Bluefingers

He's a photographer and painter. I liked the way he used gouache on canvas to create an abstract image.

http://bluefingers.deviantart.com/

Antony Gormley

A

Martin Puryear

Very accessible to the everyday viewer.

Yinka Shonibare

Nigerian UK based artist. His peice, the minister on ice is based off of The Skating Minister by Sir Henry Raeburn.

He uses fashion from history, african patterns and colors, and modern things like flipflops and designer logos.

Tavares Strachan

I went to the Tavares Strachan lecture at the Commons on Monday. He was really cool and helped me to better understand Finch's lecture weeks beforehand. His studio was wherever he went. It was always with him because he was most intested in exploration, displacement, the invisible and so on.

I can understand how these conceptual artist talk now. They have big ideas. I just want to draw. Bute, Strachan got bored of still lifes and went on to study glass as an undergraduate. He has an undergraduate degree in Glass and a graduate degree in Sculpture.

Scott Hove

Kevin Cyr: Camper Bike

KMNDZ (Johnny Rodriguez)

http://kmndz.com/?page_id=16

Daniel Danger

his blog: http://tinymediaempire.com/

Eric Fortune

Pieces are 'Alure' and 'Wanting'

Gregory Euclide

http://www.gregoryeuclide.com/

Molly Crabapple

I saw this piece at Gallery 5. I believe it was the only piece by Molly Crabapple there. My eye really traveled when I looked at it.

Her website: http://mollycrabapple.com/

Mike Moses

A local artist. He happens to work at Salvation Tattoo Gallery on Cary Street.

I saw his 'Drowntown' show. http://thedrowntown.com/home.html

I admire a good composition created with simple, concise elements.

His series of illustrations about drowntown were wonderful.

I want to try some illustrations similar!

Kris Kuksi

Kris Kuksi: Painter, Sculptor, Macabre Artist.

website: http://kuksi.com/

dA: http://kuksi.deviantart.com/

His art, its most pervading purpose being to 'expose the fallecies of Man' is very very rich and complex. He describes his favorite style of art as Surreal, Symbolism, and Macabre.

His works are often philosophical. He has a dislike for American pop culture, materialism and frivolousness.

Here's a quote from the biography on his website: "Yet, Kris’ work is about a new wilderness, refined and elevated, visualized as a cultivation emerging from the corrupt and demoralized fall of modern-day society. A place were new beginnings, new wars, new philosophies, and new endings exist."

I would not consider myself as being apart of the American pop culture and I don't suscribe to certain ways of the world.

Unlike Kuksi, however, I like to consider myself very much apart of American today, the world today and I have little interest in the sort of phoenix story of society. When man 'falls' he will be dust and he can't create a rebirth for himself. Man is not that powerful.

So the meaning of Kuksi's art wasn't the thing that attracted me to it. That's not to say I wasn't drawn by them by their physicality. His sculptures are arresting!

There is this super heavy atmosphere created by them, like they are their own civilization and they are something to behold. Perhaps like a tomb, a ruin, a church, something that deserves reverance. He treats 'macabre' the dark, disturbing, scary, grusome, and subject of death as beautiful. Macabre is French for 'dance of death' And his peices are intensly beautiful. I like to dabble in macabre a little as well.

The picture above, on the top left of the post is titled, Plague Parade. I have a good story behind this. I first saw it on the 27th of June when it was awarded a 'Daily Deviation' on deviantart.com. My jaw dropped. I loved it. I was beautiful beautiful traveling death. Anyway, I didn't really file away Kuksi's name, and didn't investigate him futher, so my knowledge of his work was limited to this one piece.

When I went to Gallery 5 on the 5th of October I saw a kinetic sculpture. (the very first picture at top) I was like, 'hey, I feel like I've seen work like this before.' I took a picture.

When I got home I researched Kuksi and voila, he was the artist that made the Plague Parade.

I blinked a few time. I was in complete awe that I'd gotten to see one of his peices in person.

I got to see a Kris Kuksi in person and I didn't even know that I wanted to at the time.

Gallery 5

photos taken by me.

I went to visit the Franklin Terrace building on Friday to visit the KI and CA departments. I really liked how secluded the building was. It used to be an old apartment complex and has a beautiful Spanish style to it. I could easily see myself working there for the next three years.

On the second floor, in the CA office area I found this advertisement for eikonostasis, the debut solo show of illustrator stepanie marguerite-teodozja krehbiel (her full name) was starting that night. I loved the illustration used for the ad and she was a CA major graduated from VCU in 2009. I knew that I had to visit Gallery 5. It seemed to be the place for illustration.

Here is Krehbiel's blogspot: http://www.krehbieldesign.blogspot.com/

I saw art by:

Wes Freed

Kaelan Foisy

Charles Parker Boggs

Molly Crabapple

Amanda Robinson

Bizhan Khodabandeh

Amanda Blackmon

Kris Kuksi

Mike Moses

Gallery 5 website: http://www.gallery5arts.org/Upcoming%20Exhibition.html

Visiting Gallery 5 was the highlight of my day. Not my week, it was just a 40min-1 hour visit. I walked there alone and I was also the only one there upstairs looking at the exhibits. Even so, the intimacy of viewing the art by myself and only for a short period of time was really impactful. There was no one and nothing there to direct me to what I should look at, join me, or anything like that. So the art did, probably excatly what the artist wanted it to. It spoke for itself.

