I could not be more thrilled on this fine Monday morning! Suzanne Shade, Director and Curator of The Beholder, asked little old me to be the guest curator on her fabulous gallery site for the entire month of May! I thought it would be easy, but she has so much good work to choose from, it was actually quite hard selecting only ten pieces to feature. Anyway, after hours of debate I ended up putting a show together that I’ve titled ‘girl crush‘. Check it out when you have a moment, but brace yourself… you might end up with a bit of a girl crush too!

{The images shown above are four of my ten picks. They are by 1) Ky Anderson  2) Lisa Congdon  3) Leigh Wells 4) Jennifer Davis}

I really, really, really want to stop looking, but I just can’t. You too?

I have never written about a commercial wedding photographer before, but when I found these scandalous shots of Boudoir Barbie I couldn’t control myself… I guess I know how Ken must feel. Anyway, I’m not sure how or why these beautifully lit, very sultry shots of  Barbie in her underpants came about, I’m just glad that American photographer Critsey Rowe decided to do them. Disturbing, hilarious, and really quite beautiful… great combo.

{Click on Boudoir Gallery, then scroll to CELEBRITY. Oh, and thanks to Kathleen for emailing me about this!}

Yes, that’s right, you’re looking at broken spiderwebs that have been lovingly, and very carefully, mended by an insanely talented/successful American artist named Nina Katchadourian. Now, after all of the hard work and love that went into The Mended Spiderweb Series, do you think those spiders even appreciated the help? Nope. Each morning she would find her starched {and occasionally glued} red threads lying on the ground, and a perfectly intact web that had been repaired during the night by an ungrateful spider. Luckily, that didn’t slow her down. She collected, and framed, the ‘rejected patch’, hanging it beside the photo of her efforts.

{If you’re interested in mending the webs of unappreciative spiders, Nina has created a special ‘Do-it-Yourself Spiderweb Repair Kit’… see image above.}

I love these images by American photographer Jason DeMarte. They are all from his series titled, Utopic, a commentary on the relationship between consumerism {represented by the dots*}, and nature {represented by, well, the nature}. I imagined him traveling the world, roaming the countryside, scaling mountains, and then quietly sneaking up on animals in their natural environment… until I realized that those ideal, utopian environments are actually photographs taken at a natural history museum. Now I just have to figure out how he was able to get that mountain goat to stare directly at that hot pink dot. What are the chances?!

* The dot for me represents that desire in its simplest symbolic form, a placeholder for whatever it may be that one feels he needs to be happy.   ~ Jason DeMarte

Back in December of 2009, I promised to keep you updated on Mikael Kennedy’s solo show in New York… well, it’s finally here! Shoot the Moon is being presented by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art at The Chelsea Hotel, opening this Wednesday April 14th, and running until May 2nd. There are 500 of Mikael’s amazing Polaroids in the show, but good luck picking a favourite! It’s a nearly impossible task… believe me, I’ve tried. A lot.

Oh sure, just some beautifully hand-crafted crocheted animal trophies {aka Crochetdermy™}, a few of which are even kind of cute… until British artist Shauna Richardson strategically places them somewhere isolated and poorly lit! I think it’s safe to say that the ‘beautifully hand-crafted’ bear in the underground parking lot would require me to go home for a change of underpants. Oh come on, don’t judge me… you know you’d be in the same situation.

{Thanks to Liesl for bringing Shauna’s work to my attention!}

We all have childhood memories that probably aren’t exactly right. They are the way that you remember events and people, which may have been influenced by the story that your Uncle Ted told over, and over about that event/person, putting a picture into your head that you now believe to be a memory. Well, American photographer Liz Steketee didn’t want to be proved wrong by a photo, so she’s taken matters into her own hands with her series titled Reconstructed Memories. By scanning and combining her own family photos, she is able to truly reconstruct these images to conform to her personal memories or, in some cases, change things completely to the way she would have preferred life to be. And so now, thanks to Liz, Uncle Ted’s story will live on forever.

What day is it? Honestly, I cannot tell you how long I’ve been on Artists Who Blog. Somewhere around the tenth amazing interview, the hours sort of started blurring together. I am currently writing this post in a haze of inspiration and jealousy, not only of the very talented artists featured there, but also of the creator of this fantastic online mecca for artist interviews, Stephanie Levy. I was thrilled to find a bunch of artists that I’ve written about, and then learn even more about their work, process, and of course their blogs. If you have several hours to spare you should stop by for a visit. You might want to have a snack first… you could be there for awhile!

{The images shown above can all be found on Artists Who Blog. They are by 1) Dolan Geiman 2) Camilla Engman 3) Leah Giberson 4) Victoria Smith 5) Ashley Goldberg}

Ah, my newest crush… The Beholder. An online gallery, and one-stop-shop for fabulous art. San Francisco based Director/Curator Suzanne Shade started the site in 2005 with only 15 artists, but now has over 70… and I love ’em all! I’ve actually written about several of them, so I knew I’d found a kindred spirit. Speaking of similarities, the mission of the gallery is ‘to use the reach of the internet to attract a wider audience for artists, and to encourage new collectors to become involved with owning and enjoying original art.’ Me too! Me too! Of course, on The Beholder you can actually buy the art… on The Jealous Curator, you can only wallow in jealousy. Well, we all have our strengths.

{The images shown above can all be found on The Beholder. They are by 1) Martha Rich 2) Jennifer Davis 3) Jennifer Sanchez 4) Leigh Wells.}

This piece, titled Flotation, is just one example of many beautiful pieces by Buenos Aires based artist Melina Berkenwald. On first glance, they almost look like Impressionist paintings… the softness, the industrial subject matter, but in fact they’re actually photographs printed on canvas, with bits and pieces that have been hand-embroidered. Yes, that’s right. Hand-embroidered photographs. Sigh.

{If you’d like to see more of Melina’s work, check out boltax gallery. It’s located on beautiful Shelter Island, New York.}