What: Smut! a deliciously indecent art party, featuring works by current Illustration students Lenora Jayne Thornton and Guillermo Riveros.
Where: Southside Speakeasy, 245 1st Street, Williamsburg/Brooklyn
When: Thursday, Nov. 6 from 7-10 p.m.
Category Archives: Randomly Intriguing
Quick Hit: Milton Glaser at Rubin Museum
What: Milton Glaser on: Drawing is Thinking
Where: The Rubin Museum
Located: at the corner of 17th Street and 7th Avenue
Cost: $12 (includes a pre-talk tour of the galleries)
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Time: 7:00 pm-8:30 pm
[Thanks to Frank for the info!]
From the Inbox: The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Comic artist Kevin Pyle (Blind Spot) sent us the following info recently…
With over 125,000 copies of the comic books printed and more than 100,000 sent to people who are incarcerated, their families, and to organizers and activists throughout the country, The Real Cost of Prisons Comix series is a great example of the comic as an activist and educational tool for social change.
Originally published in a comics pamphlet format, the three issues have now been collected in a perfect bound collection published by PM Press, publisher of Slingshot, the Postcards of Eric Drooker. The three chapters were written and drawn by longtime World War 3 illustrated co-editors Sabrina Jones (Isadora and Girltalk), Kevin Pyle (Blindspot and Lab U.S.A.) and Susan Willmarth (Black History for Beginners) and addresses the war on drugs, the economics of the prison boom, and the effects of incarceration on women and children.
With the U.S.A. now leading the world in incarceration, this thoroughly researched and documented collection seeks to unpack the rhetoric of punishment and expose the impact of a prison system out to control. All in the easily understood and entertaining medium of comics.
If you’re interested, you can get more information here.
Design a bumper sticker, rock the vote…
Good Magazine recently posted this cool opportunity. It combines activism AND creativity! Here are the official details:
The bumper sticker is one of the most ubiquitous and pithy forms of political expression. For the 2006 midterm elections we asked you to create an original bumper sticker on the subject of voting. Your submissions blew us away. So we’re bringing Project 001 back for the 2008 presidential election. You’re invited to get involved. Guidelines and submissions below.
We’ve updated the original Project 001 text below, and we’ll add new submissions to those from the Project’s original 2006 run.
the OBJECTIVE
To get people to vote (or at least think about it)the ASSIGNMENT
Create a bumper stickerthe PARAMETERS
3 x 9 inches, full colorthe REQUIREMENTS
The word “vote” must appear on your bumper sticker. As long as that word is included, everything else is up to you.the DIRECTIONS
Please email your art in JPEG, PDF, or Adobe Illustrator format to project001@goodinc.com, with the subject heading: ‘PROJECT No. 1.’ Make sure to include your name as you would like it to appear in the credits. We will feature submissions here until Election Day 2008.ABOUT THIS PROJECT:
This is the first in a series of what we call GOOD Projects, in which we challenge GOOD readers to come up with an idea and share it with the world.There’s a grand tradition of posters being created and posted in the streets to support political causes, movements, and candidates. Unfortunately, with everyone hanging out at the mall or watching TV these days, there aren’t a lot of opportunities left to communicate through posters in the public square (except for advertising, but that’s a whole other thing.
But there’s another tradition of free expression that is still alive: the humble bumper sticker. From my child is an honor student to support our troops, Americans have been using their cars to get messages out for a long time. And if you’ve ever been stuck in traffic, you’ve had time to contemplate quite a few messages being broadcast from the suv in front of you.
This project is simple: a bumper sticker. The message is simpler: vote. Actually, you can take some liberties with the message (as designer James Victore has done, above), as long as you include the word “vote.” Just to keep things fair, we’ve set a rule on how big the sticker should be: 3 by 9 inches.
Use whatever tools you want to make your artwork. Contributions will be viewable on-and downloadable from-this page, so anyone can print out a sticker to put on his or her car. If everything works out, somebody will see that sticker and think twice about voting the next time the midterm elections roll around.
We’ll post submissions until November 4, 2008.
You can see some of the other submissions from this year and from 2006 at the official website.
