Posts Tagged ‘greeting card company’

Artist of the moment….Olivia de Berardinis

{ November 16, 2013 @ 12:04 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Olivia de Berardinis is one of the most renown artists working with the pin up girl as her subject of choice. Olivia de Berardinis was born in Long Beach, California in the year 1948. She grew up on the east coast and attended the New York School of Visual Arts.

When Olivia (that is her name she is known by the most) first began her career she worked as a minimalist painter appearing in shows alongside Frank Stella. In the mid 1970s she began to work in the “pin up girl” style and had great success. Her work regularly appears in the magazine Playboy.

She and her current husband started a company to produce greeting cards painted by the artist. Soon after they started another company to sell her “pin up style” artwork.

In this clip we meet the artist and she talks about beginning her career:

In this clip a great montage of works by Olivia de Berardinis:

Olivia works in acrylics, watercolors, and gouache.

Price range information: Original works range from $5,000 to $20,000. Prints can be found starting around $100.

Great to see such innovation in this genre. If you enjoy the pinup girl genre another artist working with this style is the great Mel Ramos. He combines Pop Art with the female figure, below a great example of Mel Ramos’ work.

mel

Olivia and her husband are now based out of Malibu, California.

Another piece featuring a show with Olivia from 2008:

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Artist of the moment……Harris G. Strong

{ November 7, 2013 @ 1:00 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Harris G. Strong was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in the year 1920. He was among the first artist to paint directly onto ceramic tile. Harris  Strong was inspired to become an artist as one of his aunts owned a greeting card company. Strong loved to create and enjoyed making ceramic tiles, prints, woodcuts, collages, and paintings.

For his collegiate education Strong credits his aunt. His father wouldn’t pay for his education, but his aunt offered to as she believed in his goal to become an artist. His aunt not only paid his tuition, she also gave him weekly spending money. What an aunt!

A friend of the artist was Simon Lissim. Lissim was a painter but also worked with ceramics. After seeing Lissim’s work Strong chose to learn more about ceramics. Lissim was renowned for working with mixed media and below a work of Lissim’s that was produced with watercolor and metallic inks on board. Lissim worked for Lennox pottery.

lissim

The artist enrolled at North Carolina State and was a chemical engineer as he wanted to learn more about the art of mixing ceramic glazes. Like many people of his generation the artist left college to help out the country in World War 2.

After the war Strong finished college and ended up taking ceramic lessons at New York University.

After working for some ceramics companies the artist with the encouragement of his wife started his own business. Strong’s business flourished in New York and his business eventually employed 39 people. Soon the company grew to 47 employees and Strong moved the company to Maine. The company produced not only ceramics, but also prints, engravings, photography, and woodcuts.

At his peak his artwork appeared in locations including New York, Chicago, Japan, and Europe.

As a business owner Strong was involved in every aspect of his businesses, even developing a better way to pack and ship that dramatically cut down his companies level of items that would be broken upon receipt.

The artist developed asbestos related breathing problems due to his working conditions.

Price range information: Works range from $500 to $3,000.

Harris G. Strong passed away in 2006.

Similar to the Japanese ceramic masters, Strong spent many years researching and developing different unique glazes for his art.

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