Gasp! This is the work of Malaysian artist Sheena Liam. I’ve been recording episodes for my podcast over the past couple of weeks, and one of my fabulous co-hosting experts told me about Sheena’s work. I couldn’t wait for that episode to air … and can you blame me!? Elegant drawings turned into forest green stitches, tiny details like those stripes and fabric creases and, oh my word, that free-flowing hair! Here’s a little bit from Sheena’s ABOUT page:

Sheena Liam is a Malaysian born artist and model. As a child, Liam learnt the basics of embroidery from her mother and found herself revisiting the medium time and time again as means of self expression between traveling and modeling. 

“In a strange way modeling parallels my art in the sense I often have to use body language as means of expressing a certain sort of mood. It’s no different from my embroideries.”

Lovely.

Not that you need a reminder, as I’m sure you’ll recognize the dreamy work of New York based painter Samantha French, but yes these paintings are what she’s become famous for. I’ve loved Sam’s work for years – the water, the stripes, and the scale. Well, recently she’s taken SCALE to a whole new, kinda crazy, level. She and her long time partner {in life and love}, fellow painter Aaron Hauck have taken Sam’s pools outside. You know what they say… a couple that murals together, stays together:

What the? How? Oh my. Whoa. Good job, you two!  And look, they’re still together … exhausted, I’m sure… but still together ; )

{Mural 1: Kingston, NY / Mural 2: Benelux Restaurant, Brooklyn / Mural 3: The SoNo Collection, Connecticut}

“So last year, Cj drew a series of Warhol Polaroids. She crumpled her drawings and drew them again. The crumpled drawings were then printed on t-shirts. 100 of each of the six drawings, signed and numbered. The morning of the release we received a cease and desist from the Ali Foundation that prohibited us from selling the t-shirts. The artworks themselves were transformative but we could not use the likeness of people faces on merchandise.  With 600 t-shirts on her hands, she decided to “dispose” of them around the city. Over two days, Cj dropped 100 boxes of t-shirts around the city posting the locations on her Instagram story. [Here are the images that go with 1.o] :

“To celebrate the one year anniversary, Cj decided to take it a step further by dropping 50 shirts per day in four cities over five days. Returning home to do Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and then two days in New York. This time, it was not Warhol Polaroids, but Richard Prince Instagram series. When Prince created this series there was so much of an uproar around copyright infringement so these works seemed like the perfect pieces to appropriate. The works were screenshots of Instagram posts of famous and ordinary people with a comment by Prince at the bottom. Cj chose three specific images with celebrity faces because that’s what she got done for last time.”

How’s that for a way to kick off the new season of the podcast? Yes, after an almost year long personal hiatus, ART FOR YOUR EAR is back! I’m shaking things up a little, and instead of interviewing artists about their personal journeys – from childhood till present – I’ve recruited a group of creative experts to be my co-hosts! We’ll be digging deep into the nitty gritty of being Artists {with a capital A} covering a huge range of topics from self-doubt to business plans. We’ll also laugh a lot. Speaking of which, my first co-host is the always hilarious and fabulous Ashley Longshore. Ashley requested we kick this season off by getting real. As she said, “it ain’t all sunshine and roses… but it’s about getting up and getting stuff done when it’s raining.” There were also a few fishing analogies in there too, but we’ll get to those! You can listen right up there under those pink jeans, or subscribe on iTunes.

Here’s a rundown of everything you heard about on this episode… paintings, Instagram posts, and links. Let’s start with Ashley making an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers:

Yep, that’s Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, beside her too. Okay, I know she didn’t make a big deal of this on the episode, but as a daily viewer of Seth’s show… yeah, this blew my mind. An artist on late night TV. Hell, YES! Moving on. DVF NYC:

Ah, this is such a fantastic project! Ashley has now painted 49 powerful women in collaboration with fashion design icon Diane Von Furstenberg… and I have a feeling there will be more coming. There’s just too many extraordinary women to celebrate! {Mmhm.. that’s Ashley hanging out with Gloria Steinem, Diane, and Chouchou Namagabe, an outspoken Congolese radio journalist and co-founder of the South Kivu Women’s Media Association.}

How does Ashley make all of this stuff happen? She works really, really hard… see:

Ha! Had to throw that last one in given the theme of her most recent watercolor sketchbook. If you follow her on Instagram {you do, right!?}, you’ll notice that Ashley is never not working. Most of the time she’s painting, but when she’s not actually at the easel, she’s emailing, promoting, going to meetings, or traveling. In fact, sometimes she’s traveling to New York to be the official artist-in-residence for Fashion Week. WHAT?

