Monday 31 January 2011

Bowerbird

Bowerbird
If I had to choose a favorite bird based on its behavior this amazing bird would be it.

Saturday 29 January 2011

ARTISTS AT WAR, part two



The illustrator Harry Everett Townsend (1879-1941) was born on a small farm in Illinois. As a young boy he showed early talent, painting signs for local farmers on the delivery route for his father's peddling wagon.

But farm life was too confining for Townsend. As a teenager, he struck out on his bicycle for the big city and when he got to Chicago, enrolled in the Art Institute where he studied under
Lorado Taft. But Townsend remained restless and after two years he moved on to Wilmington Delaware where he trained under the famed Howard Pyle. From there he made his way to Europe to study briefly at the Academie Moderne in Paris.

When he turned 25, Townsend married and seemed to settle down as an illustrator working in New York for magazines such as
Scribner's, Harper's and Century.


Century Magazine

But Townsend remained hungry to see the larger world, and when World War I flared up, Townsend volunteered to cover it. He wrote, "I had gotten drunk, as it were, with the future pictorial possibilities in what I saw, and what my imagination saw, in the warfare that was so soon to come."

Townsend was one of eight artists chosen by the U.S. government to be official "war artists" accompanying the Armed Expeditionary Forces. (Other AEF artists included two other Pyle students,
Harvey Dunn and W.J. Aylward). Townsend's war diary records his excitement about his upcoming adventure:
I left New York in a blinding snow, into the submarine zone with its constant alarms, and through it. My trip through London... with an air raid thrown in.... and the nervous excitement of finding myself suddenly in the war zone, for, while one realized at all times the dangers on the sea, one really felt he had arrived when he found himself in the midst of the bursting of enemy bombs and the sight of enemy planes....
It didn't take long for Townsend to witness the effect of those "bursting enemy bombs:"
Everywhere among the blownup trenches and in the shellholes are pieces of what were once men. Here and there, a whole or a piece of bone; here and there a shoe with a foot still in it.
In addition, the incessant rain and cold spoiled many of his artistic ambitions. Yet, Townsend drew a series of powerful pictures such as this poster:


"Refugees fleeing a storm tossed area, with all the sorrow and misery and pathos that went with it...."

As brutal as his experience was, Townsend believed there was no substitute for an artist witnessing his subject personally:
In hindsight, Tragic and moving... But I knew that not to have seen it during the conflict was not to have seen it as it really was, even for pictorial reference... And I am thankful I was there and I am conscious of the opportunity I had to see and gather material and, better than the actual material, the impressions, spiritual and material, that alone can furnish the inspiration for a convincing pictorial record of what the great struggle was like.
Townsend's wartime experience seemed to have an impact on his style, replacing his light and airy drawings for Century Magazine with a bolder, darker outlook.



Don Pittenger has suggested that great war art is usually not created in the heat of battle, but only afterward, a safe distance from the fighting. Townsend seems to have agreed with this. He wrote after the war, "now I felt ready to achieve something of my ambitions, counting as of little, even ephemeral value , the things we had been able to do during the time we were so nervously, yet energetically, storing up for the future.... Perhaps the greatest pictures of the war can only come with time."

Unfortunately, the U.S. government had neither the time nor the budget nor the interest to commission "the greatest pictures of the war." One suspects that the government was never interested in "great pictures" so much as it was interested in effective pictures for the war effort. In either event, the eight war artists were quickly disbanded and sent home to their civilian lives.

In truth, Townsend seemed to have little interest in pursuing those "greatest pictures" either. He wanted nothing more than to return to normalcy. He settled down in the small town of Norwalk, Connecticut where he bought an old barn to use as a studio, painting domestic scenes and teaching art. And he never moved again.

Desert Specimens

DesertSpecimens
I'm working on a small collection of flora & fauna you might find in the desert
for a new Tiny Book I want to make.
I made this digital collage with my watercolor images and vintage maps.

Thursday 27 January 2011

Simple

Stones
At the blue house. Playing around with Photoshop and my birds.
Sketched bird
My friend Oliver found the coolest online sketch tool. Go have some fun at this link.

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Facebook giveaway

Tiny Book giveaway
Come and play with me at my Facebook page!
To participate in the giveaway you must "Like" my Facebook page first
and then leave a comment at this Facebook link.

