NO PLACE LIKE COLOUR

Attending an Illustrator course at CCA last weekend, I was introduced to Ben O'Brien's artwork. Ben O'Brien is a commercial illustrator based in Cornwall, UK, with a background including animating and directing music videos for labels including Sony Japan and Domino Records; album sleeve design; vinyl sticker design; editorial illustration for clients including The Guardian and Computer Arts Magazine and advertising campaigns for clients including Smart Cars and Honda. Ben works alongside his wife, Fi, who manages their Wish You Were Here brand, producing and selling fine art prints and is currently developing a range of Wish You Were Here homeware products for release in 2009. Fi also takes care of their varied art projects, including the ever-popular Speakerdog Paper Toys.

KARIN MAMMA ANDERSSON

"To make a concentrated feeling for something, you have to reduce it to the few small things that can tell a story. Then you can make your own history. "

Mamma Andersson

It has been great seeing Karin Mamma Andersson's new prints at Crown Point Press in San Francisco. Following the style of a very Nordic painting tradition: landscapes, interiors, relationships, and dramas, she is very much inspired by theater and film. Andersson’s artistic plot is influenced by fables, myths, pop music, and art history. Her desolate landscapes, foreboding sense of calamity, and introspective figures relate to the drama in paintings by Munch, Van Gogh and Hopper. She creates these empty scenes that despite the lonely feel, they are painted so richly that life exudes from them. They are on view through May 30th.

WILLIAM EGGLESTON, PARIS

William Eggleston Paris
Foundation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
4 April - 21 June, 2009

In response to an invitation from the Fondation Cartier, William Eggleston has spent three years working on a major photography project on Paris. This series of photographs shows the city’s many facets: picturesque and cosmopolitan, sublime and vulgar, humdrum and extraordinary. Going back to a long tradition in which grand masters of photography such as Eugène Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson chose this city as their subject, Eggleston engages in a dialogue with his predecessors via the unique photographic style for which he is well known. Published by Steidl on the occasion of his exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, the publication takes the form of a workbook and places his photographs next to the drawings inspired by them. Presented to the public for the first time, these pieces offer a unique insight into the creative process behind Eggleston’s work.

William Eggleston, Untitled, Paris series, 2006-2008 © Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy Cheim and Read, New York.

ED RUSCHA · NORIKO AMBE

Ed Ruscha · Artists Who Do Books, 1976

Artists who do books and artists who destroy them... Why not? The Japanese book artist Noriko Ambe is behind these great book sculptures.

Cutting Book Series with Ed Ruscha
"Artists who make pieces, Artists who do books", 2008

Cuts on a book of "Ed Ruscha"
5 1/8(H) x 14 1/2(W) x 8(D) inches
13(H) x 36.8(W) x 20.3(D) cm

KIKI SMITH

Kiki Smith Sitting with a Snake, 2007

Digital acid-based inkjet dyes on silk charmeuse
Image Size: 69 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches
Paper Size: 69 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches
Edition of 18
Printed by Pamplemousse Press
Published by Pace Editions, Inc.

Kiki Smith (American, born Germany, 1954) is among the most significant artists of her generation. Known primarily as a sculptor, she has also devoted herself to printmaking, which she considers an equally vital part of her work.

Kiki Smith's work is about the body - specifically about the differences between our own private perceptions of our bodies and public stereotypes of the body and sexuality. Kiki Smith moves beyond feminism to focus on the body affected through processes such as aging or giving birth. She is a prolific printmaker and photographer as well as an important sculptor. A major retrospective of Kiki Smith's prints and multiples was held at the Museum of Modern Art December 2003 - March 2004. I was truly inspired visiting her exhibition Kiki Smith, Her Memory at The Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona last month.

HELBOTICA

Designed by Jonathan Yule. Helbotica is part of a series of typographic illustrations based on Yule’s favorite sans-serif fonts. Printed in white ink on a Alstyle Performance Scoop Tee, you can find them at chopshopstore.com with a great selection of colors and sizes. At Yule's website you can find the Helbotica Poster. Size: 16 x 22.25 hand screenprinted.

