Archive for June, 2013

Artist of the moment…..Charles Fazzino

{ June 30, 2013 @ 10:41 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Charles Fazzino is a world renown artist that is known for drawing a kind of 3 dimensional pop up ad. Fazzino was born in Finland in the year 1955.  His mother was a sculptor and father a shoe designer. Fazzino had his  first solo show for the public was in 1971.

price range information: Prints available from $500 to $5,000.

For his collegiate education Fazzino attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York.

Among the hardest working illustrators in the world his art has been sought after by many corporations and public events such as the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, and the Major League Baseball All Star Game.

He considers it part of his job to insert some pop culture in his art, giving a very accurate portrayal of current culture.

Fazzoni most collected works are his three dimensional silkscreen prints. He first showed this work in New York in 1980. He first started to work in this method by taking a class at a local art store.

In this clip we visit the studio of Charles Fazzino.

Here is a link to the Youtube channel of Charles Fazzino:  http://www.youtube.com/user/CharlesFazzino

This artist is reminds me of my childhood in the 1980s! Driving across the country on Route 66 and other parts of the midwest and stopping at new cities to me that I had only seen on a map. With the advent of google.maps and such its possible that the average person might not truly appreciate the skill involved in mixing pop culture and the local identity of an area with a map.

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Artist of the moment……Janet Taylor Pickett

{ June 29, 2013 @ 10:58 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Janet Taylor Pickett is a mixed media artist born in 1948 in Michigan. Pickett is renown for working with dresses which she uses to convey identity. For her collegiate studies the artist attended many art institutions. She attended the Michigan School of Art and Design for her BFA. Her post graduate work was done at the University of Michigan. In addition she attended Parsons School of Design.

I love the way she includes renown painters in her work. An appropriation done with her favorite subject of dresses.

I find her work very similar to the artist Christina Chalmers, who also has built a reputation for working with the dress as a main subject. Below a great example of Chalmer’s work with the dress. She also creates sculptures of dresses.

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Taught much of her career at Essex County College. Also taught at Bloomfield College.

Pickett is a multi media artist that enjoys working with canvas, fabric, collage, and paint.

Price range information: Sorry, none available.

In this clip Pickett talks about her work.

Another great interview with the artist.

I love the patterns and colors used by both Christina Chalmers and Janet Taylor Pickett works!

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Artist of the moment…..Zao Wou- Ki

{ June 29, 2013 @ 10:19 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Zao Wou- Ki was born in 1920 in Beijing, China and would go on to become a force in the art world renown for his work done in an abstract style. As a child he studied calligraphy. His first wife was also an artist, a song composer. For his artistic education Wou- Ki attended the Chinese Academy of Fine Art.

Zao Wou- Ki was a member of the Academie des Beaux Arts.

In the mid 1950s he divorced his wife and visited the States in 1957.

Shortly after he found his next wife, Zhu Ying, who was a movie star. Later she became a sculptor receiving critical acclaim. At her peak, she committed suicide.

A main influence on the artist was Paul Klee. Below an example of Klee’s work. Other influences were Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse.

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Price range information. Auction record was set in 2011 at $8,864,000. Already has had five works break the $1 million mark in 2013.

Here we see a brief interview with the artist. He also gives remarks about the use of space in both eastern and western painting.

Montage of works by Zao Wou- Ki.

Zao Wou- Ki passed away in April of 2013 at the age of 93 years old.

I have never seen this artists work in person, but even on a monitor his use of space is a done at a master level. A space that is very small, seems very open and large. Wonderful compositions and use of color! Zao Wou- Ki was a master of abstraction!

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Artist of the moment…..Mannumi Shaqu

{ June 29, 2013 @ 9:42 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Mannumi Shaqu was a fantastic Inuit Shaqu born near the Cape Dorset, Nunavet Territory, Canada  in the year 1917. He was actually born in an igloo.

price range information: Carvings range from $500 to $11,000.

When he was young he was scared of white people as he feared they might try to kidnap him.

Started to carve as a teenager and started to work with etching drawings on tusks. His favorite medium was a hard dark stone, serpentine was used in many cases, that he would carve a female out of.

A direct quote from Shaqu reads, ” For many years I have carved. I usually carve every day, I have no other job.”

Shaqu was renown for works often featuring two figures such as husband and wife or mother and child.

What a great life!

Mannumi Shaqu passed away in 2000 at the age of 83 years old.

In this clip we see an example of a work featuring husband and wife.

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Artist of the moment….Photographer Ed Weston

{ June 28, 2013 @ 11:08 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Price range information: Works priced between $2,000 to $550,000.

Photographer Ed Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois in the year 1886. One of the most renown American photographers in history Weston built a great reputation for his work with the nude, shells, and also peppers.

First photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinsons and quit shooting photographs. Weston then chose to concentrate on printing his most famous works.

His mother, a theater actor, died when he was five and he was raised mainly by an older sister.

