This one reminds me a lit­tle of Swedish artist Alexan­dra Hed­berg’s recent Snow White draw­ings and explo­rations…

Founded in 2006 by Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti, Copenhagen-based Play­dead is an inde­pen­dent game stu­dio. Due for release this August, LIMBO is their first production.

The orig­i­nal con­cept trailer for Limbo from 2006:

Game trailer:
I love the atmos­pheric qual­ity and mood­i­ness of their sim­ple, almost dreamy artwork.

And here’s the in-game teaser:

Next week holds the promise of the US release of the first film by Banksy. Last week, an extended teaser for the film was released which begins to out­line Thierry Guetta’s (aka Mr. Brain­wash) pur­suit of the mys­te­ri­ous artist. Check it out:

A list of venues and show­times across the US is avail­able on the film Web site.

A brief video of the cur­rent instal­la­tion at the Bar­bi­can in Lon­don by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot which explores the unex­pected rhythms of daily life.

This week­end the Bal­ti­more Museum of Art (BMA) will play host to the Con­tem­po­rary Print Fair. Vis­i­tors to the event can enjoy and pur­chase prints from four­teen major con­tem­po­rary art deal­ers, gal­leries and presses. The two day event will also fea­ture guided tours, artist lec­tures and a panel discussion.

Con­sult the event Web site for a full list of sched­uled events and participants

The Bal­ti­more Fair for Con­tem­po­rary Prints & New Edi­tions
Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, 27–28 March 2010 11 a.m.- 6 p.m.
at The Bal­ti­more Museum of Art 10 Art Museum Drive Bal­ti­more, MD 21218

I tweeted about this months ago but some­how over­looked shar­ing this won­der­fully fun art­work here.

On dis­play at the British Library in Lon­don is a paint­ing by British artist, Patrick Hughes:

Beau­ti­ful!

As a jump-start to the week, here is a gor­geous piece to get your cre­ative juices flow­ing, dear readers:

Today finds Charm City buried once again, in a blan­ket of sparkling white. The effect is beau­ti­ful, bewil­der­ing and even a lit­tle inspir­ing though at some point after hours of shov­el­ing, the snow will become less than charm­ing. In the mean­time, here is a piece of visu­ally stun­ning eye/brain candy straight from Japan for you, dear read­ers, snow­bound or otherwise:

Doesn’t this just make your eyes smile and the snow a lit­tle more fun?

Ever won­der what the process of giv­ing form to some­thing looks like?

BMW has an idea and shares it with the rest of us through the kinetic sculp­ture installed at the BMW Museum in Munich. Employ­ing the use of over 700 indi­vid­ual metal spheres and step­per motors, the mechan­i­cal won­der cov­ers six square meters. Over the course of seven min­utes, it dances out a hyp­notic, mecha­tronic nar­ra­tive that visu­al­izes the process of form-finding. Here is a brief sam­ple of the sculpture’s performance:

A trip to Munich may be in order…

While I’m on the sub­ject of artists whose work gets my cre­ative tail wag­ging this week, these videos of Lucy McLauch­lan work­ing just blow my mind. It makes me want to lock myself in an empty room with a gal­lon of paint or ink and have at it; though some­how I doubt the results would be com­pa­ra­ble. Check it out:

WOW, I love this woman! The den­sity of the illus­tra­tions she gen­er­ates are incred­i­ble, and the inten­sity with which she works is so inspir­ing. There is so much work to be done…

Lately, I’ve been gen­er­at­ing increas­ingly more work after hav­ing lapsed into a brief cre­ative coma of sort ear­lier this year. As I shake off the cre­ative cob­webs and jit­ters, I feel more com­pelled to work and tend to have more ideas than I can make good on or even record or realize.

Typ­i­cally, when I get into this state of mind, I tend to pay even more atten­tion to art, and find myself seek­ing out new ideas, inspi­ra­tion, artists, etc. Recently, a friend turned me on to She One and not sur­pris­ingly, the cogs in my brain are turn­ing and crank­ing out of control:

I’ve been dream­ing of let­ter­forms and just haven’t made good on the pic­tures in my head. Per­haps it’s time to roll up my sleeves and dig in… Where have you found inspi­ra­tion lately, dear read­ers? Has it been from new stars in your own field, or seem­ingly more abstract sources? Talk to me people.

A few months ago, I blogged about the William Ken­tridge show, Five Themes, at SFMoMA. In that post, I described my intro­duc­tion to Kentridge’s work ten years ago at the Carnegie Inter­na­tional Show. Since that first encounter with his work, I have been a fan. This evening, I thought I’d post a copy of the orig­i­nal film that caught my attention:

The film has a sound­track, but I was unable to find a full-length copy of it with the sound. Here is an abridged sam­ple fea­tur­ing the sound:

I love the raw qual­ity of line and ges­ture; this piece still cap­ti­vates me. What do you think, dear read­ers? Seen any great ani­ma­tions or art exhibits lately that you just can’t get out of your mind?

Watch­ing this video leaves me dumb­founded– the amount of work and artistry that went in to this col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­duc­tion is just incred­i­ble. Take a look at this piece cre­ated by Blu and David Ellis at the Fame Fes­ti­val ear­lier this fall in Italy.

COMBO a col­lab­o­ra­tive ani­ma­tion by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

WOW!

