Nicole Eisenman

Read more about Nicole Eisenman here.

ANDREW MAZOROL and TYNAN KERR

Andrew Mazorol and Tynan Kerr's painting really captured me. I love the rough looseness with the amazing color palate. The crowded images actually make me want to spend more time with them to discover new things. After looking at these I'm ready to experiment a little in my studio with paint.

Huang Qingjun and Ma Hongjie

Huang Qingjun and Ma Hongjie decided to collaborate on this photo series ‘Family Stuff’ in 2005. "Huang and Ma work as independent partners, Huang covering the North, Ma the South of the country. Convincing families to expose themselves to their cameras is the major challenge that both face on their respective expeditions. Building trust and laying the groundwork for the shoot can take months, again and again Huang and Ma have to explain why they want the families to empty their houses and let the artists decoratively arrange their belongings outside. Once they have agreed to participate, most families are happy to display their possessions, even more so since they receive financial compensation. In some cases, not all belongings are permitted to be shown, in others not all furniture fits through the doorways; but generally, the artists confirm, their portraits depict average Chinese reality as it is today: simple, unpretentious and compared to 20 years ago, strikingly void of political paraphernalia."

Waste Land Festival Trailer.mov

This looks good! I love art activism more than anything.

JR for Patrice - Ain't Got No (I Got Life)

Mika Rottenberg

Ever since I saw Mika Rottenberg's video instillation "Mary's Cherries" in PS1 in 2004, I've tried to follow her work. Rottenberg's art explores the relationship between women's bodies and systems of production. Rottenberg is best known for her videos featuring working women, cast for their distinguishing physical characteristics, performing a kind of modern-day alchemy; tears are farmed as the secret ingredient for bread, and acrylic fingernails are made into maraschino cherries through elaborate zigzag assembly-line processes. With her use of humor and seductively disorienting spaces, Rottenberg opens up a funhouse mirror dimension for us to peer into–one that is at once zany and eerily true to life.

Theo Jansen

Theo Jansen was the first person I had seen on TED talks a couple years ago. His work is incredible, alive, and magical. This is one the most beautiful examples of the inspiration of nature and science in art. The second I saw his pieces walk... it's just so hard to stop watching- and the technical and engineering aspects of it just blows my mind...Man, so good.

Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen was a huge inspiration for me when I was studying fashion design years back, and continued to be even when I found my work to lend itself more to sculpture and installation. He died very recently this past February after the death of his mother. His work always just stunned me. The fashion world will not be the same without his presence.

Jan Svankmajer

(This Alice clip is not with the original music)

Little Otik and Alice (an interpretation of Alice in Wonderland) are incredible stop motion animated movies created by the great Czech filmmaker, Jan Svankmajer. He was born in 1934 in Prague where he still lives. He trained at the Institute of Applied Arts from 1950 to 1954 and then at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (Department of Puppetry). There are many examples of Jan Svankmajer's shorts on youtube if you are interested in seeing his other work. My favorite part of one of his films is "where the socks go" which is a clip from Alice before she meets the caterpillar.

Celestial Navigations - Al Jarnow

I just put this film on my Netflix queue. As I was watching the trailer I was wondering why some of the clips look so familiar and it's because Al Jarnow was an early contributor to Sesame Street and 3-2-1 Contact. ...can't wait to check it out in full.

The Price of Milk - Harry Sinclair

"A symphony of magic... A not so simple story about two people in love."

The Price of Milk written and directed by Harry Sinclair--This movie is surreal in the most beautifully simplistic ways. When I first saw this I thought that if I were to ever direct a movie I would do it just like this.

The Beast Pageant - Albert Birney and Jon Moses

The Beast Pageant - Trailer from Albert Birney on Vimeo.

The Beast Pageant is a feature film written and directed by Albert Birney and Jon Moses in Rochester, New York. Check out the super cool trailer above. You can support them as well on their kickstarter page.

Death to the Tinman- Ray Tintori

"Lovely Awesomeness" best describes Ray Tintori's short film above. The 24 year old recently made a name for himself after creating MGMT’s Time to Pretend.

Are Mokkelbost

These are some of the best collages I have seen in a while!! Norwegian artist, Are Mokkelbost's Entity series was commissioned by a school in Norway for a permanent installation. Mokkelbost explains he created the"images cut directly out of children educational books, choosing only the illustrations that were originally hand drawn or painted. The transformation was simple -- the bits and pieces of pedagogic images cluster and form living creatures, where anything that defines a living entity, such as eyes and limbs, originally depicted something else." There is such a delicacy and humor to them that mesmerizes me- and makes me wish I could stand in front of them and just stare. Check out Mokkelbost's other collage series called ION that is also pretty amazing.

Mia Doi Todd x Michel Gondry

Mia Doi Todd "Open Your Heart" dir. Michel Gondry from Viewers Like You on Vimeo.

Guerra de la Paz

Cuban born American artists Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz are the collabortive duo Guerra de la Paz . They live and work in Miami and have been collaboratively working together since 1996. Repurposing found objects is a main focus in their work, as most of the clothing used is recycled that was collected in their neighborhood Little Haiti in Miami. Their work lends itself to environmental issues, disposabily, and mass consumption.

Allison Schulnik

Allison Schulnik's work is pretty amazing to watch on a days I feel uninspired. Her films have this messy gooey style that I think is so much more successful then when used in her paintings.
Schulnik explains, "I over-indulge. I really just make work and I don't really think about it. I like to see the material move and breath, and melt. I don't like things to stay static."

Why don't you do any dishes? Why? I always clean up the kitchen. Why?...haha. So random and good.

Tales of the Unexpected- Carl Burgess

Tales of the Unexpected from More Soon on Vimeo.

Carl Burgess' Tales of the Unexpected is like seeing crystal landscapes in your Italian ice.

Cai Guo-Quiang - Transient Rainbow

Cai Guo-Quiang

I really love Cai Guo-Quiang's process in his explosion drawings. I also really enjoy the idea of the aesthetic of pain which he explains in the second video posted above. Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian, China. He was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy from 1981 to 1985. Cai's work is scholarly and often politically charged. Cai initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppressive, controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, Cai explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale and the development of his signature "explosion events," artistically choreographed shows incorporating fireworks and other pyrotechnics.

Marco Brambilla

I love watching this in full screen mode- it seems so epic and monumental. Check out more of Marco Brambilla's work here.

Pieter Hugo

I first saw Pieter Hugo's "The Hyena and Other men" series and it immediately caught my attention. The relationship between this creature and these men just seemed incredible. I later saw his "Nollywood" series in the New Yorker and was further intrigued to know more about this photographer. Though there seems to be a bit a controversy whether his work is exploiting these people or pointing out the general public's warped stereotypes of Africa. Either way the imagery definitely captures your attention.

Kara Walker

“I knew that if I was going to make work that had to deal with race issues, they were going to be full of contradictions. Because I always felt that it's really a love affair that we've got going in this country, a love affair with the idea of it [race issues], with the notion of major conflict that needs to be overcome and maybe a fear of what happens when that thing is overcome— And, of course, these issues also translate into [the] very personal: Who am I beyond this skin I'm in?”











I love Kara Walker's work, it explores race, gender, identity,violence and sexuality. I had the pleasure of being able to see her lecture at the SFMOMA in 2005. She captured the audience so easily with the way she speaks about her art, her process, and her subjects. In the the Second Youtube post, that is a podcast between Kara Walker and curator Gary Garrels ,they begin to talk about the idea of "failed revolution" around 5:48- this idea really intrigued me. Read more about Walker in this article done by the New York Times.