inspiration – 30 day challenges

http://riahills.com/stacked-mugs/

http://www.fineartpost.com/harmon/

Contacted Mark Harmon a while back along with a lot of other Truman Alumni and stuff. Finally got an email back from him today along with a link to his awesome website… http://www.markharmon.org .

I’ve been a bit out of art but am probably going to get back in to it real soon. Things are starting to settle down in the living arrangements now that we are in the apartment. Now if the floods just stop (waterlogged carpets and floors the last few days have not been fun to deal with — hoping landlord can figure out what the problem is and fix it), things will be getting back to normal… Been watching a lot of movies lately. It’s sort of nice having cable again. We didn’t have it when we lived in Boonville since we were spending so much on commuting daily and also because I was in to fta satellite reception. I did some doodling in lightwave the other day… will probably do a lot more of that sort of stuff, drawing, and photography. Things are starting to get good again. I might be posting more here eventually, but it might take a while since a lot of the paintings I wanted to take photos of and post on here are in storage at my parents house for now. Little 2 bedroom apartment is not enough room to store tons of huge paintings, especially since one of the rooms is mostly a storage room now, filled with boxes from floor to ceiling. Downsizing is hard to do. We did get rid of a lot of stuff, but there’s a lot more that we find it hard to part with since we might use the stuff or need it later. That and memories are hard to part with. I even have one box marked “sentimental crap,” lol. About half of the store room could be named that on some level.

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http://www.marshallarisman.com/

http://www.marshallarisman.com/ – Marshall Arisman is an illustrator who’s works I have liked for quite some time. His works are somewhat simple, but also are rather disturbing. I think his original theme/idea was mainly to combine the human form with metal or robotic type of images.. a sort of bionic illustration genre, really sci-fi type of thing. I like his works because they deal with our humanity… and the ultimate issue of death, and what death might mean, both now and in the future. His use of bold color schemes like black and red makes his works really pop out and catch your eye. The images are so strange and wonderful, they tend to haunt you. That makes you think. All great works of art make you think…

Levitt in Color, New at MoMA

There are no installation views of the Projects exhibition in which Helen Levitt first presented her color photographs to MoMA’s public, for one simple reason: all forty pictures were projected onto the wall, fading as quickly as they appeared. The year was 1974, and Levitt was in the midst of a creative outburst—unusual not only because […] http://bit.ly/aWjbvq

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Books by or about Helen Levitt

Inspirations – Anselm Kiefer

Another couple of great and inspiring works that I found at the Modern Museum of Art in Fort Worth, Texas were Anselm Kiefer’s Book with Wings

, and Die Aschenblume.

I have always been a fan of Kiefer’s works. The first work that I ever saw of his is located in the St. Louis Museum of Art, Breaking of the Vessels.

Kiefer’s work is gigantic, and epic, but also sublime and simple. It questions history, and our place in it. It takes Germanic Expressionism to a whole new level. It brings the painting/sculptures to the people, quite literally… It calls to mind the supernatural and makes us think about why it is, what our relationship is with it. It makes us question our reality and opens our minds to thinking about things more. I could write tons about the psychology behind Kiefer’s works, but think many great authors have already done so over and over, so I’ll leave you to explore their ideas on your own time.

Kiefer’s works are something that you need to experience in person. The hugeness of the works, and strange physicality to the works is something that digital photos and art books do absolutely no justice to.

Anselm Kiefer is a master of mixing physical things in to his paint and integrating sculpture in to his painterly works. Frank Stella is the only artist I know of that has works that combine 2d and 3d elements in such strange combinations that they start to come close to the mastery that Kiefer has over this realm. However, Stella’s works are typically pretty happy colors from the pretty happy rainbows that the pop world embraces while Kiefer’s is made of the mud-like dreary colors that are true dramatic tragedies that explore the psychological world a heck of a lot more in-depth than Stella’s simple facades ever can.

I’d love to do artwork the size of Anselm Kiefer’s most popular works, but don’t because the sheer enormity of such works make storage a gigantic problem unless the works are going directly in to museums and galleries. Taking photos of the works is also problematic because of the huge size. A photo just does not do these sort of works any justice since there is so much more to the works than a simple photo can capture.

