Originally from Armenia, artist Ana Bagayan studied illustration at California’s Art Center College of Design. Her many paintings and drawings are populated with doll-like youths and human-alien hybrids, showcasing the artist’s special interest in the metaphysical. In particular, many of her hybrid creatures were inspired by the stories told by avowed alien abductees while under hypnosis. Bagayan’s drawings and paintings have been displayed in galleries across the US, including most recently at Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City, California. Take a look at more metaphysical marvels after the jump.

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.

The Fresh Blood Hunt art competition is going strong in its second week with entries coming in from all over England.  Open to all illustrators, designers, and artists residing in the UK,  the Fresh Blood Hunt Art Competition is a chance to flex your design skills on the Tim Burton produced Vampire thriller Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter! Not only will the winner have their work immortalized in London by talented muralist Jim Rockwell but they will also win a brand new 17″ Macbook Pro and Adobe Creative Suite 6!

With a chance to collaborate with one of the biggest film makers of all time , have your work blown up to larger than life proportions, and win thousands of dollars worth of products there’s very little downside to this competition.

Did we mention that Beautiful/Decay gets to help pick the winner as well! If that doesn’t seal the deal I don’t know what will. The competition ends May 30th so get to it Britain and lets show the world how talented the Cult Of Decay really is!

Melissa Cooke’s accomplished powdered graphite on paper works explore themes of beauty, fantasy, violence, vulnerability and identity, with the artist casting herself as subject in a myriad of thematic scenarios.

 ” I take photographs as I paint and pour liquids onto myself, using my face as a canvas.  The photo shoots reference the practice of drawing and painting; then the final graphite drawing references photography.  The boundaries between the mediums are broken down and the processes are interwoven.

The images depart from the framing of traditional portraiture.  The viewer is not given an entire bust of the subject; rather the frame zooms into up-close sections of the face.  The cropping pushes the face to the surface of the paper, making the figure more ambiguous.  Flesh becomes abstracted: obliterated by paint on the skin, distorted by the eye of the camera lens, or smeared by the glass of a Xerox machine.

Photographs are used as inspiration for drawing and mark making.  The drawings are made by dusting thin layers of graphite onto paper with a dry brush.  The softness of the graphite provides a smooth surface that can be augmented by erasing in details.  Gestural marks are apparent, while still creating dimension.  Textures are given precedence over portraying a likeness to the figure.   The act of drawing becomes the focus.”

Two of my favorite upcoming artists, Timothy Bergstrom & Denise Kupferschmidt recently opened up solo shows respectively @ Halsey McKay in East Hapmton. Tim brings a new suite of his gluey material paintings that visually imitate sounds, while Kupferschmidt shows a series of studies surrounding a sculptural installation, as well as a lovely mural. Good stuff, more after the jump.

They’re the reason flowers smell so nice

Building on the metaphor of the “dome of heaven” as a visual container holding what we know, Carol Prusa  creates work consisting of acrylic hemispheres ranging from bowl-sized to six feet in diameter. Initiated in silverpoint drawing on the convex surface and completed with fiber optics, programmed LED’s and videos housed within, these domes are a visual embodiment – a download of sorts – of what it feels like to be alive while in conversation with contested cosmologies.

“My constructed domes are provocative symbols that invoke the idea of the universe and physical objects that allude to real-life structures. In my “canopies,” I explore a number of mathematical models that physicists developed to explain our universe. The mathematics of my expressed geometries offer a spiritual force that organizes structures from the microscopic to the political. Here, geometry isn’t simply abstract but creates a real world, sustained by its own logic.

To realize the startling phenomena that shape our everyday world, I incorporate digital projection and video technology. Like scientists and mathematicians who model emergent behavior, I too yearn to create a radical vision, one that takes into account the chaotic interactions that are central to formation of the universe.

As artists and scientists seek to explain our place, I join the most advanced daydreamers – those who imaginatively visualize a creative matrix and explore otherworldly possibilities – those who embrace indeterminacy and the fundamentally unstable boundaries between infinitesimal and immeasurable realms.”

