Artists featured in a solo spot on Artsy Forager
Something about this time of year makes long for warm & cozy things. Felt played a big role in the holiday decor I grew up with, so I love seeing so many modern spins on this classic material. Here are a few of my recent felt art finds!
Happy Friday!
Wishing a very happy Thanksgiving to all the US Artsies and a day of blessing to everyone! I am thankful for the inspiration found in the work of so many talented artists, the encouragement of all my artsy readers, and the opportunity to bring these two blessings together each day.
Hope you are all enjoying an abundance of love today!
Image by November Featured Artist, Susan Melrath. See her work on the Artsy Forager Facebook page & her website.
Growing up in the 70’s in a working class family, much of the time we used what we had and lots of imagination in our daily play. My brother & I would regularly create “cars” out of cardboard boxes and I distinctly remember creating an entire make-believe floor plan out of fallen leaves. The work of London based photographer Noemie Goudal reminds me of how easily our imaginations are transported as children.
Goudal’s work recalls the magic of blanket forts and tin can telephones. Taking us back to a time when just a shape or a line sparks our senses to conduct us into a new fantasy world filled with possibility.
The artist uses simple props and imagery to create imaginative installations that seem to capture portals into a completely different world, a world that seems to leak out, blending the imagined with reality in the same magical way we did as children.
To see more of Noemie Goudal’s work, please visit her website. How did your imagination shape your own childhood play?
Completely in awe of these quiet, seemingly simple drawings by Asheville artist Kirsten Stolle. These unassuming little works deal in abstract ways with big issues such as climate change and genetic modification. I’m featuring Kirsten’s work in my Artist Watch over on Escape Into Life today– see it here!
It’s no secret that colors can have an effect on our mood. There are certain shades that just make me happy and artwork that concentrates on the interaction of colors and their properties make my heart sing. Chicago artist Judy Ledgerwood’s work explores the ways in which the placement of color creates graphic interplay and the illusion of light.
Ledgerwood’s large scale works are drenched in saturated color, focusing on simple shapes and patterns. The eye isn’t distracted by detail but can concentrate on the sheer beauty of color and shape.
She uses the placement of color to play with pattern and light. Shadows and movement emerge through the simple interaction of color.
To see more of Judy Ledgerwood’s work, please visit her page on ArtSlant.
Artist found via The Art Cake. All images via ArtSlant.
I’ve always had a fascination with Asian cultures, especially Chinese folklore and familial traditions. Chinese American artist Hung Liu’s work evolves from her background in socialist realism taking traditional “mythic poses” of Chinese propoganda photography and reshaping them into visual stories of feminine strength.
The women in Liu’s paintings are not victims. They are towers of strength, their fortitude existing not in brute force but in quiet dignity.
To see more of Hung Liu’s work, please visit her website, as well as the website of her representing gallery, Diehl Gallery, where I first discovered her work.
All images are via the artist’s representing Jackson Hole, WY gallery, Diehl Gallery.
There is so much cynicism to be had in this world, that sweetness and innocence seem to get lost in the shuffle. What drew me to the work of Scottish artist Catriona Miller is its charming purity.
Her figures gaze coyly to the side, just a hint of a smile on their lips. It’s as if they carry a delicious secret they cannot tell.
Isn’t it interesting how we might often feel sorry for “simple” folks, yet how much more happy might they be than we?
To see more of Catriona Miller’s work, please visit her website.
All images are via the artist’s website.
In the book I’m currently reading, The Opposite of Fate, author Amy Tan writes a great deal about the concept of fate, how much of what happens is in our own control or predetermined or even mere chance? In that same vein, how much control does an artist truly have in the creative process? Yucca Valley, CA artist William Loveless takes his own chances with the action & reaction of his materials in his series of glue paintings, which I first saw ( and fell in love with ) last weekend at The Red Arrow Gallery here in Joshua Tree.
Through this work, Loveless is able to “probe the intersection where the creative act meets the mystery of creation itself. Through experimentation with materials and their various autonomous interactions, I seek an organic empathy with the complex patterns and processes of the physical world.”
Although the primary way in which the materials will react is known, what cannot be foreseen is the unique end result of every interaction. The final result being a record of a unique synergy to be found between the materials in that one moment.
I see these interactions as similar to the way in which we connect with the world around us. Each moment we exist is a unique interchange between other individuals, other creatures, and the world around us.
To see more of William Loveless’s work, please visit his website/blog. If you’re Southern California, you can see his work in Culver City, in the exhibition ELEMENTal at Fresh Paint Art and in Joshua Tree at The Red Arrow Gallery.
All images are via the Fresh Paint Art website.
While most of the time I’m drawn to saturated “happy” color, occasionally my soul calls out for a little moody darkness. So when I laid my eyes upon the work of photographer Sarah Johanna Eick at The Red Arrow Gallery here in Joshua Tree, the quiet power in the work took hold of me and I just had to feature her in my Artist Watch over on Escape Into Life today ( see the EIL post here ).
Sarah Johanna Eick on Escape Into Life
PS- stay tuned for another Red Arrow artist later this week!
Welcome to the new Artsy Forager site! All of the blog’s content was successfully moved yesterday and I’m still working on getting everything set up, so please bear with me as the new site continues to evolve. Big things are planned for the future of Artsy Forager and I’m so glad you’re along for the ride!
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Love & Artsy-ness,
Lesley