Much is said about the difference between art and product, between creative motivation and monetary motivation. I think that perhaps no medium bridges those two worlds better than the book cover, a visual meant to entice a person to experience the art within. But what is strange about any art that touches the commercial side is that it is often, if not always, created by committee.

Book covers are no exception. A publisher tells a designer to come up with a few concepts. The designer turns those over to the publisher. The publisher returns to the designer with some changes. The process repeats until a sellable compromise is made. The author (the other artist involved) may have a say, but it’s a small one.

With my new novel, Stranger Will, I was put in a unique position. Not only was I given the opportunity to design some cover concepts, but my publisher agreed to let readers decide the final cover, essentially turning the audience into the committee. Here’s what they decided:

What do you think about the idea of creating art by committee?

This month The Second Space gallery in Spokane, WA held its first ever juried show titled “Lipstick and Rouge”. The show’s title was to illicit the idea that color can portray emotion or be associated with a thought. Most of the work accepted seemed to hold true to the theme or a least lean heavily enough on a limited palette that one could argue for it’s admission easily.

Of course there were a few of the standard tricks. The now ever-present low-art/high-kitsch realm was being held down by a few different artists. There was a blatant, poorly executed Mark Rothko steal, which didn’t seem to fit anywhere. Despite those few outliers there wasn’t an overabundance of mediocre or unoriginal art, which is always surprising given the Spokane region’s lust for non-offensive, home-decor.

To be honest though, I really shouldn’t be surprised. After dropping by The Second Space a few times since this summer I have consistently been impressed. The quality of work shown, the presentation and atmosphere have always been both comfortable and creative.

Although the bulk of work shown was from local artists, much of the  work shown was shipped from all over the country for the chance to exhibit in this juried show. Only three awards were given, The Dean Davis Award went to Dara Harvey of Spokane for “Portal Of The Messenger” (oil on canvas), the Best of Show went to Megan Martens also of Spokane for her work, “First Comes Love…” (oil on fabric on canvas) and the Merit Award went to Kim Truesdale of Columbia, SC for “Violent Enticement” (oil on canvas). I am not sure how the awards were decided upon, and I’m not entirely sure that the works given the awards were the most worthy of them. However, I can be certain that all three we’re excellent compositions.

“First Comes Love…” managed to stop me in my tracks. I spent a few minutes trying to find follow Martens’ process. It appears  to be a floral-printed fabric stretched or otherwise affixed to a canvas. The image over the print was a semi-translucent wedding dress, painted smoothly over a mist of red.

Featured in the exhibit was our own Rebecca Roberts whose “Reduction” (oil on canvas) series definitely stood out among the pieces hanging. The series consists of four brightly colored canvases detailed with different types of cells and synapses stretching across them. They appear to be almost abstract, but the attention to detail renders the subject matter to be quite specific. Her four-piece set was hanging in a perfect spot to catch the attention of passersby, and it certainly managed to command attention from the sidewalk.

A juried show is almost always a grab-bag of visual treats. When done well there are almost always a few outliers that either supercede the standard or fall a little short of the status quo. Personally, I feel that The Second Space has managed to give the Inland Northwest a great venue for art as well as offering a great mix of work from a wide variety of individuals that is perfect for coming in out of the cold, meandering around and stroking your chin thoughtfully.

The female figure embraces her partner amidst a swirling vortex of color and texture, unaware of the surrounding danger that may tear them apart, while the male figure lies cold, rigid, and contemplative beside her.  The implied motion of the background threatens to overwhelm and consume the disconnected couple, who are both alone in their own minds.

Kokoschka’s choice of bold and muted colors gives the composition an extremely varied depth of field, carrying the eye through each fold of fabric and breath of wind, yet allowing the main focus to fall upon the opposite expressions of the two faces.  Each brush stroke is made independent and distinct, symbolizing the powerful energy of emotion traveling outward into the unknown.

Miwa Matreyek procures beautifully ornate compositions that blend performance art, animation, sculpture and music. She challenges the viewer by blending representational and surreal imagery with a mix of soft, gentle music with a dash of electronic grind at times. She juxtaposes real space vs. created space, real time vs. manipulated time and body vs. animation incorporating a meditative and insightful direction. This makes her work moving, stimulating and thought-provoking. For performances like this, she stands and moves behind a projector screen with some light coming from behind her to create a shadow-puppet effect with her body.

