Lush with plant life that is not native to the city, and rich with many non-native people that thrive there, New Orleans is the “inevitable city on an impossible site.” The wildlife that flourishes mirrors the human wildlife that flourishes. The photos are a collection of these metaphors – weeds push through the cement, vines crawl through fences, and friends and acquaintances’ characters shine through the dust and sweat that makes up the city.
I see the city as magical hub of growth, hope, and resilience as reflected through its landscape and its people. Despite its obstacles: high levels of poverty, low employment levels, and the fact that the city exists below water level, there is life in this unlikely place, and people find homes for themselves there. Whether my subjects are native to the area or come from other places, they each contribute to the life and the culture there, making it a vibrant place in which to live and create. I am constantly inspired by their strength and eccentricities, and each image is a gesture of admiration and an opportunity for me to celebrate their beauty.
I began this celebration with the series Afterparty; the images of abandoned party spaces invite the viewer to a party that is over. I revel in the lushness of what is left behind in these makeshift spaces that are true labors of love by their creators, and the little mysteries that they reveal. There is a tension created between happiness and sadness: an elaborately decorated DJ booth, crushed empty cups strewn about the floor, and large, silent, black speakers amongst traces of a celebration, with no celebration to be seen. It is the after and the in-between that interest me most and it is here that the conversation happens for me. These are all DIY spaces found in my native Brooklyn, another gritty, urban place that is the home to gems beneath the cracks in the surface.
I am an Italian illustrator specializing in children’s illustration, classic fairly tales, magazine illustrations, advertising illustration and more.
My work traverses the liminal landscapes of attraction and repulsion, always looking for that unnamable, elusive, transcendent moment. I’m particularly interested in how public spectacle destabilizes the role of the audience, and forces the passive viewer to become a participant, to confront their own fears and desires. Incorporating video, live performance, and photography, I create visceral, cinematic experiences that fiercely roam the territory of underground culture through a queer feminist lens.
Jacob Lysgaard is a student of visual communications, and a designer across several fields. He works mostly with conceptual branding projects, and has a lot of fun with illustration on the side.
I was raised in the shadow of the DOE Hanford Nuclear Site in Richland Washington. The unique industry that supported my community, the sense of tragic progress that haunts it¹s past, the striking desert landscape, and the importance of water, inform my visual sensibilities.Out of this, I have developed a language of biomorphic characters,barren landscapes, and crashing liquids. The invented creatures, rocks,trees, and bushes, all receive similar textures and shapes. With this treatment, life and it¹s environment become equal.This landscape is then used to portray trivial yet memorable experiences of my life: boy chase girl, trips to the beach to go surfing, my first rock concert, etc. This is not an attempt to trivialize my own life, but rather to integrate my experiences with my environment.
My body of work concerns the domestic sphere and my fantasies and anxieties surrounding home life. Many of us, including myself, become caught up in the future and how we can obtain the ideal life, often at the price of neglecting to think about the present. I catch myself over-planning and projecting impossible expectations on myself and those around me, as well as growing anxious over imaginary worst-case scenarios. I seek to express these common feelings of excitement, longing and stress through my drawings.
formaldehyde in the medicine cabinet. preserving memories and memorabilia.that matchbook from last february. the hair from two years ago. the gravel from your street. most importantly the dreams. you wake up with. and also feathers for when you fly away. thus creating an image that smells like spilt ink and people who never forget.
My work looks to take the visuals of the city, be they structures, images, or text and crop and combine them (within the camera frame) into new readings of meaning or space. The flattening of space afforded by the lens creates new opportunities for collage and composition. All images are made in a single shot.
Intrigued by the people and landscapes of Savannah and coastal Georgia, Katherine Sandoz paints daily in her studio in Vernonburg. Her work is fueled by her romance with the act of painting and inspired by her surroundings and the rich history and tradition of the deep South. By painting and drawing these subjects, she hopes to preserve, catalog and celebrate the terrain of daily life.
I’m a Seattle-based artist who loves math. When I think of ideas I relate them to definitions that build up into theorems and little pieces of knowledge. I like to use a standard set of elements to make up my images, with each element holding a very particular set of meanings for me. I love color.
