If the whimsical name of this company doesn’t ring any bells, I’m pretty sure you’ll recognize some of the artists it houses. Born in Brooklyn earlier this year, this company is a funhouse collective of established artists who each bring a special brand of fun to the table. Artists such as Alex Pardee, Buff Monster, Jeremyville, Miss Van, and Tara McPherson are brought together under one gingerbread roof to make the world a much more wondrously colourful place.

The Cotton Candy Machine is crammed full of all kinds of treats: from limited run art toys, to t-shirts, not to mention their highly desirable screen prints. They even have some supercool housewares. If Tara McPherson makes your world go round, as she does mine, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled on this site. She’s one busy gal and the shop offers a tantalizing array of goodies featuring her delightful characters. If you see something there that strikes your fancy, you’d better pounce, because her colourful confections are flying off the shelves.

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This is at last the artist the 1960s was desperately trying to produce. Mark Dean Veca’s installations electrify galleries and museums with an ethereal pop ecstasy the previous generation only dreamed of. This is the drug we have all been waiting for.

Cleveland-born, Brooklyn-based artist Thu Tran ups the cute ante with her magic-marker character drawings, plush landscape installations, and glass birthday cakes. Obsessed with food and cartoon animals, Tran’s color-saturated aesthetic is that of a twelve year-old girl with a killer Red Bull habit.

My background is in street art and there are a lot of people historically who I’ve really liked. But in terms of new people, I particularly love the work of Brooklyn artist Judith Supine. It’s a surreal combination of old engraving art mixed with hand-drawn and painted images. He does paste up posters, but they’re not just square, they’re cut-out shapes of these interesting looking characters. The closest thing I could compare it to are the Monty Python animations.

Hindu, Greek, and Buddhist mythology informs the work of Brooklynite Chitra Ganesh, who makes cryptic, surreal sculptures, murals, installations, multimedia drawings, and photography that draw from Indian comic books, Bollywood posters, and other ephemera of South Asian culture, as well as 19th century portraiture, anime, and the standard touch stones of a globalized psyche. The absurdity and sexuality of her work present the war between modernity, tradition, and nationality over the idea of femininity – her figures are almost entirely female, and watchful, menacing eyes are a common motif in her work. A lot of her stuff is reminiscent of Raymond Pettibon, in a good way.

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I’ve long been a fan of Brooklyn artist Katy Horan. With a folksy old west, native american aesthetic, Horan creates paintings rich with narrative, like old campfire stories, come to life. Having recently opened her first solo show at the Anno Domini Gallery in San Jose, Horan has created a haunting new body of work filled with abstract lacy patterns and narratives that will most definitely hit your storytime sweet spot.

The brilliant New York illustrator, Fernanda Cohen — who just happens to live down the road from me in Brooklyn — is teaching a portfolio class at Third Ward starting this coming Tuesday. The course, Illustration Portfolio, ‘helps students build a professional portfolio strong enough for them to feel confident to show it to art directors in the illustration field, including editorial and advertising’. She will lead the class in discussions about ‘what goes into a portfolio, and how to choose your best work, and talk about art directors, who they are, and what they expect from illustrators they are looking to hire’. Visit the Third Ward website for more details.

Brooklyn-based artist Jeph Gurecka uses food and organic matter in fascinating ways to make his conceptual pieces, taxidermying chicken parts and arranging them into a muscular, human torsoe, or making a huge pile of skulls made out of bread, or reproducing photos using salt, soil, and ash.

The work of Brooklyn artist Cosme Herrera is beautiful, subtle and imbued with a deep sense of meaning. ‘As I constantly question man-made constructs, I search for a universal language’, he says. ‘Through this body of work, I seek to define my own logos. Logos are a system of symbols designed for easy and definite recognition. Using a system of logos, I explore my relationship with wood through metaphors and parables. My use of wood is observant of the information trees contain and communicate. Their rings, like an analogical language, tell the story of the tree’s experience through starvation, growth, long winters and wet springs’. ‘Written language, in contrast to wood grain, is entirely artificial, the relationships that words have to their meanings are assigned arbitrarily. For humans, however, our elected language is very often the primary link between us, allowing for an interconnectedness of our otherwise discrete beings (trees). Exploring various natural, synthetic and man-made woods through my process, I create these works while investigating my own personal and ritualistic relationship with the material. These allegorical images illustrate a symbiotic world where man and tree coexist in peace or chaos with their environment. My narrative explores life and death through the various relationships that men and trees share ecologically, industrially, and spiritually’.