“Dreaming of Lucid Living” struck my own heart strings the most around 2:06 when that ol’ familiar humming, buzzing Universal noise of our nervous system began weaving around the music. Miwa’s silhouette is superimposed with various inner realms dissolving re-building. At 3:08 she begins singing “there’s no difference between me and you” and thus reminds me of that profound, multi-sensory experience of boundary dissolving where one realizes only our Egos separate us (and by extension, language). Otherwise, we are all just atoms built up of repeating patterns forming bones, veins, nerves, organs. Around 4:24 her piece takes a different turn as she brings us back into the “stranger than fiction” (4:45) material, consensual reality of cities and egocentricism.

“Dreaming of Lucid Living” was created during her education at CalArts Experimental Animation Program in 2007. An abridgement from her piece “Myth and Infrastructure” was recently featured at the TED conference in July 2010 . She is also a founding member of Cloud Eye Control, a collaborative performance group from LA.

Her work is stunning, to say the least.

Awe, Alphonse Mucha. Beautiful flowing lines and organic bold colors that make me feel relaxed just by looking at them.  He is slowly becoming one of my favorites. I love how is work usually has different borders within one piece and a mix of different shapes that give it balance.

Peretti’s themes focus primarily on the human relationship with nature.  Her recent studies have involved the analysis of  ”feral children”, or children who have had very little or no contact with other humans.  These mysterious subject matters are translated into surrealistic compositions created with glass, paper, pigments, and other mixed media.

The figures in Peretti’s work seem to float in space, far away from apparent reality, interacting with or becoming part of their natural surroundings.  A dreamlike quality is achieved not only through the images themselves but the translucence of the etched glass panes that allow light to filter through them.  Soft shapes fade and reemerge behind veils of negative space, creating an atmospheric distance between the subject and the viewer.  It is this visceral reaction that draws me so strongly to these works and seems to speak to my own subconscious.

Sybille lives and works out of New Orleans and Cologne, Germany, and also collaborates with her husband Stephen Paul Day, another well known glass artist.

Bruton Stroube is a photography studio composed of three photographers, Greg Stroube, Brandon Voges, and Eric Johnson (come on, Eric; change your last name to something crazy already). Most of the photography available on the Bruton Stroube website has commercial lean to it, but one series stuck out. Something strange is going on with The Upside Downy Face series, something almost imperceptible upon first glance. The reason is all in the execution: the subjects are photographed upside-down, but displayed rightside-up.

I credit the studio’s commercial background for this idea. Think, all the photos of food in advertising have been prepped in unnatural ways to get it to look beautiful and appealing. Basically, the idea is to create an end-product so perfect that the audience ignores logic in favor of idealism. The Upside Downy Face series invites the viewer to question the process (or at least be disturbed by the process).

Bruton Stroube webite

Upside Downy Face series

What drew me to this piece was the initial visual confusion of its medium. The acrylic paint is rendered so smoothly that that piece (when seen on the computer, maybe) appears almost three dimensional, clay perhaps. The implied depth is especially impressive given the relatively small color palette. The dark crescent shape at the base of this image initially distracted me, and perhaps it still does, but when I try to picture the piece without it, I can see the need for such an anchor.

Anyone else get Earthworm Jim flashbacks when looking at this?

The simple, single-word title informs the piece nicely, allowing the grotesqueness of the image to feed off of the simple body-part designation. Similarly, Steve Wilson’s complimentary piece, “Brains” (below) does the same thing, perhaps even more-so given the additional s on “Brains” (it sounds so much grosser with the s for some reason).

Visit Steve Wilson’s Deviant Art portfolio

Nature will always be my favorite artist.  I am amazed by the seemingly unnatural things it does, like join with a fence.

Pablo O’Higgins (b. Paul Higgins Stevenson, 1904, d. 1983) was of good ol’ Aryan Mormon stock hailing from Salt Lake City, Utah. He attended East High School (a place High School Musical fanatics might recognize), studying under the painter LeConte Stewart. He took his passion for visual language and interest in the eye-popping mural movement of California to the Academy of Arts in San Diego. By 1924, after an invitation, he was studying under Diego Rivera, soon painting murals in Mexico. Paul become an active member of the Mexican Communist Party with Rivera and Frida until 1947, a stark challenge to his fundamentalist upbringing by an attorney father responsible for convincing the attorney general to proceed with executions of criminals.

