Gen Con: Hobbies and Crafts

I've been meaning to write this post for two weeks now. Of course it would help if I ever had a night at home before 9 o'clock. I'm in the middle of a busy stretch. But now I have a couple minutes. And I'm going to get this out so I can move on to other things. After all, it's been almost a month since Gen Con.

Every time we go to Gen Con, I come back inspired from all the creativity and energy I see around me. Artist's Alley is filled with incredibly talented artists and I always seem to pick up a print or two. I have more art than I have walls now. I am always in awe of how creative people are. I'll post later about the paper sculpture I purchased which hangs in my car. It's my favorite thing from the whole con.

But this year I was drawn to some of the great sewing pieces I saw and the incredibly detailed miniatures that were on display. I took more pictures of the miniatures than I should have. But I was just struck each time by how amazing they were. Miniature painting is something that I've been thinking of getting into. I picked up a starter kit last year, only to find that all the paint was too dry to work with. I would like to start painting, although looking at the ones on display is both inspiring, and a bit daunting.

Seriously, look at that detail

I loved the personality on this piece. Love this little guy. 

And of course, the dragon. Fantastic!

The sewing I took pictures of was also a bit of wishful thinking. I'm still terrified of the sewing machine. I know it will try to eat my fingers. Jess tells me that there's nothing to it, but I think she's lying. Still clearly there are plenty of talented people out there.

I think this was all hand-stitched, so there is hope. But isn't it incredible? Love me some Cthulhu.

I stopped this woman as she was eating lunch. I felt bad but I loved the skirt so much. The back was also covered with emblems. Such a simple design but such fun. I had to stop her and compliment her on the skirt. She was very gracious about it.

What I love about Gen Con is that it's not just one type of art. There are the professional artists certainly. And the creative cosplayers which continue to stun me. And the hobby enthusiasts who make and create. But there's also the creative art that just appears at the show.

The robots above were built out of Legos for a giant game of RoboRally. Some very familiar faces to make the game even more interesting.

And this octopus was created on site, out of cards, by someone who just happened to like building card structures. By the end of the weekend he was destroyed for charity. Temporary art. No wonder I come home inspired.

A Profusion of Art

While we spent plenty of time at the beach in Clearwater, art museums were probably our largest activity. Over the course of seven days, we managed to hit five art museums. Did I mention it was rainy and cooler most of the trip? But the real reason is that my family loves art museums. Well, museums of any kind. Growing up we would hit most of the major museums in a city. Tampa and St. Pete were no different.

One of the main reasons I got invited on this trip is because my mother noticed that St. Petersburg is the home of The Dali Museum, a beautiful modern museum featuring almost 100 of the master surrealist's works. I've been a Dali fan since I was a child. At one point I saw his Cannibalism in Autumn and was instantly hooked. Over my life I've had nearly a dozen books of his work. So we spent our first full day at The Dali. Sadly I couldn't take any pictures of the actual art. But I did get the picture from outside (above) and the joy of standing in front of his work. It was amazing to see the individual brush strokes for some of pieces. I could recite titles (and Dali has some wild ones) for most of the paintings. There were only a few images that I hadn't seen. There is something breathtaking about standing in the presence of such masterpieces as The Hallucinogenic Toreador or Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko). These are huge wall sized works and each brush stroke is so incredibly precise. Even his small works are filled with little details that made me take my time with each painting. It was well worth the visit for this fan. And my sister said she was an avid fan by the end of the museum.

The exhibition across the hall for Andy Warhol interested us far less and we only gave the pop culture icon a cursory glance. Then we headed a couple blocks away to the Chihuly Collection. Dale Chihuly is the master of glass. Every time I've gotten to see his work I've fallen more in love with his colors and shapes. We moved from room to room, just gasping at the large installations. The museum offered a lovely setting for his work. My favorite has to be the one below. The boat was the size of a room and filled to the brim with glass. Thankfully I could take pictures in there. And I took many. I'll have them spread out throughout the post, because this was really one of only two museums that allowed pictures.

Emilie left us very early on Thursday morning and took all of the best weather with her. So we headed indoors to the Tampa Aquarium (that will be its own post) and the Tampa Museum of Art. The museum is in an incredibly modern building that was a work of art in itself. The antiquities were what drew us the most. It's hard to not be awed by pottery and sculpture from before the common era. A marble bust caught my eye quickly and I was shocked to see how good it looked considering it was 1st century c.e. The rest of the museum is currently featuring an exhibition from GraphicStudio, a print studio that operates out of University of Southern Florida. Some of the prints were fascinating. It was certainly more my style of art than my parents. I found and fell in love with the work of Christian Marclay. I loved his mixture of prints and sound effects, particularly a room long scroll of sounds. I'll be looking at more of his work. My favorite piece of the day was the statue in the second story balcony, In Mortal Repose by Diana Al-Hadid.

