May 21, 2013
Brandon Bird (b. 1980) is an artist. He attended University of California, Santa Cruz and was an artist-in-residence from 2004-2006 at Risley Residential College at Cornell University.
His most common medium is oil paints on canvas, but works in a number of genres, including pen and ink and digital mediums. He has a significant cult following for his tendency to paint figures from history and popular culture such as Christopher Walken, Chuck Norris, and Abraham Lincoln, in absurd situations. He is a regular contributor to ‘The Believer’ (an American literary magazine that also covers other arts and general culture). He has also done work for ‘Las Vegas Weekly’ and rock band, The Aquabats.
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May 20, 2013
Michael Moss was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2010, and was a finalist for the prize in 2006 and 1999. He is also the recipient of a Loeb Award and an Overseas Press Club citation.
Before coming to ‘The New Times,’ he was a reporter for ‘The Wall Street Journal,’ ‘New York Newsday,’ and ‘The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.’ He has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.
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May 7, 2013
David LaChapelle (b. 1963) is an American photographer and film director. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His style has been described as ‘hyper-real and slyly subversive’ and as ‘kitsch pop surrealism.’ One 1996 article called him the ‘Fellini of photography,’ a phrase that continues to be applied to him.
He grew up in Connecticut and North Carolina. He has said to have loved the public schools in Connecticut and thrived in their art program as a child and teenager, although he struggled with bullying growing up. He was bullied in his North Carolina school for being gay. When he was 15 years old, he ran away from home to become a busboy at Studio 54 in New York. Eventually he returned home to enroll in the North Carolina School of Arts. He would later attend the School of Visual Arts in NYC.
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April 18, 2013
Michael Leavitt (b. 1977) is a visual artist based in Seattle, described as “the best caricature sculptor in the city.’ The ‘über-allround-cool-creator’ is most widely known for his ‘Art Army’ series of handmade action figures depicting visual artists, musicians, and entertainers. Through his company, Intuition Kitchen Productions, Leavitt is a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ responsible for a wide variety of conceptual art projects and performance artworks.
From a disinterest in convention, Leavitt proclaims, ‘I’d be afraid not to try other mediums.’ Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Leavitt was influenced by the wood-craft and engineering of Native American, Scandinavian, and industrial manufacturing in the region. His parents practiced education, graphic design, and environmentalism by trade, formulating Leavitt’s early interests in both art and sociology.
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April 18, 2013
Barry McGee (b. 1966) is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others. McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South San Francisco, California. He later graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991 with a concentration in painting and printmaking.
McGee rose out of the Mission School art movement (‘New Folk’ or “Urban Rustic’) and graffiti boom in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early nineties. His work draws heavily from a pessimistic view of the urban experience, which he describes as, ‘urban ills, overstimulations, frustrations, addictions & trying to maintain a level head under the constant bombardment of advertising.’
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April 18, 2013
Margaret Kilgallen (1967 – 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement (sometimes called ‘New Folk’ or ‘Urban Rustic’). Kilgallen was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up nearby in Kensington, Maryland.
She received a BFA in printmaking from Colorado College in 1989 and an MFA from Stanford University in 2001. Though diagnosed with breast cancer, Kilgallen opted to forgo chemotherapy so that she might carry a pregnancy to term. She died in 2001, at age 33, three weeks after the birth of Asha, her daughter with her husband and collaborator Barry McGee.
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April 17, 2013
Rick Griffin (1944 – 1991) was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in ‘Zap Comix.’
Griffin was closely identified with the Grateful Dead, designing some of their best known posters and record jackets. His work within the surfing subculture included both film posters and his comic strip, ‘Murphy.’ Griffin was born near Palos Verdes amidst the surfing culture of southern California.
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April 17, 2013
KRK Ryden (b.1953) is an American visual artist. His surrealistic art style is reflective of his taste in cartoons and pulp art and his work is described as ‘colorful and visually appealing reflections on discarded icons.’ In 1977 Ryden changed his name from Keith to Keyth for ‘numberoligical [sic] reasons’ and to differentiate himself from his father’s first name.
Ryden took up the theremin in 2003 and created a band called Ken the Magic Corner God. With his theremin, and Josh Mcleod on keyboards, they recorded one studio album. Their most famous performance was with Mark Mothersbaugh as Booji Boy (a character DEVO created) singing the song ‘U Got Me Bugged.’
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April 17, 2013
Mark Ryden (b. 1963) is an American painter. Ryden is one of the most well known artists of the Pop Surrealist movement, an underground, pop-culture-infused art scene with its origins in 1970s Southern California. He was dubbed ‘the god-father of pop surrealism’ by ‘Interview Magazine.’ Ryden’s aesthetic is developed from subtle amalgams of many sources: from Ingres, David and other French classicists to ‘Little Golden Books.’
Ryden also draws his inspiration from anything that will evoke mystery; old toys, anatomical models, stuffed animals, skeletons and religious ephemera found in flea markets. According to ‘The New York Times,’ ‘Ryden’s pictures hint at the psychic stuff that pullulates beneath the sentimental, nostalgic and naïve surface of modern kitsch.’
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April 17, 2013
Jen Stark (b. 1983) is a contemporary artist who creates paper sculptures. She also works with drawing and animation. She draws inspiration from microscopic patterns in nature, wormholes, and sliced anatomy. She studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BFA majoring in Fibers with a minor in Animation.
Stark’s ideas are based on replication and infinity, echoing patterns found in nature. Since expanding her medium from paper to include wood and even mirrors, Stark’s oeuvre of optically and methodologically baffling sculptures and drawings has enjoyed a renaissance of context. Her signature creations combine a variety of materials in hypnotic mandala-like configurations. Stark lives and works in Miami, Fl.
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April 9, 2013
Franklin Christenson Ware (b. 1967), known professionally as Chris Ware, is an American comic book artist and cartoonist, notable for his ‘Acme Novelty Library’ series and the graphic novels ‘Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth,’ and ‘Building Stories.’ His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression.
His works tend to use a vivid color palette and are full of realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style. Ware often refers to himself in the publicity for his work in self-effacing, even withering tones. He is considered by some critics and fellow notable illustrators and writers, such as Dave Eggers, to be among the best currently working in the medium.
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April 1, 2013
Wes Wilson (b. 1937) is an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters. Most well known for designing posters for Bill Graham of the The Fillmore in San Francisco, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace movement, psychedelic era and the 1960s.
In particular, he is known for inventing and popularizing a ‘psychedelic’ font around 1966 that made the letters look like they were moving or melting.
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