to document this particular piece?

I wanted to share Scroll with people, and a video on YouTube and Vimeo seemed a good way to do it. No actual videotaping took place. A large .tiff file was made from the drawing at Art & Soul, and it was edited andtransformed into a panning video by 4th Wall Films. There is a lovely panning video of a Chinese landscape painting by Zhang Zeduan you should see.

You gained permission from Animal Collective, Rough Trade Publishing, and Fat Cat Records to use the track in the video; how difficult or involved was that process?

Animal Collective received my email describing what I had in mind for their beautiful languid song “Visiting Friends”. Included was a link to my site. They emailed back, “Looks cool”, and included email addresses in order to get full clearance of “Visiting Friends” from Fat Cat and Rough Trade. It all took about 2-3 weeks.

The work on your website only spans back to 2009. How has your work evolved through the years?

I created sculpture and installation for several years before a series of deaths and heartbreak altered my life course. The early 2000s was a four year period of creating scherenschnitte from black paper. After the 2008 bout with cancer and chemo, I began to create drawings from a place essential, shedding the layers of cleverness that was part of the earlier work.

As an older artist, how do you feel about the Seattle art scene right now — how it has changed, where it is, and where you think it is going?

It is good see more women artists receiving recognition, maybe we’ll achieve balance someday? My favorite thing in the current Seattle art scene is First Thursday Art Schlock.

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Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

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Nimit Malavia Finds Togetherness Through Black And White Linework

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Mark Powell‘s Portraits Heap Age Upon Age

See all posts related to Gallery Hijinks

Says Colosky about his own art:

In my artistic practice I seek beauty in common or industrial materials and processes by altering their standard functions. Drawing on my own family history in the building trades, I delve into the character of materials and building process and then deconstruct them with ideas they would not typically be associated with. I look to take what is familiar and ubiquitous in our lives and show that another dimension of esthetics and thought can be achieved with these materials. I like to set up a polarity of familiarity and unfamiliarity as a way to engage the viewer and allow for a gateway to question what is considered pedestrian and what is considered high art. Ultimately I strive to create a formal language with my work that references my experiences of personal transformation that happened through having belief in the unfamiliar and openness to strange new possibilities.

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Randy Colosky Gives A Pulsating Take On Perspective

(TOP) The Moguls (Stalker) Diptych 24″x40″; (BOTTOM) The Moguls (Stalker) Detail – Watercolor, graphite

View entire Stalker Series On Jacob Van Loon’s Website

The Moguls (Stalker) & Let Alone A Planet (Solaris)

Did you watch the films while creating these pieces?

I had to step back from both films, sort of like stepping back from a large painting after inspecting the surface detail. I came back to both films when I initially received the commission from Mitch/Mondo, but after watching them again, I put them away before I began painting. It took some time for my thoughts to congeal before I was ready to begin translating them onto the panels. It was also to attempt to let my mind naturally recall the colors and forms I recognized in both films, instead of referencing them directly from screencaps. Tarkovsky felt strongly about the use of color in film, and I felt like a direct replication of his choices would be contrived.

On a more technical level, these pieces seem to differ from your other series. What is it about those films that led to the creation of this new style of work?

I’m a new painter, and still in the process of building a technique that coincides with a concept. The fact that The Moguls (Stalker) and Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) have a basis of specificity is where they differ from the rest of my work. I had not previously painted under the direct influence of a single film or artist. I have yet to conclude if it’s coincidental, but my work in the Arbor series (Editor’s Note: see below) is heavily influenced by the Russian Futurists and Constructivists from the earlier 1900s. That basis for aesthetic felt very natural when applied to the work of Tarkovsky.

(LEFT) Nate, 2011; (RIGHT) Anais, 2011 – Watercolor, digital media

View entire Arbor Series On Jacob Van Loon’s Website

Can you tell a little bit more about your technical process with these paintings? They look as though they may have taken many steps over a course of time.

Layering and obliteration is a functional component of the concept in this set. It’s important that some of each step in the process shows through in the final composition, but it tends not to be delineated. I don’t build up volume from a center point and move outwards; the distribution of progress is staggered and dynamic. In these paintings, there’s several layers of graphite between coats of primer, and the markmaking muddies the white of the primer. I also let the primer gum up a little bit in the open air, and run a dry brush through each layer to give the surface volume. Even before [any] pigment is down, light [hits] the surface of that panel in an active way, over a whitewashed, sanded panel. Building color is something I still experiment with in each new painting.

As you mentioned, your color choices are somewhat representative of those used in Tarkovsky’s films. What are they psychologies in Stalker and Solaris that you were most interested in capturing?

Both films center around protagonists who are fundamentally terrified of knowing themselves. The loose connection is that both characters enter a place with varying levels of indiscernible characteristics. As they attempt to define the parameters of these worlds, you begin to realize that they are attempting to define themselves. The guarded journey becomes an uncontrollable plummet into the depths of their own consciousness.

There were small handfuls of major influential aspects from both films. The important characteristic of Stalker is that none of the main characters had actual names. They functioned as misfiring hemispheres, who, on some loose mechanical cycle, tried to pull together and gain an understanding of The Zone (Editor’s Note: The Zone is a fantastical place within Stalker, in which a person’s innermost desires are rumored to be fulfilled). The film switches from sepia to full color, which gave Tarkovsky’s worlds great impact. In Solaris, Henri Burton appears before a committee and, with great detail, recollects his experience with the invasive, organic surface of the planet. The tension built during that monologue still resonates with me.

Superimposing uncharacteristically bright, organic colors on top of and underneath more subdued blues and browns in The Moguls (Stalker) seemed to be the best way to address that aesthetic distinction in Stalker. Living and dying tissue was the main inspiration behind the colors in Let Alone A Planet (Solaris), outside of the imagery Tarkovsky designed when showing the surface of the planet in Solaris.

