A brand new surreal painting by Tran Nguyen was recently unveiled. Created for a group show opening at Jonathan Levine Gallery on August 3rd, the piece shows a giant girl in a blue and white skirt walking with a fox through a small, flooded town. She calls the work “The Flooded Hour.”
The show, called Cluster, will feature new works by the following artists: Amandine Urruty, Anton Vill, Ben Tolman, Charlie Immer, Drew Leshko, Dylan Egon, Gary Mellon, Gary Taxali, Luke O’Sullivan, Marco Mazzoni, Nicomi Nix Turner, Ron English, Sam Gibbons, Smithe One, Tran Nguyen and Troy Coulterman.
Tran Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in Los Angeles, California, where she is currently based. Her paintings are created with a soft, delicate quality using colored pencil and acrylic on paper. Nguyen has worked for clients such as Playboy and McDonald’s and her work has been exhibited at galleries in California, New York, Italy and Spain.
This new piece reminds me of some of her older work, where women are seen as much larger than life. I love the mysterious and surreal nature of these.
One of my favorite illustrators, Emily McDowell, created this illustration out of words written by author Amy Ferris. Though I usually don’t write about politics, I thought this was a strong and effective statement that just had to be shared.
“The brilliant Amy Ferris wrote this, and I illustrated it. As a woman, I don’t support Hillary just because she’s female (as many people like to argue). I support her because she and her platform treat women like human beings, unlike the alternative.
“I’m having iron-ons (and possibly stickers) of this design made & will be selling them on emilymcdowell.com in the coming weeks. All proceeds will be donated to the effort to elect Hillary Clinton.
“I understand that the system is flawed. I understand that people are angry and I understand why many people want change. But please, not this platform of hate and fear. Trump is not the answer. #imwithher”
I’ve been holding onto these illustrations by Laura Stoddart for quite some time, not sure of when to post about them. I’ve been struggling with what I should call them. I finally settled on whimsical though that doesn’t seem quite right. The blog Simple Pretty calls her work “elegant yet quirky.”
Stoddart creates beautiful pieces that often deal with love. A man hugging a magnolia tree, a woman and man feeling “fireworks” go off. They’re simply sweet illustrations with a touch of whimsy.
Yesterday, Sam, the boys, our nanny Cindy and I went to Santa Rosa Plateau. We veered off our normal path and decided to try a trail we’d only done once before. You start off by walking toward the vernal pools and then you make a turn into a valley. The views were exquisite. The best part was that during the rocky parts of the trail, Parker would run back to me and hold my hand until we got to smoother ground. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t fall. “What a sweetheart!,” I thought. You can’t teach a kid to be that thoughtful.
Here’s proof. The quality of the photo is bad (i.e. out-of-focus) but that’s because I was trying to climb up a hill while simultaneously trying to take this picture.
In any case, I thought that going out to nature would give me the opportunity to practice photography. Between you and me, I’ve been having a tough time keeping up with it. My Photo a Day project is still alive, though now I’m just posting to Instagram (and not on this blog, too).
Out of the 42 photos I took, only four were keepers. (I don’t count the out-of-focus hand holding picture.)
Got to keep plugging away at this! No one said making a life changing goal would be easy. I love photography so much but the technical side sometimes weighs me down. How many out-of-focus photos can I still have? (The answer is: too many.) I’m hoping that one day I’ll be so technically proficient that I won’t have to worry about that side of photography anymore. Then, I’ll find my own voice, my own distinct style. Until then, I’ll keep taking pictures of Parker almost hitting me with a rock and Sam’s rear end close to my face. (You laugh but it’s true.)
Yes, the last photo is a bit too much “Max Wanger.” (I said I was working on the style thing, k?) 🙂
It’s not too often that I come across beautiful street photography such as this. Of course, it helps that photographer VuTheara Kham lives in one of the most photogenic cities in the world, Paris. With 1.2 million followers on Instagram, Kham takes photos that rise above the Instagram community because of their style and beauty. Whether it’s of a waiter taking his smoke break on a scooter or a woman on a balcony overlooking the opera house, Palais Garnier, Kham can make any scene come alive. My favorite photo is of two young adults riding a pink swing. The caption is perfect. “Above the clouds in Tuileries garden.”
