Art

Carly Waito has me craving rocks.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ Leave a comment

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Some kids, my teacher friends have told me, feel the need to put everything in their mouths. “I don’t get it! Why would you eat that?” they say, wondering about glue, crayons, chalk, and other, more sinister science-experiment materials. I act like I’m confused, too, but I get it. I was one of those kids, who needed to lick objects, to smell and taste each thing. I was a kid who ate chalk and dirt and took rocks from the beach, smoothed by the sea and flavored with salt, and hid them in my mouth like candies.

Is this gross? Maybe, but I remember a fair number of paste-eating kids from my childhood. I think most of us grew out of it, but for whatever reason, I still want to lick these paintings by Carly Waito.

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Yes, they are paintings! I know, they look just like photographs. It takes some serious skill to render geodes and rocks in such exquisite detail. Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to hyper-realistic painters. My dad is a big fan of James Aponovich, and so several years ago, he bought me a poster. It’s a still life, and it’s very realistic, two things I don’t always go for, and yet somehow it has survived my schizophrenic apartment hopping and remained on my walls. More and more, I find myself appreciating artists who give their work that weird lickable, slick quality. Even as they approach perfection, even as they verge into photographic likeness, there is always a certain element that keeps it from being quite perfect. Is that cruel to say? I hope Waito isn’t striving for perfection. I rather like what she’s doing now.

Fong Qi Wei blows up blossoms.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ 1 Comment

Rose Exploded 01, SingaporeIf you ask my boyfriend, who is a biologist by trade and botanist by passion, he will tell you all about the sex lives of plants. Pistols and stamens and pollen—oh, my! It’s some seriously dirty stuff. I think photographer Fong Qi Wei gets that. His flowers are exploding with joy, bursting with happiness and color and light. His photographs are a psychedelic exercise in neatness. Paradoxical? Perhaps, but I don’t care.
Sunflower Exploded 01, SingaporeSee more here.
{via Laughing Squid}

A few thoughts on death, photography, and Ghost Busters

~ Katy Kelleher ~ Leave a comment

med_fuss_af-0462-jpgA fascination with ghosts can be written off as whimsical. Often, people imagine Casper or Bill Murray fighting ectoplasmic globs, when one mentions the g-word. True believers might find it a bit more sinister, but even then, they tend to speak of odd occurrences with windows, breathy sounds heard in the night, a persistent shadow that falls without light, old objects found with no point of reference. All things that are possibly spooky, but never truly threatening. As someone who writes frequently about ghosts, I tend to hear a lot of ghost stories. But even when the storyteller is uncomfortable, I find it’s more often out of embarrassment than fear.

But a fascination with death? That’s an entirely different kind of beast. Even the word trails off with fear, lingering consonants that dryly hang in the air. Death is threatening. It is real. It is ugly and universal and either entirely unfair or ruthlessly just, depending on who you ask.

Though I don’t like to think about death, I tend to do it a lot anyway. This helps explain one of my weirder possessions: a book of images from The Burns Archive. The Burns Archive, as you’ll see if you click that link, is a collection of photography that focuses primarily on the grotesque. There are images of soldiers and their gun wounds, portraits of the mentally ill, and lots and lots of postmortem photography.

Why would anyone take a picture of a dead person? Well, this used to be the thing to do when your relative died. It was a curious practice, and often involved propping the deceased up in a chair, pushing their eyelids open, and doing everything possible to make them appear alive. It’s the strangest masquerade; the dead posing as the living in a medium that has been described as a metaphor for death itself. Though I’ve never found the pictures particularly creepy, this idea freaks me the heck out.

And if I’ve just creeped you out, maybe this will bring you some peace: the New York Times recently ran a piece on their Wellness blog about German photographer Walter Schels, who captures his subjects in the days before death, and then again soon after. Instead of being sinister, manipulated and a little bit weird, these pictures are oddly peaceful.

“People are almost always pretending something, but these people had lost that need,” he said in an interview. “I felt it enabled me as a photographer to get as close as it’s possible to get to the core of a person; when you’re facing the end, everything that’s not real is stripped away. You’re the most real you’ll ever be, more real than you’ve ever been before.”