Got interested in photography after receiving a Kodak camera for his sixteenth birthday.

Just getting his feet wet, a first job in the industry was with the studio of George Steckel.

Married the best friend of his older sister, who came from money. This marriage allowed him to start working full time with his photography. The couple had four children, all males.

Started working with the figure was his family and wife. This progressed to paid nude models that were a mixture of friends and even lovers.

For paper to print his works on he chose silver gelatin paper and platinum and palladium also.

His favorite size for photographs was 8 by 10 inches. This was the format he enjoyed the most for his compositions.

A wonderful montage of works from Ed Weston.

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Artist of the moment…..Howardena Pindell

{ June 28, 2013 @ 10:36 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Price range information: Most works priced between $2,000 and $12,000.

Howardena Pindell specializes in abstract works, though in the past she has painted the figure. Howardena Pindell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the year 1943. For her collegiate studies the artist attended the Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts. For her postgraduate work she earned an MFA from Yale.

Pindell learned more about the business side of art by working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Here she worked as a curator and assistant curator dealing with prints.

Pindell has been part of the teaching faculty at Yale and also Stony Brook University.

Her work began to sell in the late 1960s. In the 1970s she began to flourish with more abstract works that dealt with the build up of the paper surface. At this point she was a mixture of abstraction and minimalism.

Pindell has also done a fair amount of research on being an African- American artist.

Winner of Guggenheim Fellowship.

Held in prominent collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

In this clip Howardena Pindell talks about printmaking and developing her style.

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Artist of the moment….Glenn Ligon

{ June 27, 2013 @ 7:49 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Glenn Ligon is a brilliant artist that uses many mediums alongside text to share cultural themes and explore themes including racism and cultural identity. Ligon was born in the Bronx, New York in the year 1960. For his collegiate education Ligon attended Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut. He himself has quite a unique vantage point being a gay african- american artist. His mediums include neon, paintings, prints, drawings, and mixed media works.

He often uses past events for current works. One series was focused on signs from a sanitation strike that took place in Memphis in 1968.

Another well received series included the Ligon using posters to describe himself as if he were a runaway slave.

Used the erotic photographs of african american males of Robert Mapplethorpe and included ex Congressman Dick Armey’s words about the works below.

Started working with neon in 2005.

Included in many prominent collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Nationally Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

President Obama chose a work by the artist to hang in the White House. The name of this work is Black Like Me.

During a charity auction to raise money for Haiti a record was set for the artist with Jennifer Aniston paying $450,000 for a work titled Stranger #44.

Currently based out of New York City.

In this clip Ligon talks about working with neon and a show dealing with the current culture of America. He also talks about where he finds text such as from the author James Baldwin, who went to live in a remote village in Switzerland and was the lone person of color.

In this clip we reunite with our dear friend James Kalm as he takes us through a show featuring neon works from Ligon.

Hats off to all artists working with text!

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Artist of the moment…..Street Artist El Bocho

{ June 27, 2013 @ 12:33 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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El Bocho was born in 1978, and is a well known street artist based out of Berlin, Germany.

El Bocho works with giant cut outs, tiles, and installations.

A link to the artists website: http://www.elbocho.net/
Signature tag is a a Little Lucy doll from a Czech tv show.

El Bocho is renown for making art that looks like a stencil, but is composed of tape. Here we see the artist producing one of these works.

Here again we see El Bocho in action.

Sorry no price range information.

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Artist of the moment…..Lucy Quinnuayuak

{ June 27, 2013 @ 11:03 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Lucy Quinnuayuak was another great Inuit artist from the Cape Dorset, Nunavet Territory. Quinnuayuak was known for her wonderful drawings and print work with birds. We might call her the “Audobon artist of the Inuits!” In the gallery my favorite is the bird catching the two fish. What a simple yet great composition. Quinnuayuak was born in Salluit in 1915.

Her husband was named Tikituk, a great painter and sculptor. In the 1960s the family moved to Cape Dorset.

Like other Inuit artists Quinnuayuak does a fantastic job when combining groups of birds into flowing positive and negative shapes.

The artist passed away in 1982.

Price range information: Prints and original drawings range from $250 to $3,000.

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Artist of the moment……Erika Simmons

{ June 26, 2013 @ 7:45 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Price range information: Sorry none available.

Erika Simmons is a wonderful modern artist that is renown for her work with unusual items for her medium such as audio and video cassettes. Born in 1983, Simmons mother was a fashion designer and father a speedbike champion.
Simmons attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where she studied Russian language and literature. For her artistic skills she is self taught.

A link to the artists own website : http://iri5.com/
Designed some works for use at the 2012 Grammys.

In this clip we see a montage of the artist’s work:

Her first job was as a face painter in Orlando, Florida at Universal Studios. She attended school for makeup artists after college.

Based out of Princeton, New Jersey.

Price range information: Sorry, none available.

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