artalicious

Say that title 5 times fast.

I should have recapped this on Friday, the day after it happened, because then I would have REMEMBERED more of what I wanted to write about.

So, in brief, it was lots of fun! Saw many friends and met lots of people (well Robert did, he's the one with art in the show and he's more outgoing than I am). Heard lots of great comments about his work, and lots of people told him he needs to keep making more! So exciting!

So let's progress to the photos, 'cause that's the fun part. I have to apologize for the image quality. We were running late and forgot to bring Robert's camera with us, so these were all taken with his iPhone and are thus noisy and not properly exposed. Alas.

Let's start with a portrait of the artist. Doesn't he look happy that I made him pose for this photo?



Here's the two of us together with his art.


And here's a shot of the art "in situ."


Here's our friend Jennifer Young, posing with her artwork.


And here's my favorite piece of hers.


I love that little bunny! So sweet and innocent in that flower. Jennifer does a lot of illustration work that I love. She's also a very talented (and helpful!) tattoo artist.

Here's one of Nell's pieces from inside the gallery:


And from outside:


Yes, that's me. I love Nell's work, how she uses line and planes to create these fantastic new ways of looking at spaces. The photos of these don't do them justice at all. I'd love to buy one of these, but we're poor and I'm pretty sure the kittehs would do their best to knock them off our windows and eat them.

Here's some pieces by other artists. I'll have to see if I can find out who they were made by since I can't remember. First these neat glasses that had images transfered onto their lenses.


I wanted to put them on to see the pictures, like those antique 3-d glasses, but of course, then the image would be too close for my eyes to even focus on it!

Here's me using a magnifying glass to look at some TINY print. That's Katie behind me.


There was also a really nice series of woodcuts. I wanted to get this one for Mike:


But I'm poor, so he'll just have to make due with this grainy photo. (He's got a Belgian Malnois puppy.)

Overall, it was a great show. There was a huge variety of works and just about everything was beautiful and well crafted. So many of the pieces were impressive in regards to how well people could work on such a small scale, and the amount of information or emotion that could fit into such tiny spaces.

Now, for the Gratuitous Pet Photo! Which today is actually a series of photos illustrating what happens when Keira gets to play with her boyfriend, O'Malley.

We start out with this:


A body SLAM! I love how O'Malley's tail looks in this picture. Actually I love his whole body shape. I think it conveys exactly what it would feel like to have Keira body check you. Which is mostly, "holy crap!"

O'Malley retaliates with an "I'll eat your FACE!"


To which Keira says, "Eat this, biatch!"


They both decide that they should work together to crash into the food lady. (Who is clumsy and slow and couldn't get her ass out of the way in time.)


Oliver thinks the whole thing is quite ridiculous. And that I should be petting him instead of photographing those losers.



~JML

Posted in: art show, Jennifer Young, Nell Ruby, Robert Hill on February 15, 2009 at at 2:53 PM 2 comments    

This is coming a bit late (like everything I do), but for those in the Atlanta area, I'd like to invite you to the RAD Studio Cruise, this Saturday, February 7th, from 5-10 pm. Here's a bit about the event:

RAD Studio Cruise 2009 is our second annual event, building on the amazing turnout and enthusiasm we gratefully experienced in year one. All of the founding group will be back including Alcove Gallery (sculpture & painting), AMALGAM Arts (jewelry), Bart Webb Studios (metal sculpture), DuckBill Studio (blown glass) and MudFire Clayworks (pottery & sculpture).

This year's Cruise will include great new additions including the debut of Academy Theater, the just-opened artist colony at Little Tree Studios, the artists of Studio 2850, and individual artist studios at the participating facilities.

Click here, to learn more.

Robert and I will be at our studio, taking Valentine's Day portraits for those who are brave enough to step in front of the camera!

And now for the gratuitous pet photo of the day! Today's GPP comes by way of my good friend Katie at Redykle, who sent me a link to a book review of Pet Projects: The Animal Knits Bible. The review contained an excellent description of this photo:

"A borrowed hamster was Ms. Muir’s model for the hamster house, above. 'He did exactly as I expected,' she said. 'He lived in it for a day, then he ate it. Then he bit me.'"

Truer words have never been spoken.

~JML

Posted in: art show, Katie, RAD, Studio on February 6, 2009 at at 9:57 AM 1 comments    

This is a bit of a brag post, because Robert has 5 pieces in an upcoming art show! As you can see from the postcard at right, it's called All Small Redux, and is in Agnes Scott's Dalton Gallery (my alma matter).

Here's a brief synopsis from their website:

"All Small Redux returns to the premise of the acclaimed 2002 exhibition, all small@eyedrum—that the exquisite and completely petite nature of small works can be overwhelmingly mighty.

In this time of downsizing, low returns, minimal output and small budgets, it is refreshing to celebrate the fabulous preciousness of the tiny.

All Small Redux adds into the fold the world of micro fiction.

Works at or under six inches, sixty seconds or one-hundred and eight words will be reviewed for possible inclusion in the exhibit."

I think that a total of around 50 artists are in the show, including our friends Nell Ruby and Jennifer Young. The opening is February 12, from 5-8. If you look on the postcard, on the last row, three over from the left, that's one of Robert's pieces! Let me see if I can find some larger photos of pieces. Here are my two favorites. They're lighter than in the photos, as the concrete was still damp when he took these pictures.

His concept is creating a modern fossil, basically taking bits of technology (wires, cables, cds, cell phones, computer mice, etc). Then embedding them in concrete and cutting them up into slices. They're lovely to look at and really interesting as many of them are almost unrecognizable from their original forms. This is a perfect project for him as he loves both fossils and technology. I'll probably need to have him write up a bit about this as he can explain it better than I can.

~JML

Posted in: art show, Robert Hill, sculpture on January 29, 2009 at at 10:36 AM 3 comments    

I was very lucky a few weeks ago and was able to meet two artists. H.A. Sigg, who is from Switzerland and Ron Balser, from Atlanta.

Sigg was showing at Mason Murer for Modern Atlanta weekend. My partner designed his website so we were introduced to Sigg, his wife and his son. He was a charming little old man. I don't remember how it came up, but he said to us at one point "When I'm in my studio, I am a god, a king. But when I leave, I am nobody." (This is all quite paraphrased by the way.) I thought it was a good description of probably how many artists feel. Creating something that seems so important or amazing, but then (for most of us) no one knows (or cares!) what we've made. : ) It reminds me of Nell always telling us to "let go" of our art, to not keep it precious to us.

It was also interesting that I didn't have much to say. I mean, here I was, talking with an internationally know artist and all I could comment on was how brilliant blue some of his paintings were. I'm not great at small talk, but geez, seems like I could have said something more than "I love that blue."

I did love seeing the originals, especially after a year of seeing web printouts of his paintings all over the house!

Ron's work was up at the Fay Gold Gallery. Ron is a client of ours at work. We've done some of the design and the coding for his website. Some of the benches were pretty cool. I loved Dorothy's Tornado. I thought it was a nice variation on "bench."

Didn't have much to say to Ron either, but he's a client and that feels a little presumptuous to take up his time in that way. He was also swamped with guests. But maybe those are all excuses to not have to talk to him! : )

There was also photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen with work up at Fay Gold. His work was really clever. Landscapes and body shapes that would create these weird spaces and vistas. They try to trick your eye. Very cool.

So, I didn't make any art, but I did get to see some and meet some artists. And now I'm writing about it. Pretty much doing everything I can to avoid making anything!

~JML

Posted in: Arno Rafael Minkkinen, art show, artist, H.A. Sigg, Ron Balser on May 23, 2008 at at 4:01 PM 0 comments