The next day we finally made it back to St. Petersburg for the recommended Museum of Fine Art. This lovely old museum was filled with antiquities, modern art, impressionists, and some fantastic sculpture. They had three Monet's that quickly caught my attention. I've become fascinated with the Impressionists lately and Monet in particular. I was also reading a book about his Seine series and was delighted to find one in the museum. The Asian collection was wonderful although my favorite may not have been the most exotic. There was a collection of materials a scholar would have. I spent at least 20 minutes looking from object to object, just enraptured. Leave it to me to find the book/learning related art. It was probably the most diverse, and most interesting collection we saw the entire week.

The last museum we saw was the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. And yes, that Ringling. John Ringling founded the Ringling Brothers Circus and went on to great fame and fortune in the circus business. He turned that profit into a very lovely house and rather extensive art collection. We drove down to Sarasota the last day of the trip to view the Circus Museum and the art museum. I have to admit that by the time I got here I was a little tired of art museums. So I didn't give this museum quite as much attention as it deserves. I wrote down three different artists I liked but mostly I just moved from room to room, seeing what caught my eye. My absolute favorite was the piece below from an artist I'd never heard of. I'll be checking out more of his work. It was a lot of art over a couple of days but looking back, I was glad we saw so many different types of art and find something to inspire at each one.

Roman Courtship by Sir William Reynolds-Stephens

Grzegorz Wrobel

I read a lot of art blogs. If I like an artist I'll write down their name and go back eventually to look at the rest of their work. Today I read Parka Blogs (one of the best resources on art books) who did a profile on Polish artist Grzegorz Wrobel. Wrobel is an architect so his paintings are often of buildings and cityscapes. The moment I saw his work, I not only wrote down his name but I went out looking for more of his work. I think I'm in love.

Watercolor is one of the hardest mediums to work in. It's unforgiving of mistakes and there is a certain loss of control you have to accept with it. Colors bleed into each other. That just makes Wrobel's work all the more amazing. These are watercolors. And they are so detailed and precise that I'm left shaking my head as to how lovely they are.

Now normally modern cityscape paintings leave me cold. But these are magical. There is an unearthly quality to them. The soft colors and focus makes everything stand all the more for me. It makes me look a little harder at what would have been an ordinary street scene. His palettes are perfect for the scene he is working on. And the details make the images seem all the more real and unreal at the same time. I was blown away by his work.

As with any artist I write about, I recommend you go out and take a closer look at the rest of the artist's work. I only choose a couple of images that strike me. All of this man's work is magical.

Wrobel's website. Sadly my Polish is not so good.
His Deviant Art site.

Why I Have Cats on my Wall

Above is the picture that hangs above my fireplace in the living room. I normally wouldn't put cats up on my wall but this painting is special. It's an original oil painting done by Jeff's grandfather. Jeff's father's father to be exact. I've seen a number of his paintings and they are all good. I never got a chance to meet the man, he died before Jeff's parents were even married. But I've spent time in his workshop and I was stunned by his talent. This man was not only a painter (a rather good one in my opinion) but he was a wood carver, a zither player, and a carpenter. His workshop was in the basement of a house in downtown St. Louis. A house that Jeff's grandfather helped build. I'm amazed by his energy, by his various interests. I wish I'd had a chance to meet him. I bet I would have liked him.

P.S. I'll see if I can find a picture of him. Ignore the silly stockings on the wall.

Art Festival Surprise

My brother was in town from St. Louis this past weekend. Jeff and I spent most of our weekend with my brother and my parents, visiting and catching up. I don't get to see my brother nearly enough and it was wonderful to spend some good quality time with him. We had dinner with them on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday we caravaned down to Kansas City with my brother to watch the St. Louis Cardinals take on the Royals. The stadium was 60% red at the game. No one can ever say that Cards fans don't travel well.

On Saturday though, Jeff and I started the morning with an indulgence. We picked up cupcakes from a cute little place in Valley Junction, the historic shopping district in West Des Moines. With cupcakes like Peanut Butter Double Chocolate and Fizzy Mai Tai it was tough to pick just one. I ended up with a raspberry cupcake with a lemonade based frosting that was incredible. We ate out on the covered patio while watching the rain come down.

