Paper Cut Nut

Recently an interest has been sparked to search for paper cut artists. There are so many out there who do bloody amazing things with just paper.
In the same realm of paper cut artists are diorama artists and I am really happy to know that there are people out there who have the patience to make pieces of paper into art without paint, or other additions(ok maybe a little glue...)
Here is a great blog post on flavorwire with 10 fabulus paper cut artists: http://flavorwire.com/229698/10-amazing-cut-paper-diorama-artists#10

Also webdesignerdepot.com has a great list of "100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Cut Art," which is where the above images came from.

Maira Kalman-Illustrator

I was browsing TED talks today at work while I was finishing up marking and getting some things together in my room, and I came across this talk by Maira Kalman. The pictures posted today are her images. Maira Kalman is an Illustrator who works out of the states. She is most known for her illustration work with the New Yorker, the Elements of Style, and for illustrating various children's books. To me she is familiar because on more than one occasion I have considered buying her book "Principles of Uncertainty," which began as a weekly visual column for the online New Yorker. She has a kind of run-on personal style that combines writing with paintings. She tells stories in such a way that makes you wonder if they are real or if they are all made up, or only party based on something true and silly and maybe wonderful or maybe just ordinary. She tells her stories with colour and writing that makes me believe that it is at least a little bit wonderful, just because it's coming from a her very unique perspective.

Her conceptualizations and story telling are the kind that I want to do, if I could only figure out what stories I want to describe. The paintings themselves have a sort of modern Chagall-meets-Matisse-combined-with-German-expressionists-and-hand-written text feel to them. She has recently been working on another visual column about Democracy called the Pursuit of happiness through the New Yorker, which has also been published into a book.

Check out her New Yorker Blog/Column here: www.kalman.blogs.nytimes.com

The ted Talks video with her talking about her work is here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/maira_kalman_the_illustrated_woman.html


I kind of want to be her when I grow up, or at least maybe have her career.

No Plastic Seeves

I had a welcome break from my day job today (one of the absolutely maravalous things about not having a full time contract), and I began researching artist promo mailers. I came across the website NoPlasticSleeves, which is a site devoted to artist promotional materials. It is mainly photographer and designer based, however includes some great visuals and ideas that is presented in a much more appealing format than many other sites that will pop up if you do a search for such a topic.

They featured the artist Jesus Galiana's promo piece: Here is screen shot of part of his image.

He is an illustrator and hand typographer based out of Madrid. He has some really great hand-done typography and some pen work that makes me happy.
Check him out here:
http://j-galiana.com/tag/pen-drawing/

Lynda Barry's "What it is"

I spent a healthy amount of time at the library today, and found Lynda Barry's Graphic Novel/sketchbook diary titled "What it is." It is a lovely compilation of self-directed visual exercises into an exploration of images, making things, creating, and attempting to explain some of the reason behind art as a stream of consciousness. Lynda Barry is a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher, known for various comic book series, books, and particularly her comic strip “Ernie Pook's Comeek.” Her book reminds me just a little of the recently published Kal Barteski book, "Love Life." Lynda says that much of what is in the book are exercises she uses with her students to get ideas flowing and the mind engaged in making something it doesn't have to think about. Based heavily in a combination of drawings, writing, and collage each page is full of something-sometimes silly images, sometimes ominous, sometimes endearing, and sometimes with dream-like qualities.
Drawn and Quarterly, the publisher of the book, describes it as follows:

"What It Is” is based on “Writing the Unthinkable” which is based on a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or remember. Lynda explores the depths of the inner and outer realms of creation and imagination, where play can be serious, monsters have purpose, and not knowing is an answer unto itself."

Mixed in between the pages of artistic Inquisitions are pages devoted to telling Lynda Barry's story of what art means to her. She tells her own story of growing up, creating, and what it meant for her to create and how that changed as she got older. These sections are told in graphic novel form, but less confined than most, with more of a sketchbook feel to them.
Most pages have yellow legal loose leaf hidden in the background, and I would have loved to have seen the original pages-would love to touch them, and feel the textures of the papers and fabrics that had been glued down to complete each collage page.

I recommend this book for anyone who likes to create, and who sometimes feels stuck, because this book will help to inspire you a little(at least it did for me). Or, even if you don't feel stuck, check it out anyways. I find myself not satisfied with only viewing it at the library, and may have to order it for myself.