This was stuck in my head while work­ing on the most recent daily por­trait, Maybe Spar­row by Neko Case. The video was done by Julie and Paul Morstad.

Today I would like to share the work of a Bay area artist whose work has caught my eye. Illus­tra­tor Caitlin Kuh­wald cur­rently teaches at the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts while also free­lanc­ing full time. Her list of clients spans a broad spec­trum, includ­ing names like Puma, Rolling Stone, Good House­keep­ing, Her­man Miller, Pen­guin Books and a whole host of others.

I love Black­birds and Praha; makes me wish I could hang them in my home tomorrow.

Tons more of Caitlin’s gor­geous illus­tra­tions are col­lected on her Web site. Her work is avail­able for pur­chase online in her Etsy bou­tique.

Images: Caitlin Kuh­wald

For what­ever rea­son, I’ve been look­ing at a lot of let­ter­pessed work lately. I’d like to share the work of an Austin-based cou­ple, Heather & Thomas hol­li­field, also known as Let­ter­press Del­i­ca­cies. The pre­ci­sion and clean lines of their design style is exciting.

Tak­ing a peek at their charm­ing work avail­able for pur­chase online via Etsy.

Images: Let­ter­press Delicacies

For the 34^th year in a row, the Amer­i­can Craft Coun­cil (ACC) will hold its annual San Fran­cisco show this week­end at the Fort Mason Cen­ter!

If you have never been to an ACC show, boy have you been miss­ing out! This year’s San Fran­cisco show will fea­ture 250 national artists who have trav­eled to the Bay area to show and sell their lat­est and great­est– fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing, jew­elry, décor (a list of exhibitors is avail­able on the show page orga­nized by medium).

Over the years, I have been to many of the ACC shows in Bal­ti­more and seen an AMAZING range of work and art. By attend­ing these shows, I have met artists whose work has enriched my life, enlivened my home and even inspired my own work.

Details:
• The Amer­i­can Craft Coun­cil Show in San Francisco
• at the Fort Mason Cen­ter (vague direc­tions avail­able here– but if you’ve never been there, it’s a pretty walk along the water past Fisherman’s Wharf– the view from the hill above is gorgeous!)
• Fri­day, August 14; 10am — 8pm
  Sat­ur­day, August 15; 10am — 6 pm
  Sun­day, August 16; 10 am — 5 pm
• Tick­ets are $12/person or $18 for a two-day pass. And since they’ve extended the Fri­day evening hours to 8pm, tick­ets for Fri­day night only are $5 after 5pm; a SCREAMING deal, if you ask me. OR if you know you’re going and want to save a few bucks, why not buy your tick­ets ahead of time at a slight dis­count here.

Not a Bay area res­i­dent? Fear not, faith­ful reader. There are other ACC shows around the nation through­out the year.

For the rest of the 2009 year the ACC shows are as fol­lows:
San Fran­cisco, CA Aug. 14–16, 2009
Char­lotte, NC Nov. 6–8, 2009
Sara­sota, FL Dec. 4–6, 2009

For 2010, the ACC shows are as fol­lows:
Bal­ti­more, MD Feb. 25–28, 2010
Atlanta, GA Mar. 12–14, 2010
St. Paul, MN Apr. 16–18 , 2010
San Fran­cisco, CA Aug. 6–8, 2010

Hope­fully, you can check at least one of the ACC shows in the next year!

As if the prod­ucts of Papaya’s own designs weren’t fun enough, they’ve teamed up with artist Sab­rina Ward Har­ri­son whose work I’ve been a fan of for the last decade.

When her first book, Spilling Open; The Art of Becom­ing Your­self came out in 1999, it quickly joined the ranks of my favorite books and often trav­els with me, offer­ing inspi­ra­tion and encour­age­ment. I have enjoyed that first book so much in fact, that over the years I have given it to numer­ous friends as a gift.

Papaya’s new col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing Sabrina’s work includes a fun range of note and post cards, sketch­books and beau­ti­ful prints of her orig­i­nal works.

I love the sen­ti­ment of the Make a Job print; I might just have to treat myself…

Images: PaPaYa!

Despite three 1000 mile plus moves in the last four years, I STILL have a stack of these that I really should get around to selling:

Designed and pro­duced in 2004, A wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing was a win­ner of the annual Swedish National Paper Screen Print­ing Com­pe­ti­tion that year. It has been exhib­ited at Kul­tur Huset in Stock­holm dur­ing the spring of 2004 and at the 100% Cen­ten­nial Exhi­bi­tion at the Miller Gallery in Pitts­burgh, PA in 2006. It is a 2-color, lim­ited edi­tion A1-sized screen­print on clear plex­i­glass that was hand printed in Swe­den while I was still liv­ing there.

Want one? I’ll be post­ing them on Etsy soon, I hope. But in the mean­time, PLEASE feel wel­come to com­ment or e-mail and I’ll be happy to make arrange­ments with you personally.

Today I would like share the work of Port­land based, Mex­i­can illustrator/designer, Alberto Cer­riteño. Inspired by the pop sur­re­al­ism move­ment, his work is densely packed with dream­like whimsy.

Prints of Alberto’s beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions are avail­able for pur­chase online at his Etsy bou­tique. And for those as enam­ored of his work as I am, he has a blog here.

Images: Alberto Cerriteño