New Artist Crush: Proper Etiquette

Sorry this post is late. My life has gotten a little hectic right now at work and I think I'm coming down with a cold, so finding energy this week has been a little challenging.

This week's artist crush: Proper Etiquette

Many of my artists I look to for inspiration and influence come from when I was in college. There are few people who will influence you more in life than your peers. Being able to discuss and critique each other will influence the way you think and draw.

I had the great fortune of meeting Proper Etiquette while I was in college. She is an ambitious woman pursuing both fashion and the studio arts with fervor and an uncompromising vision for her self and her art. I have never witnessed her breaking down in the face of obstacles, and she has met every artistic challenge to the satisfaction of her own standards. Proper Etiquette is not one to play by someone else's rules.

Her fashion work is both highly experimental and new while reaching back and taking influence from the past, incorporating themes and styles that would normally be regulated to the realm of period costume and made them relevant to her style.

In her studio art work she works relentlessly to bring her visions of a fantasy world to life in all her images. Her drive and energies seem to be ever flowing from her source, allowing her to create large bodies of work in time to meet deadlines that would give a lesser man a heart attack.

To learn more about Proper Etiquette, or to purchase some of her work for yourself visit her site http://www.properetiquette.biz/.

Random Word Generated Friday: Flesh

This weeks random word: Flesh

Flesh is one of the words I use to describe things in my head, but rarely use when speaking to other people in the same context. In my mind, I use "flesh" and "meat" almost interchangeably. Which may not sound bad until you realize that most of the context is in cooking. This puts me in the realm of  "grilling flesh" and being a "flesh and potatoes" kind of person. Which sounds rather...cannibalistic. You can see how the phrasing in my head might change when talking to people.

So how does someone start using the world "flesh" to describe something they eat?

Frans Snyders. Market Stall. 1614. Oil on Canvas,

Growing up, a lot of the meat my family consumed came from hunting and fishing. I was (perhaps inadvertently) raised with the idea that my delicious venison burger was originally packaged as Bambi. The above painting was done in celebration of game hunting being re-opened in the Netherlands. While today we see a lot of dead animals piled on a table and a business man getting his pocket picked, someone seeing this image back in the 1600s they would see a table overflowing with delicious (and a business man getting his pocket picked...).

Today, most people are removed from a large portion of the butchering process. Bacon comes plastic wrapped in a Styrofoam tray, not a pig. Which explains why most people don't use the term "flesh" to describe meat. We are a little sensitive about where our steak comes from.

Which is interesting because we have become very desensitized to images of violence against actual humans. It always bothered me that in the first Matrix movie Neo blows away the security guards in the lobby. They weren't programs, they weren't even acting violently towards him, they were only doing their crappy entry level jobs and the heroes don't hesitate to put a bullet in their heads even though these are the people their revolution is supposed to be saving. The thing is, I've never heard anyone complain about that either.

But mention that milk is pumped out of the mammaries of a cow and suddenly everyone at the table is squirming a little bit. We live in strange times my friends. Strange times.

A New Experiment: Legend of Helga

Legend of Helga, written and illustrated by yours truly

Sooo...

I've decided to try something more. I thought I'd add webcomic to the ever growing list of things I do. Drawing comics has been something I've wanted to do since at least elementary school, when I did a strip that was a pretty bad rip-off of Charlie Brown called "Stick People". In the past few years I've had a couple of false starts in actually creating and finishing a comic (be it meant for the web or otherwise). Since I've recently been doing a fairly good job of booting myself in the butt to do things and have habits, I figured it was time to try again.

This time I took stock of what always seemed to tie up the other comic projects and killed them.

One is writing, I was always dead set on telling an original story, so I always had writing hang-ups that would end up in not writing at all because it wasn't perfect. For this go-round, I decided to just tell an old story in what hopefully is a new way. Legend of Helga is about a girl taken from  her home world to save another world from and evil organization of magic users, which sums up the plot of every B-grade sword and sorcery film.

Another hang-up was panel lay-out, believe it or not. The comics I read growing up were all in the newspaper so I tend towards a page of rectangles rather than anything interesting. I was also always either trying to cram too much action into one panel or I'm spreading it out over to many and it really messed with pacing. So in drawing Legend of Helga, I did away with the panel format. What resulted was something halfway between a comic book and a storybook. I think it's a good mutant, but only time will tell what horrible creation I may have unleashed on the unsuspecting public.

