In the meantime, I wandered through New People in SF this weekend, and discovered the work of Peter Callesen. He’s a Danish artist that uses printer paper to create multi-dimensional paper sculptures.

See more of his work.

“I have memories of of the pure joy of creating things for no reason when I was a child, I think we all do… While I used to labour over paintings, I now throw colours and shapes straight onto the canvas, allowing them to trigger something within the audience.”

YES YES YES YES YES.  Also, happy Friday ^___________^

{via Juxtapoz}

So you already know that I’m a fan of iLL-Literacy’s work and their approach to it.  This fall, they dropped iB41 for free. Now they’ve emerged post- winter hibernation, all psychedelic and spirals and shit, to ask ya freeloaders to contribute to their latest track.   At least the musically-inclined ones.

Check out the track and see what you can do.
iLL-Literacy – Doyoudonotsee?

I’m pretty sure that this thing called collaborative music is gonna swallow up the fatty record industry (or at least force it to take a fatty diet) and re-position music as we know it.  I know this cos I often predict the future.  Anyway, I’ve already ranted and raved about open source and sharing and the like in a previous post, so I’ll stop right there w/ the nerdery… and let the guys who made it do the talking!

I’m really liking this guy’s artwork. Lawrence Yang is a web geek by day, artist by night. He paints intricate, colorful pieces that mesh nature and technology, watercolor and ink, plus a whole lot of other stuff that simple words cannot articulate!

I also like his approach toward balancing work and art.  He makes it sound so simple and enjoyable… as art (and work) ought to be.

A lot of the reason that I paint comes out of what I do during the day. Information architecture is this really cerebral, abstract thing so you have to think about information and how to organize and structure it for a website. I really enjoy it a lot but it really makes my head kind of implode. So usually by the time I get home my brain’s fried and I just need to relax so I’ll just sit down and paint the demons out of my head. That’s a lot of my inspiration.

What I do during the day really balances out what I do at night. I think I need to have both structure and chaos so the art is the chaos and the structure is my job and they sort of balance me out into being a normal functioning person. I think too much of one or the other would make me insane.

For more, check out his bloggy and look out for a group show coming up in March at Giant Robot SF.

I like Thao. She’s from Virginia, plays guitar, and is hella awk.

Thao – When We Swam
Thao – Good Bye Good Luck

@ Berkeley. Despite how serious everyone looks, it was a really good show.

The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.

-Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

I created this piece as part of a racial justice poster project. When coming up with ideas for the design, I knew that I wanted to create something that speaks to and pays tribute to the personal, internal growth from which movements for justice are born.

In the 23 years of my little life, I’ve been blessed to have walked alongside crazy cool people with wild, contradictory, profound stories. What I’ve gathered is that we’ve all come to understand and work for racial justice in different ways.  Sometimes they mesh, other times they clash. At the same time, activism is changing.  In this age of information, good PR is reality, something that every powerful institution is utilizing with deadening precision. Glossy commodified justice is circulated and consumed, while everyday struggles are left unreported, ridiculed, or tokenized.

For me at this point in time, this means taking it back to basics.  Even as an artist, it would be stupid to think that one poster I make or even a lifetime of work could herald a movement or a better world. There are too many creative and dedicated people out there for it to be that easy.  What I can do is share the things that have affected and inspired me: to learn, to be a better person, to do more for the people I know and would like to know.

I really like this quote by José Rizal cos it sums up something so simple yet easy to forget:

He who does not know how to look back at the place from which he came will never arrive at his destination.

Or in everyday speak:

No history, no self. Know history, know self.

This has been a root and guiding principle in my own life.  It’s also been a sort of restorative when shit gets complicated or overwhelming.  I like to think that racial justice isn’t a fight but a part of who I am.  This piece is an effort to visualize the natural and restorative core of racial justice: a retreat into the elements, the mind, and one’s own trek through life.

But enough with the cheese!  To show my appreciation for the zombies stoners good people who visit my bloggy, I am giving away a few prints. Yes yes… free stuff!!  They are full-color digital prints (17 x 11″) via Autumn Express in San Francisco. Just email me at dnm.choi (at) gmail (dot) com and mention the blog, we’ll talk.

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{via JAK & JIL}

There are a lot of reasons to love Natasha Khan (one word: LAYERS), only the first of them being that she makes really good music.

