artist 26

Jennifer Maestre

Sculpture artist extraordinaire! This chick's work is so cool, mostly because she uses my favorite media (colored pencil) in a way I could only dream of! Check out this excerpt from her artist's statement:

"My sculptures were originally inspired by the form and function of the sea urchin. The spines of the urchin, so dangerous yet beautiful, serve as an explicit warning against contact. The alluring texture of the spines draws the touch in spite of the possible consequences. The tension unveiled, we feel push and pull, desire and repulsion. The sections of pencils present aspects of sharp and smooth for two very different textural and aesthetic experiences. Paradox and surprise are integral in my choice of materials. Quantities of industrially manufactured objects are used to create flexible forms reminiscent of the organic shapes of animals and nature. Pencils are common objects, here, these anonymous objects become the structure. There is true a fragility to the sometimes brutal aspect of the sculptures, vulnerability that is belied by the fearsome texture. 

To make the pencil sculptures, I take hundreds of pencils, cut them into 1-inch sections, drill a hole in each section (to turn them into beads), sharpen them all and sew them together. The beading technique I rely on most is peyote stitch."

Oh, and for those of us (like me) who don't know what that is,  "The peyote stitch, also known as the gourd stitch, is an off-loom bead weaving technique. Peyote stitch may be worked with either an even or an odd number of beads per row. Both even and odd count peyote pieces can be woven as flat strips, in a flat round shape, or as a tube."

Check out her totally cool sculptures!

http://www.jennifermaestre.com/index.php

artist 25: the commercial artist

Marion Bolognesi:

So I firmly believe that the purpose of art is the process of creation.  Putting your dreams on paper (or canvas or plaster or clay or wood... you get the point) for the world to see, in effect putting your life on the line to show off your work... Taking the risks that might mean rejection to grow and learn and show your innermost thought. (ok dramatic but i think you get the idea)

Marion Bolognesi's work is.... not like that.  Now don't get me wrong, it is beautiful.  But her work is highly commercialized, made for the purposes of selling a product rather than conveying a message, the process doesn't seem to be as important, there isn't much to interpret, and I don't feel anything when I look at her work.

Marion Bolognesi lives and works in New york City where she splits her time between accessories design and her personal passion for expressive, illustrative watercolor painting. She received a BFA with a focus in Illustration from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston in 2003 and has exhibited her paintings and work around the globe.  No small accomplishment indeed, regardless of how I feel about her work personally.  Besides, she is from New York City, where all the great modern artists come from.  Her art has been used in magazines and advertisements, and they are really quite beautiful and distinct... if not a little creepy:)

http://www.marion-b.com/

artist 24

Holton Rower

Holton Rower was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, 1962.   He attended The Putney School, and currently lives in Brooklyn Heights.  He is an active artist in New York (of course, New York.  It's always New York...) and his studio located in Lower Manhattan.  Rower has done a number of exciting projects, paintings, and sculptures.  His sculpture follows a more simple style, with a focus on economy and emphasis on line and pattern.  For example, he has many sculptural pieces focusing on locks, while another series is about books pasted together in interesting and simple shapes.  His "pour" paintings, however, I would consider the crown jewel of his career.  I discovered this video while searching diligently for new artists to explore and learn from:

Without getting overly excited, is that not the COOLEST thing ever!?  I am not sure how Rower came up with this idea for a project but I love everything about it.  I love how the colors move, I love how each person is allowed to become a part of the process, and I love the end result.  Here are a few more examples of tall paintings by Holton Rower.

http://holtonrower.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6egUsZvWu4

artist 23

Jane Frank

Abstract expressionist, trained in commercial arts, mixed media goddess, and mom.

Jane Frank, born in 1918, died in 1986, was a pupil of Hans Hofmann. Her work can be categorized stylistically as abstract expressionist, but on ewho draws primary inspiration from the natural world, particularly landscape, or landscape “as metaphor”, as she once explained. Her extensive schooling includes attendance at Park School, the Maryland Institute of Arts and Sciences (now MICA), New York's Parsons School of Design, and the New Theater School in New York. She then began seriously painting in 1940, but having a background entirely in commercial art, she had to work hard to seriously change her approach to painting. She studied the art and history of painting extensively, in order to learn all that she could about the heart and soul of art. (Hmmm, maybe art history really was important....)

From there she began her extensive career. Jane experimented with many different styles and media, which ranged from children's books, to three-dimensional paintings, to abstract expressionism, to sculpture. A very interesting turn in her career were her “aerial” landscapes, done in mixed media on canvas, in she meant to convey a landscape from above abstractly.

