Wednesday Work: Andrew Kozlowski

Triumph! screenprint 12 x 12, 2010

Pile screenprint 12 x 12, 2010

Standard Disaster screenprint 20 x 30, 2010

Crash screenprint 12 x 12, 2010

Bag screenprint 12 x 12, 2010

Down On The Ships intaglio 8 x 8, 2010

Them intaglio 18 x 18, 2010

Moon Viewing Point screenprint 20 x 15, 2010

Go see Kozlowski's solo exhibition, Dear Tree Hugger, at The Print Center in Philadelphia until November 20th.

Blogger Alert!: Crochet Bloke

(http://crochetbloke.blogspot.com/)

Newly enamored with Crochet Bloke's blog - this is a red skull crocheted from butcher twine. Combine this post with others detailing how to cook fried flowers and lots of beautiful pictures - you've got my attention. Visit Crochet Bloke's blog, here and check out his Mr. Boo and Pumpkin Head patterns just in time for the holiday!

Defy Monday: Go Apple Picking

Mary Kate McDevitt says do it...

Buy it here.

Do it here.

A few weeks ago, this Tennesseean and this New Yorker went on a spur of the moment, outta the city trip to the apple orchard. (The Sea's first to a North Eastern orchard yet!)

And it was every bit as magical as they're depicted.

Now, I know the truth about apples... none will ever taste the same as the ones you pick yourself at the ripest pickin' time of the year.

Get some pumpkins, grab your apples, and sip some cider, most importantly: get out there in the fall sun while it still lasts. You'll have all winter to experiment with the pumpkin puree you stuff into the freezer.

Every once in a while.....:Vincent Colvin

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Every once in a while - you have the good fortune to meet someone inspired, and therefore - inspiring. Vincent Colvin is one of the most sincere, enthusiastic, un-ashamed-ly full of wonder and curiosity, person/artist (artist=person=artist (?) (different conversation all together)) I have had the pleasure of getting to know in a long time.

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Recently relocating from Philadelphia to Austin, TX (noooooooooooooooo!), Vince has been keeping us updated of his doings over at his blog, The Benthos. Earlier this week it was a post about an Ammonoid Fossil he found in the Colorado River. Then just the other day, an investigative post on the common wasp and why it might be going rapid attack on a moth in Vince's garden (complete with 5 minutes of live footage)!

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We talk about art, the art scene, the art market, trends in art, contemporary art, art history, our individual art practices, politics, popular culture, top 40, underground, indie, folk art, DIY, crust punks, intellects, sculptors, curators, professors, meter maids, and lunch truck ladies - - - but we mustn't forget the origin of all of this : WONDER.

Why do we make the things that we do? What compels us to enter those secret and special places inside of ourselves? Why are you infatuated with old globes and snake skins? Why does the sight of a whole section of different color duct tape in the hardware store make us giddy?

Wonder: wond-der. -verb: to think or speculate curiously; to be filled with admiration, amazement or awe; -noun: something strange and surprising: a cause of surprise; the emotion excited by what is strange; miraculous deed or event; remarkable phenomenon.

You get the picture. Now go pick some up !- figure out what turns you on and hold onto it! Wonder - it's what we can do.

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Check out some of Vince's new experiments with woodcuts on his blog, here, you can also see more of his work on his website, here. Get jealous of Austin, here. Buy your ticket to visit and show up on Vince's doorstep, here.

Today the Sea was born!

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Today the Sea was born! And she doesn't know it yet, but we have planned a fun filled weekend staycation. Thats right, we are going to vacation - at home. Not the toughest thing to do when you live somewhere as fabulous and full as Philadelphia ...

Don't want to give anything away - - - but for those inquiring minds, (Sea stay away) check out this link here and here, here and here, yum here, and the grand finale here.

Wednesday Work: Anslem Kiefer

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A mixed media artist, painter, sculptor, installation artist - a mixed media artist who works with things like 700 lbs. of lead, making it into a book. A painter working with tar and emulsion, earth and concrete, and an eerie application of text. Anselm Kiefer.

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Keeping with our October theme, macabre and gray. Have you heard the term "vernacular architecture"? Its a term referring to regional architecture of the home-grown sort. The row home picture windows full in complete decoration for every major, and all forgotten, holiday home to home, and street to street in South Philly - that is an example of vernacular architecture. The style specific to fishing huts built in the backwoods of Maine - things like that.