In the afternoon, the rain cleared up. The boys (my dad, my brother, and Jeff) went out golfing. My mom and I headed downtown to check out the Art Festival. Each year the Des Moines Art Festival includes some really fantastic artists, some good food, and a wonderful atmosphere. It takes place in the downtown sculpture garden so if you're not checking out the art, you can walk through some very unique sculptures.

As we were walking through, my mother found a woman who creates butterflies out of paper. They look incredibly realistic. We had to peer really close to the glass before we could tell that they weren't real butterflies and were just made out of paper. The artist even sticks each sculpture with a pin to make it more realistic. Since my mother collects butterflies (real ones) she bought a small Blue Morph Butterfly sculpture to hang next to the real one she has at home.

Then we walked past a mixed media artist that had my attention. She had a number of painting which were lovely but it was the journals that caught my eye. Gena Ollendieck (from Cresco, IA) creates wonderful pictures, leather bound journals, and photo-albums that are covered with found objects that tell a story or evoke a mood. Here's some information about her. Her pieces are unique and each one is lovely. I found at least six or seven journals alone that I would love to own. I was oohing and ahhing to my mother about one of the journals when she declared that she would buy it for me. I argued with her, a bit. They were not cheap journals. But she kept telling me how beautiful they were and how wonderful it was to support artists, something I believed as well. I have to admit that I only half-heartedly argued. This was one of the most beautiful journals I'd ever seen. And when the artist wrapped the journal in brown paper and handed it to me, I couldn't stop holding it. I brought it home and showed everyone there. It's now sitting on a table in my library. I'm not sure if I'll write in it or use it as a photo-album. I do know that I feel incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful piece of art. Thanks Mom!

Charles Santoso

I'm not sure where I saw it, the image above. I'm sure I had been doing an image search for art or illustration or Totoro (because I do those kind of things regularly...probably more regularly than I should admit). But I saw this image and my heart melted. This is a wonderful piece of Totoro work. It has the same sweetness but it's not just ordinary fan art. This has extra character to it. This is the kind of piece that grabs my attention. So of course I had to see where it came from. The link led me to other tribute art, some for Peanuts, some for Calvin and Hobbes, some for Harry Potter. But all of them had the same soft softness and sweetness to them. I was hooked.

So I went to My Mini Tree House and discovered that this was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Charles Santoso's work. And I love every bit of it. Santoso is a Sydney, Australia based artist who has done film and TV work. But it's his little character sketches that make me the happiest. On his website he describes himself as a concept artist who focuses on creating whimsical characters and scenes. He certainly does that. His draftsmanship is very good but it's the character and humor that makes me love his work.

 I subscribed immediately to his blog, and then started going back through the vast archive of art that he's already posted. As I read back, I grew to like his work even more. Santoso is willing to play. You can see the joy he takes in his work jump off the blog. He'll post concept art or strange dreams he's had. He'll try colors out and then post. He's having fun. I found all different types of art and so many characters, most of which are his own. Some artists leave me intimidated and Santoso certainly is good enough to do that. But looking at his work I just wanted to play and that was actually very inspiring. Incredible artwork and inspiration make for a new favorite artist.

P.S. I just went to Acid Free Gallery and purchased this print. Now I'll have some new artwork to hang on the wall.

Eric Barclay

It's been a while since I posted about an artist whose work I enjoy. I have a number of art and artist blogs that I follow so I'm always finding new and inventive work. Some more inventive than others.

Eric Barclay is a Texas based artist with a fun retro feel and some great use of bright colors. His print work is sweet and whimsical with a focus on animals and children. You can't help but smile when looking at it. I started following Eric's blog a while ago and am completely in love with most of his print work.

But it's his sculpture that I adore. Barclay takes cans, bottles, old light bulbs, and containers of all sorts and paints them to creates characters. The adorable little skunk above was once a Coke can. The two below, recurring characters for Barclay, are made from creamer containers. And to make me love them even more the penguin is Mr. Shackleton (based on Ernest Shackleton the Antarctic explorer I'm fascinated with) and the walrus is Mr. Hudson (based on Henry Hudson the fabled New York explorer).

Eric has done work for a number of different publications and companies. His blog and his website are filled with tons of examples of his great work. I love art that uses unique media and empty bottles, wood, gears, and lightbulbs are certainly unique. This last image, the lion below, was made from an old French's mustard container. I can only post a couple of his examples but check out the rest of his stuff on his website. It is guaranteed to make you smile.  

Words Create Worlds

I've mentioned before that I love book art, art based on books. This stunning creation is one of the best examples I've ever seen. This was created as part of an ad series for Anagram Bookshop in Prague, called Words Create Worlds. The image was created by Kaspan Company. I'm not sure how much of this is digitally created and how much of it is paper sculpture. Either way, the idea behind it makes me giddy.