Now calling himself Pablo O’Higgins, in 1937 he co-founded Taller de Gráfica Popular (“People’s Graphic Workshop”) and three years later was honored as the only non-Mexican artist shown alongside “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art”—an exhibit curated by the Museum of Modern Art. By 1961, O’Higgins was granted honorary Mexican citizenship for his artistic and educational contributions to the social-political ideas of the Mexican people.

While I was visiting family in my stomping grounds of SLC, I visited the University Of Utah Museum Of Fine Arts for, in part, the Pablo O’Higgins: Works on Paper exhibit. A collection of lithographs detail his gorgeous, organic and fluid drawing style, set against the bleak tone of stone lithography. His work includes representational figures in fairly representational settings, but the hard outlines, soft interior gradation and fluid line work give it an abstract quality I find deliciously appealing. His work narrates various scenes of the poor Mexican workforce, and generally they appear contemplative, downtrodden and bearing the weight of the recently “ended” Mexican Revolution, and the dissonance felt between the class systems. Being an active member of the Mexican Communist Party, it is clear where O’Higgins derived his subject matter. Some of his lithos are hand colored with soft hues characteristic of Mexican art, and some of his prints feature portraits of fellow socialists and laborers he encountered. His work carries a soft energy to it, despite the heavy, black outlines. O’Higgins was indeed prolific, but remains obscure in America though he has certainly left a lasting impact on the Mexican community. He is indeed an artista Mexicana.

Gregory Crewdson is a photographer who’s works echo some of the more elaborate scenes of past painted masterpieces. His work does strike out on its own with original concepts, yet still reminds me of Rembrant or Dali. The incredibly detailed scenes often depict suburban culture in a haunting fashion and in my opinion, stir the viewer all the more because of the commonplace settings and characters.

The idea of a suburban bedroom may be a common idea, but when Crewdson gets down to business, he places intrigue in every corner and cranny of that room. Often times windows are open, doors are ajar and mirrors reflect their light to pull the eye around the photo.

I first saw his work a few years ago in an art magazine and due to the size of the print, I would have sworn that the writer had typo’d. The work seemed to be so painterly, I was convinced that he was in fact a photo-realist painter. Of course a month or two later I found his work in yet another art magazine where they described the great lengths he had gone through to stage a photo for his “Beneath The Roses” series. It wasn’t until last March that I actually had the privilege of seeing his work in person.

It was at the Portland Art Museum where I was enjoying myself immensely and bumping along from piece to piece until I turned the corner and found myself face to face with a 6 foot wide print! There were two Gregory Crewdson prints on opposite walls and I believe that I spent at least 30 minutes on each! I certainly wasn’t the only one that was mesmerized by the play of light and minute attention to detail. His work was responsible for congesting that entire area of that wing of the gallery. It was obvious that half or more of the viewers were lost in the gallery, wandering around and thinking “uh… I don’t get it” until they came around the corner and were so immersed in a photograph that they didn’t care if they got it or not.

He has definitely been captivating audiences with his work. Simply do a Google image search for him and you will find hundreds of pages of results, most of which are linked to blogs, raving about his work. -When an artist pulls people in so well that everyone is remembering their name, its usually because they’re either an amazing talent or an amazing gimmick; in this case we’re dealing with great talent (and maybe a little gimmick too).

I had the pleasure of seeing a William Eggleston exhibit this past February at the Chicago Art Institute Museum.  The exhibit was featured in the new Modern Wing of the museum, and spanned several decades of the artist’s life.  I was not yet familiar with Eggleston’s work at the time of the exhibit, but as a testament to it, I spent nearly two out of the three hours I had left in the city before my train departed examining and interacting with his captivating photographs.

I found the most intriguing photographs to be from a series taken exclusively during the 1970′s in Eggleston’s native South.  The images are not chosen for their beauty, but instead it is the duty of the viewer to find the beauty within them.  The four photographs displayed here surprised me with their simplicity and charming realism.  Many of the scenes depicted in Eggleston’s  photographs are common, often before our eyes on a daily basis,  but impossible to see without stopping time just for a moment.