Inspirations – Jimmy Kuehnle

I looked up Jimmy the other day on facebook after looking through a list of artists that I went to school with at Truman State U.

http://assessment.truman.edu/components/5year/Art2004.pdf is the list of artist I found. That list is far from a comprehensive list as it only names a few names, and it actually has a lot of false or half truth info. I don’t work nor ever have worked for Boone Hospital. I do work in a University Hospital in the same town though.

I remember Jimmy from back there in college as being an interesting individual, just as I was. However, he was a lot more outgoing than I was.

It looks like that has not changed much, and has actually become the focus of his work to some degree. Drawing attention to ones self is something artists must do on some level since it’s all about bringing the fragile inner psyche out for examination by the artist and those around him or her that become viewers…

Here’s an interesting article on him that is linked to from his facebook account:
Don’t be alarmed: The walking balloon is artist Jimmy Kuehnle.

Using baloons to create gigantic mobile sculptures is a very cool idea. We all expect to see this sort of stuff going down a huge parade or something, but not just out in the everyday. It is neat to see that Jimmy’s becoming the pied piper so to speak.

I guess this sort of thing might make him seem silly to those that don’t know him, but that’s actually a good thing since it opens the general public’s eyes up – makes them become aware of their environment, surroundings, and gives them the privilege to meet someone that is a great artist! 🙂 😉

Fellow Artist – Jamie Lloyd

Jamie Lloyd is my brother-in-law. He’s in to photography, and spends a lot of time at Eagle’s Bluff shooting wildlife. His photograps have some pretty good compositional qualities in them, and he uses top-of-the-line equipment to make sure that his shots come out great.

Jamie’s website is http://missouricameraguy.zenfolio.com

Fellow Artist – Rachel (Michael Tiger) Elliott

Rachel and I were classmates together at Truman State University in the late 1990s. We attended quite a few painting classes together. I remember fondly having some in-depth discussions with her as we both sat fatigued on the painting studio floor after having been in our own little corners of the room pulling all-nighters.

Her work has a serene beauty to it. A few of her drawings are sometimes simple on the surface, but very narrative and complex under the surface. I really enjoy her mastery of color and simple lines to evoke a lot of feeling. Her use of compositional space draws the viewer in to the little worlds that each individual painting or drawing depicts and describes. Her works may be small, and intimate since they require the viewer to get up close and personal with the work, but they pack a powerful punch.

Rachel’s Blog is located at http://michaeltiger.wordpress.com/. Her blogging is one of the many things that have inspired me to start blogging again.

Fellow Artist – Chris Mast

Chris is the webmaster for the popular gaming website http://www.merqurycity.com/

I’ve known Chris since high school. He and I were on the high school newspaper staff together at Boonville High School way back in the day (16 years ago, geesh, I feel old now). Back then, Chris lived one and a half blocks away. Chris, Chris’s brother, Sam, my brother, Danny, a few other close friends, and I used to play many video games and pen and paper role playing games together. The main games that we played were Heroes Unlimited, Beyond the Supernatural, Ninja and Superspies, Rifts, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT – no longer in publication since the Copyright and Trademark owners dumbed the TMNT down and made it in to a kid’s cartoon instead of the gritty, urban ninja comic it originally was intended to be). In my college days, we even played a few games of Nightbane, and a weird role playing world that I created using Palldium Books game system with modified versions of World of Darkness characters on occasion. (I won’t publish the conversion rules here in this post, but might in a future post – they are fairly simple).

I have many fond memories of role playing with Chris. Him and I used to take turns being the Game Master. Role Playing is one interest of mine that got me interested in taking up theater in college. Chris was one of the grooms men in my wedding. I keep in pretty close contact with him and see him about once or twice a year most years nowadays. He’s a very talented artist, and with two bachelor degrees behind his name, is about as well rounded of an artist as there can be.

Chris’s portfolio website is http://www.chrisjmast.com/.

Fellow Artists

Items tagged with the tag Fellow Artists are going to be dedicated to some of my fellow artist friends and their websites. Here, I plan to link to websites, blogs, and other interesting online projects that some of my fellow art friends have created, run, or maintain. I’ll try to keep the list narrowed down to artists that I personally know, or have some affiliation with. A copy of these postings will also be added to the Fellow Artists Page in my blog.