Los Angeles based artists/designers Nikolai and Simon Haas are twins, known as The Haas Brothers. They create everything from four-legged furry furniture to oversized golden mushrooms… but it’s their alien-like ceramic pieces that have stolen my heart.

“The Haas Brothers unapologetically embrace craft, with a keen attention to materiality that is highly emphasized in the realm of design. The ceramic vases are exquisitely crafted through a process that mimics both natural accretion and 3D printing, by brushing slip over the form, layer by layer, until the vessel appears to grow clay tentacles.” – The Bass Museum, 2019

Clay tentacles … ah yes, the heart wants what the heart wants.

“Fluorescent Fragments” … I loved this joyful, vibrant installation the second I saw it, but now these broken shards feel different. This is the work of American artist Devra Freelander. On July 1, 2019, at the very young age of 28, Devra was hit and killed by a truck while riding her bike in Brooklyn. Heartbreaking and senseless. This is the long list of artistic accomplishments Devra had already achieved. It is a terrible tragedy that she can no longer add to this:

Devra Freelander makes sculptures and videos that explore climate change and geology from an ecofeminist and millennial lens. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016, and her BA with honors in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2012. Freelander has exhibited with Times Square Arts, CRUSH Curatorial, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the Affordable Art Fair, the New York Design Center, the RISD Museum, Zoya Tommy Contemporary, the White Gallery, and the Fjuk Arts Centre. She is a founding member of MATERIAL GIRLS, and a recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. She has participated in residencies with Sculpture Space (Utica, NY April-May 2019) Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY November-December 2018), the Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard, Norway, October 2017), Socrates Sculpture Park (Long Island City, NY, 2017), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace (New York, NY 2016-2017), the Fjuk Arts Centre (Husavik, Iceland, July 2015), and Virginia Commonwealth University Summer Studio Program (Richmond, VA, June-August 2013). She is represented by CIRCA Gallery in Minneapolis, MN.

All of my love to her friends and family. RIP, Devra.

Pneuhaus is a Rhode Island based design collective {Matt Muller, Augie Lehrecke, Levi Bedall} that focuses on “the mastery of all things inflatable”. Yep, clearly! Their most recent, totally breathtaking project is titled Pnit:

“Pnit magnifies the most basic knit stitch pattern so that this elegant and simple strength can be seen and the mechanics of it understood. Knit fabrics are a part of our daily lives, they cloth us and keep our beds warm; and yet as many of us lose track of the way the objects we interact with are made it can be easy to overlook the intrinsic structural beauty of fabrics.”

Pnit was created for PVDFest, Providence’s signature art festival, and will be illuminated in all its knitted glory throughout the summer of 2019. Happy Monday.

A cardboard car … CARdboard. Okay, sorry. This is the work of American artist Shannon Goff. She does fabulous things with clay as well, but this car – the 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V, to be specific – stopped me in my tracks. That dashboard? The wheels? That trunk!? Detail and craftsmanship that would make her grandfather proud. You see when Shannon was little, her grandfather bought one of these American beauties (in metallic turquoise no less), and she remembers “the Mark V’s smooth ride conjuring up the sensation of floating on a cloud.” Here is a little more info about this project:

“‘Miles To Empty‘ (2015) explores the car as a metaphor for the complexities of American life in general, and for my own experiences as a native of the city of Detroit specifically.” … and an extract from the exhibition text … “In ‘Miles to Empty’, Goff reflects on how our increasing reliance on adaptive technologies has diminished the routines of human industry, and is changing our aesthetic sensibilities. Dauntingly laborious, challenging in concept and ambitious in scope, this monumental sculpture embodies Goff’s immense energy and her love of making. Goff demonstrates a high level of skill and ingenuity, which used to be present in all manufacturing before the production line eradicated first the hand, then the whole individual. Each part of the car is uniquely made, and in making it, she has imagined the many hands that collectively fabricated the vehicles on the Lincoln company assembly line.”

Gold! … or metallic turquoise.

Mmmmm, yummy! From ceramics to collages, dumplings to beer… these are just a few of the pieces included in “Potluck”, a totally stacked group show opening at Hashimoto Gallery in San Francisco {804 Sutter St} this Saturday, June 29th from 6 to 9pm. I’ll give you one guess to figure out the theme:

“Inspired by community and connections created around food, this dynamic group show brings together artists working in ceramics, drawing, painting and beyond for a delicious exploration in our relationships with food.

Featuring 28 artists from the San Francisco Bay Area, nationally and internationally, [Potluck] includes a diverse range of experiences culturally, emotionally and conceptually. Drawing inspiration from the community created around gathering for a meal and the preparation of food, each artist brings unique memories and histories embedded in what we eat. Each piece offers the viewer a personal perspective of food, ranging from favorite dishes and places, intimate domestic scenes, celebratory occasions and nostalgic recollections.”