Quick Hit: Swoon at Deitch Projects
SWOON
SWIMMING CITIES OF SWITCHBACK SEA
PERFORMANCES AT DEITCH STUDIOS
SEPTEMBER 11, 12 AND 13 AT 8PM
The Swimming Cities is designed and organized by printmaker and installation artist Swoon. Collaborators include playwright Lisa D’Amour, the band Dark Dark Dark and circus composer Sxip Shirey. Propulsion systems brought by John Rinaldi and Kinetic Steam Works. Boat design and carpentry created in close collaboration with Jeff Stark, Iris Lasson, and with guidance from The Floating Neutrinos.
DEITCH STUDIOS
4-40 44TH DRIVE (ON THE EAST RIVER)
LONG ISLAND CITY, NY, 11101
(212) 343-7300
Last Minute: Hobnobbing Zmirkies
The McCaig-Welles & Rosenthal Gallery presents an exhibition of new works by the artist Roman Klonek titled “Hobnobbing Zmirkies.” In the 1970s the Kloneks moved from Poland to Germany, where he quickly became addicted to comics and cartoons. In the 1990’s he studied Graphic Arts in Duesseldorf and earned his diploma with 12 huge woodcut printings that showed the inner-workings of the human brain. In 2001 he founded the Gallery Revolver with friends in Düsseldorf/Flingern, bought a printing press and started a never ending range of woodcut printings.
Roman Klonek likes to draw heros, mostly half animal/half human, in hair-raising situations.
You may ask: How could this have happened? For heavens sake, how will this move on?
You will see snapshots full of adventure, thrill and fateful encounters captured by one of the oldest graphic techniques. Woodcut printing is based on the principle of a stamp. The reduced forms remind you of the first days of comics and cartoons. The hybrids are forced to a tragicomical chord between tradition and subculture. In general: The basic principles of the woodcut printings are rough drafts of Roman’s drawing books. These books are sort of diaries, just with drawings instead of stories. The subjects are always inspired by his personal present. So one can say the images are autobiographically encrypted.
The exhibition will be on display through September 8th, 2008, so check it out while you can!
McCaig-Welles & Rosenthal Gallery
129 Roebling Street, Suite B
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Bonus footage: Here’s a recent SoyJoy commercial animated by Roman:
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[woodcuts by Roman Klonek]
Quick Hit: Ephemeral Museum
Check out this awesome image from Lisbon’s Bohemian Quarter. According to the New York Times, it features:
numerous past and recent “works” by graffiti artists from Portugal and elsewhere are numbered and on display on the walls of old buildings. The project, called the Ephemeral Museum, offers a website, map and audioguide.
Very cool stuff, indeed!
Thanks to Steven G. for passing this along.
Quick Hit: Into the Galaxy with Michael C.Place and Pritt
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Here’s a cool video of Michael C. Place (who you might remember from Helvetica) creating art with a little paint, paper, and correction tape. It’s basically a commercial, but still–inventive illustration.
Ingo Fast–Illustrator and World Traveler
Friend of the Illustration Department and Parsons Alum–Illustrator Ingo Fast–spent almost a year traveling around the world, illustrating the whole time. When he got home, he relaxed a little while. And then set out once again, this time for thirteen months! Recently, How Magazine featured an article about his journeys and work; you can read the whole article here (just use the small arrows at the bottom to advance pages). You can also see images from his travel here and here.
Fascinating stuff!
Quick Hit: Street Artist Swoon goes down the Hudson
Carol Vogel did a quick write-up in the New York Times about Swoon, a street artist who works in Brooklyn and the NYC-area. Here’s the scoop on an interesting event happening this Friday:
SWOON, the Brooklyn street artist, strikes again, this time along the Hudson River. On Friday she is opening “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea,” a project involving a fleet of seven boats — raftlike vessels handcrafted from scrap wood and salvaged materials — that will float down the Hudson River from Troy, N.Y., to Deitch Studios in Long Island City, Queens.
Along the way the playwright Lisa D’Amour will give a performance from the decks of the rafts and from the banks of the towns along the river. Swoon is also collaborating with the circus composer Sxip Shirey, as well as a group of Bay Area artists and mechanics who call themselves Kinetic Steam Works and who are dedicated to powering kinetic artwork with steam. A band, Dark Dark Dark (accordion, cello, upright bass and banjo), will perform along the journey too.
Each of Swoon’s rafts uses alternative energy sources, including biofuels and solar power. When the journey ends in Long Island City on Sept. 7, Swoon’s “invented landscape” installations will open to the public at Deitch Studios there.
You can read Gamma Blog’s interview with Swoon here and there’s a list of other articles about her and her work here.
[art by Swoon]