My name is Lee Gainer and I am a visual artist in the metro DC area (USA).  My work uses found and created imagery to visually analyze social rules, hidden messages, the psychology behind these ideas and beliefs, and how they alter our behavior.  I am interested in exploring how the possible hidden messages in modern media (commercials, advertising, the web, billboards, etc.) can manipulate us in how we define things, such as what beauty should look like or what success should be.  There are certain unwritten rules that many of us know and live by and I am curious as how they came to be.

For instance, many in the US know of the two month salary rule for buying diamond engagement rings.  It turns out that this was a marketing scheme created by DeBeers in the early 20th century.  They began with one month's salary and then later upped it to two.  Today, the two month's rule has become a romantic tradition in America.  A tradition where a man's love for his future spouse is judged by the size of a shiny rock or rather, what is the bling factor.  I created a print series and a book, both called Two Months' Salary, that shows groups of engagement rings based on the average salaries of several occupations.  I expected to see a difference in the rings according to their price tag but many of them look very similar.  The 2 sets (husband and wife) of 20 prints are 10" x 8".  The book is available through my website.

My name is Dustin Timbrook and I'm an artist working in Huntsville, Alabama. I have a studio in a big, century-old factory space called Lowe Mill that has been converted into work space for dozens of local artists. Last year I quit my day job as a high school art teacher to move into my studio space and make a living off of art alone. It hasn't been easy, but I'm doing alright and I'm doing what I love for a living, so I have no complaints.

I've been drawing, painting, sculpting, and making music and videos since I was a tiny kid. I studied painting at the University of Montevallo, mostly working in oil. Lately though I have been hooked on painting with watercolors, and my work has become very vibrant and lighthearted. I usually work in a stream-of-consciousness manner, making things up and adding to an artwork as I go along - like incredibly detailed doodling. The little vignettes that I paint usually start with a human or animal figure and I build from there. I decide what characters, objects, and environments to add as the scene develops. Leaving the end result of a piece a mystery keeps the painting process fresh and exciting for me. Plus, it results in my paintings being absurd and comical, which is my favorite kind of work to create. I have a website to display, write about, and sell my work.

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So hello, I'm Josh, and I'm a photographer living in Seattle.  I take pictures of the city and of industrial places around the Pacific Northwest, but you wouldn't necessarily know that from looking at my work.  I seek out rusty, weathered surfaces and crop out the surroundings, mostly, so though there may be a small identifying detail that gives a sense of size or place, for the most part the images just become pure abstractions of color and form.

And that's what I like about them - they're pretty and gritty and fun to look at.  It doesn't need to go any deeper in meaning than that (unless you want it to, of course - be my guest!).  I want people just to enjoy them because they're neat looking! Plus I think it's cool that they kind of look like paintings, and I love printing them out on huge stretched canvases to emphasize that effect. I'm ridiculously new at this, and 2010 marks the first year that I've decided to make my work public.  Even though I grew up in a household with a photography professor and an art historian/art journalist for parents, I was always dissuaded from pursuing any sort of career in the art world (strange, right?), so I sort of kept my light under the proverbial bushel until recently.  And how do my parents feel about my work now that I'm in my 40's, you may ask? I'm happy to say they've come around and they're extremely supportive. Hooray!



clearing - I love the little patch of blue just aching to open up amid all the rust and become open sky.

I have been drawing since I can remember, and was lucky to always have enthusiastic encouragement from my parents. When I was little I loved drawing animals, especially birds and dinosaurs, and I almost drove my mother crazy collecting dead birds to study and draw. I thought I might become a marine biologist or a paleontologist when I grew up, but by age 12 or so, I knew I wanted to be a professional artist. These days I'm still predominantly inspired by images of the natural world. I mostly paint in watercolor or draw with a mechanical pencil and use watercolor wash on top.

I live in southern New Mexico with my husband David and our cat Vinnie Vinosovich. In my spare time I like to tend my flower garden, go jogging early in the morning, and read (especially science fiction). Right now, due to space constraints, I'm focusing on small paintings, but as soon as I move into my larger studio area I'm going to be experimenting with large scale watercolors.



cherryblossoms

Ever since I could hold a pencil, I was a habitual doodler.  I'd doodle on napkins, paper bags, desktops (and spent many recesses cleaning desks as a reward for my creations) - you name it.  I have a few of my old grade school and high school notebooks and the margins are virtually covered in scribbles and drawings.

