Artists' Books

Funes Contest Entry

Tony — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:45:06 +0000

Tribute to Craft Brewing (blurb book)

Tony — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:09:41 +0000

These were just a few pages from my book that I ended up really liking.

David Carson-Graphic Designer

Tony — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:54:59 +0000

I like the style that David Carson utilizes in his work. He breaks lots of “rules” in the graphic design world and causes you to look at his work a little deeper. He is a huge inspiration for how I would like to be able to think and design one day. I think that he pushes limits and find extremely creative ways to portray what he is saying. There is one thing on his website that is a small scrip and in all the words only the first and last letter are in the right place and the text says something about how the Cambridge University did a study about how the human brain does not read out each letter it reads it as a whole. It was nearly just as easy to read compared to if it were spelled correctly. He has done amazing work for everything from Surfer Magazine, SKATEboarding, SNOWboarding, Nike to CD covers, Chevy Camaro, Giorgio Armani, Bank of Montreal, and U.C.L.A. He can cover pretty the needs of any type of industry. I think I also have this different relation to liking him because he has had a similar lifestyle to mine in the sense that he is a local surfer to San Diego and stayed here to attend school at SDSU.

This is a poster Carson created for an exhibit he was holding in Bern, Switzerland.

He designed the cover of the Bush’s 1994 album Sixteen Stone.

This is one of very many Surfer and other action sports magazine covers he designed.

Photographer #1/Art Event- Ira Block

Tony — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:57:37 +0000

I was looking on the Ordover Gallery website to see what the upcoming exhibit would be in Solana Beach and I came across a photographer that I really liked and became more and more intrigued by as I looked at his work. Beginning April 16th there will be an exhibit called The World of Ira Block, who is a photographer for the National Geographic magazine. I had the opportunity to go to the Ordover gallery on Saturday night when Ira was going to be there. I didn’t have the chance to talk with him because there were many people there and he seemed to be very social and busy. The gallery wasn’t too big but it did have two rooms with one of them mostly displaying Ira’s work. He had a variety of images such as the

Lena River, Russia

The Mississippi River

New York City

Monument Valley, Utah

I really enjoy landscape photos, but in particular I like them from a bird’s eye view. I also am envious of the various, vast locations all over the world. Ira also uses a majority of different color spectrums. Some of his photos utilize lots of colors like this one:

Beijing, China

Then he has other photos were he only captures monochromatic images or dichromatic such as this one:

When I was a the gallery I kind of felt out of place because I was just dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and a hat while everyone else was somewhat dressed up. I walked into the smaller room on the left, which had other artists than Ira Block’s work, and this woman just kept giving me this dirty kind of snarling look. I really wanted to say something to her. It was a pretty casual kind of lounge around atmosphere. The owner of the gallery, Abe Ordover, was there walking around and talking with everyone, as well as Ira.

Altered Books

Tony — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:15:49 +0000

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to go to a workshop that was put on by Terrilynn Quick, an altered book artist and CSUSM alumni. She brought lots of examples of current books and ones she had done in the past. The possibility with these books is as far as your creativity can take you. She had books that flipped out from the inside, ones that were cut into shapes like an oak tree leaf, ones that she taped, glued, painted, colored, used markers, pencils and crayons, and any other object you could think of. She liked to have a theme to her book and you might look at it and not be able to guess what the theme was but if she told you and then you looked through it you would probably be able to catch on. We had the chance to make our own at this workshop and again we were limited to what we brought or what was in the workshop room. I enjoyed this project more than the zines because I feel like with this altered book concept you are expressing yourself, creating a theme, a different way of viewing something, and you are recycling. For example I used an old accounting book I would a) never use again and b) couldn’t sell back so I guess got my full use out of the book. I really wanted to cut mine into the shape of a pint glass but without there being a saw I was limited to using scissors and it was very difficult to cut the cover. The theme of my book became beer because that is what my artist book is about and it was just kind of on my mind during the workshop. No I am not an alcoholic, as much of my work revolves around beer; I am just a true beer connoisseur. Here are a few of the pages I worked on.

Zines

Tony — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:59:05 +0000

The night we went to the zine exhibit was very cool for me because I hadn’t ever seen work like this. It was also a minor history lesson into where magazines came from and how the whole zine movement was started and what purpose it held. After the woman from Grrrl Zines A Go-Go explained how the zine movement started back in the ’80′s throughout the punk rock music movement, it became clear to me where the inspiration for the appearance of these zines came from. Lots of the text and positioning of images and text goes along with bands such as the Sex Pistols, Rancid, Ramones, the Black Flags, and others of its generation. I like the idea of a zine because it could be used as another way to express yourself, ideas, and feelings or emotions, through a different art medium. It could also be used as more or and informative piece like some traditional magazines we currently have today. While at the workshop I had the opportunity to make one. Although it’s only one page and we were limited with what materials we had I still enjoyed the experience. Here it is!

Cai Guo-Qiang

Tony — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:11:16 +0000

Yet again, Guo-Qiang is another artist who I am really intrigued by because of the mediums he chooses for his art and installations. I think especially the use of gun powder and how he combines a few mediums together to come up with his bigger picture or final project. I think the project I enjoyed the most was the airplane, known as Bon Voyage: 10,000 Collectibles from the Airport, in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I think his concept for this piece was to display the “dangerous” items that are confiscated on a regular basis at airports around the world. It makes you think that at any moment there could be someone sitting next to you in the terminal or on the plane and have something on them. I also liked the installation Guo-Qiang did in Quebec, Canada called Reflection. It was a sunken ship with thousands of broken pieces of ceramic deities. He said that if the deities had defects them then weren’t considered deities and wouldn’t be worshipped to. I think by him putting them in a sunken ship he is trying to say that they could float to the bottom of the ocean and just be another forgotten piece of history.

Mark Bradford

Tony — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:03:05 +0000

I really like the work of Mark Bradford mainly because I have never seen anything like it. I think that it is extremely creative that he came up with the idea to decollage and collage the signage off of fences in certain areas of Los Angeles. Bradford’s work is very abstract which is also a major factor in the way he thinks and sees things. For example the collages he makes he does on canvas so he looks at it as if it were a painting. I also think it’s interesting that he refers to himself as a “maker,” not an artist or painter. I like his style of art a lot because it is not just art, but the work of a craftsman too. He does need to view things abstractly, like he does, but also view it from the perspective of a builder or constructor. I did think the whole Laker’s jersey/dress thing was a very different experiment or message but I get what his point was.

Aerosol Artists

Tony — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:47:31 +0000

Today we watched a video about Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen. I really liked the style from these two artists because they utilize a lot of things from city in the nature that they find them. My favorite thing was how McGee would go into the city and paint or draw the things he saw and then go home frame them and then create an installation on the wall; almost like a collage. I also like how he collected items from the streets and would one day maybe use them in his work or they just ended up being walked over in his studio.