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#artistspotlight
kidmograph · 1 year
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RE:BORN 2022
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davidwfloydart · 1 year
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The Silent Whispers by Misna Chanu 🎨 #artistspotlight #whispersofoursouls #whisperoftheheart #soundofsilence (at Catalina Foothills, Arizona) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnup-AUPLTfGo80Bd9PS252qVBgL8L-ASSiQmg0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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sheishine · 1 year
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Behanceポートフォリオのインスタで「編みキノコブローチ」をシェアして頂きました! My knitted mushroom brooches were featured on @behance portfolio Instagram! #水島ひね #hinemizushima Posted @behance Moodboard inspired the fantastical and mystical world of fungi 🍄 Featuring work by @daninjafx, @hellosongbom, @songhkang, @bandaminta, @marielamezquita, @sheishine, @marijatiurina, @ionelaapetrii, @dashaplesen, and more. Full moodboard in our bio link.⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ #behance #artistspotlight #moodboard #fungi #mushroom #3d #3dart #motiondesign #3ddesign #animation #illustration https://www.instagram.com/p/CpjpZXauDej/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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studioahead · 6 months
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Artist Spotlight: John Gnorski
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When we asked John Gnorski what on earth are EARTH BABIES, he took us on a subterranean journey to meet them. Or at least that's how it felt. Hearing John speak about his creative process certainly takes you all over, even into your subconsciousness, about which he has a lot to say. His art is full of strange landscapes, strange portraits, strange figures. Our current fave is one from his Clouds Roll By Like A Train In The Sky series not because of its great title, or because the clouds might actually be birds or blossoms, but because peeking through the print's ink is the grain of the woodblock, reminding us of the materiality that grounds all our work, no matter how wildly dreamt.
Studio AHEAD: John, your bio is mysteriously pithy: “Born in Alexandria, Virginia, living/ working in Point Reyes Station, CA.” What brought you to the other side of the country? 
John Gnorski: I moved from the East Coast more or less on a whim in 2007, picking up and leaving the Hudson Valley, which had been my home for 6 years at that point, and ending up in Portland, OR. Luckily it was still a pretty affordable town at the time so I was able to piece together a nice existence doing carpentry for a day job (which would indelibly inform my art practice) and making art and music every other waking hour. I found a great community, fell in love with the truly epic landscape of the West, and at some point the West Coast just became home. 
After many happy years up in Oregon, my partner Katie, who is a filmmaker, decided to get a master’s degree and that instigated our (truly auspicious) move to the Bay. One thing led to another, and we were lucky enough to find a house to rent in Pt. Reyes Station. Before long we found a great community out here and we hope to stay for as long as we can. 
I do miss the East sometimes, especially the sort of archetypal procession of seasons there with crisp autumn days, deep winters, and summer thunderstorms and lighting bugs. That said, I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to live than here on the Northern California coast. I’m grateful every day to be here and I often think to myself how did I even end up here in this incredible place? 
Studio AHEAD: Has Northern California come to influence the materiality of your work? 
John Gnorski: Absolutely. In a very literal sense I tend to use native wood in my work whenever I can, but the influence goes beyond the physical material to a particular sensibility that seems to be shared by a lot of Northern California artists across generations and styles. I find that, at least in my experience, there’s less concern out here about the whole (false) binary of art vs. craft than I experienced as a young artist on the East Coast (particularly in the vicinity of New York). 
I think that this attitude has, thankfully, changed quite a bit pretty much everywhere in the years since I moved west, but nevertheless California has a long history of breaking down established conventions and categories. Ceramics and wood sculpture, for instance, have been taken seriously out here for generations in a way that hasn’t historically been the case out east. 
This anti-hierarchical spirit famously permeates a lot of the culture out here. A nice example is the great DIY building tradition of the “hippies” and other folks who took to the rural areas of the coast, starting in the middle of the last century, and made truly beautiful, strange, and inspired homes out here that flout both architectural convention and often the laws of physics. I’ve had the pleasure of helping to restore some buildings like this up in Mendocino and, to bring this full circle, some of the little scraps and bits I’ve taken with me from those projects have become pieces of my own work, along with the lessons of those often anonymous artist/builders who made, intentionally or not, amazing sculpture-houses. 