I started making custom Converse out of necessity more than anything else.  I'm a Converse collector and I wear them frequently.  I have over 30 pair, however here in Canada, the really funky designs are difficult to come by and they tend to be expensive.  One day I thought to myself 'Why not just make my own Converse?'.  And so I did.  And they were terrible.  BUT . . . they were'nt terrible enough to deter me from trying again.  And again.  And again.  It took a few tries but I managed to work out some kinks in my approach (black sucks as a base colour and Sharpies run if you get them wet without sealing them first, for example).  Soon, armed with an assortment of fabric pens, fabric paint and brushes, Sharpies and Mod Podge (for sealing the ink and rendering it water resistant), I was whipping out shoes faster than a bunch of rabid monkeys at a podiatrist convention (I dunno what that means - remember when I said things whirl through my head?  That was one of them).

The process is relatively simple.  I draw out the design on the shoe, and then simply start painting.  Recently I've been experimenting with 3D designs with relative success.  I have a pair of Spider-Man/Venom shoes that have black goop attacking the Spidey image and a Ghostbusters pair that have been slimed with ectoplasm.  I also have a Freddy Krueger shoe that is ripped and torn, exposing Freddy's signature singed flesh below the green and red striped fabric.  I've also managed to get a few of these designs into the hands of some celebrities - Henry Winkler, John Schneider, Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters, Dave Thomas from Bob and Dough MacKenzie and SCTV, and Lou Ferrigno.



1. BatVillain - I'm a huge Batman fan (I have a room in my home dedicated solely to The Dark Knight).  These were one of my early attempts with fabric markers.  They turned out pretty well, I think.

G’day; Being a sheep grazier in the Strzelecki Ranges, Victoria Australia, is an exercise in bloody-mindedness.  Many would say that we’re living the dream and I guess we are.  It is beautiful here, surrounded by rainforest, fresh air and acres of blue sky.
To relax I do stuff; everything from computer graphics, textile art, sculpting, etching, individualising reading spectacles, painting (watercolour and gouache), illustrating, portraits and caricatures of locals, wine making, curing meats, and anything else that takes my fancy.
A couple of months ago, needing an egg cup, I became frustrated at the lack of imaginative egg cups available.  Eventually it all became too much for me and I decided to make my own - gargoyle egg cups were born.
I am still busy with sheep, replanting ‘The Bush’, commissioned art and graphics work, learning Klingon (weird woman), learning free form rock climbing (some would say that farming here is the same thing), flying RC helicopters and exploring new and interesting things.
I word of warning; I have an irrepressible and sometimes wicked sense of humour.



Chocolate Yum! 130mm x 130mm (unframed). Ink and gouache on heavily textured rag paper.
This is one in a series of caricatures of me I did for a small exhibition.  They were happily accepted and displayed by the organising committee, however, after the exhibition had closed they reminded me that the theme had been small and nude.  In retrospect my oversight was probably due to a deep-seated lack of interest in exposing my privates in public -  I’ll blame my parents (chuckle). I am asked to do caricatures on a regular basis now which I put down to a lot of very good humoured people living in the bush who are happy in their own skins and enjoy a good laugh.


Baring Their Soles 900mm x 460mm (framed).  Hand quilted and dyed silk (sold)
Never having worked with textiles before this was a challenge.  The feet are those of my long suffering husband, mine, and those of two friends who  were not nimble enough to escape my grasp. I rather feel that feet are a neglected part of our anatomy. The challenge was not only to reproduce form but texture and movement. The silk fabric and quilting provided the texture of soles while the foot prints in the background portray the motion.  The piece was entered in an exhibition with a textile/nudity theme and to my surprise, was sold on the opening night.  I’ve not done a very good job of photographing it but I hope you get the general idea.

I've been collecting maps for almost as long as I've been making art with a computer, close to ten years now. When I initially had the idea of making collages of maps into fauna, I couldn't bring myself to cut up the objects I treasured so deeply. From the colorful lines to the assortment of fill types, the tattered papers had been preserved for too long for me to destroy them with scissors. Even if I were to create something new from their destruction, the world would be with one less artifact. It's at this point when I truly saw the beauty of using the computer, the benefit of the truest sense non-destructive editing. Incidentally this allowed me to overcome one of the largest hurdles I had faced while making digital art; the maps added texture and depth to a medium that I have often struggled to make appear less flat and lifeless.