COLORING LIFE

Ninteenseventythree have produced some great wallpaper, 1000 x 52cm roll, that you can color in for yourself. Designed by Jon Burgeman's this coloring-in wallpaper it's a great self-expression home decor tool for all ages. Also available the creative collection of coloring cards. Enjoy & Happy Coloring!

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS · One Dozen Monkeys

TMBG. One of my favorite alternative rock bands. Always, lovely unique videos!

MONOCHROME WHITE · CHANEL

I love PAPER and WHITE. For me black has everything. So does white. This flowers have been in my head since I saw them at the last Chanel 2009 Spring Summer Haute Couture Show. Why don't share this lovely garden? I absolutely find them exquisite, laborious, and ephemeral paper sculptures. They remind me to a giant pop-up book made of white paper.

The gorgeous white paper flower arrangements of roses, daisies, leaves, and petals decorated the massive columns and entryway staircase of the Cambon-Capucines Pavilion in Paris. A remarkable series of paper cutting, from Kirigami to Scherenschnitte. In an example of Chanel’s deep pockets, the house’s creative director Karl Lagerfeld got a team of 40 to labor for two weeks to produce the 7,000 paper flowers, bouquets, table clothes and potpourri that embellished the extravagant nightclub décor. The project was brought into reality by Matt Gardiner.

As Karl Lagerfeld said: "A white page, a linear and timeless graphic interpretation. It's like a starting point for the story of this new era, for which all the details still need to be written. This is why I chose paper as the theme for the couture collection this season."

The models wore white, paper head-dresses created by the Tokyo milliner, Katsuya Kamo, using an origami technique. The models' nails were painted in icy white.

Photos: Chanel Website

OBSESSIVE CONSUMPTION = ENDLESS CREATIVITY

Obsessive Consumption = Endless Creativity = Kate Bingaman-Burt

When I discovered through the book Handmade Nation, Kate Bingaman-Burt illustrations a few days ago, I realized that even the worst things in life can be seen with a positive perspective. She is got the question - What Did You Buy Today?

Most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about what we buy on any given day. A latte here, movie tickets there. The mundane stuff of life that eats at bank accounts and adds up fast. Kate Bingaman-Burt, a Portland graphic designer, used to be the same way. Then one night five years ago, she added up her credit card bills and realized she was more than $20,000 in debt. "It wasn't like I'd been on some wild spending spree," she said. "It was coffee and magazines and everyday things."

Still, she felt embarrassed and very guilty. So she did what any artist would: Picked a pen. She began hand-drawing near replicas of her monthly statements, re-creating every last ledger line and decimal point in a penance she vowed to continue until the debt was gone. In February 2006, she went further, making daily ink drawings of something she's bought. She posts them on the blog portion of her Web site, obsessiveconsumption.com.

She's gotten national attention for the work, including a mention in The New York Times Magazine. Bingaman-Burt sells pieces online -- credit card bills go for the minimum monthly payment -- and produces a monthly zine. Princeton Architectural Press is publishing a book of her drawings in 2010. She began Obsessive Consumption in 2002 by taking pictures of things she bought for an early blog. At Mississippi State University, where she got her first teaching gig, she suffered her credit card realization and turned her art into her life. Or life into art. She's not sure, either. Read the complete article at Oregonlive.com written by Anna Griffin.

PRINT · COLETTE'S ORCHID

Colette's Orchid

36.5 x 50.8 cm / 14.38 x 20 in.
Signed and numbered (Limited Edition of 50)
Price: 148 US dollar

Giclée print/Ultrachrome print on Hahnemühle German Etching 310 g/m2. This paper has the subtle texture of an etching paper and a soft white tone. It is mould-made and inherently acid free, appealing characteristics that artists have enjoyed in Hahnemühle German Etching for over 400 years. I have chosen the heaviest line, giving the final print a substantial feel, offering an exceptional print quality. Soon available on my Etsy shop. You can always e-mail me - info@yummyink.com

Currently, my work in progress is a series of illustrations of my "girls" inspired by the writer Miranda July, based in LA. Going through her book "No One Belongs Here More than You" has been a great source of inspiration to create a special, unique, and delicate world for my Ladies. She is an interdisciplinary pure indie artist, not afraid to explore new boundaries in the blank paper, film, wall and space. She is the undisputed high priestess of the DIY art revolution.