Edit: Shortly after putting this up I thought to link to Anagram Bookshop only to find that it closed at the end of last year. :-(

Oasis Home

I found this image by Harrison Cady on Illustration Art, a blog I recently subscribed to. I love the image of the house as oasis in the middle of the city. As a hopeful gardener, the jungle surrounding the house is my idea of landscaping. The image is unlike a lot of Cady's work but I had to save it. And now share it.

New Favorite

I went out for a three hour dinner tonight which included two beautiful glasses of merlot, a mushroom lasagna that made me drool, a tasty tiramisu, and some absolutely incredible dinner conversation. My friend and I met at 6 and were still talking as we walked out the door at nine. The only reason we called dinner over was that she had somewhere to be at 9:15. Otherwise we'd still be there. Thanks Christina, for an amazing dinner!

So I have no real time for an actual post. That doesn't really matter though because I've been wanting to share this image from Joey Remmers that I found last week. I want a print of this. This might have to be my birthday present this year. He's selling them as part of a show he's doing at the Corey Helford Gallery. This print is called A Sheep Amongst Wolves. I really like the rest of Joey's work but it was this image that made me instantly take notice. I just love the colors and the lines. It's just gorgeous. Joey has a rather nice website filled with his painting and the tattoos he's inked. I love both. His ink work is a bit out of my price range but I bet you it is worth it. Perhaps when I finally have the money to get my ink done, I'll fly out to him. But until then, I think this print will tide me over.

Scottish Library Mystery

I posted a link today on Facebook about a mystery that is surrounding Scotland's libraries and festivals. Someone is creating elaborate and beautiful paper sculptures and leaving them in various libraries and at various book festivals as celebrations of books and the places that hold them. The sculptures started in March and so far there have been seven of them that have been dropped off. All of them are incredibly beautiful and very poignant for the location they are left in. Each is accompanied with a gift tag that makes me giddy. Here are some of the tags.

"For Central Library @ Edinburgh_CC 'A gift'--This is for you in support of Libraries, Books, Words, Ideas-- Libraries are Expeansive (It's hard to see the E crossed off. I'll just show this one).

"For @filmhouse--A Gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas... and all things 'magic'."

This one left at the Poetry Library leaves me speechless "It Started with your name @by leaveswelive and became a tree... We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books...a book is so much more than pages full of words... This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas...a gesture (poetic maybe?)

I found the story in a link from Neatorama from a community forum called This Is Central Station (read this, they cover this mystery, and the artists incredible words far better than I could). They cover all of the finds. The sculptures appear unnoticed and are left in random spots throughout the libraries. Often times they are not noticed for several days. The first location was the Scottish Poetry Library, then the National Library of Scotland, the Filmhouse, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the Edinburgh Book Festival (two were left there), and the most recent is the Central Lending Library. Each are beautiful.

The cup reads Nothing beats a cup of tea or coffee and a really good book. 

The cupcake reads Except a piece of cake. 

The teabag reads By Leaves We Live

It really is a mystery but one of the best kinds possible. I hope that this person who is creating and leaving them knows how extraordinary these are. How inspiring these little miracles are. How incredible this kind of support is. I hope that these wonderful art pieces bring some notoriety to the libraries and festivals. I hope the artist understands how appreciated his or her gestures are. These made me giddy and made me cry with happiness.

Folds

It's been quite a while since I last wrote about an artist I'm interested in. That used to be a weekly feature but since I've been posting only twice a week or so I've been cutting them out. So today I thought I'd share the utterly amazing work of Simon Schubert.

I found Simon's work through Lines and Colors, a blog that I have been in love with ever since I found it. Simon works in the medium of paper. Or more to the point he folds paper. He creases, he smoothes, and he creates intricate architectural masterpieces on single sheets of paper. There are no lines drawn on the paper above. That is all shadow and fold.

I love how he creates these architectural scenes that are all so structured yet he's also playing with perspective. They look vaguely 3-D. It's breathtaking in it's construction and elegance. They look so much like drawings, yet the are done one painstaking crease at a time. I wonder how long they take to created. And how often he has to take a step back to look at the full sheet. He manages to make a very simple medium, incredibly complex. If I haven't mentioned it, I'm in awe of this man's work.

Simon also does sculpture although I would say that it is not for everyone's taste. His sculpture has an interesting mix of disturbing and intriguing though. It's the kind of thing that I want to examine closer but I know I'll have nightmares later. If you like oddly creepy sculpture check it out. Otherwise, you need to see the rest of his elegant paperwork at his website above.