I find her versatility inspiring, and since I have been on an abstract expressionism kick, I figured she should be included too. Jane was a part of the abstract expressionism movement in America that started post-WWII with artists such as Jackson Pollock, (who seems to be the inspiration for almost every artist in this movement who followed in his footsteps). It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.

On the quality of interiority in her works: "It is also an attempt to penetrate the surface of an object, presenting not only the outside but what occurs within - the essence or core." -Jane Frank

numero 22

KNOX MARTIN

(aka, the coolest name i've ever heard of!)

Knox (such a cool name) was born in 1923. He attended the Art Students League of New York. (Why do most great artists seem to come out of New York!?) Since then he has taught at several prestigious schools including Yale Graduate School of the Arts, the New York University, and even the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy.

Knox Martin is best known for his repertory of signs and symbols that allude to nature and, in particular, to the female form. Flatly and freely painted in brilliant colors, his works have often been executed on a grand scale, as in the outdoor wall painting, the twelve-story mural Venus, done in 1970. He mostly creates painting, sculpture and wall paintings using media such as acrylic, collage, fresco, ink drawing, mixed-media and oil.

"Art is at its cutting edge out of a specific lineage - the creation of reality. The subject matter of what I do, is creation." - Knox Martin (1999)

This quote about Knox Martin's work I thought was very insightful:  

"Beauty is fury, color is God!"  - J. Krishnamurti

Knox is now almost 90 years old, which to me shows that filling your life with something like beauty and color can fuel a passion for life that never seems to run out:)

http://knoxmartin.com/index.html

artist "my age" (that's 21 for those of you who are not Jen Kapp)

Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan was born in 1922 and passed away in 2008.  She was an abstract expressionist heavily influenced by Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Elaine de Kooning.  Grace worked fervantly to establish her own style and break new grounds in her art, but she never broke entirely with the figurative tradition. Determined to stake out her own artistic ground, she turned outward from the interior world sanctified by the Abstract Expressionists and embraced the visual swirl of contemporary American life.

“Her art was marked by a willingness to employ a variety of styles in a modernist idiom, to go back and forth from art-historical references to pop-culture references to autobiographical material,” said Robert Saltonstall Mattison, the author of “Grace Hartigan: A Painter’s World” (1990).

I thought this little tidbit from her obituary was an interesting insight to the late artist's character. "Grace Hartigan grew up in rural New Jersey, the oldest of four children. Unable to afford college, she married early and, in a flight of romantic fancy, she and her husband, Bob Jachens, struck out for Alaska to live as pioneers. They made it no farther than California, where, with her husband’s encouragement, she took up painting."  This seems to be an accurate picture of our modern day artist, with her whims and fancies, and did I mention ADD?  

“I didn’t choose painting,” she later told an interviewer. “It chose me. I didn’t have any talent. I just had genius.” .....OK Grace.  A little bit egotistical, but we feel you girl.  

Another quote I found interesting from Grace:  “Pop Art is not painting because painting must have content and emotion,” she said in the 1960’s.  I am not so sure I agree with her on this quote, because I believe that art is (for the most part) in the eye of the beholder.  But she was certainly a bold lady, opinionated and strong, important qualities for someone trying to put their own stamp of beauty on this world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/arts/design/18hartigan.html

artist 20

first of all, i think it is worth mentioning in a blog about art that last night was a night to celebrate art as i enjoyed thoroughly the kin concert in vienna.  seriously...... you can't even begin to understand how incredible they are unless you see them live.

there, i've said my bit and i rest my peace.

Helen Frankenthaler


Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s.  Her major influencers were Jackson Pollock and Hans Hoffman.  (love Pollock, don't so much love Hoffman)  


Now, I know little of abstract expressionism painting.... but since i've recently found a new obsession in finger painting, I thought it deserved a little more research.  I still like my coffee idea, but i'm thinking now...... what if I added an element of both ideas together?  like, a patchwork of color and beauty, to convey emotion and feeling, with my coffee portraits on top.  In my head it seems like it could work.  I do very much like Helen's work too.  Especially after i found this quote by her:


"What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?" ~Helen Frankenthaler


Helen was very inventive, and invented the "soak-stain" technique, in which she poured turpentine-thinned paint onto canvas, producing luminous color washes that appeared to merge with the canvas and deny any hint of three-dimensional illusionism. Her breakthrough gave rise to the movement promoted by the influential art critic Clement Greenberg as the "next big thing" in American art: Color Field painting, marked by airy compositions that celebrated the joys of pure color and gave an entirely new look and feel to the surface of the canvas.

