Ellen C. Caldwell | ECLAIRE.me

Both Gluibizzi and Bunner are painters who find their source images online (Gluibizzi often using Tumblr and Bunner preferring Google images). Umbrico uses photography as both the medium and subject of her work, tapping sites like Craigslist, eBay, and YouTube for shared tags and similarities.

AW: I have never used pieces of actual clothing. For me, the disconnect between the final pieces and the actual garments is important. I think the work would give off a very different feeling if actual clothing was used—there’s something about striving to replicate the clothing, and then noting the inaccuracies and nuances that are created in the process of recreating something by hand.

Caroline Sharpless: I have always been interested in the built environment and its psychological implications. Where we live, where we have lived, where we want to live is so entwined in our “reality.” Architectural spaces shape the reality of events, the territory of our longings, the memories that we rely on. I look at my empty rooms as liminal spaces, pregnant with possibility, empty and full at the same time.

Thorson sheds light on her process in the following section and in her image captions, “My work plays off conventions of trompe l’oeil and the readymade, and it tests the boundaries between what we overlook and what we esteem. I’m currently working on an ongoing series entitled Bro Palace that depicts dirty socks. At the end of the day, I take off my socks and throw them on the floor. I’ve become interested in the aesthetics of this: I like the socks’ undulating forms, their stains and wear patterns, and the ‘compositions’ they make with one another on the rug.

Don’t you crave more irregularity? In a world that is growing more and more technologically programmatic, we crave the handwritten and the hand of the artist, just as it feels like both are becoming obsolete.

In Reeder’s words, “This painting is the start of a new series. Prior to my Neighborhood Series, I had done a series of paintings based on electric substations and that industrial theme was something I wanted to explore again. As with the previous series, I’m drawn to the old, the worn, and the creaky. My studio is in a converted warehouse in an older Houston neighborhood that includes rickety 1920s single-family homes next to industrial warehouses – typical for unzoned Houston! Both are rapidly being replaced by $800,000 townhouses, also typical. The warehouse that inspired this painting is near my studio and I drive by it frequently. It has rounded vents that felt very anthropomorphic to me, like giant mouths opening. It is old, rusty, has broken windows and doesn’t even register to most people who pass it. I love the very mundane nature of this building and that’s what drew me to it as subject matter.”

What I love about Sherman’s process is that it is not necessarily what you expect, if you’ve only seen his finished works. It’s a fun, investigational journey, resulting in witty, playful, and wonderful painted finishes

JH: There were a lot more fine artists this year, which I really enjoyed seeing. I know the vision for the event was for it to be more than a mural festival and this year was the most diverse. I really enjoyed meeting Wayne White, he is a genius, so to meet him and his wife Mimi and get to help him build some cardboard heads for an afternoon was special.

Gluibizzi’s style is really unique too. He pairs like groups together: friends, pornographic scenes, swinger couples, or proud stoner owners with their bongs. His light watercolor pastels feel more playful than pornographic even when poses are super-suggestive and provocative. And although his figures are missing any kind of intricate facial details that might render them more personality and uniqueness, all of his works still feel warm and intimate. Perhaps there is something in their universality that is appealing and more friendly than Google searches or Tumblr streams of stranger after stranger.

Astawa’s canvases feature a comic-like aesthetic consisting of outlined figures and two-dimensional, flattened perspective. He incorporates the traditional wayang-style painting conventions throughout, using precise details such as shape and shading of natural forms or popular characters from the Hindu epic Ramayana. He also infuses his paintings with iconography from the wayang tradition; if he wants to indicate that a figure is an important member of the royal family, then he uses an established symbol, such as a signifying headpiece, that would visually indicate this.