Shady Trails, 2010
13.5 x 18 inches, Acrylic, colored pencil, ink, & graphite on paper $400

Sneaky Tree Girl, 2009
12 x 16.5 inches, Colored Pencil, graphite, & acrylic on paper, $250

Welcome to another release from Click To Collect, Beautiful/Decay’s campaign to help art lovers start their collection of original artists works at affordable prices! This week we bring you an amazing selection of drawings by LA based illustrator Lyndsey Lesh whose works mix quirky scenarios with Lesh’s masterfully drawn multimedia aesthetic. Based on fictional stories as well as real world observations these drawings open the door to Lesh’s creative world and beg you to join in on her humorous surreal adventures.  See all the available works by the talented Lyndsey Lesh and read more about our Click To Collect project after the jump!

Teacher’s Lecture, 2012, 8 x 8.5 inches
Acrylic, graphite, & colored pencil, $350
(this piece includes a 2 page hand written short story by the artist about the drawing)

The Invisibles, 2012
8 x 8.5 inches, Graphite, colored pencil, & acrylic, $350
(this piece includes a 2 page hand written short story by the artist about the drawing)

Trick or Treat, 2009
12 x 16.5 inches, Graphite, acrylic, & ink on paper, $150

Owl Man, 2009
12 x 16.5 inches, Graphite, acrylic & colored pencil on paper, $250

Every Five Years, 2012
8 x 8.5 inches, Acrylic, graphite, & colored pencil on  illustration board, $350
(this piece includes a 2 page hand written short story by the artist about the drawing)

I Haven’t Seen Your Face In A Very Long Time, 2009
12 x 16.5 inches, Acrylic, graphite, & colored pencil on paper, $150

About Click To Collect:

Eight months ago I bought my first house and renovated it, which meant my art collection was packed up in boxes and bubble wrap not to be seen for another 5 months. In the mean time, staring at the boring white walls in my house was literally driving me up a wall. And the second the dust settled, before even moving in the furniture, I installed every piece of art I owned in the new space. The art transformed the whole house, what felt soulless and sterile before was now filled with the chatter of all the different works of art telling their individual stories.
That got me to thinking about how important art is in making a house a home, and how everyone should be able to collect it. That’s how the the CLICK TO COLLECT project was born. We wanted to give everyone a chance to collect our favorite artists and keep the prices to $500 or less…. Art Within Reach, if you will, ahem. Each week this month we will offer you 5-10 original hand-made works priced $500 or below through our CLICK TO COLLECT project. It’s our hope that by making these original works available at these prices, we’re helping our readers start or grow their very own collection that they will enjoy and treasure for years to come.

- Amir H. Fallah
Editor In Chief

]]> http://beautifuldecay.com/2012/05/22/click-to-collect-lyndsey-lesh/feed/ 0 http://beautifuldecay.com/2012/05/21/artist-interview-michael-deforge-is-king-trash/ http://beautifuldecay.com/2012/05/21/artist-interview-michael-deforge-is-king-trash/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 20:31:56 +0000 MICHAEL OLIVO http://beautifuldecay.com/?p=60757 Read the Rest...]]>

The world of child mafias, gooey relatable beasts, funky leathery space dudes, soft bodies, diseased bodies, and crusty bodies, is the world of DeForge. Toronto-based Michael DeForge is running amuck in the independent comic’s scene. He is consistently putting out top-notch work executed in his very distinct style, a style that allows for plenty of room for experimentation while still being immediately recognizable as the “DeForge touch”. At age 24, with just a few years solidly devoted to comics, it’s amazing to imagine what he will achieve in his lifetime. On top of that, he does prop and effects for the wonderful Cartoon Network series Adventure Time. He has the drive. He has the look. He has it all. He is King Trash.

OK. Let’s start with the Deforge physical specs.

I think I’m 5″8? I’m not really sure. I’m probably like 160 or 170 pounds, but I don’t own a scale. I’m 24, my eyes are brown, I have black hair.

Alright, cool…so how’s that Adventure Time job?…character design right?

