Erte Research

Since I am new to Roski and don't know too much about famous artists and their styles, I decided to educate myself on another one of the artists from the design principles assignment.

His name is Erte and I love his romantic style. The French artist's work consist of stagnant figures, he does a great job at still creating movement within the piece. This is something that I personally struggled with in my preliminary sketches of the design principle assignment.

Erte is also exceptional at creating balance within a piece without it looking completely balanced. He uses the Rule of Thirds in the third piece. I absolutely love his work and hope to learn even more about him in the future.

Artsy Video

I came across this very artsy and imaginative video the other week when on Youtube. I don't want to give away too much about it before you watch, but this video is an advertisement for Tiji TV of France. I think they did a very good job with taking into account the audience that they were targeting. Also, they were very creative with their ideas.

This idea/concept is very interesting to me because in addition to loving engineering and art, I am also intrigued by marketing and advertising.  It's a cute video. Enjoy!

Spider Web Art

For our final project, my group is focusing on the Nature Lab exhibit at the Natural History Museum. In our preliminary sketches, we focused a lot on spider webs and how we could create an interesting poster through that. So of course I decided to do a little research on my own about spider-web art. The artist I found is Tomas Saraceno of Argentina. He does work with large-scale spider webs like the one below.

I love how the web is 3D just like they are in real life. Also,  the black background works really well to show the detail and elaboration of the web.

It is imperative to know that Saraceno does not create the webs himself. Instead he uses actual spiders in a closed area to build the webs. Naturally, spiders only spin their webs in 1D space. Therefore, Saraceno and his team are constantly moving the orientation of the web, to create the 3D look.

Here is another picture of his work.


His exhibits can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hamburger Bahnhof.

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/881828/tomas-saraceno-co-opts-the-communal-habits-of-beatnik-spiders

More on Shibori Dye

After participating in the Shibori dyeing that took place two weeks ago, I became very intrigued. I have done plenty of cloth dyeing before, but this dye seemed to be so much more rich and special. Therefore, I decided to do some more research on it.

Shibori dye stems from Japanese decent dating all the way back to the 8th century. The term "shibori" actually comes from the verb "shiboru," which means to wring or squeeze. This term is very fitting as there are so many ways to manipulate the cloth to create such beautiful patterns. We were able to see some of those patterns in class and at the final workshop. One specific technique is called Kumo Shibori. For this design the user must scrunch small portions of the cloth very tightly. This design looks random and spider-web-like.



Arashi Shibori is another technique. The cloth is wrapped around a pole tightly with thread and then compressed. Once it is dyed, it turns out like this:


Itajime Shibori  is my favorite that I have seen. This design is created through accordion folds and pressed between two hard objects. Therefore, the dye can only reach the exposed cloth. The end result looks like below!


http://blog.needsupply.com/2013/04/21/shibori-a-short-history/

Maude White

Okay, as some of you know I have become recently enamored by cut paper artwork.  Wandering Pinterest, I came across this artist - Maude White.  I'm completely fascinated and determined to learn how to do this.

I thought you guys might be as excited as I am about her...

Here is her website.
http://bravebirdpaperart.com/

Katie.

Lawrence Azerrad

I had never heard of Lawrence Azerrad before hearing him speak a few weeks ago, but I am glad I went.  His work was interesting, as was his background in Los Angeles.  What really peaked my interest though was his work with different bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers in designing their album covers.  As a design student, album artwork and branding is something I am extremely into and something I would like to pursue in my future, so seeing someone who turned that into a career was both inspiring and showed what you can do with that line of work.  His work about regarding that retro jet plane was crazy too, I didn't know something along those lines ever existed.

Simon Doonan

A few weeks ago I attended the Simon Doonan lecture, and I am very glad I did.  It was an amazing experience to get to hear Doonan's thoughts on the fashion industry firsthand.  I really liked the way he described fashion as a modern day "spectator sport"; it really is when you think about it.  I had never seen it in this manner but now its the only way I see it.  Different brands are different teams and they hire different designers who are the real players, and of course the regular person wearing the clothing is also competing against their peers.  Competition is fierce in fashion, and it really is sports-like to see what different brands can produce.  Doohan was funny, down to earth, and of course dapper--his shirts are killer.

Robert Montgomery

I'm finding myself intrigued by this artist.  I particularly enjoy his Fire Poems...

Here is his website, if you guys are interested, as well as an article of his recent show...

http://www.robertmontgomery.org/robertmontgomery.org/16.html

http://www.someslashthings.com/online-magazine/2014/12/2/someart-robert-montgomery-opening-event-at-ajl-gallery-berlin

Alexa Meade

Recently an artist that caught my eye was Alexa Meade. Instead of painting subjects on a canvas, Meade makes subjects the canvas. She applies acrylic paints on human subjects and makes them appear as a painting.

It's absolutely unreal, and I love the angle that she takes in her art.

"I paint representational portraits directly on top of the people I am representing. The models are transformed into embodiments of the artist's interpretation of their essence. When captured on film, the living, breathing people underneath the paint disappear, overshadowed by the masks of themselves." -Alexa Meade

Simon Doonan

I genuinely enjoyed Simon Doonan, as I’ve seen his work before. He started in the department store industry where he eventually began designing window displays in unconventional ways. Fantasy-like, gory, busy and often disturbing, I personally really appreciate his work. I love his touch of humor in many of the examples that were shown in the backdrop during the event. Although however outlandish his displays were, they did exactly what they needed to do—capture attention.
 Doonan also discussed the fashion world, and unsurprisingly he mentioned that he thinks even fashion is subjective, and so it was not in his place to dress people. As a result, he has little to no critique on outfits and style. Personally I appreciate his stance, as I feel strongly about make-up in the same manner. However, I do also think that there can be a standard of fashion, and not to mention, often people have the desire to be trendy but simply cannot. In addition, there is often a limit to one’s style, even if one doesn’t intend it. I don’t see an issue with helping certain people with fashion, and I think that by sharing one’s taste, one can share his or her style. It’s a celebration of different tastes.
 Overall, Doonan was an eccentric personality with great messages to share. I'm a fan.