Eva Lundsager

Eva Lundsager is a contemporary artist I've been looking to a lot for my own work because of her emphasis on color and texture. She uses the most vibrant colors in amazing ways, even though her palette is neon at times the paintings are never overwhelmingly bright. The colors are carefully selected to compliment, something that can be very difficult to do when working with such a saturated palette.

 Another notable detail about her work is how many different ways she applies paint to her canvas. The variety in technique creates different textures and effects that create a beautiful variety within her paintings. Her process is fairly unusual, she flips her canvas throughout painting to see the possibilities in every drip rather than keeping to just one concept like most artists--this looseness in technique is perhaps what makes her work so strong.

Pippin Drysdale

Pippin Drysdale is a ceramic artist from Australia. The forms that she throws are quite simple and minimalist but are very beautiful, especially because of their unique surface qualities. She is inspired by the Australian landscape and uses line, texture, and color to suggest this. The subtle lines that are constant in her work give the pieces movement and interest.

Geometrica

This is collaboration work of Alessandro Mendini and Young Sin Kim from Korea and this creation "Geometrica" came out. This Geometrica is composed of little and big geometric circle and curves. Gold circular handles really simple but beautiful. Due to shape and color, those circles really emphasized and gives mood of royalty, so it got into me.

Mark Rothko

In my previous post i mentioned seeing one of nauman's pieces at the Chicago art institute. That got me thinking about all the other incredibly work i saw while there. it was a very inspiring trip for me. I saw everything from the Cycladic figurines found on the island of create in 1200 BC to Van Gogh's paints of haybails. Despite all that incredible art the most interesting thing for me was the Mark Rothko paintings i saw there. Rothko was part of the abstract expressionist movement. His work almost exclusively consists of colored squares on a canvas. Seeing images of his work in textbooks I always thought it was crap. I mean anyone can paint squares of color on a canvas. Looking at them in person was a far different experience though because they are enormous. The sheer size of them makes it feel like your going to get sucked into the painting. Because of seeing them in person i now have a new found for rothko and i try to bring this experience to mind when looking at all art.

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary american artist and while i don't always appreciate his style and often times look at his work and think thats not art, i do appreciate and am inspired by the large range of mediums that Nauman has gone through. He is quite the renaissance man of todays art world. His work includes cast sculptures, video art, photograph, printmaking, painting, and neon lights. About the only thing i haven't seen in his work is jewelry. His cast pieces are the ones i find most fascinating. The picture below is of his fish fountains. He cast around 100 fish in bronze and set them up so that the fountain was coming out of each of there mouths. He is very well know for his use of neon lights. one of which is actually at the Chicago art institute. He uses the lights to portray very stark messages. Lastly are his performance pieces most famous of which might be "fountain" which is depicted below. Fountain is a self portrait based on the original fountain by Duchamp. All in all the sheer quanitity and variation in medium of Nauman's work is dizzying.

Susan Kadish

I found out about this artist who has a unique style in dealing with ceramics, marble, fabrics, paint, metal and stone. Recently, she has been focusing on clay. As you can see below, many of her ceramics are a beautiful combination of stones or jewelries. I believe her childhood interest in stones and her experience of studying stone cutting in Italy affected her artworks. 

Wood Firing

The process of wood firing a kiln is demanding and requires a great deal of time.  Intensive labor is needed for preparing wood, as well as, maintaining and firing the kiln. Many kinds of wood can be used for the kiln but it's usually the softer woods that produce a faster hotter firing, while hardwoods aid in keeping a bed of coals in the firebox. Reaching the necessary temperature for firing is not dependent only on the amount of wood burned.  It is also the timing of each stoke, the size & species of wood, as well as the moisture content, that makes a great fire. A stoke could be as little of time as three minutes it just all depends on the fire itself. Even with good conditions, there is no guarantee that things will come out perfectly.

I found a website that talks about about wood firing kiln and what kind of ash does what to clay bodies at http://www.robertcomptonpottery.com/Method%20of-Wood%20Firing-pottery.htm

Johnson Tsang

When I first looked at Johnson Tsang's clay works (online), it captured my attention. How he references various living creatures and combines them in his works are amazing. As I was carefully observing the procedure of carving and painting this piece of ceramic, I was even more amazed at his delicacy and creativity. I might spend more time looking at his other ceramics. 

Richard Notkin

This piece is made by Richard Notkin and I remembered this name because one of his work was displayed in Museum in IMU. As it seems in picture, his work is amazingly detail and realistic. I hope I can make something out of clay like this detail.