***Make sure you leave a comment at my Facebook photo to participate in the giveaway. I cannot include the comments you leave here (my blog) at the giveaway over there (Facebook page) :p Thanks!

****The winner is Lori Miller!! Congratulations!!!*****

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Birdroom

Our birdroom, I mean bedroom ;)
Our birdroom, I mean bedroom ;)
Specimen 652 Large Format print by the talented D. S. Brennan.

The Last Resort


Wandsworth, London

This is the first image from my new solo show, Concrete Ocean. The show opens 2nd March 2011 at Andipa Gallery in London and will feature a mixture of new images and installations. I am really excited about this show - it has been fun to work on! You can find out a bit more about the show on the Andipa website. I will be posting more images and information over the next few weeks, so check back often.

A major update to my site slinkachu.com should be live very soon too - details to follow soon. In the meantime you can follow me on Twitter - I finally relented and signed up (although anyone hoping I will be as prolific as Stephen Fry will be disappointed!) and Facebook.

Follow slinkachu on Twitter

Like slinkachu on Facebook

----------------------------------------------------

I am featured in this quarter's edition of The Street Art Journal, including a pull-out poster of an image from my Big Bad City book. If you can't find a free copy at your local art gallery/ coffee shop / arty-farty hipster hang-out you can subscribe for free here and get it mailed in the post. The zine is put out by Elisa and Seth from Carmichael Gallery and is a brilliant read - really well made, loads of content - and did I mention completely free?






Monday 24 January 2011

I'm Moving!

Jan 2011 inspiration board
I'm moving!
New Space
As you all know I'm hosting an ACE Camp's workshop early next month at my studio. Sixteen lovely women are flying down to Mexico to play with me at La Casa Azul!
The space I share with my boys right now is not big enough to host a workshop
so I'll be trading spaces with my Manolo. His studio space downstairs is still empty so I'm going to set up shop there this week until after the retreat...unless I convince Manolo to make the swap permanent. He's not budging, but I'm working on it ;)

Sunday 23 January 2011

NEW BOOK ON ROBERT FAWCETT



At long last, a book devoted to the life and art of the great illustrator Robert Fawcett has been released by the art publisher, Auad Publishing.

It is a hard cover 9x12" book with a dust jacket, 182 deluxe pages, and a special foldout for Fawcett's well known Civil War panorama. The book was a labor of love for the publisher, who selected and edited the numerous color and black and white images used in the book. Those who know Mr. Auad know he spent years tracking down hard-to-find tearsheets and originals of Fawcett's art in order to make this the definitive collection of the famed draftsman's work.

The book has an introduction by Walt Reed and the text is by yours truly. For a look at sample pages, or to order the book, go to the Auad Publishing web site.

Saturday 22 January 2011

The Bird on the Moon

Bird on the Moon
Some people see a man, others a bunny. I just see a bird ;)
Taken a few minutes ago...it's stunning tonight.

Dragonfly

The Coffins of Little Hope
Dragonfly
Last year I illustrated this bejeweled dragonfly for the cover
of a novel called "The Coffins of Little Hope" by Timothy Schaffert.
The cover was beautifully designed by Kathleen Lynch.
It will be released this spring.

Friday 21 January 2011

Tiny Booklets

Making Little Booklets
Tiny Booklets
Recycled some of my discarded prints to make some tiny booklets
to go with the tiny books.
I realized how much I enjoy making tiny things :)
And speaking of enjoying...my friend Yvonne Eijkenduijn
over at The Yvestown Blog
made a beautiful blog book that you can preview here.

Thursday 20 January 2011

The Blues

Blues
Blues
Blues
Blues
Blues
For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere feelin' the winter blues...
here are some warm sunshiny blues for you :)
This is a house that my very talented husband Manolo designed and built
for a client a few years ago on the Mexican coast.
Makes me dream of being by the sea side today...

*Photos by Héctor Velasco Facio

Wednesday 19 January 2011

THE TASTE OF METALLIC KISSES

What topic has been more intriguing for artists than the sympathy of mortal flesh for mortal flesh?

From the beginning it has been Topic A: "Always Interesting."


Prehistoric kiss, 3500BCE


Nefertiti's kiss, 1350 BCE


John Gannam, Good Housekeeping 1954

While the ballet between living organisms continues to fascinate, the more recent relationship between organisms and machines has emerged to command the attention of artists, sometimes in profound ways.

