Brie Ruais

Brooklyn based artist Brie Ruais sculptural works are a combination of found/collected objects and embroidery, weaving, and wax casts. Her works reflect a desire to connect with the community and the natural and metaphysical world and many of her works play on the interconnectedness of living things through the use of universal symbols.

More about her process from her website: “Working with embroidery, drawing, sculpture and found objects, I compose both floor and wall based installations that evoke environments and shrines. I use the aesthetics of spiritual practices in Shamanistic cultures to root the pieces in nature. The inherently labored, hand-made quality of embroidery, carved wood, and altered objects, and their arrangement with items from nature, stirs ideas of the sacred and ritualistic. For me, embroidery is a personal meditation on the parts of the whole, the pieces that make up a story, and an investigation into a historical craft of storytelling.”

See more works on her website: www.brieanaruais.com

Sad Trombone

I’m looking for a way to express how bummed I am that this day slipped away from me with no artist post. I think this fits:

www.sadtrombone.com/

Alas, the art will have to wait until tomorrow.

Tim Lowly

I’ve known Tim for a few years now. He is a gentle soul, only says what is necessary, and what he does speak says volumes. I believe the same goes for his work. He is an instructor and North Park University in Chicago and many of his paintings revolve around his daughter, Tema. I especially enjoy his large scale detailed paintings which evoke such a sense of beauty, calmness, and solitude.

You really should look at these in larger detail on his website: www.timlowly.com and his flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/timlowly/.

Twelve Fingers

Today we have a guest blogger, Bill Tucker, writing about artist Twelve Fingers:

Twelve Fingers, aka Nathan Enkel, creates a world of monsters and people in everyday situations as well as visually descriptive worlds and bodies based on his current interests and feelings. The Toronto native is a student at OCAD and is continually developing this new world and works hard to share it. From pieces depicting heads vomiting clouds dashed with beautiful tones of water color, to paintings of monsters in full color spray painted glory. His characters are connected by a familiar bolt of lightening that floats above the monsters or humans heads.

Check out his website, www.flickr.com/photos/twelvefingers to meet these new and interesting creatures. I’m putting Twelve Fingers on your team

Uppercase Magazine

Uppercase is a gallery and publishing company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They are dedicated to “making, curating, and publishing visual art.”

In addition to great exhibitions like Jen11—an exhibition of 11 artists named Jennifer—they have also begun publishing a quarterly magazine that is all about “learning from other artists, illustrators, designers, photographers, filmmakers and musicians, whether they’re upstarts or icons, famous or shy, verbal or visual.”

Unfortunately the first issue is sold out, and there are only about 10 of the second left so hurry and get one! You can also subscribe to the magazine on their website.

DIY Fabric Envelopes + Artist Interviews

I’m tired and have a million projects going on, so I’m going to take the easy way out on posting today and tell you to check out the DIY Project from yesterday’s Design*Sponge: Fabric Envelopes!

These were developed by Derek and Lauren of San Francisco’s Curiosity Shop (Wow, two San Francisco posts in a row! What a great city!)

ALSO: Check out the new section on our website: Artist Interviews! First up is Berlin-based artist Kyle Bryant.

Lisa Congdon

Lisa Congdon is a San Francisco based illustrator who didn’t begin making art until she was 33 years old. She is almost entirely self taught and sees this as an advantage, being able to work with her own sense of color, shape, and composition. I especially love the portraits of animals and people with random bursts of neon colors.

In addition to making art she also owns an art gallery and design-led shop called Rare Device in San Francisco. See more about her and her work on her website: www.lisacongdon.com

Ann Wood + Small Shoulders event at FIB

We have exciting things happening at {fill in the blank} Gallery right now, one of which is a free monthly community arts event that we’ve been working on called Small Shoulders. The idea is to bring the community together to experience art as a whole, using supplies that are very basic (the last one was prints made from fruits and vegetables) and easily accessible to create intricate and beautiful results.

Our next project is called Cardboard Stampede and is a project developed by Brooklyn-based artist Ann Wood. She has even been gracious enough to donate supplies for this project and we are so excited to be partnering with her on this! Please see more information about the event here.

We wanted to highlight some of her other work today. Her bio on her blog explains her work best:

“I work with mostly found, and salvaged materials, many of them vintage or antique garments. There is a kind of affection and tenderness in the re-use and re-purposing of things that were once personal and perhaps treasured possessions. Much of my inspiration comes from these materials as well as from many of the ideas I have been infatuated with my whole life : smallness, intricacies, miniaturization, collections, repetition; lost or abandoned things discovered and rescued; the idea of haunted and enchanted places, things and creatures; the setting of a tiny stage.”

You can see more of her work on her website: annwood.net. Enjoy!

Elizabeth Gerdeman

Elizabeth Gerdeman is an Ohio based artist whose works linger in the balance between how something can be simultaneously monumental and impermanent. From her intricate landscapes, cut and assembled from paint chips, to her plaster and watercolor prints, her pieces continually fluctuate between representing something on a microcosmic and macrocosmic scale. One can’t help but want to slow down and take the time to study what unfolds in her works upon viewing them!

View more of her amazing work at her website, www.elizabeth.gerdeman.com

Scott McMahon

I recently ordered a Diana Camera and will be playing around with it for the first time this weekend. In anticipation, I began looking up toy cameras and pinhole photography. My searches lead me to photographer Scott McMahon, who uses many different photographic methods to achieve stunning results.

A spectacular series called Bioluminescent is described as follows: “In this series fireflies were carefully collected and placed inside boxes and jars containing leaves, grass, twigs, flowers soil and light-sensitive material (usually color transparency film). As the fireflies lit-up inside the containers they not only exposed their own image, but that of the objects within. In these images of minute worlds the firefly creates the structure of a surreal landscape, leaving its impression and preserving its mark.”

See the artist’s website for more great work.