There’s also a very strong Japanese influence on the aesthetics of so much California art/craft/design that’s found its way into my work. Would I be making these very Japanese/Noguchi-inspired lanterns if I hadn’t ended up here? I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing this place has informed them quite a bit. 
Studio AHEAD: Don't get Homan started on Noguchi. He's obsessed. What is your relation to abstraction? Many of your sculptures and drawings almost seem to form recognizable figures, but not quite. 
John Gnorski: With very few exceptions everything I make is representational even if it’s hard to decipher the image in the finished piece. I’m looking at a little watercolor painting right now that would almost certainly appear totally abstract to anyone but me, but I know that I made it in the Mojave desert and I can see the particular landscape that I was trying to depict—the horizon, the heat ripples, little constellations of scrubby desert plants—though it’s basically reduced to visual symbols. 
It’s not necessarily a formal decision I’ve made to avoid pure abstraction, it’s more of a narrative one. Having concrete subject matter is an important starting point for me, one method of avoiding the potentially paralyzing experience of confronting the blank page. So even if the finished picture or object ends up miles away from where it began, I still start by saying to myself, for instance: I’m going to draw a lizard sunning itself on a stump or, as in one of the pictures I’m working on now, I’m going to draw a bather in Tomales Bay stooping down to look at a bat ray. One might end up a pretty faithful manifestation of the concept while another might go through the ringer of some process and turn out as a loopy line drawing that barely hints at its source material. 
I sometimes do the same thing when I write songs, coming up with a title first and then writing into that. The two even intersect as in my continuing series of cloud pictures all of which are titled “Clouds Roll By Like A Train In The Sky” which is also the name of a song I wrote. Without the title those pictures read as geometric abstraction, but with the title they become clouds. Context is so important! 
Studio AHEAD: Those cloud pictures, and also your Rorschach-like quarantine notebooks/bird and butterfly prints, give room to the subconscious. How do you get into that mental space when creating that allows for the subconscious to take over? 
John Gnorski: Allowing room for the subconscious is really important to me because at the end of the day it’s very often the accidental/unintentional things that really resonate with me. To clarify, when I say subconscious in this context what I’m really talking about is allowing forces outside of my control to work in the picture/object. I try to maintain a decent level of competence when it comes to the basics of art-making, but I also try to use whatever “technique” I’ve developed to allow chance and accident to do their wonderful work. I know that nothing I could map out perfectly from start to finish will be nearly as interesting as something that transforms in ways I never could have anticipated through the process of the making. 
This sensibility is very visibly present in the Rorschach-style pieces and a lot of my sketchbooks and works on paper, but it’s there in less obvious ways in all of my work. The lanterns, for instance, might appear as though each little bit of joinery was carefully plotted out, but in reality they are built based on pretty simple line drawings and constructed in an organic manner. I’ll have a basic shape I want to achieve, but the way everything is put together is done on the fly. Sometimes a connection might become redundant structurally as a piece grows, but I’ll keep it in there as a remnant of the process. All the little false steps and unintentional gestures become a part of the piece and give it a complexity I wouldn’t have achieved if I’d set out with a dialed-in plan and done things in the most elegant and minimal way possible. 
The same is true of the ink on paper pieces which begin life as charcoal drawings and allow chance to seep in throughout the process. I rub the drawings onto plywood “plates” which transfers them in an imperfect but legible manner. I’m also using multiple plates and pieces of paper to allow for misalignments, and the plates themselves are of a type of plywood that tends to have an active grain that sometimes splinters or “runs”—interrupting the carved line in often surprising ways. I hand print the plates, which produces unexpected textures, and then go back into the image with more ink or sometimes collage or pastel. So in the end what began as a pretty clear and maybe even graceful line drawing becomes, through the welcoming-in of chance, something a bit more nuanced and awkward, full of special little moments on its physical surface that come out of that totally not conscious place of process. 
