DFM Instagram
It's a rainy Monday morning in Los Angeles, and we needed a little cuteness boost to get the day going. We found it at the Dirtsa Studio shop on Etsy, which has the cutest chalk by numbers art ever! The name Dirtsa is "Astrid" spelled backwards - the name of the shop owner's grandmother, who was also an artist. A Yale graduate, Becky worked as a Display Coordinator for our beloved Anthropologie for two years before leaving to "explore creativity on (her) own terms", and now resides in New Jersey where she makes all the cuteness you see on Etsy. We love that, yes we do. To visit the Dirtsa Studio shop, click here.
All images via the Dirtsa Studio shop on Etsy
Keren Richter, a visual artist educated at Parsons School of Design and Columbia University in NYC, is the genius behind our website of the week, Keren's portfolio (www.notkeren.com). Keren specializes in illustration and art direction, and has a client list that includes Microsoft, Urban Outfitters, Sephora, MTV, Vans, Ford, Nylon, Casemate, Boost Mobile, and Rocketdog, among many others. Her illustration style is very distinct, but her range is very broad. Her site includes illustrations, advertisements, art direction, collages, and a "things" category, which includes everything from a casemate iPhone case to a sneaker for Vans, both decorated with her signature illustration style. There's no doubt Keren is talented, that's for sure! We pulled some of our favorites below.
For more of Keren's inspiring work, visit www.notkeren.com.
All images via Not Keren via Design Work Life
What a fun job! Dana Tanamachi, a graphic designer living in Brooklyn, makes her living as a custom chalk letterer. Yep, that's right - she makes awesome, large-scale, custom chalk art for a living. She's so good that she's been commissioned by big name clients like West Elm, Rugby Ralph Lauren, Google, Addidas, Every Day with Rachael Ray, and more. We love it! We want something for our office!
All images via DanaTanamachi.com
We are so happy to see Ben's latest work. We all studied in Rome together and remember pouring over his sketch book and admiring the detailed drawings then. Now they are even more spectacular. The work has a distinct baroque angle that I bet was influenced by our time in the Italian capital. If you are in the area of Gallery Half, please check out the show and support his work.
Half Gallery is pleased to present Hotbox Devolution, the first solo exhibition of paintings by artist Ben Blatt, on view March 1 through April 1.
Blatt’s intricate watercolor paintings focus on enclosures set into abandoned piazzas, rigorously rendered with twisting, virtuosic detail. Outcropping bell jars, fountains, terrariums, monuments, and medallions serve as incubators for lush, botanical worlds in which the artist cultivates a psycho-suggestive bounty. Within these containers, Blatt explores notions of un/natural paradox: overturned, architectural constructions spill water on teeming plant life; leaves unfold to receive crystalline forms; water is both frozen and flowing; veins (or vines?) crawl through stone; mountain ranges plot like ant hills. Life overgrows life in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
Employing the patient medium of watercolor, Blatt refocuses the idyllic art-historical movements of Rococo, Symbolism, Wunderkammen, and Romanticism through a contemporary lens: shifts in CMYK (a color printing model) suggest digital erratum, psychedelia flutters about, and cracked color fields abut cobblestones harvested from microscopic electron scans.
Entangled deep within this world of copious, visual delight is the fear of floodgates burst wide. Taken, a particularly bucolic scene, offers a pendant dangling amidst radiant autumn vines. Framed beneath a double bust of a woman is the carnivorous flower of death know as rafflesia, which just happens to reek like rotting flesh.
Ben Blatt lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA in 2001 from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work has since been included in group exhibitions at White Columns, Bellwether Gallery, Feigen Contemporary (all New York, NY), and John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI.
I was browsing an older issue of Print Magazine this morning and found the work of a fellow RISD alum Janine Rewell. I like the consistent aesthetic of her graphics, and the sun burn is pretty cool.
1
