Calling All UK Artists & Designers- Fresh Blood Hunt Art Competion

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 Drawings of beauty, fantasy, And Violence

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.”

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Tim Bergstrom & Denise Kupferschmidt @ Halsey McKay

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.

CAROL PRUSA’s ultra-detailed Fiber OpticDome Drawings

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.”

Click To Collect: Lyndsey Lesh

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!

Artist Interview: Michael DeForge Is King Trash

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.

Sarah Weber’s Aggressive Burns

Sarah Weber is a Chicago based artist that is making some really nice work right now. Aggressive graphite mark making, cutting ,burning, layers of  of vellum and globs of gold coalesce into really physically engaging drawings. Bouncing between subtle reference and pure abstraction,and producing a lot of work, this is an artist to keep your eye on…More after the jump

Justin Brown Durand’s Art Giants

Justin Brown Durand is an artist/musician from Northampton MA… and he has some seriously strange output.  Pink deformed giants dancing naked with swollen hands and little faces.  Twisted distorted characters that look a tad bit insane. See more of Justin’s work after the jump listen to his amazingly weird music too at Heart Pump Arts.