Featuring new works by: Laura Berger | Sarah Carolan | Jeffrey Cheung | Lauren Corden | Brian de Graft (1st shown above) | Amanda Dunham | Nicole Dyer | Dan Gluibizzi | Casey Gray | Liz Hernandez | Celia Jacobs | Sam Keller (3rd shown above)| Katie Kimmel | Ness Lee | Quentin Monge | Rebecca Ness | Kellie Orr | Hilda Palafox | Pedro Pedro | Petites Luxures | Joel Daniel Phillips | Stephanie H. Shih (4th shown above) | Jessica So Ren Tang | Lorien Stern (2nd shown above) | Anna Valdez (5th shown above) | Chelsea Wong | Joey Yu

ps. “Potluck”, curated by Dasha Matsuura, runs until July 20th, 2019.

Colorful, whimsical, with twists and turns that make my heart race … yes, all of these pieces make me want to ride imaginary rollercoasters while eating fruity candy. This is the most recent work of Australian artist Lynda Draper. I wrote about her way back in 2010. Her ceramic pieces were fabulous then, but the way she has pushed her work in the past nine years is even more fabulous … and others agree. This past Friday, June 21st, Lynda was awarded the very prestigious Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award, which “celebrates and promotes contemporary Australian artists working in the ceramic medium, with $50,000 in prize money.” Amazing! Here is a description of her work found on Gallerysmith {Melbourne}:

[Lynda Draper’s] work explores psychological scenarios often representing a journey within the dualities of life and death, reality and fantasy, past and present. She is interested in the relationship between the mind and material world and the related phenomenon of the metaphysical. Creating art is her way of attempting to bridge the gap between these worlds.

{Thanks to Kylie Gusset of @noticingceramics for letting me know about this exciting news! Congratulations, Lynda!}

Can you imagine walking into a Los Angeles laundromat and seeing a couple of iridescent mermaid tails hanging out of the rinse cycle? That’s where this beautiful and bizarre work by LA based artist Olivia Erlanger started out in 2016.  Last month, however, her fabulous tails/washers were at Frieze New York {with And Now Gallery}. Obviously they were a crowd favorite, because mermaids!

*Final, fabulous image above was found on Instagram via @imastudio

Gasp! As a person who loves forgotten bits and pieces, my garden, and vibrant color… well, these pieces are everything. This is the work of Swiss artist Mathilde Tinturier. I could go on and on, but the description on her site does a lovely job. Here is just a portion translated into English:

There are thousands of them, lost materials, trash, abandoned twigs, umbellifers, scotches, confetti, dandelions, Christmas balls, thrown at random into a world that is no longer theirs. What unites them? Nothing. What are they whispering to us? Nothing. What do they tell us about the world? Few things … What unites them? Chance and necessity, a secret order that Mathilde for each work reinvents and gives all these forgotten objects a place, a voice, a presence. 

Beautiful.

Move over bologna and cheese… here comes silicone, urethane plastic, and acrylic. Mmm, yummy! These verrrrrrrry tall sculptures are the latest work from American artist Justin Richel. If you recognize his name, it’s because I wrote about his paintings – a whole bunch of times – years ago {he was featured in my first book, “Creative Block”, too}.  His paintings from back then also involved stacks of 2D stuff, but in the past couple of years Justin has taken his work to new heights… sorry, I tried to resist but it was RIGHT THERE. I’m always in awe of artists who push themselves to evolve. So inspiring, and very exciting to watch!

Candy-colored balloons, magically stacked one on top of another. You’d think they could just float away… until you find out that they’re bronze! These sculptures (stone, urethane paint on bronze) are the work of Korean artist Gimhongsok, from his series titled “Untitled (Short People)”. All of these images are from his show, “Dwarf, Dust, Doubt” that was shown at Tina Kim Gallery (New York) in the fall of 2018. Here are some words from the gallery’s site that explains these gorgeous pieces:

“[In] Dwarf, Dust, Doubt, Gimhongsok has highlighted how society casually assigns values to objects using terms to describe their size, weight and how we perceive them. In isolating these arbitrary values, he questions the political and social judgment implied by their use, rejecting the cavalier way people treat objects upon seeing them … each work from Untitled (Short People) is comprised of blown up balloons that are cast in bronze. Varying in size, the artist enlists friends and acquaintances to blow up the balloons finding poetic resonance in the capture of human breath. Divided into groups of four and six balloons, the entire series represents a combined effort of more than one hundred people.”

Sigh. Beautiful.