I't been my favorite gallery that I've visited so far and I think, the prettiest space inside and out.

Seung Eun Kim

He's an art director/story boarder/clean-up artist/etc. who's worked on Godzilla, Starship Troopers, The Jackie Chan Adventures, The Spider-Man, The Batman TV Series (2003-2005), The Boondocks and more.

He is very skilled at drawing. Some people outside of the art field tend to think cartoonists or comic people can't draw well, so they do comics. The opposite is true. Kim may be the best drawer I've ever seen and I look at his stuff for help.

Greg Garza

He is such a great illustrator. This peice is titled 'Stuck in the wall', he painted it with Painter9. I absolutely love the transition from 2D to 3D with one digital medium.

Joshua Levin

Also known as mythfits, he can be found here: http://mythfits.deviantart.com/

His does alot of assemablage sculpture. His favorite objects seem to be children's toys, miniture playsets, suvinenir trinkets and things like that.

fiberciment: lost and abandoned places.

This artist seems to understand perfectly how to use interior architecture to his advantage in his photography. His websited and dA is filled almost exclusively with photography of run down industrial factories, high schools, mansions and transforms them to something really beautiful and grand like the ruins of ancient civilizations.

James Lee and Hania Lee

Just a couple of people who happened to make an engaging animated short film with a fresh style, really really satisfying music and totally adorable narrator. I love this animtation.

Tarboy: http://www.tarboy.com/

Lee Bontecou

There's something so wonderful and sci-fi about what Bonteou does. She makes mobils and hangs alot of her sculptures on the walls like paintings.

I could swear that her drawings look like very well done versions of what almost every high school/middle school student does on the back of their notebooks.

Folkert Dejong

The Dance - Balthazar G (detail) 2008

I started my sculpture project course and am very interested to start using styrofoam as a medium.

Spencer Finch

I attened Spencer Finch's lecture in the Student Commons Theater on Thursday at 2 pm.

I was (and I think everyone) was amazed by his painstaking efforts to reproduce exact color of light in his work.

Even measure color of the night sky, painting it with mars black, voilet, cobalt, white, measureing that and creating a light blulb instillaton made to look like the molecle of the exact color.

My two favorite peices of his were 1. the colored solor powered hanging lights made to represent the stars in our galaxy and 2. his rorschah images of colors he'd seen in his dreams.

I generally don't look into highly conceptual artists, but I liked his thoughts on memory and 'seeing'.

Jeff Simpson

Candian artist very proficient in Photoshop.

Can be found on CGhub, dA, and his personal website: http://www.surrealsushi.com/

Simpson is so apart of my art cannon. I love his work.

Janet Fish

Two jars hot pepper pickles 1970, oil on canvas.

I studied Fish last year, but never did any still life studies to implement what I saw in her work.

Nevertheless, I love her glass and the seperation of colors. Edges are accentuated.

Even though she never influenced the way I paint at least on a conscience state, Fish has greatly influnced the way I observe, the way I see when I look at things with the purpose of drawing or painting them. She paints from life, but waits for ideal light on each section of a still life for example. She waits for this ideal nature light and paints it as soon as she sees it. Her work is not hyper-realism, but there is an exageration to it that couldn't be done in a photograph.

Vittorio Storaro

An Italian cinematographer. He went to the film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. He worked on films such as The Last Emperor, Apocalyse Now, The Conformist and others.

Often collaborated with director, Bernardo Bertolucci.

The movie I am most interested in is The Last Emperor because of Storaro's use of color psycology. He was inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's theory of colors, and used color to show the stages of the life of Puyi.

Andy Goldsworthy

Cracked earth removed 1986

Snow and stone arch 1986

Cornelia Parker

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991Mixed media.

"I resurrect things that have been killed off... My work is all about the potential of materials - even when it looks like they've lost all possibilities." -cornelia parker.

Robert Gober

Drain 1989, cast pewter.

Jan van Eyck

Sterling Clinton Hundley

I went to go see local Hundley's work at Ghostprint Gallery 220 West Broad Street on first friday (Sep. 5)

It was great to see his work, I only wish I would've brought my camera, that is if cameras were allowed.

He's great. He paints tiny little abstract paintings. A ton of them. And then arranges them to form a single representational painting.
I was even more happy to find his blogspot with him talking about his process and the meaning of his works.

Aaron Lifferth

Does some wonderful little oil paintings of fruit and glass.

So simple and delicious.

I happened across him while looking at other artist's blogs.

Here's his blog: http://aaronlifferth.blogspot.com/

Basia Konczarek

Another Polish illustrator.

Ryohei Hase

A freelance illustrator based in Tokyo Japan.

He graduated the Tama Art University in Tokyo Japan and has worked for Bandai Namco games.

He's done a series of pieces about chaotic conflict with animal-headed humans and full animals. I love his work because it is frightening. It is phychologically very scary. Even though there are lots of animals in his work, they are more about torment inside the mind

Ryohei Hase's website: http://www.ryoheihase.com/