About the image: I didn’t want to clutter up my blog with pictures of dead people, so instead I simply linked to them, and used this gorgeous photograph by Adam Fuss, an extremely talented artist, to illustrate the point. It’s from a series call “My Ghost,” so I thought it was rather fitting.

Honestly, I love Naomi Okubo.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ Leave a comment

LovelyHonesty is a tricky thing. I think everyone, in some way or another, struggles with the truth. Some people lie, both to themselves and others, acting as through the truth is a disease they can avoid with enough mental hygiene. I tend to flow in the opposite direction; I can be guilty of sharing too much, giving too many pieces of myself. You’re probably thinking maybe that’s why I have a blog. That might be true.

Naomi Okubo not only creates beautiful things, but she also paints with honesty. The contemporary Japanese artist creates images that remind me so much of the scroll painting tradition (and since I’m terribly, incurably American, they also remind me of the “Oriental” inspired works of Mary Cassatt). But while her images are undeniably gorgeous, I’m almost more interested in her artist’s statement. And that never happens. lovely2She writes: Continue reading →

Oh, Louise.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ Leave a comment

louiseIt’s very late and though I have lots to say about Louise Bourgeois (some of which I’ve already said), I’ll keep it short and sweet for now. Here is a picture of her sculpture “Arch of Hysteria.” Like most of her work, it’s scary and eerie and yet…somehow beautiful. To me, it speaks to that feeling of dread that settles in the pit of my stomach after I make a life changing, supposedly freeing move (for further reference, see the ending of The Graduate). This figure is trapped, yet fluid. It’s the combination of anxiety and bravery made physical in a sweeping motion of the human form. It’s how I feel whenever I stand on top of a mountain: terrified, but terribly alive.

Aakash Nihalani’s neon New York.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ Leave a comment

RainboroughPortland has some great street art, but I would really like to see Aakash come to town and decorate some of our old, gray, grandiose buildings with his colorful shapes. Instead of using spray paint or wheatpaste (the two most common materials to use in graffiti art) he relies on neon-hued tape to create his bold geometric patterns. The piece above is named Rainborough, which is a delightful play on words if I ever heard one.

But, like many things, you’ll only see Aakash’s work in NYC. As he explains on his website, he wants viewers to experience New York in a new way, through new eyes brightened by vivid pinks, yellows, and reds. These glowing tones highlight the solid shapes of New York architecture, emphasizing both the past and the city’s brilliant future.

For more of his work, check out aakashnihalani.com. Or you could go to his Flickr stream. And if you’re feeling inspired, you can always order some washi tape and create a little Nihalani-style mural on your own wall (and that’s what I’m going to do, as soon as I have a hot minute to myself).

Clare Elsaesser paints the perfect summer.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ 1 Comment

married to the seaTo me, summer is a state of undress. It’s bathing suits worn as bras in anticipation of a potential swim. It’s running around in a t-shirt and cut-offs, with as few pieces of underwear as possible. It’s loose limbs and undone hair, cotton dresses that don’t quite cover, blisters, sunburns, tans, and bare feet.

Much like my introductory paragraph, Clare Elsaesser’s paintings could be read as sexual. They feature waifs, thin and graceful, covered by flowers or standing in a colorful, kaleidoscopic mess of blues and greens. They’re walking through sun-dappled woods, faces covered but legs nude, or emerging from water that has been abstracted into flat planes, blocks of color. While Elsaesser mutes the backgrounds, she applies a much tighter hand to her romantic heroines and her shockingly pink blossoms. These girls are lovely in their anonymity, sweet and floral and free.
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And yet to me, there is nothing overly sexy about the summer state. The lack of clothes are not for show; they’re for my body, which craves warm air and the wash of sun. That is, I think, what makes it so great. Clare’s girls aren’t being stared at by predatory eyes. They’re relaxed, languorous, sensual yet not quite sexual.

