mwcapacity.wordpress.com-Fly over country my arse

Chris Lowrance and Sam King call it painters blog for no coasters. I love it. MWcapacity is a well conceived and executed landing pad for artists and art people who reside in the middle. Some may say that metaphorically/mentally/physically the middle is a bad place to be. An unresolved purgatory. A neither here nor there place a 50% kind of place. But I say no. What's a sandwich with out the lovely cured Italian meats or what's a pie with out the oozy peach middle. What's a body without the guts, just a head and some feet. Blah. Anyways, there is a lot happening in the middle and if your curious, you want to look into the key hole or maybe you want to bust on through the door and jump on the table. There are often lively conversations and more than once they have hipped me to great artists. So strip off the crusty ciabatta and sink your teeth right into the succulent pimento loaf that is the mid west.

Chris Brodhal

While in Seattle, we got to see for the first time the work of Cris Brodahl. Not as well know as her fellow countrymen - Michael Borremans and Luc Tuymans, Brodahl is nonetheless an amazing artist. The sense that I got from the room of her carefully arranged paintings and sculptures is akin encountering images carrying messages from another civilization. Bizarre, unsettling, unfamiliar and beautiful are the adjectives that come to mind when I attempt to remember her work. In her paintings, Brodahl works primarily in muted colors with some occasional elements of painted bas relief. The imagery appears to originate from some form of photo collage, however, the results are not what you'd normally expect. Instead of a hodgepodge of cut up photo references the imagery appears to be both structured and mysterious while emanating a strange otherworldly aura.

Laura Marsh at Newman Popiashvili Gallery

She was once my art school room mate in a hole-in-the-wall Little Italy apartment. In the process of creating an extensive, wax-laden handmade book, Ms. Marsh had poured hot wax down our kitchen sink. Days later, I had come home to our landlord's passive-aggressive gift of gigantic wax chunks chiseled from the inside of our wrecked pipes (and displayed in one of my food bowls on the kitchen table)....

But that was then, and Laura is the kind of artist that is balls-to-the-wall. Oh, and did I mention that she is a 2009 Yale MFA graduate, the Program Director of Artspace in New Haven, and a Professor at University of New Haven. Hardcore, eh? So much for the wax incident.

Laura Marsh's work paints the cultural portrait of our society through combining imagery from advertisements. The artist inserts advertising media into drawings, sculptures, paintings and video, thus augmenting commercial images and stretching the life of everyday materials to manifest characters that bare an objectified gaze. Visit her awesomeness here.

Call for Collaborators: Video & 2D Artists

I got this call for entries from artist Ellen Mueller, she's looking for collaborators for a project for the University of South Florida's Contemporary Art Museum.

VIDEO

Call for video artists of all levels of experience to help in a collaborative project: I have a script divided into short scenes, and would like a different person/group to shoot each scene. In the end, I will be editing all the scenes together to create the entire script. Artists have total creative freedom to use any medium they like (digital video, stop-motion animation, clay animation, puppets, actors, real or imaginary props/costumes/settings, etc). All participants will be given credit.

The script is very fantastical and follows the time traveling main character, Enid, as she attempts to stop a violent action before it occurs. The scene breakdown, as well as character profiles can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/bookofenid

I will need something from you to create the end product - a .mov file, miniDV tape, DVD, etc. All work will be shown at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Spring 2011. I am hoping to collect all work by October 20th, 2010.

To participate or ask questions, please email Ellen@EllenMueller.com

More info: FAQ

2-DIMENSIONAL

Call for artists of all levels of experience to help in a collaborative art project: I would like to gather as many depictions of 5 characters as possible. Profiles of these characters can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/bookofenid

These characters can be depicted in 2 or 3 dimensions. I will print images of these depictions & decorate an altar-like space where people will be able to sit and watch a movie about the characters. Some of the images may be integrated into the afore mentioned movie. All participants will be given credit.

Please scan or take a photo of your work. The recommended file formats are PSD, AI or TIFF. The recommended resolution is 1024x768 or 300 DPI and at least 2.75"x3.75". All work will be shown at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Spring 2011. I am hoping to collect all work by October 20th, 2010.

To participate or ask questions, please email Ellen@EllenMueller.com

More info: FAQ

Eric Yahnker

There's something to be said for having a sense of humor.

I saw Eric Yahnker's piece "bummed bouquet" as part of a humor-inspired show at Ambach & Rice in Seattle. The whole show was great, but Mr, Yahnker's piece in particular stuck with me.

I'm glad to have encountered this work, as its timely to some conversations had of late about the seriousness of art. Can real art be funny? I vote yes. Humor is as human an expression as any I know, and what is art if not an opportunity for conversation about the things that make people what they are. Sometimes serious. Sometimes beautiful. Sometimes vile. Sometimes... funny. And how refreshing, in a crowd where everyone is trying to hard to be the next genius, to come across someone who's willing to be a little self- deprecating about art and about this culture we're all a part of.

Gert and Uwe Tobias

G and E are hardly unknown or emerging artists but I felt the need to showcase their work since I have been obsessed with them lately. The Tobias twins are German artists who make these incredible, humongous lickity luscious wood cut prints that are a hybrid of historic folk art stylings, colorful cartoons and bizarre illuminations. Through the use of color, basic shapes and often text, the Tobias's concoct mesmerizing new age lore. Like modern interpretations of some Gee's bend quilts I imagine some one bringing a Tobias print to the Antiques Road Show in 2090 and we learn about a family history through icons and patterns and text. I love how text and highly personal icons can encode meaning and tell stories. And content aside what it must be like to pull a multi colored print from a nearly 5 or 6 foot wood cut is beyond my comprehension. It would take a village! -brandon

Jessica Kincaid

Jessica Kincaid's beadwork is not your momma's beaded sampler.
She started young, collecting and beginning beadwork when she was 8 years old, and it has been her medium of choice ever since. The spirituality in Jessica's work comes through as light transformed by the translucent, shimmery quality of the beads chosen to pixelate landscapes and environments (and even, in an older body of work, MRIs). The images are abstracted in her choices - the crop, the color, the specific glass beads that are chosen to play off of each other. The result is a world transformed - a bridge between the real and the just beyond real.

WLGB™ - nuff said

Alright, it's Friday almost the holiday weekend and what better way to kick it all off than to bring you the worlds largest gummy bears. That's right over at the Worlds Largest Gummy Bear Company you can purchase your own slice of record breaking gelatinous history in a myriad of flavors. Don't just settle for Ohio's largest or Uruguays biggest. Nope this is the end all be all no one can touch it on the whole globe for size. If you don't like the soothing smooth and tacky hand feel, then you can get one a stick. And for more aesthetic appeal I bet it would look awesome back lit. Happy labor Day!
-brandon