Getting Inspired
I’ve been a bit all over the place lately, but I’ve recommitted myself to my forest stencil that I bagan at the beginning of 2014. It’s a beast, and with all of the detail it takes forever.
I’m really starting to make ground on it and you can begin to see the trees forming.
To get myself inspired again, I hit up a few art shows in only a couple of days. I checked out Hanna Hur‘s Get Well Soon Slow Editions Book Launch at Art Metropole which was different than most shows I attend. The art book was comprised of flower drawings created while in the hospital, of arrangements visitors had left for the artist. It was pretty rad and the shop as well.
The second show I attended that night was Jon Todd‘s Outsiders at Hermann & Audrey which showcased his brand of portraiture and story telling through mixed media painting and collage. It’s alway great to see his work in person (like any artist for that matter) because you don’t get to experience the scale and depth of the materials used from a computer screen.
Then only a day later I hit up the AGO. I went to finally see the Michelangelo: Quest for Genius and Alex Colville Shows.
To be honest I walked right through Michelangelo: Quest for Genius. I’m not sure if it’s just where I’m at with my own art, but I just found it completely boring. The Alex Colville show in my opinion was amazing. Room upon room of countless works and sketches spanning his career. I found his water colours of the war really cool and thought they would inspire many concept artists with his execution.
Now that I’ve seen that Alex Colville inspired so much of The Shining I should finally watch it… this week would be perfect.
Happy Halloween
A Show & Tell
I Finally hit up the Frida & Diego Show at the AGO on the weekend. It was alright. I can appreciate it, but I’m not huge into Frida‘s stuff. Diego, I wasn’t framiliar with his work before, and I was pretty down with some of his stuff. The guy pulled off some pretty crazy murals in his day. I couldn’t grab any pics in the show so if you click their names above it will jump you to a google search of their work.
Afterword I went in search of the Evan Penny Exhibit which I’ve wanted to see since it opened and has also been up for a while.
There should be a warning before you check out this show…”This exhibit will mess your depth perception up enough to walk sideways and feel like you’re on a boat for the next 5 minutes.”
This cats stuff was off the chain. It was hyperrealistic, but oversized. Everything was massive, and 50% of the sculpture was stretched or distorted in a way that completely messed with your eyes.
Such as this one.
This one below I actually saw about 10 years ago at Museum London. It was cool to see it agian, but in different context. I could also see that light plays huge into these sculptures. In London this dude looked 100% real, the way he was lit. In Toronto he looked a bit grey in his flesh tone, but it was more than likely the wall colour reflecting on him….still sick as hell.
I realised as I was creating this post you might not want to follow an Evan Penny with your own sculpture, but let me tell you… if you were to create cardboard sculture, you would aspire to make work like this!
Booyah! Hahaha, doesn’t look that glamourous after Monseur Penny’s tres dopeness, but I’m happy with how it’s going. Right now it’s standing at about 10 inches tall. It’s taking longer than expected, but what else is new. The plan is to make about 5 of these bad boys which will lead into a larger group of work.
I’d like to have the bulk of this figure done by the start of next week so I can get working on the next phase….if only I had some of those keebler elves that shoe maker had.
Check Out This Show: Ben Sellick
I have been working my ass off at my real job lately. Loads of overtime. So nothing art related to update you on that’s my work. But I have made some time to get take in some art.
Last week I made a quick stop at Awol Gallery to see their Season Opener Garrison Creek Bat Co. show. It was packed so I didn’t so I bounced after only being there a little bit.
On Saturday I made it out to the Picasso exhibit at the AGO before it opened to the public. Morgan and I are members and free preview tickets are an awesome perk of the membership. The place was rammed. Pretty nice set of his work so I’m going to check it out again in couple of weeks.
This week I’m going to check out a good friend of mine’s show. Ben Sellick is presenting a retrospective of 10 years worth of art. I’ve been chatting with him while he’s been gearing up for this, and I know he’s put his heart into this show.
He’s a sick artist and has been chosen by #Hashtag Gallery’s to exhibit in their first solo showing (they opened a only few weeks ago.)
Details:
- Ben Sellick: A Retrospective
- Grand Opening: Thursday May 3rd 7pm
- #Hashtag Gallery, 801 Dundas Street West, Toronto
- Click here for Facebook Event
Hope to see you there.
bradleitch 