Don’t these photos make you want to pack your bags and move to Paris? At the very least, they make me want to take up street photography.
Marketing agency Kalias-V recently shared a mural they finished of a beautiful owl. Taking up the whole side of a building, the wide-eyed owl sits on a green branch and is surrounded by red leaves. This piece can be seen in Kharkiv, Ukraine. I can’t get enough of owls, especially in street art.
If you love a good “before and after” series, you will not be disappointed with this one. Pet and lifestyle photographer Grace Chon is back with Hairy, a series where she takes dogs who are in a desperate need of grooming and transforms them into adorable creatures. All of these dogs weren’t just given the normal treatment, however, they were cut in a Japanese-style of grooming, with an emphasis on making the dogs look as cute as possible. Chon worked with the talented groomers of Healthy Spot in Los Angeles to make this series come alive.
If the name Grace Chon sounds familiar, she’s the photographer behind the viral series Jasper and Zoey. (It’s still one of my all-time favorites.)
I got a chance to catch up with Grace and ask her a few questions about the new series, Hairy.
What made you want to start this new series? How did it come about?
I think a lot of us have a fascination with before and after images because it’s always fun to see dramatic transformations. I had the idea of doing a before and after series with dog grooming because there’s something about it that’s so funny to me. Sometimes the dog looks so different and you wonder if it’s the same dog in both images. I wanted to capture that idea in the series, and have the after photos be really extreme by showing Japanese Dog Grooming cuts since they aren’t that common and the results are so striking.
How much time and effort went into cutting the dogs’ hair?
These cuts truly are works of art – each haircut takes about 2 hours or more, as the majority of the styling is all done with hand scissoring.
Can you describe the Japanese style of grooming?
The emphasis of this style of grooming is to make the dog look as adorable as possible by highlighting the uniquely cute characteristics of the dog. My personal take on it is that they make the dogs look almost like stuffed animals – cute overload!
What did you learn from shooting the series?
Grooming is definitely an art form. I don’t have dogs that get groomed, but watching the groomers up close made me realize how much time and dedication goes into a cut especially when the majority of it is being done by hand with scissors. The groomers I had the pleasure of working with are so creative and great at what they do.
Grooming credits:
1-Yuki by Alyson Ogimachi
2-Athena by Donna Owens
3-Teddy by Donna Owens
4-Herman by Cindy Reyes
5-Raider by Koko Fukaya
6-Rocco by Patricia Sugihara
7-Lana by Koko Fukaya
I love coming across greeting cards that make me smile. Even better, I love it when they’re created by a family run store. These were made by Pasadena-based sisters Alice & Doris of Ilootpaperie. Oh So Beautiful Paper just put up a blog post about what they saw at the 2016 National Stationery Show and the cards at Ilootpaperie immediately caught my eye. This was the first time the duo has exhibited at the show.
Here’s how they began their company, “Our cards are very much an representation of our 30+ years of inside jokes and things/people that are our sources of inspiration – and luckily, it turns out that the inside jokes are appreciated by more than just ourselves. We originally started working in paper goods when we created custom wedding invitations for our close friends; greeting cards seemed like a natural extension – a way for us to show our personalities and put to paper a collection of cheeky thoughts and visuals that make us laugh.”
The company also sells enamel pins. Aren’t they all the rage these days? I just had to scoop one up for my sister-in-law. She loves french fries.
Illustrator and graphic designer David Rollyn doesn’t have to drive too far to find inspiration. Living in Oregon, he constantly explores the wilderness and then channels his passion for the outdoors into drawings. Time and time again, he focuses his attention to camping. As he states, “I love doodling little camping scenes. Ones that are really simple and make you think, ‘dang, I really want to go camping now…'” He even goes so far as saying, “There’s no better life than camp life.”
So what does he hope others take away from his mini masterpieces? “I love drawing something so simple, that you can’t stop looking at it. Even though there isn’t much there, you just want to keep looking at everything, every little bit. That’s what I always try to accomplish with my drawings.”
His moto, both in his illustrations and his life? Keep it simple. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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!
