Natalie Shau

Natalie Shau. I keep going back to this artist. She is very inventive, beautifully odd. Her work can take your breath away. She is always worth another look.

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Nancy Scheinman

Nancy Scheinman‘s work is beautiful. Each piece looks deeply layered. Images and accident lay side by side. There are many subtle suggestions. One could quite imagine these works being much sought after. I love her use of relief and her palette. (God, I’m getting to sound like Joan Rivers.)

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When you go to her sight and you look at her galleries, it begins to look like a production line. Each piece is constructed in the same manner. The artist would almost be better off letting you look at a handful of her work and leaving the rest in the closet to be let out after she has sold those public pieces. Her work is expensive. That in itself should have no bearing on the work. But I do get the impression that she is part of the market in art. Something about which I know nothing.

Robin Chandler

Some artists achieve what my professors at university called ‘a voice’. Chandler has achieved this. The work has a distinctive quality, a signature that belongs to this artist. It is “artsy”. By that I mean that it demands to be studied. When I was younger I recall many times in workshops poets/writers explaining their work. As if they had writen for the purpose of being studied in the classroom. In Chandler’s own voice. ‘Artists are concerned with the poetic treatment of that same conceptual space, only in tactile or plastic form. Using abstraction as an approach to form – human and anthropomorphic creatures, lush images of vegetation- and a color palette from highly saturated color to a black-gold/silver palette, I amassed a set of repeated forms which rush through the picture plane. My work seeks a symmetry and a depth of field through a “layering” of forms across a space-time continuum creating a “visual language”. Working with an assortment of papers-mostly handmade or imported- and testing and mixing several adhesives, the task was then to devise a logistical means for sequencing and arranging each layer of each dimension on the picture plane to create an illusion of hyperspace or depth of field.’

Artist’s statements should be banned. Like men taking off their shirts in public. Let critics make fools of themselves. Having said all this, I still find Chandler’s work appealing. They are colourful, professionally done with great craftsmanship. I do like the contrast between flat images against the whole page giving a sense of depth. I don’t know if it has significance beyond that.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat

This is the last sort of art that I think I would have entertained as interesting. But Basquiat’s work is interesting. He doesn’t paint pictures so much as tell stories. There is information in his work, data, impressions of anger and sadness. These are like cave paintings. Or the early bible creations of monks. They assault you with a collage of data. Impressionistic in a non-visual way. A lot of what I see reminds me of Picasso. The sad thing is that this artist is dead. And his life has been romanticized. Which means his work could take second place to people’s curiosity about the artist.

‘Jean-Michel’s early years were spent with his middle class Haitian father, Gerard, who was unable to fulfill his son’s need for nurturing and recognition. To fill the void, Jean-Michel hit the streets of New York at a young age where art became an outlet for his anger and empty childhood. Also known by the tag “SAMO,” Jean-Michel’s unique brand of graffiti was found throughout Manhattan as early as 1976. “His work from the first consisted of conceptual, enigmatic combinations of words and symbols, executed with the curt simplicity of a late Roman inscription”, according to Henry Geldzahler, longtime curator of twentieth-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.’

I wrote about this artist a year ago. Upon reflection I like Basquiat’s work even more. There is of course a lot of courage in his work. If he’d been middle-class. But as a street kid I think he must have felt that this was the language he knew.

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My own impression of Warhol and Basquiat in this documentary is not favourable. Basquait seems in awe of Warhol. And Warhol looks like he needs another ‘h’ in his name.

Henry John Lintott

One of the wonderful things about ignorance is that you can fall across an artist whose work you like and know nothing about him. I know that Lintott is a Scot. As is my background in part. And that he is dead. As I am not. But other than that there is very little written about him. Some of his work is quite odd. Like this painting of 3 souls flying over the country side. Economy class. And some of his other industrial landscape pieces. But I like them. They amuse me.

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This video was created by a young woman who has a wonderful blog that I follow.

AStern

My first ‘solo’ work as a producer/director/editor.

Hope you enjoy!

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Susannia Lakner

The work of Susannia Lakner is both playful and colourful. Of course some pieces work better than others. Sometimes when you see a smaller version of the work it is difficult to see  how the pieces work with each other. Almost invisible seamless pieces suddenly appear when blown up. Susannia does not try and hide her edges but works with them.

She has a sight called Planet Susannia. Be prepared to spend a lot of time there.

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Suhair Sibai

Suhair Sibai. Her work is remarkable. Wonderful. I’m a little gaga over it. Reminds me of Klimt. And Kuris. There are story lines in her paintings. And then there is paint. And a sense of restoration. As if there was a remarkable work being excavated.

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Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress. Though known primarily for her extraordinary beauty and her celebrity in a film career as a major contract star of MGM’s “Golden Age” Lamarr was also a scientist, inventor and mathematician who co-invented an early technique for spread spectrum communications; a key to many forms of wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day.

Ms. Lamarr might have been one of the most intelligent people in the United States when she was a star. She and her husband designed a machine to be used in torpedoes. (She despised the Nazis. All her efforts were directed toward defeating them.) The war department didn’t buy into it during the war. Her work on spread spectrum devices are now used in all computers. She never made a dime on any of her inventions.

Ms. Lamarr is most remembered for her movie career. Especially her nude scene in Ekstasy. She was also an author. She has said that she spent 20 million dollars during her life. An extraordinary woman.

I am a big fan of street art. Unfortunately we have very little in Toronto.

Brazilian Fashion Blog

Living with dirty walls and grey tones of large cities is not easy. Those who live in metropolitan areas know how pleasant it is when in a given day that old and destroyed wall becomes an open air museum: it is the graffiti, transforming forgotten spaces into canvas, valuing the enriching the environment and improving life quality for citizens.

Brazilian Fashion Blog pays a tribute to these artists, bringing a selection of pictures reflecting such works from the major Brazilian metropolis: Sao Paulo.

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