Ba Dass ChiX

So March 19th is the opening of my new art exhibition titled, "Ba Dass ChiX"! It will be held at the Gallery Cabaret @ 2020 N Oakley in Bucktown. Starts at 6pm and goes until 9pm. Then there is a concert that we are all welcome to stay for. Im bring the art and food and of course there are booze! :)

The show is in honor of women's appreciation month aka March! The photography exhibit will explore the various inspiring and strong women in Chicagoland and tell you a little about each one.

I plan to continue this series and publish a book in the near future so if you know any Badass chicks drop me a line :)

Hope to see you there!

-Iz

Bruce Holwerda

This artist's work is really out of the ordinary. I saw this oil painter at another Art Festival in Naperville. His work was on the fliers and posters for the show. It was hanging up on all the light posts in downtown Naperville weeks before the show. The image on the poster was very intreguing and eye catching. I would slow down every time I drove past one of the fliers to try and figure out what the figure was doing. I finally got to see the image up close in the Bruce Holwerda's tent. It was of a man riding an orb like object. Yes I agree it was a little wierd. The man was wearing a colorful outfit and had a court jester looking hat on his head. His face was painted with many different shades that looked like deliberate face paint. His expression was very excited and enthusiastic as if in the middle of an act or performance. The loose brush strokes gave the painting a fun and care free feel. The background was plain yet the brush strokes had been pushed in a way to create motion and speed. The orb he was riding looked as if it had exhaust pipes coming out of the back of it turning it into a futuristic vehicle.

As I looked around the tent and saw lots of interesting figures. They all seemed to look like circus performers with painted red noses. Many of them looked like they were silhouettes painted in with wild intense splashes of paint. Almost like Pollack's action painting, but with complete control over every movement. I fell in love with Holwerda's work. His work has a surrealistic quality to it and that automatically caught my eye. Several of his figures wear extravagant head dresses in which you can find a whole new picture. You can't see it at first glance, but if you look closely you can find miniature people dancing around holding indescribable contraptions. Mechanical objects pertrude out around the figures heads. This series of paintings reminded me a lot of Mr. Marcet's style of painting, because he likes to incorporate suddle surrealism in his work as well.
Holwerda work was so much fun to look at and his precise study of the figure incorporated with action painting as sudle surrealistic qualities mad his work one of a kind. I am amazed that I haven't seen any of his work in an art museum yet. I recommend you check out his work. He'll be famous sooner or later! http://www.bruceholwerda.com/

Gary Wick

At the Naperville Fall Art Festival I had the pleasure of admiring thousands of fantastic art works. I picked up a card from Gary Wick's tent which displayed many various pastel drawings. I remembered him very well from the show, because he was very funny and animated. He seemed to really have a lot to say about his work. He was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable when it came to art in general. He is a self taught artist, who has taken a few classes to improve upon his technique. He has had his work shown is quite a few galleries and has received awards in some competitions. He has had dozens of one person exhibits and is very proud of this work.

I was amazed at his precise detail and beautiful blending in his pictures. I have tried using pastels numerous times and I have never been able to get the smoothness and elegance in which Gary's pictures were drawn in. The land and skyscapes blew me away! It was interesting to see the various canvas sizes that Wick used and the way he laid out his plaine air drawings. Long narrow canvases seem to work well with Wick's drawings. Sometimes this lay out has sort of a Japanese print feel to it, which I feel is very ironic since many of his drawings are of the old fashioned American landscape. His skyscapes are extremely dramatic and contain a array of vibrant colors. If I were to blend these colors together I would end up with a muddy mess, but Wick's perfectionistic touch creates a flawless transition throughout all the colors.

I talked to Gary for a while asking him about his technique and how he creates his dramatic shadows, perfect details, blending, depth within the composition... I could go on. He had simple answers for all my questions. For details he just sharpens his pastel, and for blending he uses his finger! I was shocked to hear that they master works were done with such ease. Gary asked me if I would like to draw just like he does. I simply blurted out an obvious, "Umm ya!" He directed me to his website where I could locate the step by step instructions on how to draw almost every one of his pictures. Here is the website if anyone is interested. www. wickartwork.com

I was pretty impressed so make sure you check it out!

Art of Play

Art of the Future

Two weeks ago I randomly ran into an art show, in Millennium Park. It was at NextFest, a show of new inventions and technology that will soon be available to purchase. Next to the entrance to the NextFest tent there was a maze like structure made from soda pop plastic rings. This to me look like a piece of art all by itself. Walking through the maze you discover beautiful large scale prints. These prints were done in a graphic design program called Flash. Flash is the media and interaction tool for creating web site banners ad and intro pages into a medium for fine art. This was all created by Erik Natzek of Chicago. He has fine tuned his software in order to produce these epic prints and digital creations. These dynamic shapes and patterns flow and intertwine with in each other turning into a 3D visual world. The interlacing of translucent and opaque forms makes the pieces extremely interesting and easy on the eye. The hues of the prints are all over the place. Complementary, tertiary, and primary colors blend well together. The use of thin lines on top of this thick blocks of color make the art even more interesting. There is no other subject matter in these prints other than lines and shapes. Normals this would become boring and repetitive, but it is the opposite when it comes to Natzek's work. It is as if a different story is told with ever piece. The moods of each piece change drastically. Some are very busy and cluttered, reminding me of the Futurist that we talked about in class. Others create smooth flowing ribbons of color sweeping thought large open spaces. It is sort of romantic and mystical. Whether fast or slow, the prints all express motion.
The prints were absolutely beautiful and gave me new inspirations for my computer art class. It is amazing what today's technology can do and how much it influences us and art as well.

