Daily Art Fixx

visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!

Aurora Robson: Recycled Art

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Aurora Robson was born in Toronto, Canada in 1972 but grew up in Hawaii and has lived in New York for 20 years. She has a BA in Visual Art & Art History from Columbia University and is a certified structural welder. Robson currently lives and works in Brooklyn with her husband, cinematographer Marshall Coles and daughter Ona.

Robson uses everyday waste such as discarded plastic bottles and junk mail to create intricate sculptures, installations, and collages. Over the years, Robson has intercepted tens of thousands of bottles, saving them from their ultimate destination at the landfill or costly recycling plants. The fate of her junk mail follows a similar path and have now become part of her stunning ink collages.

“Deeply concerned about the natural environment, Robson sees herself as an eco-activist who uses her art to address urgent issues poetically, not polemically. She is best known for assembling cast-off plastic bottles, which she colorfully paints, into wildly inventive hanging sculptures the smaller ones sometimes containing LED lights and large works that fill entire rooms.” (Art in America Magazine Oct. 2009)

In addition to her work as an artist, Robson is Director/Co-founder of Lumenhouse, a photo studio, artist in residence program, exhibition space and community/cultural event space located in Brooklyn. She is also the founding Director of Project Vortex, an international organization of artists, architects and designers working with plastic debris – working with Project Kaisei to reduce the amount of plastic debris littering our oceans and shorelines.

Robson’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows across the United States, and has been featured in magazines such as Art in America, Juxtapoz, Artworld Digest, and the cover of Arts Houston to name a few. Most recently, she was awarded the 2010. The Arthur Levine Foundation Grant.

To see more of Aurora Robson’s work,  visit AuroraRobson.com.

See stuffed toys made with recycled sweaters.

 

Bobbie Russon: Painting

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Born in 1966, London, UK based artist paints the transition from childhood to adulthood, mapping a path of loss, awkward self-awareness and developing sexuality.

“When I work it starts almost like a form of meditation, drawing is a way to work directly from the subconscious onto paper, paintings then follow.  There are recurring elements in my work, most notably the loss of innocence and awkward self awareness of a child becoming an adult. There is a loneliness to my paintings, something I felt very acutely growing up as an only child and seem unable to shake. dolls or animals rather than other humans feature as companions with their almost human-like but dumb, false understanding.  If I can evoke a memory or emotion in a stranger by my own personal interpretation of a shared but private experience without having to use words then I feel I am succeeding.”

Russon’s solo exhibition “Tea and Camphor” runs through October 2011 at bo-lee Gallery in Bath, UK.

See more of Russon’s work on Facebook.

Jung Yeon Min: Painting

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Born in 1979 in Gwang ju, South Korea,  Jung Yeon Min currently lives and works in Paris, France. Min began her art education at an arts high school in Korea, followed by  four years at Hong Ik University in Seoul, and then three years at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.

Influenced by Hieronymous Bosch, an early Netherlandish painter famous for his apocalyptic fantasies, Min denies any easy affiliation with the more recent influence of Surrealism, although she admits, “Bosch… put so much imagination in his works, it became a kind of pre-Surrealism.”

“Min’s works are highly imaginative and rich. One finds multiple worlds, the extraordinary and the realistic, notions of micro and macro, and manipulations of space and time in her work.”

To see more of Min’s work, visit Kashya Hildebrand Gallery.

Sources: Jolaine Frizell, Jonathan Goodman

Dena Schuckit: Abstract Painting

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Dena Schuckit has a BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and her MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She was a master printer with Crown Point Press for twelve years.

Schuckit works from stacks of saved and categorized photos pulled from online news. “My hybrid landscapes chart loose and abstracted scenes of construction, destruction and the suspended chaos that often accompanies the two. The process decontextualizes the action from any specific event, instead drawing from the connections that emerge in the process of organizing the photos. Online news is often accompanied by entire slide shows of photos capturing the drama and dynamism of the disaster and the surprising and unplanned landscape that is the deconstructed physical manifest. Sorting stacks of these pictures is a way of mapping my relationship to my landscape. Pattern, shape, color, and event overlap and repeat in a complex rhizome charting the ebb and flow of civilization vs. nature.” (from artist website)

Schuckit’s work is included in the collections of the University of the Arts, London and the Parsons School of Design, New York. Her current solo show ” The Garden is a Raging Sea” at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, Colorado runs August 27th through September 25th.

To see more visit DenaSchuckit.com.

Bathsheba Grossman: Sculpture

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Bathsheba Grossman is an American artist based in Santa Cruz, California who creates stainless steel and bronze sculptures using computer-aided design and 3D metal printing technology. Her  sculptures are primarily mathematical in nature, often depicting intricate patterns or mathematical oddities. 

Grossman’s sculptures explore the region between art and mathematics. “My work is about life in three dimensions: working with symmetry and balance, getting from a zero point to infinity, and always finding beauty in geometry. “

Grossman’s work been exhibited in art galleries around the world. She has been featured in the New York Times, the London Times, Der Spiegel, Wired, Discover and Make magazines.  One of her lamps was in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential designs of 2007.  Her sculptures have also appeared in the TV shows Heroes and Numb3rs, in Second Life, and on a Japanese video game commercial.

To see more of Bathsheba’s fascinating work, visit Bathsheba.com.

