Paige Smith is an American graphic designer and street artist. Her street art installations are sculptures made of resin and paper. Her first big project was to install these pieces all over the city of Los Angeles, California.
As a graphic designer the artist has been very successful working with international brands including PayPal, MTV, and Cisco.
With the help of a partner Smith recently launched a fashion line. The duo produce leather handbags that can switch from a backpack to a handbag.
Below a brief interview with the artist talking about what inspires her:
Some places to find her installations include old and worn buildings and phone booths.
Below a link to the website of Smith. Here you can see more of her street art installations:
Paige Smith is a diversified artist and designer. Her small sculptures are wonderful as they remind me of being a child and being exposed to the wonderful shapes and colors found when you sliced open a rock such as quartz.
Dewain Valentine is an American artist renown for his minimalist style. Dewain Valentine was born in Fort Collins, Colorado in the year 1936.
The artist was inspired by modern painters including Larry Bell and Ken Price.
Many sculptures are made of fiberglass and/or resin. For subject matter Valentine often refers to skies. Valentine is sometimes associated with the Light and Space movement.
Valentine helped to develop a special resin that for the first time allowed artists to work with sculptures larger than 50 pounds. Valentine also prefers a very smooth finish, to give the appearance of being new and machine built.
Below the surface of Valentine’s work is discussed in further detail with more examples shown:
The artist is based out of Gardena, California.
Valentine is part of the collections of the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Denver Museum of Art.
The artist is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Price range information: Large disks by Valentine can reach the $1 million dollar mark. Smaller table top size works range from a few thousand to $35,000.
Valentine gives the viewer a wonderful combination of basic geometric shapes with cutting edge materials that he helped to invent! A wonderful example of modern art.
Ron Davis is an American painter renown for his abstract geometric shaped works. Ron Davis was born in the year 1934.
Davis attended the University of Wyoming before turning to art. He then attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he found abstract art.
The artist used mixed media in his works with many works consisting of acrylic paint, resin, and wood. Davis has a unique approach to his fiberglass works. He uses many thin layers of color that can be layered on top of each other without becoming muddy.
The way the artist builds up his layers of color is similar to that of a painter, the only exception being that when painting the artist layers color on top of color. When building his resin forms Davis adds his layers of color behind the previous layer.
The artist taught at the University of California at Irvine.
Davis is now based very close to Taos, New Mexico.
Below a short piece about Ron Davis by the Laguna Art Museum:
I find the artist reminds me most of glass master Dale Chihuly for the way he sees three dimensional forms and color.
Price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $70,000 for sculpture works. Prints can be found between $3,000 and $9,000.
Davis is included in many prestigious collections including the Tate London and the Museum of Modern Art located in New York City.
Ron Davis has such a wonderful style of painting. I enjoy his work for his great use of making three dimensional work on flat surface. His application of color seems loosely controlled but with a great sense of design and awesome results.
An example of his great sense of design is the fifth picture down from the top. In reality its a hand rolled zig zag cigarette.
John McCracken was an American minimalist artist. John McCracken was born in Berkeley, California the year 1934. The artist was a painter and sculptor.
The artist served in the United States Navy before attending the California College of Arts and Crafts located in Oakland, California.
John McCracken’s art is the first one shown in this clip of famous artists of the 1960s:
McCracken also taught at the University of California at Irvine, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in addition to other colleges.
The artist is a past recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In this clip we visit a show from 2008 featuring the work of John McCracken:
The artist was always experimenting with new materials and was among the first artist to work with fiberglass and resin.
In this clip we view some of the artist’s signature works from the 1960s to the 2000s:
John McCracken passed away in 2011, at the age of 76.
The artist is part of many prestigious collections including the Smithsonian.
Price range information: Works range from $100,000 to $500,000 for sculpture works. Prints start at $5,000. Original watercolors and oils range from $5,000 to $20,000.
What a great example of modernist art. From his materials to his use of bright colors and simple clean shapes.