She recently died last year, very sad.  However, her paintings will forever be her legacy, and cause us to remember her.

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-frankenthaler-helen.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Frankenthaler

artist 19

P. Buckley Moss

This lovely lady artist has been around for a while.  She is one of America's most prized living artists. An alumna of New York's prestigious Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Pat Moss is a formally educated and accomplished artist, highly regarded by academics and collectors alike. Her art is represented in over 200 galleries worldwide.

Having achieved success, she devotes a great deal of her time and effort to helping others. Donations of P. Buckley Moss art have raised over four million dollars for worthy charities. The P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children's Education is devoted to promoting the use of art in the classroom, especially as a means to teach children with learning differences.

Moss was born in 1933 in New York City.  She had a difficult time in school as a child due to her struggles with dyslexia.  (I find most brilliant artists to have a struggle like that, either ADD or dyslexia or bipolar disorder... the most incredible artists need not look for inspiration any further than their own struggle)  

In 1951 she received a scholarship to New York's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.  She began her career from there, quickly discovering her own unique style, and her fame took off quickly after she graduated.  

In 1989 the P. Buckley Moss Museum opened in Waynesboro, Virginia. Its stated purpose is to permanently record and illuminate the Moss phenomenon through educational exhibitions, lectures, permanent collections and archival files.

However, one of her greatest achievements has been in the world of charity.  In 1995 the P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children's Education was formed to help children with learning disabilities to succeed in school and in life. The Foundation encourages the use of the visual and performing arts in all educational programs, but especially those involving children who learn differently.  Moss has used her own talents and her own struggles to help people for a very long time... an admirable ambition.  

http://www.pbuckleymoss.com/about.html

artist 18: courtesy of prof skees...

chuck close


THIS GUY IS AWESOME!


end of blog.






......just kidding.  chuck close was born in 1940.  he specializes in huge gigantic massive portraits, and paints with a photorealistic style.  a lot of his portraits are of family and friends, and sometimes other artists too.  close is a great admirer of the arts as well as pursuing his own art and has been following and drawing inspiration from other artsts since he was small.  for  example, once when he was only eleven his mother took him to an art museum where he had an encounter with jackson pollock.  about the experience he said this:

"I went to the Seattle Art Museum with my mother for the first time when I was 11. I saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. I was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far removed from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I’ve been chasing that experience ever since."

In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts.

another thing that i found to be very interesting about chuck close is that he suffers from prosopagnosia, or face blindness.  i had never even heard of such a thing before, but essentially it is the inability to recognize faces.  when he paints portraits, it helps close to remember faces better, which i probably why so many of his works are of close friends and family.  close said about this subject:  

"I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces. That occurred to me twenty years after the fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had urgency for me. I began to realize that it has sustained me for so long because I have difficulty in recognizing faces."

like i said.  SUCH a cool guy.  unfortunately, he suffered a seizure in 1988 that left him paralyzed from the neck down.  this hasn't stopped close from still being actively involved in the art world however.  he is definitely going to make my top ten artists for closer inspection;)

http://www.chuckclose.org/#/official-gallery

artist 17

akiane kramarik

child prodigy, aritist extraodinaire.

i can't believe i didn't think to write a blog about her till now, after all, i've been following the young artist's career since i was about ten.  she made me want to paint more than anything, and she made me want to quit art.  her paintings make me want to cry, laugh, and throw up all at the same time.  but i guess you can't touch a prodigy.

akiane has been doing art since before she could talk.  by age five, her sketches were amazing enough to pass for high school and even collegiate level pieces.  she began painting by age six, and by age seven was beginning to receive global recognition.  she has met countless celebrities, been on tons of tv shows, and became a sort of global sensation all before she entered her teens.

akiane sees the world from a different perspective than you or i.... she paints dreams across her (ridiculously huge for a girl her size) canvases, she writes poetry alongside her pieces and the most beautiful stories that can only come from the heart of a child.  seventeen now, (and every bit as adorable as when i first discovered her) her works are (dare i say it) more incredible than ever before.  honestly, i remember looking her up from time to time growing up to see what new works she was producing, and wanting to quit art when each new piece was more incredible than the one before.

look this kid up, i promise you will not be disappointed.  i have too many favorite pieces to post pictures here, but if you go to the gallery on her website you can see all of her incredible works.

http://www.artakiane.com/