Negative Space

Hans Haacke: The 9-11 Poster Project

Hans Haacke's Poster Project appeared on scaffolding's and walls throughout New York City from March 11-25, 2002. I don't recall ever seeing or actually noticing these Posters throughout the city because I was oblivious to detailed and everything other than Yugi-oh cards and video games. I was about 12 or 13.

On the 7th year anniversary of Sept. 11th, I almost forgot what today was and what happened. No intention is made to say that the event is done and over with or even minuscule because it affected me directly also. It just shows how well we (I) coped with the event. In addition, being out here in Connecticut is almost a breath of fresh air - just being away from a direct connection with the "negative space" in the city.

Personally, I think Hans Haacke's Posters effectively describe/portray Sept. 11th better than any poster or "We Will Never Forget" slogan. Such a simple design represents so many different things as did Sept. 11th. He uses the negative space as a symbol of the missing tower - that is what I saw when I first looked. When you first look, you also notice what is behind his poster. And that is where I feel he best portrayed 9-11. Everybody was simply living their lives, carrying out there day-to-day activities. I remember me and my cousin was just getting on the train at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall, my brother was in class in Lower Manhattan, all my friends were still at school, and so-on.

Creative Time offers the Poster Project as a screen saver, the underlying background occupies the void. Creative Time

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

AWESOME!!!

Trompe L'Oeil

Trompe L'Oeil Floor Mats found at Urban Outfitters. Urban Outfitters' products, in addition to its decor, always came across to me as inclined for hipsters, designers, and artist. Trompe L'Oeil floor mats are the craziest/best interior design idea I ever came across. The mat looks accurate in size and color, which actually makes you think the floor is eroding away, and it affects the feel of the room.


dream.

PRGRSV

Lately I have been trying to create some illustrations just to a have a little diversity in my work, rather than just having foto-manipulations. With that said, this is my latest illustration along with the bizydreaming header. It's still a work-in-progress, but I'm pretty pleased with what it has turned out to be.
The thought behind this pretty simple - three Giant Panda bears in Red, Blue, Green (RBG format) with the word "prgrsv," or progressive. It's almost like a transition of what it was to what it is now. And to also think that Giant Panda's are now endangered. The five stars at the top left are from the Chinese flag because the panda's are found in China.
I'm not too sure as to where I want to go with it as yet. So give me time for an update on "prgrsv" or shoot me some ideas.

peace,

dream.

Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall by Olafur Elliasson

Photography by AGM|newyork

First, I want to say I went to see the Waterfalls, but my camera shots didn't amount to these I lovingly swiped from Mr. AMGnewyork. I also want to add that the Waterfalls are truly monumental.

The Waterfall will be in New York for the entire summer so be a witness to New York history.

peace,

dream.

Typographic of Fiodor Sumkin

Fiodor Sumkin.

Ink on paper. Hand drawn typography turning intricate messages into incredible images.




I love typography and the things you can do with it. Especially what Fiodor has done - I would love to be able to make images out of text. That is one of my goals to accomplish throughout my learning experience.

Sumkin
Respectfully swiped from the artist and his model/Anti-Corporation

Art Under the Bridge

DUMBO Arts Festival

DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival
DUMBO Arts Center
NewYork, NY

Sep.26-28, 2008
DAC's mission is to engage a broad spectrum of society in the sensory and intellectual stimuli of emerging visual culture by providing visual artists and curators with the singular opportunity for both on and off-site experimentation, innovation, presentation and advancement.
Activities - DAC produces the annual Art Under the Bridge Festival, the largest urban forum for experimentation in public art by emerging artists in the United States. DAC presents a year-round exhibition program in its gallery, hosts an annual Artists' Opportunity Workshop and commissions editions, multiples and public space works.

Festival 2007 Images from Flickr

Art Bistro

Today, I took another step towards achieving my goals of taking over the universe, infiltrate dreams, etc. In an act to take inspiration further I joined ArtBistro. Mainly, I need to socially network with people in my field so I figured it would be a good look. In addition to networking, the offer art scholarships, and job offerings in your field of work.

ArtBistro brings members of the visual art community together to network, advance careers, and to foster a community with exclusive benefits where information about artists and designers is provided by artists and designers.

If you're a member of the visual art community add me and if you are not I suggest you join; it can be very beneficial in the long run - they have job listings, scholarships, and artist just like you.

