Ooh! These gorgeous wobbly portraits are from a series titled, “Old Enough To Be My Mother”, and are the work of American artist Nathan Ritterpusch. I wrote about this series in 2012, and my heart literally just skipped a beat when I saw that he had created new pieces in 2016! LOVE.

Intricate ink drawings on gorgeous dyed paper… all of these pieces are from a series, titled “There Is No Road” by American artist Jeanne Heifetz. I absolutely love her statement about this work:

“… As a child, I was always afraid of making the wrong decision. Selecting from many possible options was torture unless I could find a convincing rationale for my choice, some external justification beyond my own desire. Fear made me superstitious. I enlisted numerology, mythology, arcane patterns of all sorts to confirm the “rightness” of my decisions.

This body of work confronts decision-making head on. Still craving a system, I borrow one from nature: Plateau’s laws, which govern the branching and growth of many natural forms. Within that system, I improvise, lighting out for the territory without a map. Each drawing grows by slow accretion as I allow myself (or force myself) to make hundreds of tiny sequential decisions…”

So. Good. What a beautiful challenge to give herself… as are the results.

Gorgeous. This is the work of Baghdad-born, San Francisco-based artist Hayv Kahramana. All of these oil on panel pieces are from her 2013 series, Extimacy. I love this quote she gave in a New York Times article about this work:

“Having these women violently detaching their limbs, for me, is very reminiscent of the psyche of a refugee, and that sense of detachment you have from your land that you’ve had to leave behind. That’s the idea of the diasporic women, who are fragmented, or cyborgs almost. They’ve had to give up part of themselves.”

Brilliant, and beautiful.

Portraits that pop right off the paper they’re painted on! These candy-hued ladies are the work of New York based artist Robert Otto Epstein {who by the way has a degree in political science, and oh yes, also a law degree… hm, I feel like there’s a story there}. This is his latest figurative series… they make me want to call all of my girlfriends so we can wear our watermelon shirts, drink cosmopolitans and argue over who gets to be Carrie / who has to be Miranda?

So, I’m sitting here trying to think of a way to explain what India born, Sydney based paper artist Gunjan Aylawadi does… but in all honesty I really have no idea how she does what she does. Let’s just say there is a lot of paper, woven to look like intricate/patterned tapestries. Yes. She makes paper do this?! But don’t worry, she’s going to tell us how. Listen right up there under that insane “work in progress”, or you can subscribe on iTunes.

First up, this is the original she recently sent to me. Mind. Blown…

Yeah, that’s in my house!? The photographs are fantastic, but I wish I could explain what it looks like in person. So, so, so good.

We talked about her love of geometry {perhaps a holdover from her computer science degree… computer science?!}, and I thought this piece, and the making of this piece, was a beautiful example to show how these perfect geometrics come to life:

Cra. Zy. Have I mentioned yet that she’s completely self-taught, and in fact, invented this technique? Yes. She did. Again, my mind is blown. And while we’re on that topic, I’ll show you this beauty:

It’s paper. I dunno. What I find even funnier, is that Gunjan claims she’s “not a very patient person”… UM, what!? She told me that in day-to-day life she is very impatient, but once she found this work, and while she’s immersed in it she becomes another person. She said it feels like someone else takes over, almost like a form of meditation. Here she is in action working on two HUGE “carpet” pieces:

Yeah. Not very patient. Right.

And now, on to the text pieces we were talking about… love it!

As if her technique isn’t brilliant enough, Gunjan’s reason for doing these text pieces just adds to the awesome-ness of this work. Such a smarty-pants.

Now, as usual, the speed round produced a few gems. Turns out she refuses to eat Vegemite, but claims to be a huge fan of anything dairy. Well, according to her Instagram feed, she wasn’t kidding:

Yep! Ice cream from around the world! Paris, Sydney, and Japan {and there are a lot more where these came from!}. If I make it to Sydney next year, I’m so making her take me to wherever that blue ice cream came from! Oh, another speed round tidbit – she would love to show her very analog work in Silicon Valley, so if you’re listening Facebook, Twitter, Google etc… CALL HER.

Ok, thanks so much to Gunjan for sharing her insanely inspiring story with us, thanks to Saatchi Art for supporting the episode, and thanks to you for listening! There will be more art for your ear next weekend. xo

Other links:

1. Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk
2. Japanese Paper Place, Toronto
3. Broken Hill, Australia
4. Munga Park, Australia

Oh, yes. Amazing flowers inspired by pencil shavings… but Japanese designer/artist Haruka Misawa went one step further than just being inspired by the pretty petals made by her pencil sharpener. She printed paper with pattern, wound that paper into tight cylindrical scrolls, and then put her sharpener to work… the result… her own unique, one-of-a-kind blossoms. Happy. Friday. Mic drop.

{via Colossal}

Yes, yes, yes. Strange compositions, beautifully cut found images… it’s work like this that makes me want to drop everything and run to my studio. This is the weird & wonderful work of Netherlands based collage artist Nicola Kloosterman. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and cut up some magazines. Immediately.

Oh. All of these beautifully composed photographs are from a series titled, quite appropriately, “Home of Art”. YES, I love homes of art! This is the work of Pedro Correa, a Spanish fine art photographer based in Brussels. Here are his words about this series:

Home of Art: A personal view on the very special atmosphere that reigns in museums and that allows art to live and blossom, its “guardians of art” and in general the way art is presented and approached.

So good. I obviously love wandering through galleries, so these images were calling to me for that reason, but, what captivates me about his entire portfolio … Pedro’s unique view of the world. What. An. Eye.

Just to be clear, I hate deviled eggs. As in, HATE… until I saw this beautiful little morsel. This is the work of South Korean born, New York based Mie Yim. Tiny food drawn in pastel on Martha Stewart paint chips! LOVE. She has a delicious Instagram feed full of these yummy little things, and it was actually kind of hard not to post all of them. Yep, anyone that can make me like the look of a deviled egg is clearly very talented.

{Thanks to Jeanne Heifetz for sending me the link to Mie’s tiny work}

Quiet, beautiful, mundane, everyday-ness… that makes my heart skip a beat. This is the work {oil on masonite} of American painter Mike Ryczek. Sigh. Perfect for a Monday.