Lori Nix

It's been a while since I profiled an artist whose work I enjoy. I keep a list of artists and always want to share good art. And Lori Nix's work is beyond good. It's downright incredible.

Lori is a Kansas born artist who creates miniature dioramas and then photographs them. In many ways she's a double artist. First is the building of her subjects, wallpapering tiny walls, constructing tiny chairs, sculpting miniature trees. She's a craftsman and a sculptor. But after all the hard work of building is done, then she has to light and photograph the scenes. It has to take a lot of patience because each scene is perfect right down to the last detail. Lori says that it takes about 7 months to build a scene and 2 or 3 weeks to shoot it properly.

Lori has her studio set up in Brooklyn. Her most recent exhibit is called The City, which focuses on what will happen after cities are abandoned by humans. It was her image of the library (seen below) which first caught my attention. The images are all about the decay and destruction of the man-made world mixed with Nature's capacity for producing life. I find them beautiful and a bit disturbing.

Nix has a number of different themes, like Unnatural History (Great Plains seen below) which gives a museum curators view of history and nature. It's all about how they create dioramas and displays. I love Nix's use of black and white which makes them seem like old museum pictures.

I simply had to share Lori Nix's art. I'm in awe of her photography but I'm even more in awe of her diorama building skills. I want to explore her little worlds. Each is so filled with beautiful details. They are nearly perfect.

Just an Image

The Full Spectrum

I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I'm coveting a set of books. Not just any books but one of the most incredible series filled with fantasy art ever created. The first Spectrum book came out in 1994 and the series now includes 17 titles. Spectrum, the brainchild of Cathy and Arnie Fenner, works on a call for entries basis and the results are judged by a jury of fantasy artists. The best entries are then published in book form. Gorgeous book form, crammed full of great work. I pulled this quote from the Spectrum website and I think it sums up the books beautifully.

"Spectrum doesn't exist to categorize or define fantastic art; rather, it exists to honor the imaginations of very special artists who delight in helping us see the world in a wonderfully different light. It's our job to help them reach a wider appreciative audience."

I bought Spectrum 9 about six months and was instantly hooked. Jeff and I drove to Omaha this weekend and I picked up 10 and I'm slowly adding books to my collection. My goal is to have all 17 books. They are one of the best collections of fantasy art that I've found. I love that there are so many divergent styles and artists. Each page offers a treasure trove of artistic talent. I'm excited to find that I can recognize some artists now based entirely on their styles. And some of my favorites are present: Kei Acedera, Bobby Chiu, Peter de Seve, Rick Berry, Shaun Tan, Dan Dos Santos, Rebecca Guay, Dave McKean, Brom...to name a few. And a slew of other artists. The series doesn't just include the great masters who have already established themselves, but is open to all artists.

For fans of art, these books are must haves. I will be picking up 16 and 17 soon. They are both available in the stores. The older editions will be a little more difficult to pick up. But I love the thrill of the hunt. And these books are well worth it.

Renata Liwska

I've been meaning to write about Renata Liwska for my other blog about children's books, but something keeps stopping me. It would make sense to post her work there, after all she is a children's book illustrator. Her work is, in a word, adorable. So it would make sense for me to write about it there, but I think her beautiful tiny pencil sketches are simply too perfect to not consider art. She belongs in both blogs, there as illustration and here as art.

I was introduced to Renata's work through The Quiet Book, written by Deborah Underwood. The moment I saw the cover at Barnes and Noble I knew I had to own the book. And I knew that I had to learn more about the artist. The cover drew me in, and the interior illustrations enchanted me further. Her image for "Pretending you're invisible quiet" is one of the cutest things I've ever seen. And all of Renata's work is that cute.

Renata works mostly in pencil, adding color digitally for her printed illustrations. She's illustrated seven books now and all of them are soft and cute. I've been reading Renata's blog (Pandas and Such) for a while and love her posts. Her blog offers glimpses into perfect miniature animals, that spring from her pencil with personalities all their own. The light pencil hash marks create detailed and adorable characters. Plus she's not afraid to show work in progress, something that I love almost more than the finished pieces. She shows off her sketchbook drawings which are enough to make almost any illustrator jealous. Look at her "rough" drawing below. I wish my finished products looked that good.

Renata is a Polish artist who has moved to Calgary to be with her artist husband. The two of them share a website. His work can be found here. I've been slowly trying to buy up Renata's books to add to my collection but I'm also thinking about picking up some of her pencil drawings as well. I'm a huge fan of adorable animals and beautiful art; and they just don't get more adorable or beautiful than Renata's work.