Visual Tranquility - Roy Lichtenstein

Drowning Girl, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was born October 1923 and died September 1997 at the age of 73. Lichtenstein first became interested in art and design as a hobby. After graduation from Franklin, Lichtenstein enrolled in summer classes at the Art Students League of New York. Lichtenstein then left New York to study at the Ohio State University which offered studio courses and a degree in fine arts.
His work fluctuated between Cubism and Expressionism, but he became popular because of his Pop paintings. In 1961 Lichtenstein began his first Pop painting using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commerical printing. His first work to feature the large scale use of hard edged figures and Benday Dots. Fall semester '07, I found out that he made each dot individually using his fingers. Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl, which can be seen at the MoMA. Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction.
Lichtenstein eventually steered away from the style of art he is known for back to Abstract/Cubism, but he made it more of a Pop painting than anything else.
In the Car, Roy Lichtenstein
Cubist Still Life, Roy Lichtenstein

IIT Mies

IIT Mies Wallpaper 2004 - portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

IIT Mies Wallpaper (2004) is a project developed for the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) that features a portrait of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe composed of pictograms that depict various student activities and, from afar, form a single coherent image. The 2x4 installation also includes copies of ANY Magazine (1994–97) for which the firm designed a layout system based on an underlying typographic grid.
What I like most about this portrait is that it was done using Adobe Illustrator. When I first saw it I was hype because I did something like in using Coca-Cola bottles and cans, but I didn't make the pattern small enough, I guess, to complete the effect of using smaller images to make one large image. I'M ON MY WAY TO DI TOP TOP!!!
You know what's sick about this portrait? From far it looks like Benday Dots =]

Roo-Shay

OOF, by Edward Ruscha

Pop Art! In the West? Typically, when we think of Pop Art we(or those who are not that interested) immediately think of the East because it was the center of art at the time and because of Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (Warhol's main subject of work), and maybe a few others. When I think of Pop Art, I think of Warhol, Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Edward Ruscha(pronounced roo-shay). A little like Roy Lichtenstein, Ruscha is noted and known for incorporating words and phrases in his paintings. I'm a graphic design major and typography is an essential aspect of the study, so I try to study typographic elements in art. Ruscha's OOF isn't anything special or out of the ordinary typographically, but I what I liked most about it was of course the word "oof," but also how the words contrast with background. OOF by Ruscha can be found at the MoMA.

Edward Ruscha has remained an important figure in American art since the early 1960s when his artwork first came to the fore as part of the West Coast Pop Art movement. Since that time, he has continued to develop his signature style, which combines words and images on the same visual field.

Ruscha also did the trademark for 20th Century Fox.

Visual Tranquility - Takashi Murakami

The exhibition runs from April 5th to July 13th.
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, New York 11238 - 6052
(718) 638-5000




"That I may transcend, that a universe my heart may unfold" Murakami, 2007
Each time I visit any art exhibition I go with the intention of gaining insight and design possibilities. Murakami's exhibit was especially inspirational because he coined his own style and gained international acclaim for it. What I like most about his works is the way he homogenize the colors - the colors are clearly different, but they are uniform.
Murakami is one of the most influential and acclaimed artists to have emerged from Asia in the late twentieth century, creating a wide-ranging body of work that consciously bridges fine art, design, animation, fashion, and popular culture.
The exhibition © MURAKAMI explores the self-reflexive nature of Murakami’s oeuvre by focusing on earlier work produced between 1992 and 2000 in which the artist attempts to explore his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity, as well as through self-portraiture created since 2000. Two works examining these subjects were a part of a group show, My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation, presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 2001.

Jean Michel-Basquiat

Jean Michel-Basquiat gained popularity first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray painting graffiti on slum buildings in lower Manhattan, adding his signature/tag of "SAMO" or "SAMO shit"(same ol' shit). Basquiat first started to gain recognition as an artist in June 1980, when he participated in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition. In 1982, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated extensively, eventually forging a close, if strained, friendship. By 1984, many of Basquiat's friends were concerned about his excessive drug use and increasingly erratic behavior, including signs of paranoia. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit by this point, starting from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New York's underground. Basquiat died of mixed-drug toxicity (he had been combining cocaine and heroin in his Great Jones Street loft/studio in 1988.
Basquiat's art career is known for his three broad, though overlapping styles. In the earliest period, from 1980 to late 1982, Basquiat used painterly gestures on canvas, often depicting skeletal figures and mask-like faces that expressed his obsession with mortality. Other frequently depicted imagery such as automobiles, buildings, police, children's sidewalk games, and graffiti came from his experience painting on the city streets. In 1982, Basquiat became friends with pop artist Andy Warhol and the two made a number of collaborative works. They also painted together, influencing each others' work. Some speculated that Andy Warhol was merely using Basquiat for some of his techniques and insight.

