Lost AT E Minor

I Was Told There’d Be Cake

Full-time writer, part-time maker of dioramas, New Yorker Sloane Crosley has released a collection of her witty essays entitled I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Recounting tales of plastic pony collections, wanting to raise her unborn kids in Belgium, and locking herself out of her apartment twice in one day, Crosley’s stories will make you think of Larry David if he was a cute thirty year-old woman. No wonder HBO snapped up the rights to the book.

Another smokin’ hot New York illustrator

I met Caroline Thaw at Brooklyn’s Third Ward in one of the courses I taught. The first time I saw samples of her work, I was happily overwhelmed by her diversity of styles, her cute yet twisted characters, the radiant and infinite beauty in every piece she made, her delicate line, and her strong sense of style and scenographic space. Part of her work’s charm comes from her experience in theater design designing sets and custumes for productions that traveled around the world (she is from England, originally), and her tremendous love for kids.

Mosstika

Edina Tokodi is a Hungarian artist strutting her stuff on the streets of Brooklyn, using a few licks of moss to create largely nature-focused imagery. The works adorn both the exterior and interior of buildings – she’s done a number of installations – but it’s her new take on street art that is raising eyebrows. A little quirk: the moss continues to grow after she’s fixed the piece. That’ll bring the streets alive if anything does.

Tifenn Python

I recently came across the work of French illustrator Tifenn Python. She is also showing at the current Young Blood show at New York’s Opera Gallery. What I love about her work is that it has a certain vibe to it that reminds me of some of the great masters like Lautrec and Shiele, which I’ve been drooling over these past weeks. Her work calls focus to the line, encourages simplicity, and bathes our eyes in colour. It also has a certain sense of comfortable melancholy, which feels familiar to me.

Young Blood at New York’s Opera Gallery

Well, it seems I’ve been in a vacuum of art since the spring. And now, its just a week or so out from the upcoming Young Blood exhibit, which features my paintings and opens at the Opera Gallery in New York. I find myself feeling both excited and nervous at the thought that this show is just around the corner. These past few months have seemed like one of the great feats of my lifetime. I have been working for five months on these two upcoming shows, immersed deeply in the studio, being on a complete mission to create what will be my debut show in Manhattan alongside a handful of other rising international artists. I would wake at once at 4:30 in the morning, to a strict regimen of coffee by five, and paint through the sunny summer days into late in the evening to complete these works. Read more

Martin Wittfooth at Copro Nason Gallery

The themes in Martin Wittfooth’s work don post-apocalyptic dystopias, leaving the viewer wondering if, in fact, they were the god that brought the wrath, or a mere viewer of a world not yet known. He and our mutual friend Jon Todd stopped through San Francisco to hang out this week and I managed to get a little inside scoop on his upcoming show, Sandcastles in the Tide, opening at Copro Nason Gallery in Los Angeles this Saturday. Talk to me a little bit about the theme behind this body of work. ‘This body of work is about nature reclaiming what was once taken from it, and continues to be a recurring theme for me. These paintings, in particular, are somewhat darker. I chose a lot of similar iconography in the paintings to tie in with what I feel shows human’s destructive tendencies’. Read more