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The duo of Brendan Monroe and Evah Fan are one of those creative, powerhouse couples. Though two entirely individual artists, the influence they exert upon one another is subtle yet undeniable. Both create the kind of art that that makes you giddy with pleasure, while the lack of pretension puts you completely at ease. You get the undeniable sense that these are two people who simply live and breathe creativity and love every moment of it. Two amazing artists with a wholly individual take on life and the world around them. I had the pleasure to grill them both.
Where did you both go to school?
Brendan: ‘I went to school at Art Center in Pasadena, California’.
Evan: ‘Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, with you Ilana!’

Since school up until now, what’s your journey been like?
Brendan: ‘Oh, so much. Well both of us met right after school. We had a group show together in LA and it was our first after graduating. Then we hung out a bunch and made some magic happen, or whatever. Work wise, we just tried to stay alive and keep working. I figured out that illustration wasn’t really my thing, and then I went more down a “gallery” path with my work’.
Evah: ‘A journey revisiting my teen years. In order to survive, my credentials opened doors to minimum-waged jobs. Once as a clerk at a local copy shop (there’s plenty here in Berkeley) and another as a shipping assistant at a little shipping place right after graduation. Together these two jobs gave me more insights to making zines and miscellaneous shipping details. I guess it is rather helpful. Slowly, I got a chance to do some illustrations and participate in small exhibits showing my paintings. All in all, a little rough ride in the beginning, and now it’s a little better, to be able to work from home fulltime in my late 20s, I am thankful’.

How did you find your style? How would you say it’s evolved since you began?
Brendan: ‘Well, at first when you are a student you kind of take a lot in from your environment and your style or way of doing things is not necessarily your own yet. That’s one thing I felt was really nice to look forward to after school, letting things take their own way with less input from all sides. Then eventually, you find out what you want things to look like and what you want to say. At least it sort of worked that way for me’.
Evah: ‘I think my style came through from my compulsive obsessive from cleaning? Somewhere in the midst of developing my idea, my paintings reduced in size and I am bending forward to paint, which is not healthy for my eyes. I get anal-retentive when it comes to painting, a result of household chores. I didn’t always paint so small, in school days, I think they were normal size. I enjoy painting with flat color; early style draws from cartoon and comic influence’.

How would you say your work has influenced one another?
Brendan: ‘The most in our own ways we kind of push each other to try new things. Evah’s always trying to get me to use some blue’.
Evah: ‘Our work is quite different and I admired how Brendan is process oriented, where as I really have to dig hard to project what I want to paint. There’s spontaneity lack in mine that is apparent in his work. Unconsciously, I dabbled into making three-dimensional sculptures from seeing all these wonderful wood sculptures come alive from him using his band saw’.

What do you enjoy most about your work?
Brendan: ‘Hmmm. . . My work, I’m happy when I can make something a little strange and sort of eerie, but not scary, while also making something I think is fairly beautiful, if that makes sense.
Evah: On the economic scale, my artwork is kind of travel-size friendly. It’s compact in a sense, and I’ve been told from gallerist to bring my small originals (save on shipping?) and frame in the final destination. I do however enjoy depicting my scatter-brained fragments into some sort of naïve narratives’.

If and/or when you find yourself in a creative slump, what do you both do to try and get out of it?
Brendan: ‘I just try and work anyway, though it can get tough. Or take a break, but I don’t always have that choice. Drink coffee’.
Evah: ‘Take a coffee break. Sometimes I get really frustrated I boycott working for a few hours, until something good sparks up. The drill goes, I vent my frustration out on Brendan and a good meal goes a long way!’

Plans for future projects?
Brendan: ‘Our next show will be in Paris at Galerie L.J. Beaubourg. We’re not positive what we are going to have in the show, but I think I might like to try experimenting with some microorganisms, though who knows if they will turn into finished pieces or not‘.
Evah: ‘I want to paint bigger, but of smallish things. Also longing for a sojourn abroad’.