I will be having my first solo exhibition, From Here to Over There, on July 9th at Chop Suey Books in Richmond, VA. This will be followed by another show, The Atlas is Painless, opening on July 15th at The Renaissance Center in Dickson, Tennessee.

Here is a peek at some of my work:



Yellow Eyed Junco

The first piece I made using this new digital technique. I tried to emulate aves in poses reminiscent to field guides or old Audubon illustrations. The first series I began working on contain a hodgepodge of maps. I was more concerned with connecting color and texture than location.

Cut paper is a medium deeply rooted in history and tradition.  In this way, I hope to modernize this cut paper medium. Light and shadow is also important in my work. The light transforms the two-dimensional paper by creating a shadow. The shadow indicates space, which allows the piece to become three-dimensional. These pieces are all cut from a single sheet of paper with an exacto blade.



1. This piece titled Rice Husband is one of three hand cut paper pieces about superstitions that my mother told me. I draw inspiration from my Korean background and upbringing and juxtapose these cultural symbols with more contemporary imagery. This particular one is about how my mother told me to finish every single grain of rice at every meal. If I didn't, each grain that I left behind will become a physical mark on my future husband's face.

I am an artist and professor of printmaking and drawing based in Nashville, TN. As a child with an overactive imagination, I often envisioned the world as nothing more than dolls and creatures acting out fantastic narratives. I had a difficult time keeping my head in reality, and I never knew when something I was staring at would become a magical door to another world. When I slept, I was constantly visited by fantastic nightmares. My dreams were inescapable and graphic, filling my mind with vivid images I wanted to relay upon waking.

My prints, drawings, and animations draw from my influences of fantastic, imaginative worlds and lucid dreams. I draw my subject matter from questions, emotional reactions, and fascinations. I use my art to explore the human condition, revealing my personal view of the world, in the hope that others will compare and relate this exploration to their own. It is my belief that the sharing of stories and emotions helps humankind to understand themselves better by peering into the thoughts of others.

Plate 1

In this series about the my unconscious thought process, I print out an original rorschach inkblot used in psychoanalysis in light grey. I then draw directly over the shape in pencil with my first impulse of what I see in the abstract forms.

What could be cuter? Penguins at Everland Park in South Korea aren't used to snow, so their keepers outfitted them with suits to wear the first time they used their new snow run. Link (embedded video) -via Metafilter

Lexicographer Grant Barrett assembled a list of the Buzzwords of 2008 for The New York Times. The biggest part of the words came from the US presidential race, and a big chunk were inspired by the economic meltdown. A couple were born from the Beijing Olympics. But the biggest is a verb turned into a noun for use on the internet. Link -via the Presurfer

Jill Bell of Urbana, Maryland repaired a scratch on her car with a dab of nail polish, and liked the look so much that she painted her entire car with it!

Over the next 13 months, from September 2007 to this past October, she completely covered her car in a quilt-like pattern – as a quilter, she found the multi-pattern paint job fitting, she said.

Bell said she collected between 100 to 250 bottles of nail polish, but did not have an exact idea as she simply used bottles from anyone she could get it from.

"Lots of ladies in my church donated nail polish, and lots of ladies at Weight Watchers, too," she said. She said it would be nearly impossible for her to estimate the dollar value of all the bottles, as each brand cost a different amount – anywhere from under a dollar to $5.

Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!

(image credit: Bill Ryan/The Gazette)

It's a collision of three internet memes! This creation is called Nabii's Royal Naboo Air Force 1, and it's the winner of the Steam Wars contest from FBTB Forums. (If you check the forum, you'll find that there was originally a tie for first place.) Steampunk Lego Star Wars is one of the Top 20 Reasons to Love Lego Star Wars from GalacticBinder.com. Link -Thanks, Pete Svab!

Watch a super-cute video of a gang of dogs decorating a Christmas tree. The site is in Hungarian, but don't let that stop you from enjoying the fun! Link -Thanks, Johnny Cat!

What to do with all the snow that piles up in a city? Some folks in Toronto made snow bricks and covered a TTC shelter (a streetcar stop) to make it into an igloo! See more pictures at BlogTo. Link -Thanks, Jerrold!