(TOP) Montage of clips from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker; (BOTTOM) Theatrical trailer for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris

(TOP) Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) Diptych – 24″x40″; (BOTTOM) Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) Detail – Watercolor, graphite

View Entire Solaris Series On Jacob Van Loon’s Website

Are the geometric arrangements you’ve chosen also related to the mood and psychologies of the films? If so, how? If not, what informed them?

The geometric motif was established in my work prior to this set of paintings, based on unrelated research. It may go generally unnoticed, but The Moguls (Stalker) and Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) are different from the rest of my work aesthetically, because of how I designed the intersections of detail. I was using a lot of angle and counterweight that I had never used, which, in my mind, emphasized the confrontations offered by either film.

I originally started dealing with this motif based on inspiration garnered from the Russian Avant Garde, and research I had been compiling on the development of commerce in the United States at the turn of the 20th century.

While working, did you attempt to put yourself in the same mental space as that which you gleaned from the films? If so, was there certain music you used or anything that otherwise aided the process?

I think removing myself from the films before painting was sort of like muscle memory; I was able to act quickly on impulses and the process seemed automatic, after some initial hurdles. I listen to a lot of Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Library Tapes, and Max Richter while painting. I find William Basinski’s approach to sound relatable, so it enforces my train of thought about painting in some ways.

(LEFT) Preliminary sketch for The Moguls (Stalker); (RIGHT) Preliminary sketch for Let Alone A Planet (Solaris)

See all artists influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky

Flora/Fauna

“The training I received as as an illustrator emphasized the importance of aesthetic versatility. The way something is illustrated can have a big impact on the narrative. A lot of my technical work focuses on the tangibility of aesthetic. In the case of Flora/Fauna, it also touches on interchangeability. I built associations between different types of organic forms. Both panels have a distinct look. The text may point the view in a particular direction with the piece, but while designing the final images, I switched the words between each panel a lot. I used a variety of items to influence the structures — chard, tobacco plants, cabbage, cured meat, the human figure, and in more extreme cases, police investigation photos taken from scenes where gun-related suicides had occurred. The colors chosen in the print runs were meant to exploit the forms, not to lead the viewer to an unwavering conclusion about the scale or context of the set.” – Jacob Van Loon

(TOP) Roman Ring, an earlier rendition of the Flora/Fauna Series; (BOTTOM) Roman Ring Detail

Triptych

(TOP) Triptych; (RIGHT) Triptych Detail – Watercolor, acrylic, graphite

“I attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, which is about seventy miles west of Chicago. Several local highways intersect within the town, but the core of the university is based off Route 38 — part of what is known nationally as the Lincoln Highway. That road was the first national highway that existed in a more finished (paved) state, running from New York to California. Eventually, I toured a small section of the road, all the way out to central Iowa. Small towns like DeKalb abbreviate the highway every so often, representing a paradox between distinction and anonymity, [as they are] stuck at an uncomfortable place in history, stifled by the current economic climate. The idea of the Lincoln Highway was birthed from Midwestern minds, and it planted the seed for greater structures of commerce. Starting in 2010, I started to address a range a stories and research of the highway in my work.”
– Jacob Van Loon

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www.jvlendnote.com + www.jacobvanloon.com

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Jacob Van Loon Artist Interview : Layering Upon A Tangible Aesthetic

Bumblebee

The appearance of materials such as stencils, spraypaint, and unconventional installation materials makes sense when one considers the curator of the show is none other than Los Angeles street artist Bumblebee — an individual that really runs with his moniker to create miniature beehives and models that he attaches to abandoned phone booths. In this group show, he pulls his work off the street and into a gallery setting. What is perhaps most impressive about the curation of this show is that beneath its sophisticated facade, each and every artist knows how to get down to the nitty-gritty and how to take his or her works to the street.

Perhaps this quote can serve as a fitting summary for this show:

“There are many artists in the urban / street art movement. For this show, each artist was selected based on his or her unique voice and ability to push the boundaries of the genre, while remaining true to its origins.” - Bumblebee

Hyuro

Valencia by way of Buenos Aires artist Hyuro makes drawings which blur the lines of where individuals begin and end. A heavy aspect of this all-in-oneness lays focus on hair, which she textures delicately and with great dimensional purpose. Expect a post soon about her street art brilliance.

Penny

In the piece below, Departure of the Witches, London’s Penny uses overlays an impressive number of hand-cut stencils atop one another and spraypaints them onto a sheet of 32 $1 bills. This combination of mediums and the artistic style Penny employs seem to bring museum-quality renderings in touch with the daily grind.

Klone

Though they are fully-formed ideas, Klone‘s watercolor pieces leave one with the sense that they have a lingering, and often difficult-to-read, spirit behind them. The Ukranian artist now lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Stinkfish

In a style reminiscent of Day Of The Dead folk art, but with a more refined and updated quality, Bogotá artist Stinkfish will put ink on any human face that magazines and vinyl covers deem fitting of such a treatment. When paired with covers of Playboy and old images of Gwen Stefani, the ornamental opulence is certainly welcome.

Moneyless

Using graphic acrylic chalk and ink on paper, Milan’s Moneyless has created a series of symmetrical geometries which have qualities so delicate some lines are barely perceptible upon first glance. This combination of textbook-illustration clarity and acrylic chalk graininess are what truly gives these pieces worth — a combination of stylistic and textural decisions that would be otherwise lost in a more digital or less dynamic realm.

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My Turn At Carmichael Gallery: A Group Show With A Street Art Lean (Curated By Bumblebee)