Here is an amazon link to it: http://www.amazon.ca/What-Lynda-Barry/dp/1897299354/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277768900&sr=8-1#noop

Meathaus-Website

I Came across the website Meathaus, and like the selection of work I see so far. The Meathaus website describes itself as:
"A loosely defined collective of friends and associates contributing to irregular comics and art anthologies and an art-blog-website with a special emphasis on drawing, sketchbooks and comics."
Naturally this would be something that would interest me. There are interesting postings on artists, their work and selections ranging from art, animation, comics, photography, design, and other categories. There is a particular flavour to the selections. If it were music I would define it as indie, but it is art...so I'm not sure what word comes to mind-perhaps part of the appeal and what makes it feel fresh to me is the drawings are more masculine(which is a change from much of the work I come across on Etsy and many other design/decor blogs). Check it our for yourselves and let me know what you think of it.
http://meathaus.com/
Screen shot from the meathaus website.

Dong jun Lee-Illustrator and Designer

I came across the design and illustration artist Dong jun Lee who is from Korea, and thought that he has an interesting style. His illustrations are heavily line based with subtle colour schemes. The colours and some of the flow of lines actually feel feminine to me, but the drawings themselves are not, which is a nice contradiction. There is a nice flow of line and an assymetrical balance that carries each drawing well. The white backgrounds and use of white throughout the illustrations make them strong and clean looking. He has illustration, sketch, and design categories, but I found myself more intrigued with his illustrations. In a few pieces, something about the flow of lines feels faintly reminiscent to some aboriginal paintings, though I am doubtful that that was intentional.
Take a look at his work if you're interested, screen shots shown above were taken from his website:
http://dongjunlee.com/home.html

I don't know much about the artist himself, but he was a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and currently resides in Korea.

Julie Murphy-Artist, illustrator

I came accross the website of an artist named Julie Murphy.
She has a lot of illustrations that look like a peak into her sketchbook. I enjoy some of the qualities in her her work-the strange animal drawings, human/animal morphs, and the colour and ink layers. I appreciate when things aren't precise, but they still work that way. I especially like the one title "Lello." The images are so strange, there is a lot hidden inside of this piece, and if you look closely, you realize that it was drawn on a subject divider.
http://www.juliemurphy.info/ Screen shots were taken from her site.

Henrique Oliveira-Artist

I came accross these photos of an artist named Henrique Oliveira. His work is stunning. He is a Brazilian artist who takes discarded, decaying fences that are commonplace in Sao Paulo, and puts them together in the form of abstract, three dimentional works. Apparently the colours found in his peices are original colours with how he found the wood. They remind me slightly of some kind of combination of Richard Serra and John Chamberlain in the sense that his work is monumental in size, colourful, abstract and made of materials that were once something else. A much more natural form than either of those two artists, and clearly very different and distinct from them, but somehow they come to mind when looking at pictures of his work.
This site link to Totonko: filtro de diseno is in Spanish(but there is an English "swtich") and the pictures are arranged well, which is where I stole the above images from.
http://totonko.com/2009/03/tapumes-henrique-oliveira/comment-page-1/#comment-6302
Also here is Oliveira's webpage:
http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/tridimensionais.html
He also paints, but in my opinion, his three dimentional work is far greater than his paintings.
I wish I could see it in person!

Jodi Hoover- Artist/Ilustrator

I found this site for an artist/illustrator named Jodi Hoover. She doesn't have an enormous amount of pictures of her work posted, but what is posted has really lovely qualities, characters and colours. Here are a couple of screen shots from her site which I also quite like the look of. The layout itself is very straight forward. It is very accessible with no need at all to scroll down (which is especially nice, given my small macbook screen size.)
http://www.jodihoover.com/
and she is also on etsy(but when I went to her shop, she was all sold out...)
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5376389

Art/Craft/Vintage/Homemade Goods!

The Winnipeg Etsy Street Team is hosting an Etsy Goods sale!

Where: The Costume Museum of Canada. Located at 109 Pacific Ave, in Winnipeg.
When: Wednesday, July 15th. 6-8 PM.

Come check it out, there are some awesome sellers/crafters/artists(myself included)...