Benzle Porcelain

Curtis Benzle

A porcelain ceramicist who stains his porcelain so that his clay is only 20% of clay and the ending product looks like glass becasue  it's very translucent. All of the vessels are made of slabs.  When painting or printing, he begins with a slab of less than a millimeter in thickness(usually painted as slip onto a fabric and allowed to dry to a malleable state).  The appropriate marks are then generated on this surface. Benzle started doing this in the 1970's in various ways of

"nerikomi---specific images are created in layers within a tube or "log" and then segmented as cross-sections.  These image wafers are then used either individually(as with much of the fish imagery) or as repeat pattern.  When used as repeat pattern I vary the individual wafer size to provide movement within the overall assembled pattern.  I came to the nerikomi technique through my graduate studies in glass.  At that time, early 70's, the most common reference technique was "millefiori" glass.  I simply transferred the glass technique to porcelain.

slip painting----large color fields are usually painted in with colored slip made from the same recipe as the malleable body.  I also use slip to paint in specific details in some of the fish.

print----I use stencils and stamps to generate some of the imagery.   The decision to use nerikomi, painting or printing is based on the content of the overall piece.  In general, nerikomi provides a crisper image, painting yields a more fluid imagery and print falls somewhere in-between". (http://www.benzleporcelain.com/technique.asp)

I chose Curtis Benzle because I am fascinated by the way porcelain looks and it's translucency it gives when around a light source.

Jonathan Adler and the Business of art

My post for this week is about the pottery of Jonathan Adler. Adlers works are playful, many seem to flavored with a touch of cynicism and sarcastic humor. Others are just plain fun. By looking at the forms it seems as though most of them have been slip cast, though the orange piece is thrown. I also find the geometric perfection and repetition of some of the vases quite impressive. Adler seems to be a big name in contemporary pottery and interior design. I don't know how I feel about this though. At what point does an artist become a brand name as well? Like say Jeff Kuntz or Thomas (gagging noise) Kincade for example. I guess Andy Warhol was able to, but it somehow seems more pure when he did it. Can making art and making your work a brand name coexist? Or do you sacrifice originality when your work becomes a brand? On the other hand though, maybe in the end the best critique of the commercial system is to wholeheartedly accept the system to the nth, so that your work and business practices, are, in a way, a sarcastic commentary on the commercial art market, and life in general. . .

Something that I wouldn't want to purchase

For some reason, this squirrel attack mug caught my attention. There isn't any information on who made this, but you can buy it on Amazon or ebay. I guess the idea is brilliant but creepy at the same time because you never know what's staring at you inside of the cup until you take a few sip of liquid. I would give applause to surprising me with an inanimate clay squirrel. 

Renee Iacone

Renee Iacone - Ceramic Artist

http://johndavisgallery.com/renee-iacone-2/

Kevin White - Carly Steuck

Kevin White is a ceramic artist working in Australia.  His makes vessels with contemporary embellishment that take inspiration from the East Asian ceramic tradition.  These forms feature evocative hand-painted decoration with geometric planes of colour, lustrous gold finishes and intimate decal patterning.  

Kevin has also incorporated, in his most recent work, larger sweeping brushstrokes that relate to his experience living and working in China and Japan.  His distinct signature of interpretation is clear, giving new life to the ceramic traditions and refracting ideas of Japonisme seen in British ceramics of the 19th century.

Bio on Kevin

Kevin was born in England in 1954 and arrived in Australia in 1985 upon completion of his post-graduate studies at the Royal College of Art in London.  In 1978, he was awarded a scholarship by the Japanese Ministry of Education for research into ceramics in Japan.  He lived and worked there until 1983, spending much of his time working in the studio of Satoshi Sato in Kyoto who was a member of the avant-garde ceramic group, Sodeisha.  He is currently Associate Professor and Deputy Head of International Development at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Kevin has participated in many solo and group exhibitions around Australia and overseas, and received a number of nationally and internationally recognised awards.  His work is held in collections throughout the world, including the National Gallery of Australia, Powerhouse Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Royal College of Art (UK), Tachikichi Corporation (Japan) and the Gifu Prefectural Ceramic Museum (Japan).

Eva Funderburgh

Eva Funderburgh is a sculptor who lives in Seattle, Washington. Her range of work is broad such as bronze and clay. She makes many unknown creatures from imagination and her styles of creatures work grabbed my attention since it is cute and somehow similar with characters in Japanese Animation movies.

Kim Alsbrooks

I'm really into art that is clever, but also humorous, and Kim Alsbrook's series of paintings "My White Trash Family" does just that. She's spent the past ten years painting tiny portraits on crushed beer cans.

The combining of super traditional portraiture real historical figures on the cheapest of beers is an unexpected combination and very funny.

Its more than just humor however, her paintings are very well rendered, especially considering the difficult surface of a beer can. They also speak of serious topics, from the artist statement itself:

"The White Trash Series was developed while living in the South out of frustration with some of the prevailing ideologies, in particular, class distinction.   This ideology seems to be based on a combination of myth, biased history and a bizarre sentimentality about old wars and social structures.   With the juxtaposition of the portraits from museums, once painted on ivory, now on flattened trash like beer cans and fast food containers, the artist sets out to even the playing field, challenging the perception of the social elite in today's society."