I can't help but think Kiefer's work looks German and that I would like to visit.

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DEFY MONDAY: Speak Up!

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...c'mon...do it.

Wednesday Work: Alex Clauss

Pissed Off Kids, 2009

Series of 3-color screenprints 6.5 X 12.5"

Testimony, 2009 

Single-channel video

(I really wish this had been called "Dinkin' Around" or "Hinkey Dinkey")

Crudus Memoria, 2009

5 color screenprint 13X9"

September is over, (was it ever really here?) and creative-costume-figuring-out has ensued. I truly love this time of year. It's the richest, most brilliant, macabre, and strange; Halloween is that time of year when innocence and eerie collide into one traditional celebration. (Pint-sized bleeding zombies and vampires running around your hood begging for candy anyone!? )

Even though Alex Clauss' work is not necessarily centered around Halloween, it definitely gives the same sort of feeling. Clauss' prints and videos collectively show their observer a spectral and nostalgic sensibility, and even a bit of bizarre humor.

Read more about Alex Clauss and his wonderfully strange work HERE

And the most fitting for last, this one actually is in the essence of the coming holiday.

Automation, 2008

Single-channel video

Mwaaa Haa Haaaa....

DEFY MONDAY: Diva

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I'm usually a jeans and t-shirt kinda gal myself, and whence the weather changes, a sweatshirt is added. In the office - layers and layers of button-ups and v-neck sweaters. Both wardrobe types which lend themselves well to anonymity, and a special skill that I have to be able to blend way into a crowd.

It could be the pre-AM frost coming in my open window last night, well before the morning alarm, or the thawing of a pitbull before morning coffee - he woke teeth gnashing, ready to take over France or some other unknowing country, like a little Napoleon (feel bad for the lab that lies next to him); whatever it is I have a wild hair, and this DEFY MONDAY: I say - diva.

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It could be something "subtle" like the pigeon feather headdress or the androgynous bow tie, both pictured above.

Or you could go for something all-consuming, but anonymous still, like these knit costumes below from Mark Newport - an artist exploring masculine identities through knit one-sees. Okay, okay, gender politics, but don't they just look plain cozy?

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But, I said diva - you want to be anonymous?Let's shake it up out there. Fall into and reside behind a mask like one of Nick Cave's (not of the Bad Seeds) Soundsuits.

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Nick Cave is an American performance artist interested in wearable sculpture, but I don't think you have to be a diva or an artist to make your own awesome outfit!

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I just ordered some new on-sale sweaters in COLORS (read: not black, grey, or brown), & I might even splurge for an afternoon cup of coffee (read: diva).

Its the little things sometimes,

let's all live - LOUDER.

***Don't forget, Halloween is coming up!

Wednesday Work: STOP Motion/Stop Animation: The Brothers Quay

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While studying abroad in Rome a few summers back, I had the good fortune to be introduced to the Brothers Quay, both their work and the artists themselves, while participating in a philosophy course dealing with ideas of vision and rationality. (or was it reality, or realization??? hmm, it did begin with an 'r'. The whole experience a blur!)

And I don't know if its the changing weather, a changing mood, or if I am just preparing to nestle down in the studio with my demons for a while (oy! demons!), but I have been obsessed - obsessed!- with all things macabre lately (see also, steampunk): The Brothers Quay fitting the bill quite well.

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Twin brothers born in Norristown, PA, these boys are Philadelphia locals made it big. Both attending The University of the Arts back in the 1960s, moving to England shortly thereafter to study at The Royal College of Art in London.

All you really need to know however, is this: Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay (2010). Netflix it - watch "The Epic of Gilgamesh, or This Unnameable Little Broom" (1985), then watch "The Street of Crocodiles" (1986). Then watch them again. Try to wrap your brain around these TABLETOP realities created from everyday objects, from garbage, from your lunch scraps.

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Their sets are teeny-tiny. Their attention to detail is ENORMOUSly articulate and thorough.

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You want to watch it, own it, be it - NOW.

But...maybe you don't. (I'm heartborken.) In that case, check out these videos on Vimeo, "The Best of Animation/Stop Motion/Puppets" in today's music video scene. The image below is from
N.A.S.A feat Karen O and Ol' Dirty Bastard, the song is "Strange Enough".