Studio AHEAD: Tell us about EARTH BABIES, your collaboration with Kate Bernstein. We are particularly interested in how collaboration impacts the creative process—we have many ideas about this at Studio AHEAD and those ideas are constantly evolving. Do you find it easier to work alone or with a partner? 
John Gnorski: EARTH BABIES is the conceptual tent that shelters all the collaborative work that Katie and I do together. It started as a music/installation performance at an amazing event called Spaceness that friends of ours organized for 5 years on the coast of Washington at a place called the Sou’wester. 
Spaceness was a very free-form community art-making event that revolved around the concept of the unknown, and often featured work relating to outer space or unexplored worlds. It was held annually in early spring—the very darkest and dreariest time of the year in the Pacific Northwest—and it featured music, dance, video, radio, you name it. Folks would work for months on their contributions, and it was so beautiful: community coming together to make their own entertainment and help each other through dark days. For me, this is the best case scenario for art-making. I like to think of it as subsistence art—art for fun and joy and also for survival. It honestly makes me tear up thinking about it, and I often cried during the performances there. It just moves me so much to see what people can make with little to no budget out of the simplest materials like cardboard, scrap wood, clip lights, fabric, words: whole worlds that can really put you under a spell, transport you, communicate a message, and make time and space for our imaginations to nourish one another. 
Anyway (and forgive me, this is going to get maybe a little esoteric) Katie and I, inspired by a trip to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, came up with this idea of a whole culture of beings living deep under the surface of our Earth called “Earth Babies.” We first wrote and recorded songs based on this imaginary world, and over the years we made various installations: the “Healing Machine” which was a sound bath in a hand-built A-frame in the woods and the “Hopler Archive,” a fictional natural history museum. 
At this point, EARTH BABIES is the name we use whenever we want to make something creative without the burden of our “actual” identities getting in the way. It’s our shared alter ego that allows for maximum creative expression. 
As for collaboration generally, as much as I love spending time alone in my studio, my ideal art making ratio would be 25% solitary practice, and 75% collaboration. I love the energy of working with other artists, performers, thinkers, etc., and I think that collaboration leads to amazing things no one ever could have come up with on their own. I also think that community events like DIY music shows, theater, potlucks and ephemeral art exhibits in informal spaces are the most heartfelt and wonderful forms of art —purely collaborative and collectively authored. Again, it’s that idea of “subsistence art”. If none of us had to worry about selling our work I think there would naturally be a lot less emphasis on individual style and a lot less concern about authorship. Maybe collaboration would be the new norm and we could all contribute a verse to the big song we sing to sustain ourselves. 
Studio AHEAD: What's your favorite music to listen to while making art? You are also a DJ and musician.
John Gnorski: Katie and I host a radio show on West Marin’s community radio station KWMR every other Sunday morning, which has really made us feel connected to the community out here. 
I listen to a huge variety of music in my studio from atmospheric/ambient music like Brian Eno and Hiroshi Yoshimura to soul to Neil Young to Terry Riley to Alice Coltrane to Lucinda Williams. I’ll often just rely on my cassette library to take a break from the digital realm, which features a lot of mixtapes from Mississippi Records, my favorite record store/label. But if I had to choose only one thing to listen to while making art it would be Ornette Coleman. I’ve listened to a collection of his recordings called Beauty Is A Rare Thing many thousands of times over the years in every studio, basement, garage, and shed I’ve worked in. His music has every color and emotion and gesture in it, and it radiates compassion and energy and love. It’s also difficult at times and can go from soothing to jarring pretty quickly, much like life. When I listen to a song like “I Heard It Over The Radio” I hear everything from voices harmonizing singing a folk song to animals making raucous calls to wind in the trees and rattling subway cars. 
Studio AHEAD: What can you do in music that you can’t do in the plastic arts? And vice versa? 