The fact that Eggleston’s photographs are in full color lends to their striking impact.  While black and white photography places a heavy emphasis on the lines and forms in front of the lens, color photography plays upon your emotions, evoking responses associated with the specific colors viewed.  These 1970′s photographs are all the more effective with their avocado greens, golds, and rust reds.

When planning a cover design, one approach is to extract an image from the story and build upon it to reflect the narrative’s overall tone. With Shome Dasgupta’s forthcoming chapbook, i am here And You Are Gone, I felt as though I had no other option than to take this approach. The opening pages contain a very effective scene involving a dandelion and (possibly) un-reciprocated love. Therefore, when I happened upon the below image from artist Brent Watkins, the fit felt natural.

i am here And You Are Gone explores the schoolyard relationship between a young boy and a young girl, following their development through Junior High and beyond.

My first choice dealt with composition. Because the story focuses on individual characters, I framed the cover to highlight the individual dandelions. One weed being taller than the others also correctly implies much about the story (the female character is presented as more mature and less socially awkward than the male character). The drifting sees added to the effect.

As you can see, I didn’t have to do much to turn this image into a cover. The addition of the sun provided a necessary third tone to the piece, but basically I let the image speak for itself.

For anyone interested in either the artist or the book, here are a couple links:

“Dandelion Wish” by Brent Watkins

i am here And You Are Gone by Shome Dasgupta

Make sure to click on the attachment and take a listen. Thanks.

This song began one evening while Joel and I were listening to different sounds and beats on his production equipment to fit a song I had written several years ago. After trial and error we put together the rhythm (drums/bass) and realized it was becoming it’s own piece. The bass line is taken from chords of the old piece, but the entire sound and character of this one no longer sounds even remotely like what I had written prior.

The next step was the creation of the melody which came pretty naturally; humming along to the bass/drum track until it was ironed out and flowed. Joel and I like to record as we write and often listening to the development of a part after it is complete can lead to other creative ideas or pathways. I have seen that occur a few times already, leading me to follow alternative creative ideas I may not have seen otherwise. Initial vocals and lyrics were developed next. Constant repetitive humming along as I played the base line on the piano, I began to sing different words to different  song sections. The word “sideways” was the first to really take a strong place, followed by the “pray with me” line. Joel and I quickly agreed we liked how the two sounded and the rest of the lyrics were written around these words. A theme was becoming evident; one of judgment or a request for redemption/salvation. The questions we asked ourselves, “Who wanted to be saved?” and “what role does the vocalist of the song take on?” We played with the idea of gambling but ended up focus more on the concept of organized religion. Three verses of lyrics have been written, but in this draft recording there is only one verse. This is because we are still formatting and developing the actual musical track.

Joel and I have very different musical pasts but it has been very exciting to bring those two pasts together. We have a few pieces we are working on right now and it seems that there is a strong blues influence along with perhaps a hip-hop undertone. I’m very excited to see where these pieces develop as we brainstorm and create together.

The most thrilling part of the experience to me thus far is the creation of the song meaning and how different pieces can be tweaked to emphasize a specific message. Also, the way I can witness our different styles merge is very satisfying. My least favorite aspect is posting incomplete work. haha. It is frustrating not be able to have all the lyrics up there at this time and I want to reveal where we are headed with the piece to everyone who listens. But, the point of this blog is to discuss the process so I will just have to be patient…. not my strong suit.

His powerful imagery is so environmental and present that it leaves me pondering the question, “Does 2-dimensional art really do enough to incorporate the viewer?”

Dan May’s work is soft. Truly, that’s the best word I can use to describe it. His fanciful depictions feel painted in thin layers to give the final image a glow, a technique called sfumato, which Leonard DaVinci often used. I don’t know that May actually uses this technique, but I doubt he would mind the assumptive comparison.

I choose The Hunter as the focus of this post because it highlights the contrast of his soft style with the harsh content. Here, a fluffy monster holds a knife, glaring menacingly over a hedgerow. These images take a childlike subject matter and make it creepy. Good work, sir.