Mostly prop and effects design, but sometimes characters and other stuff. It’s awesome. I really like working for cartoonists. I work with Andy Ristaino, and he’s really patient with me and all of my screw-ups.

(from Fred Seibert’s Flickr)

Yea, that sounds really rad…tell me about the toronto comics scene, seems really strong.

Yeah, we have a nice group of cartoonists here. I see the Wowee Zonk group around a lot (Patrick Kyle, Ginette Lapalme, Chris Kuzma,) Zach Worton, Johnny Martz, Steve Wolfhard, and a few others. It’s nice that the Beguiling is here, since they’re really supportive of everyone and are the best comics store in the world.

(cover by Patrick Kyle)

Solid group… have you ever not drawn in that very distinct way you draw, it feels like you were born to draw like that way without any hesitation?

I think I purposely try to switch up my style a bit. I think it still always reads as something I’ve done, but something like Incinerator was drawn really differently from the way I went about, say, Lose #2. I like working on multiple projects that are all different from each other. If something is really densely gridded, I’ll want to move onto something airier right after – or if I’m working in black and white for a while, I like having the option of switching to color for something like Ant Comic.

Yea, makes sense…how many comics you got going right now?

Right now, my main projects are Lose #4, Kid Mafia #3 and Ant Comic. I also have some smaller stuff on the side, like my monthly strips and some mini-comics and work I’ve promised to anthologies.

Cool…so how is that 50 cent kid mafia experiment going?…I’m curious about that not so distant future of comics.

It’s going well! Paypal takes 30 cents of every transaction, but I think it at least subsidized the shipping cost of the last batch of minis I sent out. I’m always really late assembling my minis and sending them to stores, so I thought this might be a more efficient way of getting the comic out there for now.

Yea, and you embrace the digital world pretty fully right?…you’re a Cintiq man?

Yeah, I’m scanning my pencils and inking them with my tablet, for the most part. I’ve been working this way a while. If the pages are smaller, sometimes I can lay them out digitally too.

So I’m assuming that you as a comic artist grew naturally out of a lifetime of drawing…when did that happen exactly?

I’ve always been interested in drawing comics, but didn’t really commit to it until a few years ago, before then I was still drawing and did the occasional comic, but was more focused on working as an illustrator and I was pretty directionless with all of it. Like, I knew I wanted to write jokes, and I knew I wanted to draw, but I didn’t know how to put those things together yet. I had a lousy work ethic, too. I’d only draw whenever I “felt like it,” so when I did work on comics I wasn’t really putting my all into it. Anyway, I ended up having a year where I went through a lot of lousy stuff in my personal life, and also realized that I hated all my crappy artwork up until then, and decided to actually double down and try to take drawing comics seriously.

I get the feeling you love science, all the microscopic and interior views of life in your work…this right?

I think I love fake science. I like making things up, and diagrammatic drawings, but I’m actually a big dummy with those things, and lately I intentionally try to ignore information I hear or read about insects, since I don’t want too many actual “facts” to influence Ant Comic.

(for more visit What Things Do)

You got any pets?

I don’t!

Ok…do you have any interest in androgyny? That one comic in Thickness #2, and some of your interests on your Tumblr hint towards that…certain rock stars ‘n such.

I think it shows up in my work – definitely in some of my character designs. I’m not sure if it’s androgyny specifically that I’m interested in, but I’ve drawn comics focused on identity and ornamentation and body transformation, and gender definitely becomes a part of that.

Right on…any comic recommendations to the folks out there?

I really like The End of the Fucking World by Chuck Forsman right now. it is currently my favorite ongoing comic. Lately I’ve also been liking comics by Andy Burkholder, Katie Skelly, Alex Schubert, Patrick Kyle, Noel Freibert, Jane Mai, Edie Fake and Michael Comeau.

Anything you dieing to say right now?…or did we cover most of the Deforge?

Hahaha! Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything like burning inside of me to say!

Cool, that’s that then. THANKS MAN!

Sweet! Sounds good, dude!

Thanks for your time, I appreciate the patience.

Not at all! That was cool, it was nice talking to you!