Bharti Kher is a contemporary artist who is renown for her work with bindi or bindis, sometimes called the third eye or the “dot” worn by Indian women. Kher works as a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Her sculptures are often life size works of very large animals such as elephants.
The artist began to use the bindi in the mid 1990s.
Price range information: Most works range from $40,000 to $400,000. Occasionally photographs can be found for less than $10,000.
Bharti Kher was born in London, England in the year 1969.
Her flat works often include bindis glued to wood panel.
In this clip a very large elephant that takes 7 or 8 people to carry is taken to Sotheby’s to get ready for an auction:
Kher is now based out of New Delhi, India.
Below a longer interview with Bharti Kher from 2014:
I always enjoy when items from a culture or country are included in artwork. That is why I so enjoy Inuit and Shona art. Kher work has a great sense of culture and humanity.
Peter Zimmerman is a wonderful German artist working in an abstract manner. Zimmermann is renowned for his blob paintings. These works are made by taking a photo and then abstracting the shape onto a canvas using photoshop and other techniques he has learned over the years. The works are colored using an airbrush. These works are also finished with epoxy resin.
Zimmermann’s work is a great blend of old school mediums such as the airbrush, and modern mediums including the computer program “Photoshop.”
For his artistic education Zimmermann attended the Academie der Bildenden Kunste located in Stuttgart, Germany.
Zimmermann has produced multiple books of his artwork.
Price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $60,000.
Peter Zimmermann is based out of Cologne, Germany where he also teaches.
Markus Linnenbrook is an artist born in Dortmund, Germany in the year 1961. Linnenbrook is renown for his great sense of colour and for painting on and working with resin. For his artistic education Linnenbrink attended the Academy of Fine Arts located in Berlin, Germany.
Lives and works out of Brooklyn, New York.
When it comes to a movement to associate the artist with we should call it conceptual art. Not only is the colour still very brilliant in his end works, the surface quality is very textured almost giving his work a sculptural feeling.
Price range information: The artist works in a variety of mediums from oils and acrylics to watercolors and price range $1,000 to $8,0000.
Its also interesting to see the names he chooses for his work. He blends them all into one word with capital letters, another interesting concept!
In this clip we visit a show for the artist given in 2012.
And for those fans of printmaking in this clip we see a project titled “Mud Honey.” These monotypes were made from the left over ink on the press after printing the Valley of the Dolls monotype series.
Ron Mueck is an Australian artist known for sculptures that capture the emotions of the human face. He is known as a hyper realist artist. I love his use of exaggeration when portraying the human figure. Ron Mueck was born in Melbourne, Australia in the year 1958. Many times the human body is portrayed larger than in real life adding to the curiosity of Mueck’s works.
He worked in entertainment industry for many years. Similar to Sesame Street, Ron Mueck was the creative director and voice of many puppets for a popular children’s show titled Shirl’s Neighbourhood. It was ran from 1979 to 1984.
Other jobs in the entertainment field include working with Jim Henson and his Muppets and also a film titled Labyrinth.
Mueck lives and works out of London, England.
Mueck then started his own business creating props and large animated creatures that looked animated rather than like robots. The company was based out of London, England. The company was a challenge for the artist, but his props were usually only meant to photographed from one side or a certain angle. Mueck longed to produce finished works of art that looked finished from all angles.
Has made collaborations with his mother-in-law another famous artist named Paula Rego. Rego is a famous author and painter and here is a great example of her expressive style of painting.
His mother introduced him to mega art collector Charles Saatchi and this helped launch his career to the next level as Saatchi purchased works and commissioned works by the artist.
Below is a great clip that shows an exhibition given by the artist. Many different works are shown and the artist’s brilliance at capturing emotion in his faces is displayed.
When looking at Ron Mueck’s body of work I am reminded of the great British artist Lucien Freud. Freud was known for his use of very thick paint applied with his hogs hair brushes. The artist enjoyed drawing people from odd angles and many times his works appear more lively than other stiffly and more accurately painted pictures. Below is a great example of Freud’s artwork. Freud was born in the year 1922 and passed away in 2011.