I also had a tendency towards overly-complex character designs. Some people can do this, but after a few pages I would be artistically worn out and never want to draw those characters again. Legend of Helga's characters are pretty much various geometric-shapes on top of fleshed-out stick figure bodies. The result is a cast I (so far) love to draw (knock on wood). I also gave Helga a feature I don't like (her pointy nose), which oddly had been more pleasurable to work with than all the softer-featured women I've tried to work with in the past.

Currently, Legend of Helga updates once a week on Thursdays. I'll keep upping the update-frequency as I learn what kind of schedule I can deal with. I'd love to someday get to the point of daily posts, but that's still a ways off. Right now my goal is to maintain a regular update schedule for a year.

So if I've piqued your interest, your can check out the first page here: Legend of Helga

And if while you're there, you'd like to show your support you can click on the TWC button and vote for my newest endeavor, I'd be ever so grateful.

The Desire to Make Art

I have alluded to before about a collaboration project I have been working on with Stephanie (January 3rd's New Artist Crush), and I think it's finally time I get around to telling you about it.

This fall I traded gas money and modeling time to my friend Stephanie to help me move (she has a bus, it makes things less difficult). She was working on a project dealing with women in nature for school, and I just so happened to have a pair of wings I made that I wanted documented and like playing dress up. I also got a bed out of the deal. So there was probably a flock of birds murdered to death with one stone pitched by the two of us.

The photography session went rather well, as did my impromptu costume (I can do a lot with a bed sheet...) that we both had a desire to explore this character we created further at some point in time.

That point in time turned out to be December. In the middle of winter. When I learned my desire  to make art could kick the kittens out of my survival instinct in a knock-down hair-pulling bone-breaking wrestling match.

It's out of frame, but my foot is resting on the beaten corpse of my survival instinct.

New Artist Crush: Martye Allen

Sculpture by Martye Allen

Martye Allen is one of the artists featured in the gallery where I work.  I had the good fortune this fall to meet her when I swung by her studio on a car trip to pick up some new work.

Allen is primarily a ceramics artist who's subject matter is largely north-woods animals. Both her pottery and sculpture work always look like they are illustrating some sort of story. Which is what I enjoy about it. I am, on the whole, not usually very interested in clay work as most of it tends toward the functional or the abstract (or the functionally abstract) which is not my cup of tea.

The other thing that I cannot convey to you in words or pictures is the touch-ability of Allen's work. When I was in her studio picking new pieces for the gallery, my fingers were on everything, petting, holding and resting my hand on all the clay animals. I find there is a life to her sculpture that is not unlike that of an animal I think.

Link!
http://www.martyeallen.com/

Random Word Generated Friday

Today's Word: Deciding

Dear Random Word Generator...I don't think you understand what a noun is. I don't know if that's upsetting or if that just makes you more random.

It is one thing to decide to do something, another to start doing it and yet another to finish with the follow through. There seems to be a lot of support to start something by the general society, but not a lot about finishing. We are all applauded by the anonymous crowd for deciding to quit smoking, drinking, begin exercising or losing weight, but sometimes it seems like the continuation or the completion of a goal.

I, personally, have no problem beginning something. Deciding to do something is easy for me. What really kicks my keister is finishing. This is probably why I have more projects in various states of completion than I can count (or even remember) and three half-read books on by bedside table.

In the past few months, I feel I have gotten better at finishing. Part of it probably has to do with my decision to  start fewer things and learning to be more focused on a project through to the end.

And rewarding myself. It is amazing how focused I can be on something when there is the promise of new shoes at the end of it.

Folgers

Dear Folgers,

What have you done to your coffee? It certainly looks like the brown caffinated substance that is sometimes the only reason I am a functional human being. But the smell and the taste resemble less coffee and more an experiment from chem. lab.

I admit I do not have the most discriminating of palettes when it comes to food. In general, if it is mildly edible, I will probably eat it. Heck, if I can chew and swallow it I’ll probably eat it. There are probably three sadly overworked taste buds in my entire mouth.

But I’ll be darned if your liquid death doesn’t offend them all.

And the smell.

Holy-moley the smell.

That is not what coffee smells like. I don’t know what smells like that, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to ingest it. I’ve had hair-dye kits that smell more appetizing than the fumes wafting upwards from a freshly opened container of your classic roast. It’s generally not a point of pride when ammonia is better smelling than your food.

I know your canister says that it contains 100% coffee, but maybe you should check where your beans are being stored. While old chemical waste drums may be thrifty and green, they are probably not the best shipping containers for coffee.

