Category: Artist

Mia Mäkilä: Lowbrow and Horror Art

Stefanie Snider

“Picture Pippi Longstocking and swedish movie director Ingmar Bergman having a love child. That’s me.”

Mia Mäkilä is one of those artists that manage to catch you off guard.

I don’t even remember now how I came across her work. I bookmarked it, figuring I might go back if I “had the time.”
Meanwhile, those distorted cartoonish figures have been haunting me. Her work is unique; you can see a piece and instantly know it’s hers. She uses bright comic colours, but the darkness still manages to seep through.

It gives me the most delicious chills.

“Newspaper Freak”, by Mia Mäkilä
Click image to visit her site;
some art contains nudity.

Dark Passage

Stefanie Snider

“Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.”

Often haunting, urbex photos show the abandoned, the decayed, the forgotten.

Old hospitals. Rusted theme parks.

Empty insane asylums…like those on Dark Passage’s Hospital Hopscotch.

Frightening? Or beautiful?

(Images not reproduced here, per photographer’s request. But check them out on her site, they’re worth the click.)

Devorah Sperber: After the Mona Lisa

Stefanie Snider

As you probably know by now, I have a serious crush on art. My favourite pieces are made by artists who use everyday materials in completely new ways.

Meet Devorah Sperber.

After the Mona Lisa 3

“After the Mona Lisa 3

2010

425 spools of Coats & Clark thread, aluminum ball chain, stainless steel hanging apparatus, clear acrylic viewing sphere, metal stand

30 x 21 inches”

Think that’s incredible? You should see what she does with pipe cleaners.

(via Regretsy)

Not Just a Word Nerd

Stefanie Snider

I find so much inspiration in art. In filmmaking, in special effects, in design. In the artists themselves, in people who are RIGHT NOW making and writing and drawing and painting. Isn’t that exciting? I see so many successes and so much potential in my artistic peers that I can’t help wanting to join them in making something fantastic.

I didn’t go to an art school (though I wanted to), and I don’t have a ton of artsy friends (though those that I do know are remarkable). I have next to zero visual-art ability. But it tickles my creativity to peek into the lives of artists who are as we speak creating amazing and wonderful things.

So, check out A Studio Visit with Allison Sommers at hifructose.com. Her art is impressively detailed and instantly recognizable. I want to live in her studio.

I also love Nikki Burch’s illustrations and cartoons; she’s been a favourite of mine for quite a while. Her stuff is dark, but silly and fun at the same time. She uses teeny tiny little pen and brush strokes that make me glad I don’t have to print out my stories by hand.

And although I only get some of the references, I’m 200 pages in on Art Student Owl and it’s made me smile and laugh more times than I can count. Underneath the smart-assed jokes, though, it’s genuinely nice to think of all these artists out there giving up so much to maybe, someday, get somewhere doing what they love. I admire that, because I’m working toward a future where I can put my writing first.

(I just realized it is in fact Monday and this should have been a Movie Monday post. I’m sure the world at large will cope.)

Artists! Bring Out Your Skeletons!

Stefanie Snider

After yesterday’s post I found a video that instantly changed my views on writing, and on being a “new” writer. If you’re an artist, in any form, you need to see this.

More artists need to do this: to reveal, even occasionally, their awkward first attempts. All that we fledglings see are the polished pieces, and it’s reassuring to see proof that once, even the experts kind of…sucked.

Artist Danny Quirk: Self-Dissections – Revealing the Inner Self

Stefanie Snider

“Aspiring to become a medical illustrator, these works were done in my senior year at Pratt Institute. Always having been interested in anatomy/the body, decided to do a series of paintings combining Classical aesthetics with a surreal approach. I plan to work on this series for about another 6 months while I am taking prerequisite courses for graduate school requirements, where I intend to become a medical illustrator.”

-Danny Quirk

"Self Dissection" ©Danny Quirk

Click the painting for more. (One contains artistic female nudity).

Via Fuck Yeah Illustration

Writer’s Rooms

Stefanie Snider

After yesterday’s Bag of Bones post, I got to thinking about the act of writing. It thrills me to see a character who is a writer, because other than the people pecking away at their laptops in coffee shops all over, writing is a very private act. It’s not featured much at all in movies or on tv. It happens behind the scenes. You’d no more stumble on a writer at work than you’d walk into someone’s house uninvited.

But what if you were invited, welcomed even, to see the spaces where writers tuck themselves away? Would you notice some common link, some talisman that summons the Muses?

I’m not the only one hoping to tap the magic (and be a nosy little snoop while I’m at it); The Guardian offers a whole series of peeks into the most private spaces of authors.

Have a look.