Daily Art Fixx

Zac Shavrick: Sculpture

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:00:25 +0000

“Zac Shavrick was born in 1987 and raised primarily by his father, Barry. Fascinated by his father’s work, Zac would join him in his metal shop where they welded together. By age five, Zac was welding on his own, by seven, he was fabricating entire sculptures. As he developed, his work was influenced by his world of games, fantasy novels and movies, including Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

Other inspirations for Zac were Pop-Art era survivor, Kenny Scharf and renegade sculptor J.J. Veronis, who’s sculptures graced street signs all over the NYC area. Eventually, J.J. became a mentor for Zac.

When Zac was eight, he was asked to decorate the artist tents at Woodstock’s 29th anniversary celebration. There he met many musicians including the Goo Goo Dolls who bought some of his sculptures. As he continued to decorate music venues, he even sold work to such music icons as Ozzy Osbourne.

Zac later attended Purchase College to fine tune his craft and concentrate on his art. During these years, he frequently showed his artwork locally and in NYC.

Before his senior year, Zac was commissioned to make a sculpture for Brakewell Steel, a large-scale metal fabrication company. Inspired by his frequent childhood trips there to collect scraps, he made a sixteen-foot-tall sculpture with twelve figures emerging from a dumpster titled: The Dumpster Divers.

Zac’s passion for his craft continues to take on new shapes evident in such creations as his six, figure procession of Darwinian evolution, or a demon riding a tricycle.” (Bio from artist website)

To see more of Shavrick’s work, visit ZacMax.com.

Elaine Fried de Kooning: 1918-1989

Wendy Campbell — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:00:25 +0000

Born on March 12, 1918 (or 1920) in Brooklyn, New York, Elaine Marie Catherine Fried de Kooning was a painter, sculptor, draughtswoman, printmaker, writer, and wife of influential artist Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning studied in New York at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, the American Art School, the Academy School, and with Willem de Kooning. She was interested in both figurative and abstract art, acknowledging the influence of her husband and of the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School.

Elaine met Willem de Kooning in 1938 and the couple married in 1943. They had a turbulent marriage, separating in 1956 and reconciling in 1975. Though they benefited from one another’s art and teaching, they also suffered from each other’s infidelities and struggles with alcoholism.

During the 1940s, de Kooning painted portraits of her family, her husband, and many of her literary friends and fellow artists, including the poets Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg and the choreographer Merce Cunningham.

De Kooning had her first solo exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1952 and exhibited almost annually thereafter throughout the United States, including shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1964.

In 1962, de Kooning was commissioned by the White House to paint the portrait of President John F. Kennedy. The portrait is one of de Kooning’s most well known and celebrated paintings. Following his assassination in 1963, de Kooning stopped painting for a year and took a teaching appointment at the University of California, Davis.

In the 1970s, de Kooning taught at numerous colleges including Yale University, Pratt Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Rice University, and others.

While de Kooning, like the “action” painters of the time, used gestural brushstrokes, most her work was figurative and representational, and rarely pure abstraction. An avid traveler, “she was exposed to and inspired by a wide variety of art work that helped make her one of the more diverse artists from the Abstract Expressionist movement; she experimented with sculpture, etchings and subject matter inspired by cave drawings, all in addition to her wealth of painting, which included everything from watercolors and still lifes to abstractions and formal portraits.”

De Kooning’s works are in the collections of numerous major American museums, including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Elaine de Kooning died of lung cancer on February 1, 1989. Willem de Kooning, suffering from dementia at the time, was never told of his wife’s death.

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Sources: Crown Point Press, The Art Story

Bernardo Medina: Photography

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:00:02 +0000

Photographer and Architect Bernardo Medina was born in El Salvador, Central America but has lived in Houston, Texas most of his life. A source of inspiration for his architectural projects, photography allows Medina to “play with the perception of the outside world…it’s structures, forms, colours, illusions, and clichés.”

Medina uses mostly digital photographic equipment from professional SLR’s to simple “point and shoot” digital pocket cameras. His work has been featured in books, magazines and publications around the world. In 2009, Medina won the Grand Prize in National Geographic’s “Ultimate Photo Contest”.

