Category: Art

There’s so many good artist websites out there I can’t blog ’em all. Barry’s sketchblog is from an illustrator of children’s books. I like his whimsical style and his attempt to post a sketch a day.

The Vietnamese-American artistDuat Vu draws strange, Escher-like landscape and cannibalistic objects in a stark black ‘n’ white (and sometimes red) style. This was featured in the latest issue of Direct Art magazine, which I was too lazy to pick up.

Creative Generalist posts this assortment of links covering an amazing public marionette performance in the city of Nantes, France. A little girl pops out of a space pod, rides a mechanical elephant, takes a nap, and much more. It’s like a very bizarre Metal Hurlant strip come to life. And it wasn’t done to promote a movie…imagine that.

Another overlooked artform gets a boost with this very particular museum of ExLibris Bookplates. The site is Japanese, but the guy seems to collect Eastern European artists. There’s some pretty strange stuff here. There’s also a section of classic Art Deco plates. Groovy!

NPR just had a report on rock poster artist Leia Bell Of course, being radio, I could only imagine what it looked like. I wasn’t disappointed.

This person’s Flicker photos are all old matchbooks.

Too cool. Apparently this has been going on for some time (so I suck, la la la). Best designs get printed on a limited run of t-shirts, all very affordable. This month is their Christmas blow-out sale, with shirts going for $10 each!

Threadless is an online, ongoing tee shirt design competition. Threadless receives over 200 tee shirt design submissions per week of which 4-6 of the highest scoring designs are printed and made available for purchase on our website each month. This system guarantees public interest in all of our product and has resulted in the discovery of some very amazing work over the years.

The strange art of Frank Lobdell. Kooky, jazzy stuff, like relatives of that Dave Brubeck album cover. You know the one…who’s the painter of that?

In a recent Jim Woodring interview, the artist names two art books that changed his life. One, unsurprisingly, was on Surrealism. The other was a book called As I See by Boris Artzybasheff. Before you could even say “Google”, I found a page on him. Not only did he do 200+ covers for Time Magazine in the ’50s, but his style is similar to Basil Wolverton and others. In fact, his range is very wide, from cartoony to realistic, from oils to woodcuts.
Other examples are here and below:

You won’t be surprised that I’m looking forward to this book, which may already be out. Last Gasp Online Catalog – POP SURREALISM: THE RISE OF UNDERGROUND ART. I’m curious at how much is “surrealism” and how much is wanting a better label. Artists include Anthony Ausgang, Glenn Barr, Tim Biskup, Kalynn Campbel, The Clayton Brothers, Joe Coleman, Camille Rose Garcia, Alex Gross, Don Ed Hardy, Charles Krafft, Liz McGrath, Scott Musgrove, Niagara, Marion Peck, The Pizz, Lisa Petrucci, Mark Ryden, Isabel Samaras, Todd Schorr, Shag, Robert Williams, Eric White, and XNO.
I don’t know if Shag is exactly “surreal” so we’ll see.
Anyway, here’s an interview with the author Kirsten Anderson, who runs the Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle, which done started it all.