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Now here's a woman after my own heart.

I was poking around for images to use in my next cross-stitch piece, and I had google image searched for "explosion". (Now you know the secret to my creative genius, it's called Google Image Search) And I came across this piece, which isn't really explained, so I'm not sure if it's a painting or what.

But I found her site, katepemberton.com, and just loved what I saw. Lots of her works are cross-stitch pieces, using old computer technology from the long long ago. It's all about binary, pixels, grids - early computer images that I can just barely remember. I usually like art that is more elaborate, and the more time and effort put in, the more I fall in love with it. So I admit that her aesthetic is a departure for me. But there's a perfect marriage of style and imagery, and she makes the simplicity work in her favor. Plus, the humor and craft-geek thing just make me feel all fuzzy inside.

Some of the multiples pieces I'm not as wild about, although they are quite clever. And kudos to her for finding out a way to make it all marketable. This is something I've been struggling with, the fact that my pieces are so much more precious to me than to anybody else, that selling them seems impossible.

Labels: artistsiheart, fiber

It's actually kind of odd that it took four editions to get to a female artist. I'm usually much more drawn to them, as I have lots of feminine elements in my own work. Guess I just wasn't feeling inspired until I saw this piece about Ann Hamilton on art:21, a really great PBS series about artists. Ann has a background in sculpture and textiles, two things very near and dear to my heart right now. Unfortunately, there's just not very many good images of her work online.






One of my favorite pieces is called "toothpick suit", which is a man's thrift store suit covered in toothpicks, painted black except for the tip. She wore it for an exhibition, and was photographed in it. I love the weirdness and humor of it.

She's also done some work that involves trading functions of different sense organs in the body. For example, she's found a way to make a pinhole camera out of her mouth, and takes photos of her subjects by standing in front of them with her mouth open for the proper number of seconds to get the right exposure. The resulting photos are slightly blurry, but recognizable, and the shape of the mouth opening creates an eye-like shape in the final print.



What I love most is how process-oriented her pieces are, and the wide range of forms they take. I've found, for myself, that I just want to try everything, in all disciplines. Often they blend and influence each other, giving me ideas for more creative and interesting ways of working in the future. What I find difficult about the art world is that galleries want to see a cohesive body of work, where all the things you make are similar to each other, and that's just not how I roll. So it's edifying to see someone working this same way and finding success.


For more, you can hear an interview with her at Studio 360

Labels: artistsiheart, fiber

Dan Funderburgh is maybe more a designer/illustrator than an artist, but I always enjoy people who blur that line. His work is really awesome, creating intricate patterns out of traditional floral and geometric elements, and also modern and unusual objects like bikes, crabs, guns, and camouflage. His attention to detail is exquisite, and the combinations are funny and surprising. Just the kind of thing that's up my alley. Appropriately, "fun" is right there in his name!

He also has an impressive client list of skateboarding and underground culture institutions (and here comes the name-dropping part..), including Swindle Magazine (the publication of Shepard Fairey of Obey Giant fame), Zoo York, 5 Boro NYC, and ECKO unlimited. I can only hope to have a client list like that someday...

Labels: artistsiheart, fiber

My favorite art is the kind that makes me laugh, and Arthur Ganson's work is strange, surprising, and funny. After a meeting at MIT yesterday, I met up with my friend Jon and we checked out the MIT Museum. I got confused and thought it was going to be MIT's art museum, which is actually something totally different.

The main exhibit was about artificial intelligence, of limited interest to me, except for a movie featuring Alan Alda and a robotic soccer game. But in the next room, there were at least 15 or more of these precise, delicate sculptures with foot pedals next to them. And when you step on the pedal, they spring into motion, although with some of them, you don't really notice what the motion actually is at first.

There was a tiny old fashioned chair bounding across a miniature persian rug, as if in a low-gravity environment, and occasionally bouncing off a small toy cat. There was a ball-bearing chain being extruded from a small pipe, and writhing around quite viscerally. And a small wishbone walking across a platform, seemingly pulling (but actually being pushed by) a large metal contraption of gears. As it marches slowly to the end of the platform, you wonder if you should turn it off because it looks like the whole thing is going to fall off and someone from the gallery staff is going to come yell at you. But just at the very last moment, the end of the platform that the objects are sitting on begins to rotate, very slowly, and turns the little wishbone around and sends it back the way it came.


Check out the videos and still shots on his website.

Labels: artistsiheart

In the interest of educating myself, I'm going to make a feeble attempt at finding other artists working in similar areas, or just work that I really like. The first person someone that one of my neighbors introduced me to, Kenn Speiser. He lives in Providence and he uses lots of mundane objects and construction items in his work. I especially love the Department of Transportation piece (pictured at left). From his website:

"In the words of Bruce Helander, former editor and publisher of Art Express Magazine and frequent contributor of collages to The New Yorker, Kenn has "the intuitive gift that all conductors of visual poetry must have -- to keep dissimilar parts spinning at the same time, and to fine tune them into an aesthetic balancing act with a provacative twist." It's no surprise that large corporations, small businesses and public institutions have found Kenn's vision appropriate for their site-specific projects. "

He also has a security envelope project, although he actually calls them "safety envelopes". There are SO many different patterns, broken down into categories. There are specimens I've never even seen before, and colors too.

The site is also educational, for any envelope history buffs (I know you're out there...):

"The earliest example I have of an inside security tint is an envelope used at the White House during Woodrow Wilson's administration. The inside tint was used to insure that no one read the contents of the letter and Wilson used window envelopes at the time to save on readdressing time given the quantity of correspondence his administration produced."

Labels: artistsiheart, paper