James Benjamin Franklin
Artist James Benjamin Franklin has been brightening up every Saturday for me over the past month or so, accompanying an ongoing story by Laura Lippman in the New York Times Magazine. I really dig his simple, slightly surreal, minimal style, emphasizing folksy figures with clean spare detail and beautiful Milton Avery-esque palettes.
Tagged: folk art
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As a long time fan of the folksy paintings of artist Keith Shore, I was really happy to hear from him that he’s just updated his site with some amazing new paintings. I can never get enough of the loose, dreamy way that he treats his subject matter, as well as the medium in general. In fact, several of these paintings will be dressing the set of the upcoming movie, The Beaver, starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. I’ve never been a huge Mel Gibson fan, but I might have to check this one out. Read more
Kathleen Lolley takes a narrative approach to her folky paintings, using fairy-tale, fantastical, and mythological imagery to weave cryptic stories both imaginary and referential to her personal life. Read more
There’s something folk arty about JJ Cromer’s work, and it would certainly translate well onto textiles. If Joan Miro had spent time in Africa and set up shop in rural New Jersey, his work might look something like Cromer’s. Read more
Also by ILANA KOHN
Sixth Pommery Exhibition Sons & Lumieres
How much better can it get than little dollops of contemporary art interspersed throughout the breathtaking setting of Champagne Pommery’s Domaine in Reims, France. The most interesting part here is that this is an ongoing tradition at Champagne Pommery, going all the way back to the 19th century ‘when Madame Pommery commissioned sculptor Gustav Navlet to carve four bas reliefs for the estate and later had the famous cabinet maker and glass artist Emile Gallé create a solid oak Pommery barrel that holds up to 19,816 gallons (100,000 bottles). This barrel was displayed at the 1904 Worlds’ Fair in St. Louis’. The upcoming Sixth Pommery Exhibition, Sons & Lumieres, will be curated by French artist Bertrand Lavier and will include ‘everyday objects often set in difficult spaces’. Read more
Color heaven! Perusing UK illustrator Ben O’Brien’s portfolio feels a lot like wandering the aisles of a giant candy store. I could buy one of everything in sight. Read more
I love it! With the CD now being eclipsed by the MP3, I find myself feeling even more nostalgic for the simple charm of the cassette. Australian artists Andrew Smart and Jared Schmidt create ‘large scale hand-made wooden cassette tapes, routed, sanded, bogged, primed, and painted with a high quality paint finish’. Aha! The perfect way to memorialize my old mix tapes. Read more
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Japanese artist Ikeda Manabu creates the most detailed, expressive, and awe inspiring artwork which literally rolls across the canvas with subtle colours amidst waterless wave-like formations. Each work is constructed upon a series of intricate miniatures which play out across broader themes of unrest and movement. Read more
Brilliance can be handed down in many ways — through your voice, your hands, your mind. One individual that possesses it in many ways is young French musician, M83. Read more
San Fransisco-based artist Alexis MacKenzie must be patient. She has to be in order to create beautiful collages from the vintage books that she collects. There’s an amazing amount of detail in each piece. Elements are painstakingly transplanted from book to paper with scissors and glue. No Photoshop cut n’ pastes here.
I love the interesting lines and clever use of sustainable materials found in the Klein Bottle House, a holiday place in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The architects, McBride Charles Ryan, based the design around the concept of the Klein Bottle, ‘a descriptive model of a surface developed by topological mathematicians’. Read more
Not much more needs to be said about this. Ricky Gervais, the funniest man in
‘NaCo was created in 1999 by Tijuana’s Edoardo Chavarín and Mazatlan’s Robby Vient, schoolmates at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Read more
Activists from all walks of life — architects, artists, children, students, skaters, and more — are documented on the Tools for Actions website, aiming to show us how, whether deliberate or not, the tiniest or the biggest project driven by the quietest or loudest voice can trigger radical change in today’s urban centres. It’s an inspiring blog, particularly for those feeling disempowered. Read more
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With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
Trip out with Sparrow Vs Sparrow’s retro illustrations, I love their aesthetic, color use and sense of humor. Read more
Alex Passapera’s dizzying pen and ink drawings are cascades of images melting into one another, often looking like contorting, mutating creatures spewing blood-like ink splatters. Read more
Almanac Market in Philadelphia is slightly pricey, but you definitely get what you pay for. Offering fantastic bread, cheeses, produce, and cured meats such as sopressata and pepperoni, it was a great pit stop when my band played in town, and definitely more economical and tasty than hitting a greasy spoon for road snacks.
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
Warning at Work is a silkscreen mini-print from Sussex based illustrator Andy Smith which comes in a limited edition of just 50. Dimensions are 20cm x 15cm. We have them available through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
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