It’s like fries and ketchup.. chips and salsa.. hot wings and ranch.. the design trend of dipping objects in any array of colors makes something good even more tasty! Here are a few examples I dug up this week..
Just imagine wearing that blouse.. wouldn’t you feel like a brush dipped in paint?! Love it. Happy weekend, Artsies! Mr. Forager and I are taking a little road trip over to La La Land for the LA Art Show. So excited and can’t wait to share the adventure with you on Monday!
I’m a little sneaky sometimes. You know, like a mouse. You may have noticed the found gallery page pop up in the top navigation last week.. or maybe you noticed the found logo in the sidebar.. or saw the Facebook & Twitter posts on Sunday. If you haven’t picked up on my not-so-subtle hints, you can find more on found here.
found is an online exhibition gallery featuring curated collections of small works, quarterly, for limited engagements. It’s just another way for me to share artists’ work with you, but in a more focused, specific, special way and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity and promise lots of wonderful artsiness will come to found!
The very first found exhibition will open on Thursday, February 21st! The show, City Mouse | Country Mouse will showcase two Nashville area artists, Christina Baker and Deann Hebert, who, in their respective work, are drawn to very different perspectives of their Tennessee home. The show will be sponsored by the artists’ representing gallery, Gregg Irby Fine Art and a portion of the proceeds will benefit The Nashville Zoo.
Mark your calendars! These two talented artists are creating some beautiful work to share with you!
Just in case you don’t speak text short-hand, 2G2B4G = too good to be forgotten. Which very aptly describes the work of today’s artist, Denver’s Shawn Huckins. The artist’s current series, An American Revolution Revolution combines 18th Century American portraiture with 21st Century lexicons such as tweet and text acronyms, creating diverting and provocative images.
Like the historical portraits he uses in his work, the text slang has become a part of our own period in history. Will we still be using this jargon to communicate in a hundred years? Or will future generations look back and see us as stodgy, stuffy, and hopelessly formal? Hard to believe that we could denigrate any further than we have, but perhaps our ancestors thought they were just as hip and happening as we believe ourselves to be.
My first thought when looking at this series was similarities between traditional portraiture, often created as a remembrance of a certain person for a special occasion, and our modern obsession with texting and tweeting, and the impressions and memories of ourselves we are creating.
I’m not sure I would want to be remembered for my texts. Would you? To see more of Shawn Huckins’ work, please visit his website.
All images are via the artist’s website.
Sometimes, OK if you’re me, often, we fall so in love with a piece of artwork, we want to live in it, breathe it, and yes, WEAR it. The Wear the Artsy series imagines doing just that.. what if I could become my favorite work of art? Today, I’m longing to put on the garb of Featured Artist Christina Baker’s Dinner Mints. Classic, sophisticated, yet laid back yummy.. just like Christina’s painting!
art | Dinner Mints by Christina Baker, acrylic on canvas, 6×6*
necklace | Supernatural Necklace by Lina Lundberg
cuff | Braided Turquoise Leather Cuff by Justlena
sweater | Striped Merino Crewneck Sweater by The Limited
shirt | Faded Chambray Popover by JCrew
skirt | No. 2 Pencil Skirt in Sequins by JCrew
bag | Bag MH 130 by Margarete Hausler
heels | Nalo Heels by Anthropologie
*Dinner Mints is just one of the pieces Christina will be showing in our very first found exhibition! I’ll be giving you the lowdown on the show later this week!
You know the old wives’ tale: oysters are an aphrodisiac. How many single guys have taken a gal out for beer & oysters hoping to make a lil magic happen? If it’s sensual magic you’re hunting, look no further than the work of New Orleans artist Carlos Lopez. His elegant, nearly surreal still lifes of oysters will make your mouth water and pulse quicken before you ever bite into the real thing.
For a New Orleans native, oysters, so abundant in the area seem a natural still life subject, yet there is nothing prosaic about Lopez’s treatment of the common bivalve. These works carry the sensuality of Georgia O’Keeffe, the smooth surrealism of Dali, yet glow with the light and crispness of classical still lifes.
These mollusks seem to take on a life of their own, the work is so full of emotional charge, we can feel the sadness, the joy, the hope or shame the oyster seems to be feeling. Or perhaps we are seeing our own reflection in the pearly surface of its shell.