John Gnorski: For me the boundaries are pretty porous. As I alluded to earlier with the titling of my work, there’s a lot of crossover and dialogue between disciplines in my practice. It’s easier for me to come up with analogies. A skittering, hesitant line in a drawing conveys something similar to a thin, airy flute or a tentative phrase on a piano. Take a lyric like this one by Leonard Cohen: 
Nancy was alone
looking at the late, late show
through a semi-precious stone. 
It conjures all kinds of atmospheres and emotional states like a Rothko or an Alice Neel portrait. Whenever I hear Alice Coltrane play the harp I think of someone painting with absolutely every color on their palette. 
Music, however—live music—does have the wonderful quality of being ephemeral that most plastic arts don’t possess. It allows you to really inhabit the moment if you choose to. As a performer you’re also able to collaborate with an audience in a way that’s much harder to do with visual art. If you can engage an audience, or are part of an engaged audience, it can really make the experience special, with everyone kind of rooting for the performers and contributing their attention and energy to make the whole experience really lovely. 
Then I suppose there are some stories that can be more eloquently told in pictures or gestures than in sound. Light can be captured really evocatively in a drawing or a painting and used to make form in the realm of sculpture. There are some feelings you can only get, some ideas that can only be conveyed, when you’re in the presence of a physical thing. 
Studio AHEAD: I want to end on the very first photo posted on your Instagram. It’s a poster that says: “Now is the time to do your life’s work.” How do you or how do you try to live this mantra? 
John Gnorski: I made this picture as a kind of personal affirmation to hang on my studio wall many years ago. A lot of people who came through commented on it and it seemed like most everyone appreciated the reminder. 
My idea of my “life’s work” changes all the time, but the constant is a commitment to making things that I hope will tell a story or convey a feeling clearly and with heart. At times it can seem like art is some kind of luxury or commodity, but then I remember how it has truly illuminated and influenced and given hope and shape to my life and the lives of a lot of other people over the entire course of human existence. I think that being an artist is as noble a vocation as any, and more helpful to humanity than a lot of things I could be doing with my time. 
I’m in the fortunate position of being able to primarily make a living by making art and other art-adjacent objects these days, but in the recent past when I would be laboring away at a carpentry gig, I would think of that image and that mantra and remember that I had some kind of calling beyond the job that paid the bills—a “life’s work” that couldn’t be defined by an hourly rate—and that the artist work deserved and demanded my commitment. I still believe that if I show up for the muse or universe or whatever you want to call it everyday, ready and willing to work, that I’ll be able to somehow keep doing this as my life’s work and hopefully make things that help other people see life or hear it or survive and take joy in it. 
Studio AHEAD: We love that. We always start with asking our clients how they live. It's so important. Can you give us three creative people/places/cultural forces based in Northern California that we should take note of?
John Gnorski: Cole Pulice is a musician/composer living in the East Bay whose music often keeps me company in the studio. We also listen to a piece of theirs almost every day on the short drive from our house to the trail that we walk to check on the animal neighbors and greet the day. 
Bolinas/Pt.Reyes/Inverness DIY art/music scene This is an acknowledgement of the type of creative community vitality that to me is the heart of sustaining art-making—artists, musicians, writers—we can also get specific and talk about it in terms of two spaces where most of this stuff takes place: the Gospel Flat Farm Stand and the hardware store in Bolinas. Both are DIY spaces of the highest caliber that provide the setting and the energy for art to happen. 
Ido Yoshimoto. I know that everyone reading this probably already knows Ido’s work [if not, we interviewed him here —SA] but I feel compelled to shout him out because he so generously invited me into the community here when we landed a few years back. He’s also shared knowledge and food and time. The people who make their lives here and share their talents and have profound respect for the land are the soul of this place, and Ido is one of those people.