Price range information: Ron Mueck has broken the one million dollar sale mark with a work titled Big Baby which sold for $1.35 million back in 2008. Smaller works that are cast out of dental plaster are the cheapest starting around $80,000.
Other great hyper realist style sculptors profiled on this site would be John DeAndrea and also master sculptor Duane Hanson, both profiled here already!
Peter Alexander is another artist well known for using industrial materials and basic geometric shapes in his works. Peter Alexander was born in the year 1939 in the city of Los Angeles, California. In many works the image seems to be below water looking upward to the sky. Another theme he has explored is etchings and digital paintings of what seems to be someone coming in for a landing. The viewer has the feeling of being above ground.
He is well known for his squares and other geometric shapes made out of translucent resin that he himself created.
Alexander started out as an architect then made a switch to fine arts.
His work can be seen in movies like Erin Brockovich and Terminator 3.
Also has painted murals including a wall at the Walt Disney Concert center in Los Angeles.
For his collegiate studies the artist attended the University of Pennsylvania, Architect school in London, University of California at Berkeley, U. Souther California and UCLA. With all of those colleges he earned both a bachelors and masters degree in the arts.
Alexander was influenced by the Light and Space movement.
In this clip we Peter Alexander as artist in residence.
And here a clip from the Laguna Art Museum.
In this clip we see a problem with public schools and art being fixed! We visit Peter Alexander as he ventures to tell children how great art can be!
Price range information: The resin sculpture works for which he is most famous are quite large and range from $75,000 to $125, 000. Works in acrylics or pastels can range from $500 to $2,000. Oil paintings range from $2,000 to $12,000.
Art comes in all forms! Be aware of each and learn as many as you can!
These brothers are a fantastic duo that integrate politics, social commentary, and Chinese culture into their works. The pair try to make a comment on the surge of western products and ideas into their culture.
Many times they work with idea of three young Chinese boys growing up. The boys play with all sorts of toys that are from the highly commercialized United States and the western world.
The two were born in 1951.
A clip showing some works of the artists with a brief commentary.
The pair have worked in many mediums inlcuding fiberglass, resin, lacquer collage, hand carved wood reliefs, sculpture, ink, oils, and acrylics.
As with other Chinese artists its very interesting to see how they portray the western world. The babies in these works are very happy and seem to be enjoying their Coca Cola products. As long as they can enjoy the products properity will rule the day. The babies are more than happy to think about eating or drinking something as large as their bodies.
The artists were born in 1963 and 1964. Lou Wei Dong was born in 1963 in Guangxi, China. Lou Wei Gou also born in Guangxi, China. I could not find a birth date for Luo Weibing, the youngest brother. He went the Art Academy in Beijing, China.
Wei Dong attended the Guangxi Art College. Wei Gou attended the Ghanzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Both finished college in 1987.
High price range: $366,000 for a work titled Welcome the WorldFamous Brands. Its in the gallery, the one with many chinese faces embracing western items such as Juicy Fruit, Coca- Cola, and another famous world famous American brand McDonalds. Oil painting record is $68,000. Watercolor is $20,000. Enamel is $50,000.
Low price range: Oils for $5,000.
The brothers began to work together on artworks beginnig in 1986.
I enjoy their works as they represent what I believe many Chinese people are thinking, look at all of the products from the United States. Its interesting to think that the Chinese might see their fat babies as living the life having any material items they could want. In the new China EVERYONE will prosper rather than just the social elite.
The artists love to make shiny and glossy surfaces on their wood carvings, lacquer works, and resin sculptures. I enjoy their mix of new and old ideas representing what China could become in the current century. From a design standpoint I love the piece that sold for a record amount, Welcome World Famous Brands. The imperial red color mixed with prosperous golden color made for a strong and dynamic painting.
Diattaart Blog 