Visual Tranquility - Concep

So I'm browsing the net, and I came across an artist and his work I found interesting. I haven't drew any pics since the 6th grade and works like this truly inspire me to get back into the habit. With that said, I took a step forward and sketched a few comics from the New York Times just to get back the feel of putting the pencil to paper. And, I even dropped my Sociology class for a Studio Art class next semester right after I found some of his works and read his story. INSPIRATION!!!
So, Who is Concep? A kid from New Orleans, Concep is a artist, dancer and a poet. Concep attended Ringling , an art school in Florida, as an Illustration major, then he moved to Brooklyn, NY attending Pratt Institute. Some artist movements that inspired Concep was Jean Michel Basquiat (I enjoy this guys work too!!!), Donde, Rene Margritte, Salvador Dali, Norman Rockwell, Michelangelo, and Bob Ross - he's been inspired across the board from the Renaissance to the graffiti movement in the early eighties.
Hopefully one day I can make a mark in the craft and create works as original as his.
(a2+b2=c2) you will almost always find on his work - representing, the past, present, and future.

Little Andy

Andy Warhol

From my trip to the MoMA I purchased an Andy Warhol replica from the MoMA Design Store. I call it Lil' Andy because it's not an original, but who cares. He isn't my favorite Pop Artist, but he is one of the most recognized. I bought this little artwork because it's similar to Roy Lichtenstein in a way with the use of benday dots. You wont be able to see the dots because the effect makes it appear as a solid color. And, I also like the quote on the picture.

MoMA

Today I made a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, for inspirational purposes. Honestly the MoMA is one of the most comprehensive museums artistically. When first began my tour up to the final galleries I was overwhelmed with awe. Not trying to sound phony or anything, but that's how real this museum is. Of course there were pieces that didn't interest me, but there is always an appreciation for it. Sometimes we see artworks, and we say, "I could do that!" But the truth is you didn't. I guess that's why you have to appreciate it because these guys take risks that we overlook or are afraid to. I read in a magazine Creativity is all about risks, so I guess my advice to you, is take risks.
And!!! Take a trip to the MoMA, you wont regret it. When you first walk up the flight of stairs you are surprised with a piece of creative genius, I wont say.
Sorry for the low quality images. I hate myself for this - I carried my camera, BUT I forgot the memory card and the batteries, so I was forced to take a few pics with my phone. I did the best I could in fotoshop to restore it.
MoMA

Conflict

Conflict, by Chad Harris

For print (program used, Photoshop).

Inspired by the movie, Conflict Diamond and Lupe Fiasco's Conflict Diamonds.

Download Lupe Fiasco's - Conflict Diamonds here

Visual Tranquility -PESU

PESU is a Japanese artist and some of his paintings have
been featured in the "Daydreamin' " video.

2001 PESU crossed the ocean from Tokyo to California, to seek more in himself and his love of Hip-Hop. It was not an easy transition and Pesu struggled with cultural differences, but not only did he overcome them but he grew a true appreciation that opened his third eye. In Northern California he participated in various Hip-Hop shows/galleries as a live illustrator. He went onto do his own gallery show in Sacramento, California in 2004. Then, the following year, he relocated to New York City to seize all the possibilities that lay before him. -

Now residing in New York City, Pesu engages in live paintings regularly and also participates in live improvised art competitions. He is a crowd favorite and has taken home first place twice in a row. He has also designed artwork for the official Mix DMC ’96 East Coast Champion, Mista Sinista, in 2005. The following year, he had his first one man gallery show in New York City and continued to have more shows after that. In the same year, his art appeared in one of the hottest music videos, “Day Dreaming” by Lupe Fiasco featuring Jill Scott. As well, he was elected as an artist for Evisu for the 2007 Sun Dance Festival and elected for MTV Art Battles. In the year, he paint live over 150 times and sold more than 100 pieces. He was covered in Trace Magazine as live painter in following year. He is now one of the most up-and-coming street artists in New York City.

Visit his Blog here