I love these delicate, washy paintings by LA based artist Sara Escamilla. I also love that they are currently for sale on Buy Some Damn Art! Yes, Buy Some Damn Art! It’s a new online gallery concept brought to you by the lovely Kate Singleton of Art Hound. Every Tuesday at noon she’ll feature six new pieces… original, reasonably priced, fabulous pieces! Her mandate… to bridge the gap between prints and far-too-expensive originals for a new generation of art buyers. Hey – that’s you!

{Sign up for the mailing list, and you’ll get previews of the upcoming pieces delivered right to your inbox… and hurry, because BSDA is only two weeks old, and things are selling fast!}

I have boxes upon boxes of weird little bits and pieces in my studio… this tribal, totem-esque series, titled neonative, by American designer/artist Scott Massey makes me want to do something with all that stuff {something really, really good!}.

“With a box of scraps that I’ve been carrying around with me since life in NY, collages were made using amazing photos of Native Americans found in Lanterns on the Prairie: the Blackfeet Photographs of Walter McClintock. When the box is finished so will the project, so far there are 20 pieces.”
~ Scott Massey

Yep… actual size. Seriously. Edinburgh based artist Paul Chiappe creates these teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy, beautiful little pencil drawings based on found vintage photographs. The drawing talent alone is amazing, but then to do it at such an insanely small scale?! love ♥

{via Junkculture}

I have loved the work of Vancouver based artist Jessica Bell since the first time I saw it, about two years ago. Bits of paper, paint, fabric, thread… it’s all in there! They are delicate, lovely, and beautifully composed. The images below are her latest body of work {so recent in fact that these images aren’t even on her site yet!}. These textile assemblages contain bits and pieces of perfectly chosen fabric, that have been sewn together to create a series of “clouds”…

I wish I could show these to you in person!* They’re huge {light ones: 32″x40″ ; dark ones: 36″ x 48″} and so beautifully crafted. Oh boy, now I really want a stormy day… and a sewing machine!

*{If you’re in Vancouver, you can see these at East Van Studio until November 12th. They are part of a group show called “Monument(al)” that also features the work of Sarah Gee and Aaron Moran.}

I’ve written about her “Collection-a-Day” blog, and I’ve written about the book that came out of that blog, but when I saw the latest mixed media work from San Francisco based illustrator/artist Lisa Congdon, I couldn’t stop myself from writing again… yep, I was in fact, still jealous! I love the color palette, the found paper/images, and don’t even get me started on the tribal patterns around that woman’s neck. Gorgeous!

{ps. I’m working on an exciting new project that I’ll be announcing in January when I speak at Alt Summit… and guess what? Lisa’s involved! Yay!}

Oh, I wish that I had been in Seattle when this was happening! New York based artist Zoe Williams created this project called Free Art* for Seattle’s First Thursday art walk. “Colorful felt balls were placed around the Pioneer Square area with tags stating that they were free to take, but in exchange for the free artwork, participants were requested to visit the project website and contribute to a collaborative story.” I couldn’t find the site that went with this {I’m curious about the collaborative story part!}, but in any case, I would have been thrilled to find a sweet little felted ball that I could take home for my very own. I want a yellow one, please.

And on that note, have a happy, colorful, fuzzy, art filled weekend! See you on Monday xo

Susannah ~ Comment # 7
Morgan P. ~ Comment #84

Congratulations, both of you are now the proud owners of the first four issues of Fine Line Magazine! You are going to love them! {I’ll be in touch to arrange getting them to you} Thank you Fine Line, for giving away such a lovely gift, and thanks a bunch to everyone who entered… now that I know how much you guys love give-aways, I’ll have to do them more often! xo

Somber, simple wooden figures… wearing Mickey Mouse ears, bunny ears, and just a touch of argyle! I absolutely love the work of Italian artist Andreas Senoner. They make me happy and sad all at the same time. Lovely.

{If you like this work, have a look at another Italian that I’ve written about before, Willy Verginer.}

{via Antena}

Yesterday I got a new twitter follower, so as usual, I went to check out their portfolio… and found these! Beautiful, strange, organic collages by Jenny Brown, an American artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Obviously, I wanted to know more… well, her “about” section was just as beautiful, and just as mysterious. It reads as follows:

We spent a lot of time debating whether or not the blackened landscape was beautiful or horrific. My opinion kept changing daily. I had gotten the idea to put my bright blue wool socks on one morning… I thought they might cheer me and everyone else up, but I was wrong. Even in times like these, quick fixes are still quick fixes, and I never wore them again. I think everybody knew there was nothing to be done but to take stock of our new surroundings and accept them. Nobody really wanted to be there, what choice did we have?

Exhausted, we spent long days dusting snow off the frozen ground and trying to dig holes in it. I was put in charge of maintaining an abandoned free-standing chimney that must have been attached to a house at one time. One day when I was wading through the bramble that had grown around it, I decided to stick my hands in the opening of the chimney to see what I could find… I pulled out a curious collection of items: a frozen and dried lime, a dirty sponge, some nails, a hairbrush. I wasn’t sure what to do with them or why they were there… I had hoped for something simple… a bundle of photographs, maybe a book? I spent long hours lining the objects up on the ground in different orders and looking at them to try and figure out how they fit together.

Night time was spent making escape plans, though we all admitted our new world was almost beautiful in the dark… the sky was always starless and velvety, and the remnants of the forest became a charming menagerie of tunnels and hiding places. Fact was nothing but fiction in these moments and we sometimes were hesitant to sleep because we didn’t want to miss looking at our surroundings in the night light. It was the only time I felt calm and hopeful. As the sun rose each day, we found ourselves silently wishing that all that imagined beauty from the night would really be before us.

These fantastic collages are just a teeny-tiny snippet of the MASSIVE portfolio belonging to Spanish designer/artist Jorge Chamorro. So, how you ask, did I choose these four… honestly, it was those striped socks with their “du’s” and their “DA’s” that got me. I want the socks on my feet, and the collages on my wall. A lot.