As you may know, one of my very favorite artists of all time is Audrey Kawasaki. (Inside my home, Audrey Kawasaki, Stella Im Hultberg and Amy Sol paintings all hang on my walls.) Audrey has the ability to paint the female form in this innocent yet sultry way. She just released her latest piece and it’s absolutely gorgeous! Called “Lush,” the painting was created for the Suggestivism:Resonance exhibition at Spoke Art gallery in San Francisco. The show opens tonight and will run until September 24. More works in this exhibition will be released tomorrow, Friday, September 2nd. Can’t wait!
One of my all-time favorite pieces of street art is this giant mural by Poland-based artist Natalia Rak. In it, a young girl is holding a painted watering can above a real life tree. To me, this is the creme of the crop when it comes to street art. While many street artists paint murals on walls with no particular meaning, there are a select few who really study the urban environment and create works that cleverly interact with the real life objects around them. (Ernest Zacharevic is a genius at this.)
Today, I was pleased to to come across the works of Alex Face, a well-known graffiti artist in Thailand. Face wanders the streets and alleys of Bangkok looking for the perfect building he can use as his canvas. In many of his pieces, you can’t quite tell where his works begin. Are you looking at real life props like wires, branches and leaves or did Face draw them in?
One of my favorite pieces is the one he created with first graders at a local elementary school. The messy, spray-painted scribbles are the perfect backdrop for Face’s funny baby. Speaking of baby, what led him to center all of his work around an adorable toddler? According to Widewalls, the baby idea was inspired by the birth of his own daughter. He draws the baby with a third eye because, “I believe in the spirit, that is how I grew up, I feel the spirit” he says. The third eye in his drawings represents another dimension “it’s something that we can feel but can’t see with two eyes so I add the third eye which can see what we can’t”.
I’ll always have a place in my heart for street art, of course no one comes to Banksy but Ernest Zacharevic, Os Gemeos, Etam Cru, and Seth Wall are all up there for me as well. One artist that has popped up on my radar recently is Amanda “Mando” Marie. The Colorado-based painter is known for her eye-catching stencils that are made with acrylic and aerosol and displayed as murals or as paintings on canvas or paper.
There’s a unifying theme to her work, her paintings often consist of children playing or floating in the air. Though some have described her work as “nostalgic storybook-like imagery that is at once playful and ominous,” I don’t understand that feeling of darkness. Marie’s works are inspired by vintage 1940s “Little Golden Book” era illustrations and there’s a recurring visual theme of “twinning” imagery, or a repetition of a child to create doubles. I love the paintings where she creates stars in the children’s eyes, they create a magical mood. Also, notice how gigantic Marie’s murals can be. If you look closely, in the first picture, you can see the artist working on the piece. She looks tiny!
Currently, my favorite art gallery, Thinkspace in Culver City is showing a collection of the artist’s work. You can see them from now through September 10. Marie also contributed a mural piece to this year’s POW! WOW! Antelope Valley, and is featured in the Lancaster Museum of Art and History’s show The New Vanguard, on view from August 13 to October 30.
How I’d love to collect her work!
Here are some paintings by Amanda “Mando” Marie that I enjoyed, too.
“A place with mysterious lights spread out over a Word Heritage Site forest.” One of my favorite art collectives, teamlab, is up to it again, this time bathing a Japanese forest in a rainbow of lights. Near Shimogamo Shrine, they present Resonating Trees, colored lights that shine on individual plants before subtly fading away. As visitors or animals approach the trees, the lights change color and a musical tone emits from the forest. This satisfies both my love for art and rainbows. See it in action by watching the video, below. This breathtaking installation can be seen from now through August 31, 2016.
While most people visit museums and just enjoy the art, Karin Jurick is studying the whole scene. She takes out her camera and captures pictures of museum patrons engrossed in art and then goes back to her studio to paint both the art and the visitor, or as she describes it, “moments in time, people just doing their thing.”
She calls this whole series Museum Patrons. Recently, she narrowed down the work calling it ArtistZ. Jurick made a list of her favorite painters from A to Z. “When I had several for a letter, I dove into learning more about each artist and finding ‘the one’ image that I loved most,” she states. “With a few letters, I had no idea who to choose, like Q or X, so I spent a good amount of time researching artists I’d never heard of.”
One of my all-time favorite paintings is Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. In Jurick’s version, a couple huddles closely together while enjoying the piece. The artist cleverly named her version Double Date.
If you enjoy Jurick’s work, you can buy her book, here. Called ArtistZ it’s a series of paintings which feature select works of art from her favorite and most-inspiring artists. What a great way to learn about art and appreciate all the classic artists.