I realize at this point you must be thinking I’m a coffee snob, but I assure you I am not. I enjoy a coffee house’s Americano as much as a greasy spoon’s been-sitting-in-the-pot-all-day. But you, you Folgers, have done something unspeakable to the bean. Something horrible, ghastly and Lovecraftian has happened to your coffee. In fact, I am fairly certain a cup of this is one of the components in summoning Chthulu.

I just thought someone should tell you. It seems rather like the sort of embarrassing situation where you are chatting with a pretty girl and your fly is down. Except in this case instead your fly, you’re being stalked by horrors from the deep, and the pretty girl has tentacles instead of teeth.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Coffee Drinker

Oh...oh crap. I think it is watching me now...

New Artist Crush Mondays: Tom Kidd

None But Man Cover Art By Tom Kidd

One of the jobs I think I'd like to do someday is paint cover images for sci-fi and fantasy books. Recently it came to my attention that one of my favorite webcomics, Girl Genius, has published a novel (in fact, Girl Genius day is on the 12th, which is a day when the authors encourage those looking to purchase their book to buy it in hopes that the high sales data will catch the attention of book distributors).

I was surprised to find that instead of one of the Foglio's having done the cover art (being both artists themselves), it was an artist by the name of Tom Kidd. Kidd has done the covers for several books and has that wonderful attention to detail that always makes me want to hang my fiction collection on the wall instead of shoving it on a shelf.

It seems though, that the ways of the cover-image artist is going the way of sign-letters as increasingly less imaginative photoshop-collages and public domain images grace the face of paperbacks. My copy of Dracula has a sunny hillside castle with wildflowers on it...which really doesn't set the right tone for the story.

Instead I will sit here and drool over Kidd's work and continue to comb the re-sale shops for older, more imaginative editions of my favorite fiction paperbacks.

Link! Ho!
http://spellcaster.com/tomkidd/

Saturday is for Laughing.

"Orange" is an UK service provider like AT&T. If you don't get the rest of the puns, you're probably a Luddite and that's okay.

Random Word Generated Fridays

Today's word: Team

I do a lot of things better as a team. Or maybe more surprisingly as a team then alone.

Recently Director Ansley returned from maternity leave at the gallery where I work. She's only there two days a week so far, with her little bundle of joy, but already I feel an improvement in my work environment. Everything isn't hanging over my head alone, and I've got someone else to bounce ideas off of. There is a stark comparison between working as part of a team and working alone. Enough that if I have a choice, I would never work by myself again.

I also recently collaborated on an art project with Stephanie (this week's artist crush). The results of our teamwork I think are more than either one of us would have dreamed of doing alone. Also, perhaps crazier and more dangerous, but I will report more on that later.

Running a household as a team, with my whole family as when I was growing up or just with my brother like over this summer is a lot easier too. And more enjoyable. It is easier to find the motivation to cook and clean when I'm not just doing it for myself. I cooked a lot more when my brother was around than I do now. (Although I did finally make up that venison roast you left this autumn, mom) Alone, I tend to eat a lot more packaged foods or half-made things.

Even though I seem to naturally seek a solitary existence, one of the values I have come to have as I gain more experience is that of the working with and alongside other people. Being able to build with another person always results in a project richer and grander than we could have done alone and I enjoy it.

*For my grandparents to brag about* My press release for this show caught enough attention over at the Daily Mining Gazette that the gallery was able to land the cover of this week's "Happenings". No, I don't have a copy. Sorry. But these writing exercises are paying off!

New Artist Crush Monday: Stephanie Rabbit

The Rabbit herself. Photo by Stephanie Trevino

This week's artist crush is one of my better friends, Stephanie Trevino. I met Stephanie in art school and have had the pleasure to watch her artistic voice evolve. Since I have known her, she has gone from photographing broken toys to buildings to people. Each leap from behind the camera has made her a stronger artist that I admit envy of. There are not many photographers who's work you can look at and see their individual finger prints all over.

Stephanie's photographs tend to offer a tantalizing glimpse into a story that you are almost sure there is more to, but are left to wonder or maybe even fill in the blanks yourself if you're feeling daring. I have always admired the dialogue she is able to establish not with words, but with pictures. Her work ranges from the artistic storytelling to the cataloging and journaling of her day-to-day life and I was hard pressed to choose from which of these categories I should select an image from (I choose the journal side of it, but it also features her photography-as-storytelling).

Recently, we collaborated on a project that seems to have some prospects of becoming on-going. When I model for her I am always excited to see what part of me she has captured with her lens. She always shows me such unique views of the world, both telling and mysterious, innocent and dark. I always find a showing of her work leaves me both satisfied and wanting more.

Links! (share my addiction...)
http://rabbitintheroom.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephsteph/