Until recently I was unfamiliar with the artist Alex Ebstein, but I am glad to have rectified my lack of awareness.  There is an honesty to Ebstein’s work that I find readily engaging.  The use of yarn or string in an artist’s practice can often shift the aesthetic towards a decidedly crafty end result, but Ebstein manages to use the material with such purpose that it might as well be a drawn line in an architectural blue print.  The effectiveness of the work hinges on her ability to merge direct compositional tactics with a more playful approach to the selected materials.  Ebstein’s use of string also elevates the intentionality of her mark marking, and then quickly reasserts itself as a method of creating illusory depth in what would otherwise be relatively flat pieces.  Taught angular moments combined with purposefully relaxed textures start a visual conversation that I am more than happy to participate in.

I could have just included the ‘eye chart’ pieces because I found them extremely aesthetically pleasing, but the back-story provides a bit of insight that I think most would enjoy.  Think of it as a ‘Director’s Commentary’ for the work.  Courtesy of Miss Ebstein, “…then for the eye chart pieces. They are more of a weird reflection on (and obsession with) eyesight and my existing eye problems that force me to visit the doctor every month. I’ve had four eye surgeries in three years… I am always nervously checking my vision against things, one eye at a time, so these drawings were kind of my own dark humored joke about being an artist and constantly worrying about my vision.”  I am of the belief that ‘going blind’ is one of (if not) the most terrifying things any artist could imagine, and I appreciate the candor with which she addresses what could be an immobilizing reality to those with a more pessimistic outlook on life.  Ebstein will be starting grad school this fall, and I am eager to see how this focused environment will affect her work.  I also encourage anyone interested in contemporary art to check out the consistently interesting programming at Nudashank – a gallery she co-runs with Seth Adelsberger in the Baltimore area.

Julie Weitz’s 2011 multimedia series of masked figures are deconstructed meditations on the human body that are folding, weaving, morphing, and collapsing onto one another like a jigg saw puzzle that has no beginning nor end.

Francesca Pastine’s Artforum Excavations Is a beautiful series of works where the artist cuts away at various issues of art forum literally excavating the art away and rearranging the pages and layers of the iconic art publication. Lets hope she tears apart a copy of Beautiful/Decay one of these days!

“I began using ARTFORUM magazines as a medium for my work in 2008. I noticed that they were familiar fixtures in my friends’ homes. Apparently, because of their glossy nature, nobody wanted to throw them away. I was intrigued by their square format, particularly when the bloated art market was reflected in their one-inch thickness and I began asking my friends for their unwanted magazines. Starting with the covers, I cut, bend, manipulate, pull, and dig my way through them, revealing a visceral topography of art trends. The finished worked becomes an unsolicited collaboration with the magazine and the cover artist. Maintaining a strong connection to the physicality of drawing, my X-acto blade mimics a pencil, subtracting rather than adding. I eschew glue or other manipulations that change the inherent character of the magazines. In this way, they retain their association to what they are, carriers of information that have been handled, earmarked and scuffed over time. Through physically intervening with these familiar icons of the art establishment, I suffuse the inanimate with emotional power, creating a palpable complexity of form and information.”

Mark Hunter Brown is a truly dynamic individual.  I have known Brown for the better part of a decade, and I am relatively positive that I will never meet another person quite like him.  With each day functioning more like the next chapter in a bizarre novel, his zest for life is infectious.  Luckily, Brown is also an amazing artist, and has managed to document his interests and experiences through countless drawings and paintings.  Though he gains inspiration from his travels, the work is not limited to the places and people he has actually interacted with.  Brown is also heavily influenced by the written historical accounts of different cultures and people, but the work is not about visually representing his source material.  Instead, he chooses to focus on the importance of the moments recorded history has chosen to ignore.  There is this dead zone in between the great scenes of history that also warrants consideration, and Brown is keenly aware of this.  When asked why he is drawn to this type of situation Brown replied, “because life doesn’t look like a Delacroix painting – it’s just people walking around and eating sandwiches. These moments seem more real to me…they’re equally compelling.”

While these scenes are not infrequent in his work, Brown’s practice is not limited to this type of subject matter. There is far less literal material in Brown’s oeuvre, and his vivid imagination becomes readily apparent when looking at paintings of huge figurative fortresses or anthropomorphized coo-coo clocks snorting bones off of a table.  When viewed in context these paintings start to function as some sort of bizarre allegory, but their meaning is never explicitly stated.  There is such a rich diversity in the distinctive worlds that Brown creates, and no piece is less detailed than the last.  Whether he is teaching at Columbia, backpacking through Morocco, or boar hunting with monks in the Italian countryside – the need to process the world into visually compelling images has remained consistent within Brown’s life.  Lucky for us, his mind seems to function like an endless supply of Google image search results that I have no desire to stop looking at any time soon.

Kalamazoo, Michigan based artist Tom Howes’ drawings, collages, and sculptures subverts both the seriousness and banality of  memories, ideologies, observations, and the minutiae of everyday life. Whether it’s with minimal engagement or a more expressive approach, he attempts to level the playing field between expectation and reality by directing attention to the obvious. In doing so, we learn that the obvious often remains subjective.

Real rocks sprayed with imitation rock texture spray

Urinal cover silkscreen series

Michael Mapes Boxed collages house thousands of individual specimens consisting of dissected photographs and biographical DNA in the form of such things as hair, finger nails, scent, eye lashes, fingerprints, food, botanical elements, fabric swatches, makeup, dirt, handwriting samples and breath. The human specimens reflect the artist’s interest in the role of creative science as lab threatens to supplant studio in his own work. Representations of the specimen are dissected and then reconstructed through artistic interpretation invoking entomological, forensic and artistic methods. (via)

Chicago-based Andy Burkholder has been posting a consistant supply of mind-clearing one-pagers on his wonderful tumblr. He’s got something special going, and he’s just riding the wave real hard. His work outside of the one-page bits is just as impressive, but more focused on experimentation, as opposed to a formally consistent body of work. Check out his web, his flick, and visit him at CAKE. A buttery smooth man.