What’s most impressive about this body of work is that Jurick has to closely replicate work from the all-time greatest masters. Monets, Picassos, Klimts, nothing seems too intimidating for the artist.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by George Seurat
Irises by Claude Monet
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
America Windows by Marc Chagall
Summer by Frank Benson
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper
The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell
Guernica by Pablo Picasso
American Gothic by Grant Wood
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso
Dance by Henri Matisse
“Close Encounter”, Chuck Close
The Red Armchair, Portrait of Sylvette David and Femme Assise by Pablo Picasso
As an homage to one of her all-time favorite movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jurick painted the scene where the three friends stopped for a moment to take in some iconic art. “There’s a scene in the movie when Ferris, his girlfriend Sloane and his best friend Cameron go through the Art Institute of Chicago – something I’d done dozens of times and even cut school to do so. The three friends stop and stand in front of the three Picassos…Well since then, many people have mimicked the pose – it became a tradition. And their visit to an art museum proved to be an inspiration for young people to do the same. That’s a good thing.”
While perusing the website Tattoo Filter, I came across these cool galaxy-style animal tattoos by Adrian Bascur. I love how he blends traditional animal imagery with the dreamy colors of space. He has a whole collection of space tattoo images over on Facebook.
On a side note, if I ever were to get a tattoo, I’d probably still get something delicate and minimalist from Dr. Woo, though I definitely appreciate Bascur’s style.
How has your week been? We celebrated Sam’s birthday this past week and mine is coming up next Friday. We’re 10 days apart so we try to live it up during those days in between as much as we can. What does that mean for the weekend? Who knows but I definitely want to get out of town.
I’m always on the lookout for well illustrated, interesting books for my kids. Not only do I like visually stunning books, with beautiful illustrations, I like it when the story is captivating. That’s why I was excited to stumble upon this relatively new book called The Night Gardener by brothers Terry and Eric Fan. (It just came out in February 2016.)
Here’s the story: “One day, William discovers that the tree outside his window has been sculpted into a wise owl. In the following days, more topiaries appear, and each one is more beautiful than the last. Soon, William’s gray little town is full of color and life. And though the mysterious night gardener disappears as suddenly as he appeared, William—and his town—are changed forever.”
Sounds like a fun read, doesn’t it? Just bought the book, excited to share it with my sons. Here are some illustrations from it.
If you enjoy topiary, make sure to check out these surrealist topiary cats by Richard Saunders.
On a side note, how awesome would it be to have that cat topiary in front of your house?
Today I came across the oil paintings of Miho Hirano and immediately fell in love. The way the Japanese artist merges women with nature is breathtakingly beautiful. She is represented by Gallery Sumire which had this to say about her:
“Miho Hirano is attempting to express the fragility of life as well as its maturity and continuously changing circumstance. The flowing lines of curves and the subtle colors are signature elements in her works. She successfully composes in one frame human and natural motifs such as flowers, birds, fish or water. Her delicate oil paintings invite viewers to her world in which decorative beauty and fragility perfectly co-exist.”
Hirano will be a part of Los Angeles’ Corey Heldford Gallery’s 10th Anniversary exhibition which starts August 27 and runs through September 24. She joins a whole host of other artists including some of my favorites like Camilla D’Errico, Haroshi (his skateboard pieces are insane), Kukula, Luke Cheuh, and Paul Frank. This is the ultimate exhibition for art enthusiasts, students of art, art collectors and anyone else interested in a large and awe-inspiring overview of what is currently happening in the New Contemporary art scene.(My favorite genre of art.) Mark your calendars. This is going to be one heck of a show.
Hello, I’m Alice Yoo! I’m founder and CEO of Skylar Yoo, a company dedicated to inspiring and empowering women to be bold. We sell apparel, art prints and accessories to the modern feminist.
In my former life, I was editor-in-chief of the art and culture blog My Modern Met, which I founded back in 2007. I curated and wrote about art, design and photography for more than seven years. (In fact, I published over 7,000 articles which were seen by millions of people worldwide.) I’m also co-author of a book called For Love: 25 Heartwarming Celebrations of Humanity, which is on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
I live in southern California along with my husband and my two toddler boys.
This blog is about what I love, the tough experiences that I’ve learned from, and my journey as a second time entrepreneur. Right now, I’m in the midst of a 365 day challenge, to read one book a day. If you share my passions or want to learn some cool new facts, come along for the ride. I hope to inspire, educate and entertain you!