Lois Greenfield: Photography

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Sam Mosher © Lois Greenfield-1995

“When New York based photographer Lois Greenfield first began taking photographs during the late 60s, her dream was to be a photojournalist for National Geographic. After graduating from Brandeis University in 1970, she started working towards this goal, freelancing for Boston’s counter-cultural newspapers, photographing everything from maximum-security prisons to rock concerts. Having never studied photography in a classroom, she taught herself everything she needed to know as she encountered obstacles and opportunities during her assignments.

Being assigned to cover a dance concert was one such obstacle: knowing nothing about the dance world or how to photograph movement, it took Lois a while to master photographing the unpredictable movement and lighting of dancers on a stage. When the time she returned to New York City, though, she had gotten the hang of it. Not only that, but she found herself very intrigued by the subjects themselves. It was a relief to work in an area where she only needed to worry about the visual interest in her photographs, rather than editorial relevancy.

As the modern and postmodern dance world in New York took flight, Lois photographed as many dance rehearsals as she could, developing her technique and reputation, and regularly working for The Village Voice, The New York Times, Dance Magazine, and many others. By 1978, she had grown frustrated with the documentary approach. Rather than trying capture someone else’s art form, Lois wanted to find a visual syntax of her own.

Whenever she could manage it, she invited dancers to join her in experimentation, and in 1980, finally set up her own studio. In this environment, she wasn’t limited to the traditional expectations of the nascent genre of dance photography, and could explore quirky configurations and unusual moments. She spent less time interpreting choreography and more time employing dancers as creative tools for her own artistic vision. Her images expressed the joy and excitement of movement, liberated from the constraints of choreography.” (bio from artist website)

“The ostensible subject of my photographs may be motion, but the subtext is Time. A dancer’s movements illustrate the passage of time, giving it a substance, materiality, and space. In my photographs, time is stopped, a split second becomes an eternity, and an ephemeral moment is solid as sculpture.”

Throughout her prolific career, Greenfield has continued to photograph both the world’s most well known dance companies as well as talented emerging artists, while maintaining a thriving commercial photography business, whose international clients have included Disney, Pepsi, AT&T, Sony, Hanes, Raymond Weil and Rolex.

To see more of Greenfield’s stunning images visit LoisGreenfield.com.

Sayaka Ganz: Reclaimed Creations

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Boris-II-Sayaka-GanzSome recent work from  Sayaka Ganz (featured).  Ganz was born in Yokohama, Japan and grew up living in Japan, Brazil, and Hong Kong. Currently she teaches design and drawing courses at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW).  Using reclaimed scrap metal and plastic household objects as her materials, Sayaka’s recent sculptures depict animals in motion.

“Scrap metal pieces themselves are ultimately what trigger my imagination to create these animal sculptures. Every piece has its own history and memory, bent, torn and rusted from being used outdoors for a long time. They are lifelike and organic in that sense. Looking at them inspires me and almost instinctively I see, for example, a dog’s head, a bird’s leg, or a deer’s back. Then in response I go and find other pieces that could fit to create the whole animal.”

To see more, visit SayakaGanz.com.

Danielle Duer: Painting

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Danielle-Duer

Painter Danielle Duer works from her studio in Nashville, Tennessee. She describes her  narrative pieces as manifestations of a romantic walk inside her own head. Duer sees this world and the people in it as “blissful and beautiful but equally heartbroken and sick.” She wants each piece of art to contain all of these Authentic elements of life. She is  interested in human behavior and why we are the way we are,  why we act the way we do, and how it often differs from who we are inside. How do we really feel?  How do we cover this up?  How are we sincere? What is the truth?  Aesthetically, her paintings are illusive but they often symbolize her undying urge to expose our vulnerable hearts and the weapons that guard them, all from a feminine perspective.

To see more, visit DanielleDuer.com.

Marianna Stelmach: Digital Painting

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Born in Warsaw, Poland,  26 year old Marianna Stelmach (aka Vuzel) is a self taught artist who uses a Pentagram tablet and Photoshop to create her digital paintings. Stelmach graduated from an Arts and Crafts High School where she specialized in Jewelery and is currently studying Physical Therapy.

To see more, visit Stelmach’s profile on Deviant Art.

Found Via: Walking Blind

Rona Pondick: Sculpture

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fox-rona-pondick

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952, Rona Pondick studied at Yale University School of Art and received her MFA in 1977. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Pondick achieved international recognition in the early 1990s and since then has become one of the most accomplished sculptors of her generation.

“Over the past decade, she has combined both ancient sculptural methods and the latest 3-D computer technologies to produce a powerful group of sculptures that fuse human and animal bodies or human and flora forms. Pondick’s hybrids evoke compelling cultural parallels from the Egyptian sphinx and Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the disturbing promises of contemporary genetic manipulation.

I want to look at how sculpture is physical and how the physical makes psychological impact. Viewers have conscious and unconscious visceral responses to objects that they feel in their own bodies and that make psychological meaning. I am interested in looking at the way the psychological has been manifested in sculptures from all periods. When these different historic sculptures and mine are installed next to one another, there is a visual communication spoken in “body language” that needs little explanation. The sculptures start losing their historical place and take on more physical, emotional, and visceral relations with the viewer. Gestures and postures don’t translate solely into symbolic interpretations particular to a culture or time period. Otherwise, why would people look at historic work?”

Pondick’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United states and abroad.  Her sculptures are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Morgan Library & Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others, and in prominent museums in France, Germany and Israel.  She has received numerous awards including a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Pondick has lectured at many universities and institutions, including Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), the Whitney Museum of American Art, Bezalel, Academy of Arts & Design Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel), and the Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille (Lille, France).

To see more of Rona Pondick’s work, visit RonaPondick.com.

Sources: Worcester Art Museum