Visit Dan May at his homepage.

a couple days (months?) ago, caleb ross was giving us his thoughts on what constitutes art and Art (notice the capital ‘A’).  in short, he relays that ‘art,’ while it may be personally relevant, adds more to one’s decor than to global conscience.  and, ‘Art’ inherits “proper noundom” (caleb’s words) because of its social, political, or otherwise ‘greater’ importance.

i believe that art, generally, is quite subjective, and what is important, what most distinguishes the two is audience relationship.  it is possible that one person may have no reaction at all to a particular piece of art, and another may be profoundly moved by it.  and even though one may completely fall in love with that art, there may be no other significance, no meaning, no assets gained by the greater good or that global conscience (or consciousness, even).  another governing aspect, i believe, is the artist’s motivation: the compelling force, the passion behind the creation.  (here, we are getting closer to subject of the post)  take arts and crafts, for example.  each time i visit an arts and crafts fair, i am dissappointed to find no arts,  just crafts.

it’s a quick overview, yes, and i would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on the matter.  what i am posting, is what caleb’s commentary initially reminded me: Komar and Melamid’s project at the Dia Center for the Arts.   There, they posed the question, “what if art was made for the general public?”  but is it not?  surely, we have all seen the same manufactured framed prints sold at department stores: cafe style canvases, novelty signs, the B/W photo of a small girl in which her hat remains pink…….  the list goes on.

Komar and Melamid took it another step, though.  they partnered with a survey team and set out to find what people most wanted in their artwork, and what they least wanted.  questions of color, subject matter, size, and more were answered in 14 countries, and via the internet.  from these questions and answers, they  created 30 paintings.  each country’s (and the web’s) most and least wanted artwork.  above, we see the two created from the American survey.  so with topics in mind, the question is this:  would these paintings be Art?  or merely art?

thoughts on what constitutes art aside, i find their project compelling, intriguing.  i found it remarkable how similar many countries’ most wanted paintings were (places like holland not withstanding).  and i agree with many of my friends, that the least wanted paintings, as a general statement, seem to be more creative, to contain more substance, even, as artwork goes.  but remember, shawn, these surveys were done of the general population (ah, yes, the general population).  not of artists, or of collectors, specifically.  and arguably, the survey size wasn’t a significantly large proportion of that general public.  (1001 americans were surveyed for this project.)  Still, the paintings for Turkey, USA, Iceland, Russia, and France are all radically similar.  Nearly identical.

perhaps it doesn’t answer the question of what constitutes art, or Art.  and if Art is a single work, from inspiration to creation, by an artist, regardless of intrinsic, existential, or global meaning, then it basically just shows us what people use to decorate their livingrooms and bathrooms.  but perhaps there is a question answered.  one that may have not even been asked.  perhaps it shows us how few of us there are, that can string logic from arbitrariness, find meaning in the abstract, and not only crave, but live with a pure necessity for creativity.  follow the masses and you may find a great number of men chewing and spewing the rhetoric of one leader.  but if you are truly searching for knowledge, you may be lucky enough to find many individuals who can help you discover the questions you should be asking yourself.

you can find komid and melamar’s projects here: http://awp.diaart.org/km/.  along with the paintings, they have also created a shorter project:  the most/least wanted song.    check it out.  (Also, caleb, if i have misquoted or misrepresented you in any way, pleas correct me.)

What began as an evening meant only to satisfy a curiosity became an inspiration, as so many unexpected events do, and is ultimately the reason I am writing now.   I have known many self proclaimed poets in my life, some authentic and some merely wanting to be.  I have rarely been captured by a poem,  although I have read many good ones, and I was not expecting any revelations this particular evening.   But when I heard Mary read hers poems, it was as if I could see the words rising up to paint the picture and coming back down again to rest on the page.   She wrote of trees and flowers, animals and insects, light and darkness.  Everything I saw in my mind’s eye was so vivid it seemed to take on a surreal quality that nearly stopped time.  I knew that I too wanted to create beauty such as this.

Mary not only shared her poems with us, but also lessons she had learned in her long writing career which related to any kind of creative process.  The ones that impacted me the most were; to be patient in resolving problems, to not always strive for perfection but instead strive for what works, and to make a date with your own creativity.  Creativity is always working she said, but you must find it.  After the reading, my friends and I stood with the books we had just purchased and waited for them to be signed.  As I approached the table, I opened the book to the first page and asked her to sign anywhere on this first page.  She promptly turned to the third and signed there.  I cannot help but smile when I remember this image she painted for me.