To see more of Carlos Lopez’s work, please visit the website of his representing gallery, Gallery Orange in New Orleans.
All images via Gallery Orange.
The juxtapositions of uber-traditional garb and the ultra modern in these paintings by Andy Price really caught my eye. See more from this artist in my Artist Watch over on Escape Into Life today!
Andy Price on Escape Into Life
Image via View Art Gallery.
In our current gypsy-like state, Mr. Forager and I try to travel as lightly as possible. But we do acquire things along the way, some we find unnecessary, contributing to a local Goodwill every where we go, but others we hold onto tightly– art and books. Small pieces of our own art enrich each temporary home, while the books we carry with us enrich our minds, spirits, and souls. The work of Southern California artist Lisa Occhipinti centers around books, not just their physical pages but our emotional and spiritual connection to them.
The artist incorporates pages from various tomes in her work, sometimes in a conspicuous way, like the pretty coffee table books we may buy but never really read.. or in a more subtle way, like the self-help books and other guilty pleasures we keep hidden in the nightstand.
Delicate drawings and inky washes call to mind margin notes and doodles peppering well read stories. Almost as if the reader of Occhipinti’s visual story is distracted not because the story doesn’t hold their interest, but they lost in becoming a part of the tale being told.
To see more of Lisa Occhipinti’s work, please visit her website. I chose to focus on her painting work, but you’ll also find wonderful book-y sculptures and photography on her site.
All images are via the artist’s website.
Have you ever thought about how certain fabric patterns remind you of someone? Crazy mod-retro prints make me think of my sister-in-law, who loves all things vintage, while subdued plaids in soft blues and greens make me think of nature-loving Mr. Forager. Seattle artist Jane Richlovsky uses patterned textiles in her work, incorporating them in such a way that the personality of the era shines through.
The artist depicts domestic scenes from the mid-twentieth century, actually painting on found vintagey patterned textiles. The result is a interesting visual style– one in which some details of the scene show depth of space, while others, usually the shapes on which the patterns come through, are flattened as the patterns appear more as cut-outs of the forms rather than strictly conforming to the shape it is covering.
Richlovsky’s work reminds us that not all was as it seemed in the “good ol’ days”.. the flatness of the patterns meet the Norman Rockwellish technicolor scenes of life we remember from movies, yet there is a cynical and almost sinister undercurrent to some of the paintings.
To see more of the work of Jane Richlovsky, please visit her website.
While living in the desert, I’ve noticed that people tend to embrace color in bolder ways than you might expect. I think it’s a side effect of being surrounded by so much beige sand! In today’s Friday Design Finds, I’d like to share with you some examples of the work of Ed & Kate Coleman, an artsy husband & wife team who aren’t shy about using color in their wonderfully textured ceramic creations.
Seriously, wouldn’t coffee be that much more glorious when sipped from one of those mugs? And their wall tiles are perfect for adding color, texture, and some dimension to a boring wall. Want to see more from Ed & Kate Coleman? Check out their website, where you’ll find their complete product line and a listing of galleries who carry their work. There are a bunch– bound to be one near you!
All images are via the Ed & Kate Coleman website.
It was a happy accident that I found out about new Palm Springs contemporary gallery, Stark + Kent . I happened to see Samantha French mention an opening at a gallery in Palm Springs on Facebok just a week after Mr. Forager & I were scheduled to arrive in Southern California. Kismet! Even better, when I checked out S+K’s website, I discovered they were representing another pair of artists previously featured on the blog, Signe & Genna Grushovenko. I knew this would be a gallery to get to know better.
Begun by two friends with a passion for art and a love for artists, Ross Rhodes and Mike Soltis, Stark + Kent seeks to be a place where both the seasoned collector and the art world novice will feel at home and find work to love. The space is filled with work that captures the eye and the imagination, a well edited and tightly curated space boasts a nicely varied collection of work.
Although you won’t find “typical” Palm Springs work here, the connections in the work to Southern California are a bit more subtle. Which is a joy to find in a town with streets named after movie stars and a giant Marilyn Monroe sculpture in the center of town.. *wink*
I do hope if you find yourself in Palm Springs, you’ll stop in at Stark + Kent! But even if you aren’t in SoCal, you can peruse their website, full of fabulous work and more to come, I’m sure!
All images by Artsy Forager.