YASSS! Ashley was painting as models walked the runway at Christian Siriano‘s show… art and fashion, literally hand in hand.

Up next… Warren Buffet, Oprah and Rihanna:

Yep. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with gettin’ paid.

Oooh, Ashley’s NEW art book – I DO NOT COOK, I DO NOT CLEAN, I DO NOT FLY COMMERCIAL. Did we even talk about this?

I’m not sure we even got to this, but I did ask Ashley to mail me a signed copy… which I’m going to GIVE TO ONE OF YOU! It is big, beautiful, hilarious, and filled cover-to-cover with Ashley’s gorgeous work. Just leave a comment below, and I’ll draw one name and announce the winner on next week’s podcast. And with that, I’ll say thank you Ashley for her hilarious, joy-filled, honest conversation; huge thanks to THRIVE for raising their hand to help support ART FOR YOUR EAR; and of course, thank you for listening ~ Danielle

ps. This is Che Che:

Paper … that IS NOT PAPER! I’ve written about his NOT paper sculptures before, but today it’s all about “Einmal ist Keinmal”, the most recent solo show by Italian artist Daniele Sigalot. Huge balls of crumpled up failures, towering stacks that are “attempts at greatness”, and my favorite (clearly), those post-it notes! And yes, as the lilac beauty at the top of the post points out, it’s metal but looks like paper… just like all of Daniele’s fabulous sculptures. The exhibition is at Anna Laudel Gallery in their newly opened space in Dusseldorf. Here is part of the curatorial statement:

“Sigalot is aware that one cannot be successful without failures. Any creative person goes through a struggling process in order to come up with good ideas. According to him, in order to find a successful idea, at least hundreds of ideas might go to trash. Sigalot transforms this process of producing “bad” ideas into sculptures that balls and towers of wrinkled up papers in a large scale of art works … [Sigalot] appropriates his advertising background in order to create sharp and short sentences, which are critique to art market, perception of life and expectation from future. Enlarged post-it notes are part of the production of ideas but they are indeed satirical, which capture the audience with their humor.”

“…one cannot be successful without failures.” Amen! The show runs until December 14, 2019. Happy Friday.

Ahhhhh, I absolutely love the work of Oakland based artist Anna Valdez. Clearly, it’s gorgeous online, but in person? Oh my word… ridiculously vibrant, detailed, and filled with stories. If you happen to be in New York, Anna’s latest show, titled NATURAL CURIOSITY, will be opening this Saturday October 5th at Hashimoto Contemporary Here’s a part of the gallery’s description:

“The works function both as still life and self portrait, offering vantage into Valdez’s daily practice and the objects which inform it. Venus Painting, oversized and brilliantly pink, features two of the artist’s plants against a wall covered in a swirling floral design. Framed by the houseplants is a smaller, more serene still life painting, depicting a bust of Venus in cool blue tones. This self-referential painting-within-a-painting nods at the time honored tradition of oil painters breaking the fourth wall while subtly hinting at a more modern practice of image-viewing and media consumption.

The careful consideration of each detail––each hand-mixed oil paint, every carefully composed vignette––invites the viewer into the artist’s studio and practice of close observation, begging the question: when do we allow ourselves to follow our own curiosity?”

Anna will be at the gallery for a book signing of her upcoming monograph {also titled “Natural Curiosity”}, and an artist talk in conversation with curators Chad Alligood and Nina Mdivani from 5-6pm, followed by the opening reception from 6-8pm. The show runs from October 5th through October 26th, 2019.