Cigars are a Pavlovian seed for my writing. I see one, smell one, taste one, and immediately I want to write. A trip to the local humidor for me is like a trip to the library for most writers.

My standard make and model is the Drew Estate ACID line. But as prices continue to rise (due mostly to increased tobacco taxes, which I am okay with), I’ve been forced to be a bit more scrupulous with my choices. Yesterday, while perusing the lower shelves, I happened upon a brand called Ramrod. What struck me was just how aesthetically conflicted this stick of a cigar seemed. It’s ugly. But still it’s a cigar (re: it has an inherent beauty). It’s like Demi Moore’s kid, Rumer. The second surprise: this thing smells bathed in bourbon. Drunk uncle style just visited the local emergency cash loan stripmall shop, lacquered in vaporous, hot bourbon. But truly, Ramrod had me at “ugly.” I’m a sucker for the outsider.

I parked in my hammock, opened a beer, and settled into Ramrod and a notebook. First, the cigar is a bit lengthy, feeling more like the Virginia slims of cigars than the Marlboro ruggedness it promotes. So, considering the physical rigidness of the wrapper, I manned-up the situation by simply snapping the stick in half and lighting the resulting frayed end.

The taste is not nearly as potent as the scent suggests, which is probably a good thing. The liquor bite still stings the back of the throat, even if the taste is flighty. I wouldn’t call this a comfortable smoke, though to people looking to wear that ‘down in the gutter’ persona for a half hour or so could do well by Ramrod. That time, thirty minutes, is comparatively long for a cigar of this size. Ramrod has a surprisingly slow burn (most discount cigars are made with “filler” tobacco, which allows more air for a faster burn).

I think I could habitually carve out a few pages with a Ramrod.

The style here is almost illustration, but with more vibrance and depth. The iconography

used in the work speaks of a post apocalyptic world that is almost inevitable. His technique to deploy such metaphor is very much akin to the surrealists and to me seems to have touch of Rene Magritte

One of my favorite features of his work is the prevalence of vivisected ecosystem.  It references the scientific illustrations we’ve seen in textbooks, but doesn’t airbrush the details. Its as if a little piece of our planet from 50 years into the future was placed under a slide.

With such relevant topicality its no wonder that he’s getting so much attention.

*To see more of Keyes’ work go to http://www.joshkeyes.net/. I highly recommend it!

Your Bother In Arms

JS

While most of Fouquet’s photography relies in equal parts on the people and settings of New Orleans, with a oft-nod to the romanticized flapper-era persona she herself portrays, this particular piece, “Two Birds,” disregards setting in favor of rare intimacy. The classy female profile directly opposite the disheveled raven imply more than it literally states.

Perhaps it is Fouquet’s fiction writing which has drawn me to this photo in particular. Her collection, “Twenty Stories,” which I review in more depth at Outsider Writers Collective, is filled with similar character sketches, wherein the implication of relationships is often more important than the literal stories themselves.

Visit:
Kristin Fouquet’s gallery
Rank Stranger Press (“Twenty Stories” publisher)

Buy “Twenty Stories”:
From the Author
From Amazon.com

Take Jason Heuer’s Perforated Heart design, in which he takes the literal interpretation of the title to create an image with a perforated stroke. His original concept, which called for die-cutting the individual perforations, was deemed too expensive. But the compromise – a negative relief style to imply perforations – still intrigues. Had the cover been full of holes, the brilliant red cover color would have been all the more justified. Still, as seen here, the concept works.

Perforated Heart, with it’s recessed perforations, is as close as a cover design can get before it transcends the 2D format. And when that happens, we get legitimate book art objects.

Read more about the design from Jason Heuer himself, here.

Poetry doesn’t seem to be as popular as it used to be. Today if it isn’t coupled with music, it isn’t even accessible. As a result I have developed a formula. Well, we’ll call it that. It might actually be more accurate to describe it as a haphazard-habit. The “formula” is this: Write poetry. Make music that fits the general meter of the poetry. Then make the poetry into verse, edit, and repeat as necessary.

Over the years, I have added another step to the formula: civil disobedience/public performance. I’ve started shoving my poetry and art into the public realm, like a child that can’t get enough attention. I am taking back my environment, one line, stanza, or symbol at a time. Most see a drab concrete structure, but I see an open forum.