Photos by Ekaterina Izmestieva
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johndibiase · 1 year
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Since the new trailer for Ghosted is out - and it looks like a lot of fun - I thought I’d reshare my freehand colored pencil drawing of Ana de Armas from a couple years ago. ☺️ #anadearmas #notimetodie #blonde #bondgirl #knivesout #ghosted #glamour #model #draw #drawing #freehand #art #prismacolor #instaart #artcollective #coloredpencil #artistsoninstagram #beach #pencil #artistspotlight #portrait #gallery #pencildrawing #sketch #marilynmonroe #realism #fanart #photorealistic #photorealism #jjdart https://www.instagram.com/p/CpgH3lxvmzu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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pokeythakidd · 1 year
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Artist Spotlight: #SaintHarison
Brilliant voice and artist, and literally every cover I’ve heard from him he dominated on it. Hopefully one day he gives the supporters a full project of such. But also outside of the he recently released a single which is also doing great on pop charts, anyways great talent and artist that you should look into. Nonetheless love this mans voice and I'm sure you all will too.
(They only allowed me to post one so this the introduction to him)
Artist ig: https://instagram.com/saintharison?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
#TPMDaily #TPMForeva #saintharison #adele #cover #Frankocean #Taylorswift #Yebba #TPMjustthemessenger #PokeythakiddFacts
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diegoandradeart · 2 years
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THE NORTHMAN ✨🖤 Alternative poster for @theposterposse Passion Project. Robert Eggers became instantly one of my favorite directors when I watch “The Lighthouse”, so I was really excited for this one. Thank you to @theposterposse to invite me on this Passion Project 🥺✨. Did you watch it? What do you think about it. Please let me know your thoughts. 👁 /// Robert Eggers se convirtió instantáneamente en uno de mis directores favoritos cuando vi “The Lighthouse”, así que estaba muy emocionado por esta nueva peli. Gracias a @theposterposse por invitarme 🥺✨. ¿Ya la viste? Qué te pareció? 👁 #artwork #instaart #artistoninstagram #artistspotlight #artist #spotlightonartist #academic_art #originalart #artwork #finearts #thenorthman #annataylorjoy #alexanderskarsgard #roberteggers #movieposter #alternativemovieposter #posterposse (en Mexico City, Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcyHC-fup63/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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yokaisekai · 2 years
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⚠️ Game Over Bucket hat!!!⚠️ Super cute color blocked bucket hat with blue reflective brim and Holographic panels! Embroidered Game Over & YokaiSekai Logo on the front and a rubber YokaiSekai logo patch on the back! Will be available @fanimecon dealers hall 1103 Coming soon online at YOKAISEKAI.COM
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daniellepioli · 2 years
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If you signed up for me monthly letters, you know I’ve been living with pain for the past 2 years. I’ve gotten used to it. But sometimes it feels like my arm is just quitting on me. . . PS: I have few tendon issues, the real problem is nerves. . . #comicstrip #artistspotlight #artistproblems #artistslife #daniellepioli #tirinha #quadrinho #webcomics https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg2fT3NgvhW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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sperdiland · 2 years
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2022 Ritornare al punto di partenza. Ripartire dal punto di ritorno. • • • #illustrators #illo #illustratorsoninstagram #artistsoninstagram #illustration #artist #room #working #workspace #gallery #draw #drawing #artistrooms #room #wfh #freelancer #artroom #timeless #instaartist #artistsupport #artistspotlight #instaart #instapic #bologna #borgo99bologna #silviasperdutaillustration #sperduteillustrazioni (at Bologna, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeKTJS3qTgS/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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"This is Porter" – Teaser zum Artist Spotlight auf Bad Wolf Radio.
Sendezeit: Samstag, 10. Februar • 1:00 MEZ (19 Uhr EST)
Link zur Teaserseite: 
Seite: https://www.badwolfrecords.net/en/porter
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kidmograph · 1 year
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RE:BUILT
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davidwfloydart · 1 year
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Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs by Paul Koudounaris #artwork #artistspotlight #culttreasures #heavenlybodies #saints #spectacularart (at Catalina Foothills, Arizona) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmzDV_1riAY3Hc6lYwnFLFISw_oG5sogk4-3cA0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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studioahead · 2 days
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Artist Spotlight: Jeffrey Sincich
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One thing that happened when listening to Jeffrey Sincich talk about his art is that Ace of Base’s 1993 hit "The Sign" kept playing in my head. This is because Sincich talks a lot about signs, particularly the ones you see walking around a city, which he replicates in quilted and mixed-medium works. Removed from their context, these signs make promises they can’t keep (FRUITS FOR 1$), intrigue and tantalize us (1 HOUR THE BEST), and provide space for gratitude (THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU). Sincich shared his thoughts on quilting (not just for grandmothers!), what cities have what kind of signs (New York: "ghost signs high up on buildings that have been there for generations"), and how to be more cognizant of what’s around us, which leads to deeper appreciation for the hidden meanings behind all that we see. As the Swedish adage goes: “I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes."
