So what do you do after logging so many hours in the art studio for four years? There’s definitely a struggle to continue to create even when the desire is there. I think what we all needed was an assignment. Thank you to everyone who contributed. Hopefully this is only the beginning.
One of my coloring book pages.
BJ’s page.
More pictures of the zine can be seen. There are four two extras available here. Get em while they’re hot!
We started a Post-It gallery in the classroom, anticipating Where The Wild Things Are.
1. coffee & grading 2. books books books 3. almost ready! 4. fall festival fudge 5. ben visits (Happy Belated Birthday!)
We are fans of Department of Eagles (featuring Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen). We are also both fans of Marcel Dzama, who, with Patrick Daughters (the brain behind the Two Weeks video) directed the video for Department of Eagles’s song “No One Does It Like You.”
The new work, which premiered recently at the Museum of Modern Art, is animated by Dzama’s alternately sweet and dark preoccupations. A clash between Eastern Front snowman infantry and ninja ballerina terrorists, bearing AK-47s and baring thighs, forms the centerpiece of the video. All the visuals are familiar: the uniforms, the flags, the skirts and stockings, the rifles, the leafless clawlike trees, the bedsheet ghosts, amputations and arterial sprays. Steeped in a palette of blood red and cloudy root-beer neutrals, the frame full of eerie blurs and grainy textures, the whole thing feels pitched halfway between reverie and nightmare. A skewed meditation on death. An apocalyptic fairy-tale that, in weaving a childish innocence with tokens of the past and images of violence, stands up as quintessential Dzama.
Meet the soft-spoken artist. Below, you can catch some behind-the-scenes glances at the choreography and costumes. Blue-screen tricks and handmade props abound.
Deacon Bruno (1983-2009) ate in great bites, drank in great gulps, breathed in great breaths. As though he knew that time were a luxury and life demanded grand gestures and swift movements. It made him a bon vivant and a man of action. Relentlessly alive. A centrifugal force. His spirit was electric and colossal and charmed multitudes. He saw a larger wilder brighter version of you that, in the mirror, you may never have seen. And he could bring it out. He felt the pressure to create and that pressure was contagious, made you want to be a part of the same borderless world of color and sound and feeling that he commanded without effort. Gentleman of the gutter, demonic under the mirror ball and saintly everywhere else. Today, what would have been his 26th birthday, we honor that ecstatic will to create and to be: his unwillingness to separate the two. We honor his volcanic inner life.
Love, Chau and B.J.
We saw Bright Star this weekend. Beautiful. Sexy. Moving. Worth it. Last photo is from my favorite scene.
Testing out the school’s camera with snapshots of the weekend. 1.Caught! 2. ring shot 3. room 4. Houston’s endless highways
Friday afternoon I drove down to Rice to attend a board dinner with BJ at Trevisio. Â Before that, I celebrated the end of the work week with some candy.
Spinach and cheese ravioli. We just heated pre-made ones up and added sauce. Not quite in full cooking mode yet, but trying to get warmed up.
“I can’t believe it’s been a year since I’ve had a beignet!!!” ~ BJ at Crescent City Beignets
Things are starting to settle down at school. Faces become familar, routines established, relationships forged. It’s a huge sigh of relief.
I haven’t had much time to spend on my art, but it’s nice when I can incorporate my personal projects into class demonstrations. For now all I have are doodles and “figuring it out” work.
My doodles. I had my kids create ink grounds using a straw and then asked them to created drawings from the marks.
Drawing on fabric & hand sewn bows w/ recycled cloth.
Melissa (Hi, MOJO!) sent me a cool link. Wanna participate? I think I’ll give it a shot.
I love learning about illustrators like Maija Louekari. I first was drawn to this album cover in the Musikraphics book, and when I checked out Maija’s website I was happily surprised to recognize her other work for Marimekko. Some of my favorite images I posted a long time ago were her designs. Like these two:
And I bought a set of towels a year ago with this print, but I never knew who designed it until now.
For my class, I’m thinking of showing her work as a visual reference for a hand drawing + design exercise. She actually makes it look fun!
