Artifacts: February 2015

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Clare Rojas

I chose Clare Rojas because her style matched what I had wanted to create for a while. I love her use of shapes and the way she portrays her messages around feminism. Her art is fun and pleasing to look at but challenges important issues.

Clare Rojas was born in 1976 in Ohio. She works with media including printing, painting, installations, video, and children's books. She has recently moved from more figural shapes to pure geometric abstraction. Rojas also performs under the name Peggy Honeywell, and plays guitar and banjo. Her art can be described as “powerful folk-art-inspired tableaus that tackle traditional gender roles.” She explores such topics without sexual exploitation or overt eroticism making her work different from many other gender oriented art.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Willy Heeks

I chose Willy Heeks work, because his monotypes are visually intriguing. Heeks is able to use bold colors, texture and multiple mediums in his prints. He is able to layer images, texture and color in a risky but tasteful way. In these specific pieces Heeks used items found at an abandoned construction site as stencils in his prints. He was able to also go back into the pieces after they were printed and add hand worked ink and watercolor embellishments to create a chaotic but visually pleasing result.

Willy Heeks was born American in 1951. He was educated at Tyler School of Art, Graduate Program, In Philadelphia, Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program, in New York and at BFA, University of Rhode Island, in Kingston. Heeks is currently living in New York and known for his abstract art.

Hung Liu

Tom Judd

Tom Judd was born in Lawrnceville, New Jersey in 1952. His family comes from a distinguised Mormon background, although his immediate family were not active church members. I was particularly drawn to Judd's paintings because of the mixed medium and variety of color. I like how his art is able to communicate a lot of character and response without being over the top. This idea is also conveyed in his "The Hermit Project," which is a small installation that is a simple house on the outside, but in the inside it looks as though a hermit has been living in the hut for 40+ years. I liked this project because the memorabilia and nuance of the hut was so powerful, even though it was simply a collection of junk. For me, I like to get rid of things as much as I can. However, I have a small box in my room that is filled with the wackiest junk that I have collected from the past decade. It is weird and odd and even kind of gross (I have some teeth in the junk box), but each relic brings back memories that I can so clearly remember.

Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman, from Israel, has been one of my favorite artists since the children's books she illustrated populated my bookshelves. Something about her unworried, often impossible looking lines has always been appealing for me. As a kid, I was drawn to the colorful depth and narrative that her pieces have. In these prints, made at Paulson Bott Press, she is able to retain that sense of movement and line quality. Dancers (the one of the three figures) especially evokes that liveliness and Roller Coaster After Hurricane has those trademark sketch-y lines.

--Madeleine Matz

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Seth Malland: graffiti artist

Seth Malland is a french painter/graffiti artists. He is known for his book Globe Painter, which is a travel book made up photos, drawings and illustrations that depict his experience of his travels around the world. The pictures I posted are more focus on his graffiti art which were inspired by different the cultures he had visited.

Check out his awesome website: http://www.globepainter.com/#/mur?id=1407