From her latest album, Two Suns:
Bat for Lashes – Sleep Alone
Bat for Lashes – Siren Song

But it’s not even about the music. This woman is a storyteller.

“Whenever I’m writing music it’s a very visual place in my mind.  It has a location full of characters and colors and landscapes, so those two things really complement each other, and they help the other one to blossom and support the other.”

“I think it’s really important to give power to the world and the myth and the atmosphere that you’re trying to create. And if I was to just go out wearing normal stuff I’d feel like it was taking the power away and not giving others the same visual and symbolic references, and that excitement. For me, when I’ve seen other people take some risks with the way they look and do things on stage, it helps me to believe in that thing. I don’t think about that person having cups of tea and going shopping and being normal. I think about them as a performer and I quite like that; that people will look at me as a performer and this otherworldly thing.”

I worship that mind. That voice. Those OUTFITS. Don’t you?

…And she made these.

What else can I say?  I’m a believer.

Haitian Girl by David Choe.  A limited number of prints are for sale online, with all proceeds going to Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean’s foundation.

I have a hard time writing in here about things that are truly important… or tragic and incomprehensible to me.  I feel like unless my talk is backed up by substantive action, it trivializes the very cause it supposedly stands by. Hence the disproportionate amount of tongue-in-cheekery and not much of anything else.

So this is why I really appreciate writers who take the time to thoughtfully analyze difficult subjects and attempt to bridge that gap between theory and reality. Catherine Traywick of Hyphen has a great blog series called Idealize This!, which discusses practical issues encountered by people working for change.  The latest is on photography and relief, specifically in Haiti — something that I’ve (less articulately) pondered.

She writes:

In the aftermath of the earthquake that decimated Port-au-Prince weeks ago, journalists have worked ’round the clock to keep the flickering screens and hungry eyes of their eager public perpetually engaged. And we, in turn, have consumed, without pause, photo essay upon photo essay of devastated Haitians climbing bloody out from under piles of debris, desperate Haitians knocking over little boys, and homeless Haitians sleeping without shelter, among many other startling images captured by news photographers with Pulitzer-sized dreams (after all, Haiti’s last disaster earned this guy one!).

And we are so moved by these terrible, suspended fragments of another’s life that it may not occur to us that the bloody woman we saw rising from beneath blocks of concrete probably saw a photographer’s lens before she saw the faces of her rescuers. Nor do we wonder whether she’ll get a dime if her photo wins him any awards.

But that’s nothing new. Photojournalism has always been an ethically shady enterprise. Whether Steve McCurry’s portrait of the reluctantly compliant “Afghan Girl” or Kevin Carter’s voyeuristic photo of a starving Sudanese baby, the trade has long borne a paradoxical reputation; while widely regarded as a public service, it nevertheless entails a level of detachment that is antithetical to most conventional conceptions of “service.” It’s a topic I’ve written about before, and one that I continually revisit, particularly as I get to know more photographers and especially as I strive to critique the ethical implications of my own journalistic projects.

She goes on to detail the work of orgs like PhotoPhilanthropy, which positions ethical photojournalism as a process rather than just an outcome.

And in the end, there’s no perfect formula for photographers or artists to both serve others and receive recognition for their work.  It’s a personal, situational issue that requires, at the very least, a whole lot of self-reflection. Just finding out that the answer is that there is no answer is a struggle in itself.

As Eliza Gregory of PhotoPhilanthropy writes, “I think great art surprises us—it can come from anywhere, and be about anything. So I don’t think you have to be from a community to chronicle it with beauty and subtlety. But, it’s also very easy to become a hapless messiah, a benevolent imperialist, or simply someone who is not actually helping anyone. “

Giant Robot in Los Angeles is hosting Year of the Tiger, a group art show celebrating 4708 on the lunar calendar. They’ve graciously uploaded some preview artwork to Flickr, for all of those non-LA folksies.  Show lasts from February 13 – March 10th… looks pretty fucken tight! RAHHH!!!

TORA by Mari Inukai

Cringer & Panthor – Levon Jihanian

Tiger and Zebra – Lisa Hannawalt

Sweet Dreams – Jeremiah Ketner

Year of the Tiger by Apak!

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{via Alex Chiu}