Stephen Wilkes: Ellis Island-Ghosts of Freedom

While at the Cultural Center I came across another exhibition. It was a series of about 30 large scale photographs taken by Stephen Wilkes, between 1998 and 2003. These photographes were of the long abandoned hospitals of the south side of Ellis Island. As we all know Ellis Island is the iconic entrance of the United States through which over 12 million immigrants passed between 1892 and 1954. It was the gateway to Promise Land. Although it was not as easy to get in as you may think. People who were sick were quarentined and treated. Some were cured and others were not, imprisoning them a step away from their Paridiase. Wilkes visited and took photos of the infectious disease and psychiatric hospital. He became obsessed with it and came back many times. Taking photos at of everything possible, at every angle and, light. The decaying corridores and mold covered walls are personification of death.

Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe

This Wednesday I took a trip to the Chicago Cultural Center to see the Marilyn Monroe exibit. I have always been a little obsessed over Marilyn and when I found out that it only runs through September 21st I couldn't waste time. The show consisted of many different artists from around the globe. They depicted Marilyn in many different mediums and scenarios. There were many famous portrayals of her like the colorful, Andy Warhol, print of Marilyn and the photo shoots from the movie Seven Year Itch, where she stood over a vent and her skirt flew up over her head. She was shown as a suductive, sexy, bombshell that could have had any man at the snap of her fingers. This was that Marilyn that we all know and love. Her dumb blonde image has stayed with us to this day, even though it was just an image. The exibitition as reviels the real Marilyn or Norma Jean (her real name). It shows a intelligent and shy woman which was molded into her fame, yet she never thought that she would be portrayed only as a person who is beautiful on the outside. She wanted more than that. I jotted down one of her quotes that was written above her portrait, "I must drag Marilyn Monroe around with me like an albatros."
Many say that she loved the camera more than her husbands. I think that the camera loved her back just as much.
The exhibition showed a third persona of Marilyn, which was stated very dramaticly. It showed that even know Marilyn has been immortalized by all the pictures of her is just as famous as she was when she was alive, she was still only human. Many artworks showed that she was only human. That she felt pain, had emotions, and would die just like the rest of us. Two pieces caught my attention that delt with Marilyn's unexpected and untimly death. They were next to each other on the same wall. The first was entitled "Overexposed" by Christian Blau. It showed a beautiful young portiat of Marilyn on the left and a photo that was smuggled out of the morge after her autopsy on the right. The photo on the left shows the goddess at her prime, but the photo on the right brings her down to earth. It is as if you walk up from a dream and realize that things are normal again.
The other artwork which had a large impact on me was called " Marilyn's Last Portrait" It is a large slik screen print of her autoposy report shown in a bright red. The words are hard to read, but the report uses only technical terms and when you are reading it, it is just another report. No one would have guessed that this was autopsy report of a legend. This piece is the most real portrait of Marilyn Monroe, because it describes her, not as a model, actress, bombshell, sex symbol, icon, or ledgend, but as a ordinay woman.

The exibition is spectacular! Go see it if you have a chance before the 21st!
PS Will write more about this, but I left my notebook at work...

THE CITY OF PHOENIX - WAR*SAW EVERYTHING

While I was in Poland this summer I came across an outdoor photography show. This exhibition was created in honor of the 64th Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. The exhibition "The City of Phoenix- WAR*SAW Everything" shows the was and post-war history of Warsaw, it's destruction reconstruction. It consists of 28 photomontages, where photos from the Warsaw Uprising have been morphed with modern day photos of the exact same places. The exhibition made a huge impact on me. Warsaw is my home town. I have walked through its streets countless times and seeing these horrific photographs brought tears to my eyes. Looking at these photographs made me very sad, but at the same time extremely proud of how post-war Warsaw has evolved. It is amazing to see that during the Warsaw Uprising the city was leveled to the ground and now it is modern and successful metropolitan. But that does not mean that the memory of the Uprising isn't there. Heartbreaking reminders of the infamous time in history can be seen on almost every street of Warsaw. Flowers and candles line the sides of buildings. Plaques have been in countless places with the names of the innocent people who died there. Memorials stand strong commemorating the courageous people fought for their city to the last bullet. Even without bullets they didn't give up.
I give this exhibition two thumbs up. I wish I could show it to everyone.

Warsaw my home
You bled for me and cried your heart out
You suffer immense lose and excruciating pain

Your people fought to the last bullet for you

Warszawa my mentor
you taught me to love