Robot Love

A favoriate place of mine, a guilty pleasure is a store. It really is an aweful admission. For all my hippie lovin, pot throwin, gronola cruchin', tendencies one of my favoriate places is a consumer based non-environmentally friendly polyvinal crazy store. Where grown adults shamelessly trade their hard earned dollars for colorful objects pressed into the shapes of figurines. Toys.



Action, or lack of action figures that are desingned by artists in Asia, and North America, produced in China, where labor conditions are poor, to people like me who just cant help themselves. I know this and I still can't stop myself from indulging in happy meal sized figurnes with strange expressions smoking or expressing some kind of emotion through the cannon of colorful plastic typically reserved for childrens toys.

To analyze the act on a rational level is silly. I just like them.



Created by artists and designers the term "designer toys" applies to toys and collectibles that are produced in limited editions (10-2000). Illustraters and graffiti artists are also sometimes involved in the strange amalgomation of toy creation. Illustraters like Jeff Soto work in conjunction with this scene, allong with poster artists like Frank Kozik who designed posters for Neil Young, Nine inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Beck, and The Melvins. Kozik now responsible for for the Smorkin' Labbits series by KidRoBot.



So maybe I'm not the only one who's been sucked into the world of Robot Love.

Surface

I've been thinking allot about the surface of my work. Putting it off, drawing on my pots with pencil. I got this idea the other day to look at some pinstripe designs, and then got excited after spending some time on YouTube today. I think that some (NOT ALL) of these kind of designs are maybe appropriate for some application in my work. They have a kitschy quality as well as looking both precise and hand made. I don't know exactly yet but thought that could operate like some "contemporary" delft patterning. In addition to that the YouTube videos make it look fun to learn.

So I've spent some time reading about history, and will continue to look for some older images. I want to see a variety of decades.

back to blogging!

You'll have to forgive me for mistakenly posting on the main page last week instead of my own blog. Here is another shot at the video link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPw6MKhgtdo

More from the past

The Past

I'm coming to the conclusion that I have the tendency to search well beyond my own backyard.
I wanted to take this week to look back and spend some time with some images that I've taken while walking, traveling, spending time in places I've loved. While doing so I wanted to pull photographs and be observant of tendencies that I have when photographing landscape and subjects. I thought it might be worth while to spend some time connecting my own dots. Nature, and industry, saturation of the visual field (texture). I also wanted to post some imagery that is of some personal importance to me and that is inspiring in subject matter and essence.

This is from my most recent time in New Zealand.

What do they have in common?...Nothing

Klein Reid, Stephen Dixion, and Tupperware

I did like the Klein Reed forms, but hated the pretentious object based stuff for stuffs sake.

I have also continued to look at plastic vessels from Tupperware and found this comparison funny:

Finally I feel torn about surface on my pots, but I also like work that is somewhat political or overt in its nature. So I've been looking at the work of Stephen Dixion. I'm not sure what I "think" but I do enjoy the layering of surface, and the juxtaposition of historical and contemporary and his use of kitch.