Twin brothers, Ad Deville and DROO (aka Skewville), can’t seem to get a break. Working hard in a city where artists compete with finance gurus for space, the street artists are weathered craftsmen who are staying put and keeping shop in New York. The duo has trudged along, making their presence known throughout the city and around the world with their signature wooden sneakers thrown over electrical lines. Despite their perseverance and rising profile among street artists, Skewville was kicked out of their Lower East Side digs last year. They haven’t let the loss of their space keep them from envisioning grander plans for their Skewville collaboration. They headed east, to Brooklyn in the warehouse filled neighborhood of Bushwick to open their newest laboratory. Keep an ear out for events at their new place.

We spoke with Brooklyn-based illustrator Jordan Awan a few weeks back. This is the second part of that interview. How did you find your style? ‘Though “style” can be a slippery word to use, I can pinpoint one particular instance that led to a major turning point in the way I work. It was a comment made several years ago by my good friend Eric Wrenn, who told me that I was drawing too quickly and needed to physically slow my hand down’. ‘ Forcing myself to draw and paint as slow as possible was incredibly difficult but absolutely necessary for me. It helped me to make each line count as much as possible.

Art making, like life, is a process of constant becoming and never of being. So the work I make is constantly evolving, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in invisible ways. Ultimately you are who you are and can only control and shape what comes out to a very small extent. Blake says: “As a man is, so he sees”. One consequence of this would be: “As a man is, so he creates”.

A story that my father told me years ago and that always stuck with me was about Isamu Noguchi carving stone. If a stone was not breaking in the way Noguchi wanted, sometimes he would try to force it to break. The stone would crack and crumble under his force but still not break the way he had wanted, and ultimately he would succeed only in destroying a large part of the stone. He would be so ashamed that he had tried to force nature to act according to his own vision that he would put the stone aside for years to let it heal.

This story is incredibly powerful on several levels, but the one that is most relevant here is this: things and people are what they are and cannot be made otherwise. Each creator has a voice that is unique to them, and though they can not change their voice through willpower, they can become more in tune with their own natural creative evolution. Forcing yourself to make things in a way or style that is not natural is ultimately going to be a destructive, not a creative, act’.

What do you enjoy most about your work? ‘The thing I like best about my work is that it was made by me. There is no pleasure quite like sitting back and contemplating something that I created. My father is a poet; when he reads his poems to me, he often is seized by uncontrollable joyful laughter, and I readily join him in laughing. That is the kind of creative exuberance only a creator feels and only another creator can empathize with and wholly
understand.

My other favorite part is the actual making, the creative process. Susan Sontag once said (something to the effect of) her books were only alive to her when she was working on them. Every creative person can identify to an extent with what she means. When you’re working on a piece, it has life; it’s sparring partner of sorts’.

The wonderful Chris Stain [above], Billy Mode, and The Poloroid Kid exhibit at Ad Hoc Art in Brooklyn has just drawn to a close. This exhibit, among others, has helped push Ad Hoc Art to the forefront of the contemporary art movement in the burgeoning art scene in Brooklyn and beyond. Any gallery can line its walls with art, but Andrew Ford, an edgy curator in New York, is booking shows with artists that are telling stories of urban America, from Baltimore to San Francisco, from artists like Eine to Swoon, and Pop Surrealism greats like Robert Williams. Set outside of the ‘bougie’ likes of Chelsea, Ad Hoc Art has set down amongst one of the larger populations of urban artists in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

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New York-based James Gustavson’s illustrations have been featured in Elle, City Hall News, and The Rambler, amongst others. He is most known for his collaboration with Elle advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll. His art is inspired by Esther Crotty, Terry Gilliam and Chuck D.

I love the vibrancy and subtleness about the work of Brooklyn artist, Ian Carpenter, whose paintings were exhibited in a solo show in Chelsea, New York last year.

Working out of Brooklyn, artist Linda Zacks imbues her paintings with a wonderful richness of colour and detail. Her work is brutally real in places, and somewhat confronting in others, as she takes a peek behind the curtain of the sprawling modern, urban environment.

This is really amazing, a poignant and richly textured video and sound piece from Brooklyn-based artist, Alex Itin. There’s something quite surreal about the imagery that he creates to a backdrop of delicate guitar and piano lines, all of which builds to an almighty crescendo. Beautiful, memorable. Check it out.

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