I love these paintings so much, that I am going to buy myself one for my birthday (coming up in 10 days!). I also wanted to share them, because they are too pretty to keep to myself, and I think she’s talented in a way that makes me envious. It’s like the girls in the sketches; I want to be seen (and to see) in this way.

watching trees

from behind

Buy a Clare Elsaesser print here. They are very affordable, just don’t buy the one I want, kay?

 

Jason Brooks puts Paris on paper.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ 1 Comment

paris005Fashion illustrator Jason Brooks has just managed to bump Paris onto my “worth it” plane ticket list. I never really wanted to go to Paris. I’ve always been more attracted to isolated places, like Alaska or Siberia, than big, beautiful, old cites. Though describing it now, I realize I do like those crowded places, too. Just Budapest, not London. Philadelphia, not LA. I’m picky, I guess.

But I am veering too far off topic. Jason Brooks is publishing a book of his sketches of Paris. They are, by their very nature, wonderfully romantic. How can a drawing of a street be romantic? I don’t know. It just is. That’s the entire point of Paris. It exists solely for the macaroons and tulips and rainy, hazy days, and the entire idea of Spring in Paris and love in Paris and that lady who fell in love with the Eiffel Tower and married it. Clearly, she took it too far, but Paris has that je ne sais… Ugh, I’m sorry. Just look at his book.

dear paris

Turning paper into water.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ 1 Comment

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Paper is amazing. It’s an amazing material. Think about it. Until we had screens, we needed paper to transmit our information. It is the surface on which people write great novels, scribble sappy love notes, paint touristy scenes, and jot down ever-vague notes-to-self (I am particularly guilty of this last one). Paper is also one of my favorite materials when it comes to creating art. Cut paper pieces are simply gorgeous, and the shapes that can be made from plain cardstock never cease to blow my mind. I could write an ode to paper—a careless person might say that I am, right now, composing an ode to paper, but nope, it’s not a poem so it’s not an ode, okay?—but I think it’s better to just show you what can be done.

This is what Yuko Takada Keller does with cut paper. She takes these little shreds and turns them into flowing water, cascading light. In her installations, paper denies the laws of physics and takes on any form it pleases (air, water, even fire). The many little pieces work to form something greater, something that breathes motion and mutability.

And, thanks to her eye for color, they’re also just so peaceful to look at. Light greens and clear blues. In an artist statement, she said “I hoped my works would remind the viewer of something pure and natural in this world,” and oh, it does.
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More here. Found via Pinterest.

I want to be a sketch.

~ Katy Kelleher ~ Leave a comment

too prettyI just finished reading Was She Pretty? a graphic novel by Leanne Shapton that explores one simple, jealous, unanswerable question. Was she pretty? We ask our current partners. Yes, they say, with only slight hesitation. “But she was…” mitigates it slightly. But you know. Of course she was pretty, otherwise he (or she) wouldn’t have loved her. She was pretty and a dancer and she cooked him thai food every night. She was pretty and a filmmaker who hated blockbusters and could quote Goddard. Most importantly, she simply was.

While reading it, I found myself thinking not at all about my boyfriend’s exes. I didn’t think of my ex’s either, and what they must be doing with their new, pretty girlfriends who probably love hiking and are too sophisticated for boxed wine. No, all I could think was: I want to be one. I want to be reduced to a simple, lovely sketch. I want some essence of Katy to be distilled into a black-and-white series of lines and a romantic, mysterious caption. John’s girlfriend Katy liked to drive in barefeet and cut-off shorts. She could roll a joint and smoke it without veering from the center line. (High school). Jake’s girlfriend Katy loved watching horror movies with him. Her skinny arms would wrap around his torso, hungry face hidden in his chest. He stroked her hair and never called her by her proper name. (Or later) Josh’s ex-girlfriend Katy worked best in her own bed and hated staying at his house. She had the most dexterous toes he had ever seen, and loathed it when he made his bed.

It’s fun. I don’t sound nearly as romantic as a ballerina or an aristocrat, but with the right sketch, I think I could make someone jealous. Or someone fall in love with my two-line personality, like I did reading Shapton’s words, again, and again.