shelby s.

Mike Bell is the artist I chose. I chose him mostly because he uses real items rather than just making an image and his artwork is very pretty with the scenery.

His work is mostly inspired by where he lived in England which was the coast of Northumberland. The images he creates use a wide variety of materials, sand soil, coaldust, often embedded in paint surface.

He likes to paint naturally and keep it that way. He rarly uses a brush but finger, knife, trowel, sand, plaster, spray paints plus lots of builders materials to create impasto paint surfaces.

http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/m/mikebell/

The artist I chose was Maria Arango. Her work consists of woodcut and wood engraving techniques. I chose this artist because she wants to show the process of printmaking through her work and how it fascinates her and how hard and laboring it can be.

She says figurative work interests her as much as the desert and all its fruitful offerings. She also explains how she is interested in exploring the importance of wood in human existence, especially important to the woodcut printmaking artist working on paper. She imagines the work in her head and she simply prints the ones that stick.

http://www.1000woodcuts.com/

The first episode I picked from Art: 21 was time. The artist Martin Puryear is a woodworker. His first piece that is shown is a curvy ladder made out of wood that looks like it is preceding into space faster than it actually does and is ongoing. Then some work are shown in a gallery and talks about how the work doesn’t have to be good or ugly for someone to talk about it or make a point. Then Martin and Mr. Oliver went to the Oliver ranch and looked at all the stonework and walls that are up around. He talks about his interest in nature and how cultural forms evolve.

Paul Pfeiffer is the next artist. He talks about his interest for horror scenes, and recreates his favorite from a movie. He builds a staircase and projects it as well. So you are looking down the staircase from the projection screen and then look through a hole looking up the stairs. He talks about how he likes images, and who really makes the images. He talks about how repetition is compelling. Reverse and fast forwarding time and repeating what you see.

Another artist is Vija Celmins. Her first piece that she shows is a work that she is repainting the stars in the sky from a photograph. And she talks about how she likes nature but its usually doesn’t like to make a piece straight from nature.

The next video I watch from the art:21 series is Play. Jessica Stockholder is the first artist. She goes to a papermaking studio and shows how its made and explains what its about. Her artwork is shown as furniture and plastics and not paintings.

The next artist name is Ellen Gallagher. She made some artwork out of penmanship paper and build from that. She collects old magazines and does her designs over the original images.

Another artist is Arturo Herrera. He begins cutting out pieces of paper and putting them together to make a design. It becomes a shape of color. He takes pieces from images that are clear and whole, and puts them together with others to make a different one.