To see more of Medina’s work, visit 4EyesPhoto.com or his profile on Deviant Art.

Sources: ND Magazine

Jesse Hazelip: Mixed Media

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:00:37 +0000

American mixed media artist Jesse Hazelip was born in 1977 and raised in the mountain desert town of Cortez, Colorado, amidst the Navajo and Ute Nation territory. He moved to Santa Barbara, California at the age of 14 where he became involved in the world of graffiti. Hazelip has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Art Center College of Design in California and currently lives in Oakland, CA.

Hazelip recently finished up his exhibition, “Sentimental Journey”, at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. This series features the human exploration of death and the lessons ignored throughout North American history.

“World War II greatly influenced this series, where buffalo are named after actual 1950s Bomber airplanes and beautiful Herons are rendered half machine gun, half bird. Jesse uses these animals to open a dialogue about the repeating mistakes of American history. Just as our carelessness have forced bison, an American icon, to the brink of extinction; so has war almost destroyed our country. The Heron is also fused with WWII artillery, although its message differs. This greedy bird is solitary from the flock just as Americans are closed off to their own neighbors. By using recognizable images, Hazelip hopes to reach a larger audience by making his work approachable yet thought provoking.”

Hazelip’s work has been exhibited in galleries throughout California. He also makes a living as a commercial illustrator working with clients such as Converse, Mishka NYC, and National Forest Design.

To see more of Jesse’s work, visit Jessehazelip.com or his blog JesseHazelip.blogspot.com

Sources: Submerge, Fecal Face, White Walls

Mandy Tsung: Painting/Drawing

Wendy Campbell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:00:55 +0000

Canadian artist Mandy Tsung was born in Banff, Alberta in 1984 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2006.

For Tsung, “People are fascinating and beautiful; the human face in it’s complexity of nuances will take a lifetime to fully capture. It is always the look in a person’s eyes that inspires me to pick up my pencil. I want to distill that moment and, more importantly, express how powerful it is for me.”

Mandy’s work has been exhibited in galleries in Calgary and Vancouver, Canada and has been featured in collections in LA, New York, Hong Kong, and Canada.

To see more of Tsung’s work, visit MandyTsung.com.

Benjamin Lacombe: Illustration

Wendy Campbell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:00:44 +0000

Benjamin Lacombe was born in Paris in 1982 and attended the Superior National School of the Decorative arts of Paris (ENSAD). During his studies, Lacombe worked in advertising and animation and at the age of 19, created his first comic book.

“Cherry and Olive”, Lacombe’s first children’s book was published in March 2006 and was named by Times Magazine as one of 10 best children’s books of 2007. Since that time, he has written and illustrated numerous other children’s books and his work has been exhibited around the world including Paris, New York, Rome, and Tokyo.

To see more of Lacombe’s work, visit BenjaminLacombe.com.

Related Books: Benjamin Lacombe on Amazon

Timur Tsaku: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:00:51 +0000

Timur Tsaku was born in 1971 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Tsaku graduated from the Tashkent Art School in 1987, and attended the P. P. Benkov Art Institute, where he studied Scenic design. In 1991 he became an assistant to the head scenic designer of the Gorki Republican Arts Theater of Drama in Tashkent. Later that year, he moved to Israel where he created a series of paintings called “The Republic of Israel”, which were shown at the Ashdod Museum. In 1991, Tsaku returned to his homeland and became an Instructor of painting and drawing at the Tashkent Academy of Art and Theater. In 2001 he returned to Israel to start a new line of works taking its motif in the Old Testament. Tsaku’s paintings were acquired for the permanent collections of the Israel Museum and the President’s Residence, both in Jerusalem.