While I have ventured into spray-can art, I’m not particularly fond of a medium that wastes so much paint and is so dependent on calm winds.  I have also spent some time in holding cells, which is more torture than watching TV, and as a result I try not to get caught. Hence my recent use of the paint pen. Get in, get out. Hell, I can usually write something while in the middle of entire crowd without anyone taking notice until later.

I started on my most recent tear this summer, while I was wandering through an undeveloped area of Spokane, Washington. I was barefoot, shirtless, and under the influence of a potent, psilocybin tea. After wandering for hours alongside a narrow river, I climbed the bank to find a road. From the road was an panoramic vista with a view of the valley below and the mountains on the horizon. At the side of the road and in between large, volcanic boulders was a lone bench on a square concrete slab. Like a cut-out from downtown, dropped in the midst of nature.

There were countless numbers of better places to sit and enjoy the view, but the bench beckoned, as if to say, “It is acceptable to sit here.” The bench seemed to be implying that sitting elsewhere in this “free country” is not allowed. I thought of the power of suggestion and how we as individuals are conditioned by our society to fall in line, autonomously. I decided to point out what had just become obvious to me. “It is acceptable to sit here X” I wrote, and I saw that it was good.

I am hoping that once thoughts have been provoked, the status quo won’t be enough anymore.
-But to be completely honest, I do it just for the hell of it.

Being the poem,
JS

This work succeeds as part of the caricature genre, where failure depends almost entirely on how poorly the depicted persona renders on the canvas. Here, as you can see, the abstracted elements of Waits’s forehead, his lanky frame, his seemingly physical dependence on the microphone, and his wardrobe all lend glorious credibility to Allen’s rendition.

And just for the fun of it, here’s a video of my favorite version of “Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis” (the song from which this piece’s title comes):

Visit:
Scott Allen’s Blog Studio page
Scott Allen’s Portfolio site

During the presale of my (Caleb J Ross) chapbook, Charactered Pieces, I vowed to fill each preordered copy with the sweet smell of ACID cigars. Luckily, the other artjerks were there to step up, as I surely would have crumbled had I attempted to stink up the books on my own. Unlucky for the buyers of the books, the pages ended their bath smelling more like pre-smoking-ban dive bars than ACID cigars. Lesson learned, I suppose.

The art here is two things: 1) performance and 2) audience connection. While the former is easy to grasp, the latter is something all to often forgotten in the world of books and art. As agent representation for artists and authors dies the way of New Wave cocaine parties, it is becoming more and more the responsibility of the creator to ensure that his/her pieces are appreciated by as wide an audience as possible. It is my hope that the fake Lungs for Readers program (and this site, obviously) helps to facilitate audience connection in a way that is both increasingly necessary, and always a fucking blast for all parties involved.

Want to buy the book?
from OW Press (the publisher)
or from Amazon.com if you must

He uses a mix of film-set props and still photography to set literal scenes, which allow a physical, yet surreal style. Since no photoshopping is used, the resulting images have an intimacy that compliment the horror themes beautifully. Much of what disturbs about these images is the very real, very tactile presentation.

This particular image, when set against his other work, stands out because of the blood’s  implied movement. Hoffine doesn’t use a lot flowing liquid in his work (as he relies on still sets), but here’s hoping he does more in the future. The institutional set–all tiles and and grime–contrasts the relaxed lower figure, allowing the floating figure to seem strangely relevant and appropriate.

For more about Lady Bathory, visit Hoffine’s blog post.

Visit Joshua Hoffine’s website

I’ve always liked the enlarge-it-until-it’s-interesting approach to composition. Finger = boring. Full-frame cuticle = interesting. So, taking the content of a specific story in Charactered Pieces—a woman who has a fetus-in-fetu foot protruding from her gut—I enlarged a sketched fetus foot to crowd the frame. I then worked in a color scheme that hints at comfort (motherhood also plays an important role in the story), but shocks with just enough contrast. Finally, I top and bottom the pane with solid bars to keep the image from spilling off the canvas.

The result is (hopefully) an initially discomforting image that slowly draws some sympathy, and eventually empathy from the viewer. At least enough to get the viewer to open the book.