After the industrial revolution, artists began to look at engines, gears and wires (which were born with a function but no inherent design) and integrate them into nature's laws of design as if they were some new species of flower. For example, the first locomotives were raucous, clanking intruders that frightened horses and scarred the landscape but artists such as Turner and Monet began to place them in an aesthetic framework.

And consider how artists projected notions of beauty onto flying machines:

Illustrator Henry Reuterdahl imagined airships of the future for one of the earliest science fiction stories. In the following picture, a beam of light zaps an airship over the ocean at night. Reuterdahl did not strive for technical accuracy but instead depicted the machine using the same naturalistic approach he used for the sea gull.


"She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her."

N.C. Wyeth, too, used his powerful imagination to conjure up this lyrical vision of early aircraft:


Colliers

As machines have expanded into more important and intricate roles, their relationships with human beings have become more open ended. Artists' observations have graduated beyond the external designs of machines, sometimes assigning them character and personality.

Compare French illustrator G. Dutriac's early depiction of technology from the sky, a pyramid of light triumphing over the primitive and savage Berbers fighting on horseback in North Africa...


1911

...with Picasso's pyramid of light from a later airplane (depicted as an electric light bulb placed in the fearsome eye of a wrathful machine-deity in the sky). The two beams share a similar shape, but you can tell the moral character of the machine has changed dramatically.


Guernica

Just as God is supposed to have breathed life into Adam, thereby transforming inert dust into a living being, artists imbue lifeless machines with character, meaning and even moral content. Artists "design" the character of the machine, and then take as their subject the relationship between the character of a human and the character of the machine.

For you skeptics out there saying, "yeah, but machines will never make it past first base in their relationships with humans," I refer you to the work of Ashley Wood, who has built a career on the aesthetics of juxtaposing the tender places of nubile women against giant war robots:



Or painter Phil Hale, who vividly pits human muscle and sinew against machinery in an endless, iconic struggle.



Living organisms now have no choice but to share the stage with machines. It remains to be seen whether their relationship offers artists opportunities for Shakespearean level profundity, or whether this new relationship is just the thrill of encountering something different that by the way vibrates.

Perhaps our relationships with machines only appear more profound as relationships between humans become more superficial. When mortal flesh is downgraded to the status of mere meat, interactions with machines can begin to seem pretty interesting by comparison.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

The giveaway winner is...

Postcard winner
The lucky recipient of the "Today I Saw" postcard is: pklaw from Michigan!
Congratulations! Thank you for playing with me!

Monday 17 January 2011

Pocket Planners just arrived!

Pocket Planner
They just arrived! Signed copies available right now at my shop!
Worldwide shipping available :) Get 'em while they're hot!

***Update: They're all gone! I will have a few more available next week.
Thank you so much for your support of my work!

Today I Saw

Today I Saw
The lovely Jill over at Today I Saw invited me to play and asked me a few fun questions.
I'm doing a flash giveaway at my blog today!
After reading the questions over at Jill's blog please come back here and leave a comment with the name of one of the birds I mention in the interview.
The winner will receive my Today I Saw postcard in the mail!
I will choose a random name tomorrow morning
and will announce the winner at noon! Have fun!
*I stopped biting my nails last year! I started biting them when I was two years old so it was a pretty tough habit to break. So, yes! that is my very own nail in the photo ;)
Tiny Book of Birds
A few teensy weensy books are available at my shop.
Going Places print
And there's a new print at my Etsy shop!

***Comments are now closed. I will announce the winner of the giveaway later today.
Thank you for playing with me :)

Saturday 15 January 2011

Glow

Glow Jars
My friend Margie gave me another great idea for displaying art on jars...
I printed my illustrations on tracing paper with my ink jet printer
and wrapped some jars with votives inside them. Instant lanterns!
You could also draw directly onto the vellum with markers.
I'm going to have to tell Daniel to try that! He does wonders with his markers...

Friday 14 January 2011

Shop Update

Books in the making
Remember the batch of Tiny Book of Birds I made a few years ago?
Manolo is helping me put together a few tiny books
that will be available at my Big Cartel shop on Monday!
Tiny Book of Birds in the making...
My Etsy shop will re-open tomorrow.
I'm waiting for the Pocket Planners to arrive here
so I can list them at my shop...I'll let you know when they're available :)