Tsaku’s paintings begin with abstracted backgrounds in acrylic. “When the surfaces of the panels are almost completed” Tsaku says, “these moody, abstracted landscapes reveal the figures that will encompass the majority of the image.” The artist uses a “triple zero” paint brush and magnifying glass to achieve a hyper-realistic, almost photographic representation of the people and animals depicted in his unique imagery. (bio from artist website)

To see more of Tsaku’s work, visit Tsaku.com

Michelangelo: 1475-1564

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:19:21 +0000

Born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was a Renaissance sculptor, painter, draftsman, architect, and poet. Michelangelo was thought of as the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and is considered to be one of the greatest artists of all time.

In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo apprenticed with Domenico Ghirlandaio, Florence’s best fresco painter. Following that, he studied with sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni in the Medici gardens in Florence. During this time, he was surrounded by prominent people including Lorenzo de’ Medici (known as “Lorenzo the Magnificent”), who introduced him to poets, artists, and scholars in his inner circle.

Early on, Michelangelo strived for artistic perfection in his depictions of the human body. He studied anatomy with great interest and at one point even gained permission from the prior of the church of Santo Spirito to study cadavers in the church’s hospital. It was at this time that Michelangelo began a life-long practice of preparatory drawing and sketching for his works of art and architecture.

After Medici’s death in 1492, Michelangelo left Florence, traveled to Bologna and eventually to Rome, where he continued to sculpt and study classical works. In 1498-99, the French Ambassador in the Holy See commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt the “Pietà” for Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

In 1501, Michelangelo returned to Florence where he began work on his famous marble statue “David”. This work established Michelangelo’s prominence as a sculptor of incredible technical skill and innovation.

In 1503, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to create his papal tomb which features the famous statue of Moses. The artist worked on the tomb for 40 years, stopping often to work on other commissions including the painting of more than 300 figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from 1508-12.

From 1534 to 1541, Michelangelo produced an enormous fresco “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel. “A depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse, the work was controversial even before its unveiling because of the depictions of nude saints in the papal chapel, which were considered obscene and sacrilegious.”

From about 1516, Michelangelo began to focus his attention more on architecture. In 1534, he designed plans for the Medici Tombs and the Laurentian Library attached to the church of San Lorenzo. In 1536, he designed the Piazza del Campidoglio, and in 1546 he was appointed architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica and designed its dome. From 1561-65, Michelangelo’s final plans were for the Porta Pia, a gate in the Aurelian Walls of Rome.

More than any other artist, “Michelangelo elevated the status of the artist above the level of craftsman. His deeply felt religious convictions were manifested in his art. For him, the body was the soul’s prison. By using movement, monumental forms, and gesture to express spiritual urges, he opened up new artistic vistas in the direction of Mannerism and the Baroque.”

Michelangelo was known to be a complicated man. “Arrogant with others and constantly dissatisfied with himself, he nonetheless authored tender poetry. In spite of his legendary impatience and indifference to food and drink, he committed himself to tasks that required years of sustained attention, creating some of the most beautiful human figures ever imagined.”

“He constantly cried poverty, even declaring to his apprentice Ascanio Condivi: ‘However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man’, yet he amassed a considerable fortune that kept his family comfortable for centuries. And though he enjoyed the reputation of being a solitary genius and continually withdrew himself from the company of others, he also directed dozens of assistants, quarrymen, and stonemasons to carry out his work.”

Michelangelo’s final work in marble, the “Rondanini Pietà,” was left unfinished. He died in Rome on February 18, 1564 at the age of 88.

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Sources: The Getty Museum, Wikipedia, Michelangelo.syr.edu

Takahiro Kimura: Collage

Wendy Campbell — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:00:47 +0000

Born in 1965 in Fukuoka, Japan, Takahiro Kimura is an illustrator, painter, animator, and character designer working and living in Tokyo.

To see more of Takahiro Kimura’s work, visit Faceful.org or his profile on Behance. Also, check out IndiesArt.com for a big selection of Kimura’s “Broken Face” collages.

Liao Zhenwu: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:00:07 +0000

Born in Sichuan Province, China, Liao Zhenwu currently lives and works in Beijing. Zhenwu studied art at the Sichuan Education Institute and oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

For more information, visit SOEMO Fine Arts.