Let's go, come out with me, bring your scissors, your glasses, your teeny-tiny working fingers and a video camera, let's make the world a smaller place - one full of much larger possibilities.

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DEFY MONDAY: Singing in the Rain

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There's no smile like a musical-made smile! Hope you all are enjoying the weather out there, and if singings not your thing, check out something kinda glum, here.

Wednesday Work: Lisa Sigal

Line Up. 2008.

To pull directly from a press release: Lisa Sigal's work "lies at the intersection of painting, sculpture and architecture." The thing that attracts me to the work is the play of the artwork in and out of our "real" space - the space we inhabit both in the bodily sense and in the sense of this image up top, the "real" space of our work/play/live.

Art lives in galleries. Art work exists in specific confines. Art work is completed between certain dimensions of frame, or size of wall, area in room, the stretch of a single concrete monument.

I love the image up top because it is boundless, playing with the sea foam green from building to building on a landscape, but also sea foam green in relationship to the green bike lane on the street. Where is the frame around this piece? Where is the gallery?

The Day Before Yesterday. 2008.

I have been feeling tired lately trying to figure out where art lives, and in which medium specific that it breathes. Lisa Sigal's use of many medium & much space, both specific and ubiquitous, makes me feel sure & excited that yes - art is what it should be, part of our lives, the same way buildings and bills and work days are.

One Room Shelter. 2009.

For pure aesthetics I quite enjoy the color choices Sigal makes and her play with bright colors into and on top of worn or undone industrial spaces, along with the construction materials.

View From My Brother's Room. 2005.

The subtle nostalgia, and the abstract narrative. Both of these things I like. I am not pretending to understand it in the way it may be meant to be understood, but I am enjoying it as a tired one does, a feeling of familiar, yet inspiring with its unknown undertones, much like the fall air out there, just starting to nip at the tips of our ears and remind us, summer's over - there's work to be done, lovely, wonderful work.

(some thoughts on architecture). 2010.

All of these images were pulled from Lisa Sigal's website, here. To read more about Sigal, check out this and this.

Defy Monday: Spike the Cider!

Photo: Julie A. Wenskoski

It's that time. Leaves are crunching and orchards are starting their apple and pumpkin festivities. This week begins, in my opinion, one of the best month-long periods of the entire year.

So, you ask, how do you start the week of the best month, the month of "it's AUTUMN"!?

You spike the cider already...

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Below, I've listed a recipe to get you started. It is quick and very easy. My only advice here: put in the things that you like, remove the things you don't, and experiment. Cause if it's apple cider and it's amber-colored alcohol, you pretty much can't go wrong.

Poor-Man's Hot-Toddy

Make each drink individually, to taste.

INGREDIENTS
1 box spiced apple cider mix OR hot apple cider tea
6-8 oz water per drink
whiskey o' choice
butter schnapps (optional sweet licquor)
*orange slice
*apple slice
*cinnamon stick
*(optional garnish)

1. Boil water in kettle, or warm in microwave until almost boiling.
2. Pour contents of cider mix into (or add tea bag to) mug
3. Pour hot water into mix and stir well (or let steep).
4. Pour in whiskey and schnapps to taste, (I prefer half schnapps to whiskey)
5. Garnish with fruit slices and cinnamon sticks

Enjoy!... and remember this anytime you're near a nice roarin' fire.

Wednesday Work: Seonna Hong

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The Corrective Effects of a Brushfire 2009 

mixed media on paper

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Same Bad Habits 2009

mixed media on canvas

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Hold That Tiger 2009

mixed media on canvas

Seonna Hong works as an illustrator and animation art director. Much of her animation work focuses on children's entertainment, though, her art is appreciated by kids and adults alike. I find a truly impressive combination of playfulness and danger in many of her images.

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I Prefer the Low Notes 2007

acrylic and paper on wood

Check out www.seonnahong.com for more images (they are ALL sooo fine, too many to list here.)

The vibrant colors in Hong's work are reminiscent of the coming season. As leaves are changing, and sweaters and scarves are showing themselves, i find myself giddy and excited for Autumn's arrival. Just a few more weeks and it'll be here in full swing!