Studio AHEAD: Your work is inspired by the built environment. Have you always lived in cities?
Jeffrey Sincich: San Francisco is the first big city that I have lived in. It is also the first one I ever visited. I grew up in suburban Florida near the Gulf of Mexico and moved to Portland, OR a little after college. Almost as soon as I moved to Portland, I became obsessed with moving to San Francisco. My first trip here was in middle school when I came to visit my uncle, who was living here at the time. Even as a kid I knew this city was special. San Francisco is so dense, and forces you to be around so many different types of people, which I love. Sharing walls and hallways with people instead of side yards makes me feel like I am part of something larger. I enjoy being one piece of the puzzle, rather than feeling like I am on my own.
Living in a city that is built to function for 800,000+ people has created so many interesting architectural details. Awnings that are connected to signs that are connected to lights that are connected to window grates that are connected to fences. I am constantly looking around and noticing how people have cobbled together materials to make things work. There is so much texture and variety in materials on every block. The inspiration is never ending. Being able to see all of this from the sidewalk versus looking at it across a front yard or from a car speeding by is priceless.
SA: You do a lot of quilting yet you are not an old woman. Please explain.
JS: Sexism in the art and craft world is nothing new. Is sewing only for women? Is welding just for men? They are both means of joining two materials together, yet they are often associated with gender. My dad taught me how to sew in high school when I wanted to make bicycle bags. I really enjoyed learning a new skill that allowed me to make an idea I had in my head a reality. I learned how to weld in college and loved it. Unfortunately, metalwork requires a lot more tools, resources and space than sewing.
I have always been interested in craft and majored in ceramics in college. I found antique quilts so beautiful and often referenced their patchwork designs in my work. It seemed like a natural step to try and make a quilt. It was years after a failed attempt at making a quilt in college that I turned on my sewing machine again. After working full time as a sign painter for about five years, I wanted to start making art again. I decided to try making a quilt, this time inspired by the architecture I loved so much and got to paint signs on. A couple years and quilts later, COVID hit and I decided to turn my love of hand painted signs and lettering into quilts. It has been my focus ever since.
SA: A quilt is domestic. One thinks of fireplaces, interiors. I am particularly intrigued by your quilted works that represent outdoor spaces: street signs, façades, ads. Could you speak about this contrast?
JS: Signs can be personal. They are used to guide, inform, warn and sometimes manipulate you. Quilts are made to warm and comfort you. They often become hand-me-downs and keepsakes. They get worn down and are mended, holding family history. The same things can be true of signs. They fade and are touched up, sometimes professionally and sometimes not. Businesses can pass through different owners but still keep the same signs that have been up for generations. I like to reference the signs that have been cared for, or at least been maintained enough, to get a message across. Quilting objects from signs around the city like Clorox bleach and Marlboro cigarettes is my way of archiving the everyday items we often take for granted. I think that seeing these items as quilts makes them approachable in a more personal way.
SA: Are the window grates in front of your pieces like “All Makes & Models” or “Milk Beer” a comment on urban malaise?
JS: Yes and no. Window grates serve multiple functions. On one hand they are meant to keep people out. On the other they attract people with their beauty. I find this dichotomy of push and pull fascinating. The twists and curves that are used in the designs are gorgeous. Oftentimes they have hearts and sometimes the owner’s surname in them. They blend in with the architecture, filling asymmetrical voids and entryways. They cast beautiful shadows at night. The care and attention to detail put into the creation of these is amazing. That being said, they also serve to protect and evoke a sense of danger. They say look at me, but don’t you dare try to cross me.