Also, if you cover up the lower third of the image (to just below the ball of the foot) the figure kinda looks like a chick with a dick.

Visit the artist
Caleb J Ross

Buy the book
from OW Press (the publisher)

I received this print as part of a contest put on by the photographer for his newsletter subscribers. It was the best $0 I ever spent.

Visit Travis Eckert at Anti-Paradigm Productions.

Nabokov was a passionate butterfly collector, a theme that has cropped up on some of his past covers. My idea was also a play on this concept. Each cover consists of a photograph of a specimen box, the kind used by collectors like Nabokov to display insects. Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book’s content.

Read the rest/See the rest here.

I’ve long believed that our behind-the-scenes dvd-extras culture is placing more and more importance on the artist behind the art. This series of Nabokov covers exemplifies that idea.

Personally, I am a sucker for the caricatured innocence that seems to be all the rage lately. The large heads, cartoonish color palettes and styles, the enlarged eyes; all of it works for me. With this piece in particular, I think it is the colors that are the most striking element. And that is saying a lot considering the cardinal nesting in this subject’s throat. Quite a skill, to create such a visceral image, but still have it dominated by something as seemingly simple as color.

Visit:
Caleb Morris (the artist)

Also, the firm lines in this piece are fantastic. The solid black hat and coat set against the flat brown back, separated by a definite line furthers dreamlike quality.

Links:
Tom Keating’s page

When dealing with books, the main objective is sales. So, already, a particular piece cannot be approached from aesthetics or concept alone. But because of this apparent conflict, I think book covers can be approached in a way that many artists should approach their own work: how can I be an artist and make some money at the same time?

(end exposition)

This cover struck me immediately, and stayed with me for days until finally I post about it here. Simple. But immensely intriguing. The job of a book cover is to 1) catch a reader’s attention, 2) get him/her to pick up the book, and 3) turn the book over to read the back. This book does that. But as far as the design itself, the chewing-hair image is striking due to its nearly universal connotations: that of the young tease. The pink lips and the fair skin further this idea. As a reader, I imagine this book to deal with Lolita-like themes. This summary over at Publishers Weekly indicates that I am probably not close…maybe I’m just a pervert. Or, maybe I am simply reminded of this cover by John Gall:

(Mike thought it proper to admit that “the painting is an almost total rip off of a larry clark photo.” I still love you, Mike)

Links:
The artist’s MySpace page
The artist’s Tumblr page
The artist’s Facebook page

Here, a simple profile of a gun with a very direct anti-war statement: “No to Militarization. No to Lisbon.” I won’t claim to know the details behind the statement–that’s not what I do here–but the heavy contrast, visceral image, utilitarian san-serif font, and heavy dripping (meaning the person putting this up had to act quickly) cut right to the artist’s point. Overall, a successful stencil.

Also, would this be a collaboration piece? I’m sure the same artist didn’t lay the political stencil and later decide to surreal-itize it with a winged eyeball. But then again, I admitted to not knowing much of the Lisbon/Militarization statement, so maybe flying eyes make perfect sense.

The final image in the gallery below, belonging to Jyoti,  is Magdaline during flowering season. It just isn’t as striking as the Winter version. Too romanticized, I think. The Winter version has a very harsh, rigid feel that works with the metal to contrast against both the implied movement and the feminine figure.

I was lucky to catch this piece during the Winter, February 14th of 2009 to be exact. Valentine’s Day. I’m not looking into that coincidence.

Links:
Dessa Kirk (the artist)
Jyoti (the blogger from which the flowering pic below comes)

The intent is obvious: men become monsters when voluptuous women flaunt their wares. So with subtleties nonexistent (both in content and the strokes themselves) we’re able to appreciate the piece on a superficial level.

Links:
Jeff Filipski official site
Pressure Press gallery
OWC gallery

The pieces cohere in theme (motherly roles), presentation (anthropomorphic design), and material (fabric, primarily cotton and wool), while never exhausting any individual element. The stretched dress (“Everyday Dress”) is as striking as the the flowing gown (“Rag Rug”) is as striking as the creeping legs (“Pressing On”)

Details about many of the pieces included in this exhibition can be found at Betsy Timmer’s homepage.

Photo credit: Arts Incubator’s Cocoon Gallery Flickr stream