Oooh! This is “Packed”, a cardboard wonderland by American artist Nicki Crock… and look, I think a few of the neighbors are home! Here is Nicki’s description of this beautiful pile of suburbia:

“‘Packed’ is a topsy-turvy investigation into the architecture, accumulation, and curious atmosphere of suburbia. An expansive landscape of tumbled track housing made from utilitarian cardboard, piqued by pockets of fantasy. Conveying the duality of a curious, beautiful, engineered neighborhood.

In order to complete my investigation of this cardboard community, I turned my own talented community of artists to help me create several of the fantasy interiors. Packed includes artistic contributions from Alexis Zabor, Mark Eberhardt, Nick Stull, Liz Morrison, Miriam Chon, Laurie Ihlenfield and Alex Conrad.

Three of Nicki’s projects – “Packed”, “Paper Interventions”, and her stunning “Dream House” installation {which I’ve written about before} are debuting this Saturday, October 5th, at the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, Ohio. Go!

Historical subject matter meets the contemporary art of texting! These meticulously painted works are the most recent work of Denver based painter Shawn Huckins. I’ve written about Shawn a couple of times over the past ten years, and he just keeps getting better and better! Here is part of Shawn’s bio:

“In his most notable series to date, ‘The American Revolution Revolution’ and ‘The American ___tier,’ Huckins satirizes social media, asking whether the devolution of language in the face of technological advancement weakens our ability to empathize and connect to one another in a meaningful way. By layering early American portraiture and landscape with text taken directly from the internet, Huckins confronts the priorities of our society in comparison to simpler times. What would George Washington post on Facebook? How would Lewis and Clark communicate their progress westward via Twitter?”

And I can’t help but wonder, where would they have charged their phones? I bet Sacagawea would have helped with that too. Anyway, Shawn has a show opening this Thursday, October 3rd, at Galerie Bessières in France {west of Paris}. Now, if you’re not in Paris at the moment, you can also see his work at the Tucson Museum of Art beginning October 19th, and at the Pulse Art Fair in Miami starting on December 5th. Yep, he’s busy.

LOVE! This is the work of LA based artist Genevieve Gaignard. She does all sorts of fabulous things – from mixed media and sculpture to installation work and, of course, this series of fantastic self-portraits.Here is part of Genevieve’s artist statement:

“Genevieve Gaignard is a Los Angeles based artist whose work focuses on photographic self-portraiture, sculpture, and installation to explore race, femininity, class, and their various intersections. The daughter of a black father and white mother, Gaignard’s youth was marked by a strong sense of invisibility. Was her family white enough to be white? Black enough to be black? Gaignard interrogates notions of “passing” in an effort to address these questions. She positions her own female body as the chief site of exploration — challenging viewers to navigate the powers and anxieties of intersectional identity.”

Brilliant.

Sigh. This is the dreamy mixed media sculpture of Swiss artist Juliette Sallin. Her work – the colors, those textures, the delicate elegance of it all – are absolutely poetic on their own, but then you add her artist statement:

“I am a visual artist who has always been fascinated by the way we perceive and remember the landscape through our senses. I translate this interest into sculptures made of paper, but also of silk, brass and other materials. I select them for their ability to transcribe the beauty of the elements with their shapes and colors of course, but also for their tactile qualities, and sometimes even how they sound when you touch them.

Enlightened by my own experiences of Nature, by the non-dualistic oriental philosophies (Shivaism, Taoism), the phenomenological philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, and the environmental writings of David Abram, I perceive our inner plenitude as a communion with Nature and the elements. This feeling could be reached when we open ourselves to our sensations, and let our perceptions wrap us.

During the process, I borrow various crafts’ techniques, such as embroidery, silk dyeing, paper decoupage and metal forming. By assimilating these gestures in my artistic practice, I get closer to a form of humbleness and sincerity, where patience and mastery of the mind help me to get closer to my subject and to recreate, in a subjective way, the sensations I experienced in a brief moment of fullness.

My work can be considered as part of the Slow Art movement, and offers a reflection about Time; a very fleeting one, perceived while being in communion with Nature, and another one, longer and precise, during the creation of the artwork.”

Aaaaaaand exhale. Happy Friday.

{via Create Magazine}