I look forward to seeing these window grates every single day, on every block and on nearly every house. Their patterns are unique to San Francisco. I love adding a new design into my mental data bank. When I’m in other cities, I enjoy seeing what type of designs they use and how they are unique to that city's vernacular.
SA: What are some of your city-sign associations when in other cities? As a culture we tend to associate Las Vegas with neon, Paris with Guimard’s “Metropolitain,” New York with the colored circles of its subway…
JS: Cities can have unique sign styles, but more so individual neighborhoods. San Francisco’s Chinatown has many beautiful gold leaf window signs, often for family associations. The Mission has tons of beautifully stylized illustrations of the products sold in the storefronts. North Beach has giant, glowing neon signs outside the old strip clubs, begging you to come in. Los Angeles has endless hand painted signs, often in yellow, white, black, red and blue. They are faded by the relentless sun, showing off every brushstroke used to paint them. New York has ghost signs high up on buildings that have been there for generations, right next to freshly painted five story advertisements. These painted billboards still thrive in New York. The south has painted plywood highway signs that are barely holding on, advertising fresh oranges or alligator farms. It is really special to be able to walk around cities and see what old signs are still there, discovering which parts of their culture have stayed intact or have been left by the wayside.
SA: When you do step out of the city, where do you go?
JS: I go to West Marin. I don’t think there is a more beautiful natural place. It can bring me so much peace; the coastline, the rolling hills, the eucalyptus forests. Swimming in Tomales Bay is as close to swimming in Florida as it gets around here. It is beautiful in all types of weather: sunny, foggy and rainy. My favorite place is the Steep Ravine Cabins in Mount Tamalpais State Park. They have been around since 1938, and Dorothea Lange used to spend summers there with her family. They are these perfectly designed redwood structures that sit on the bottom of a cliff overlooking the ocean. I feel like I am in another world when I stay there, even though it’s just an hour away from my home. I have never been to an area that gives me this type of feeling, I love it.
SA: Is nature a type of sign?
JS: It can be. Sometimes it tells me to slow down and reminds me not to take things for granted. It is a reminder to try to stay out of the rat race more often. It can put me in a state of awe at how beautiful this world can be. But the one thing it always does is remind me that I can’t wait to get back to the city.
SA: Lastly, OPEN or CLOSED?
JS: Open, 24 Hours.
Photos by Ekaterina Izmestieva
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johndibiase · 1 year
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I FINALLY finished my freehand graphite and colored pencil drawing of @ana_d_armas as Paloma in No Time To Die. I had started it in late 2021 and just finished it last week. I had put it aside and then just kind of forgot about it. 😂 Anyway, the original drawing and prints of it are available at JohnDiBiaseArt.com ☺️ #anadearmas #notimetodie #blonde #bondgirl #knivesout #paloma #glamour #model #draw #drawing #freehand #art #staedtler #instaart #artcollective #graphite #artistsoninstagram #wcw #pencil #artistspotlight #portrait #gallery #pencildrawing #sketch #wce #realism #fanart #photorealistic #photorealism #jjdart https://www.instagram.com/p/CosXK7SvkBu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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Arts and Wellness Cafe - Accelerated
Join me in the Arts and Wellness Cafe. In this episode, we explore the word of the week and discuss ways to draw inspiration from our surroundings to enhance our work and share our favorite artists and their impact on our growth.
In this episode, we also cover the following topics:
-  Art Journal process: Discover how to experiment with different effects using supplies such as graphite and water-soluble graphite tints.
-  Fabric Art Projects: Get a sneak peek into resist dyeing and explore the exciting possibilities of this craft.
-  Question and Tip of the Week: Stay motivated and inspired by answering the question, "What would be your dream collaboration?"
-  Arts and Artists Spotlight: Learn about the upcoming Barbados Artists Studio Tours happening on February 3rd and 4th.
-  Join us at the Arts and Wellness Cafe for an engaging and inspiring conversation.
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