Mind Map

Or rather, headshot-with-landscape-projection, but the witty title I came up with in the shower at 6.23 a.m. this morning didn’t make it past me shaving my second shin, so we’ll reference a revision aide and be done with it. Today: the mixed-media work of Matt Wisniewski, self-school web developer and creator of visual experiments. Or, as I like to call them, fashionable prepubescent Tumblr fodder of the very best kind – in so far as those of us who aren’t wondering whether a Radiohead tattoo would be an ironic, beta or meta personal development while we plot our escape out of High School and into the pages of Rookie, can enjoy and love them. I have a particular thing for the mountainous series – I’m increasingly drawn to black and white photography – but the eye needs colour like Aloe Blacc needs dollar, and the floral-agrarian series are just as dreamy.

{To view more, Matt’s portfolio is hosted here}

Burning Buildings

I hated Chemistry at school. Seeing things fizz (peanut in a bunsen burner, a chunk of liver in hydrochloric acid) was the only thing that piqued my interest long enough for me to raise my head from it’s horizontal station on top of my textbooks – even then, the theory and equations either side what ever our hapless teacher was combusting made me twitchy with frustration – and with the exception of clipping safety tongs to the Head of Science’s lab coat, I spent most of my science department hours paralysed with boredom. Still, some of those demonstrations at the front of the class must have remained buried in my head, because Australian artist Jennifer Mehigan‘s work, reminded me , amongst other things, of the multicoloured flashes you get if you through pure sodium in a flame (a point: I have both tried this over my gas stove unintentionally when salting water for pasta, and it’ not nearly as pretty and searched for an informative, accompanying Youtube video but they’re all underwhelming). I’m not sure which of her work above and below I like best: the prints overlaid with paint, the less saturated pencil series, or the abstract colour studies (probably the pencils actually. They’d look cool and disaffected on my wall). Either way, they’re certainly more fun and interesting than double science (double win) so this Tuesday morning is shaping up better than the Tuesday morning’s of my youth. E= MC Hammer, and all that.

{Painted photographs are part of Mehigan’s 2010 Armed and Luminous series; pencil/paint on paper work is from Various Kinds of Fire (2011) and pencil on paper from Immortal Diamond, also completed in 2011}

Doodle Bug

I’d like to think I’ve achieved a lot in twenty three years on this planet. I can’t drive or cartwheel, but I make a mean cup of tea, and once upon a time I left university with a degree and I’m always on time for dentist appointments and national train travel and I recycle a whole tonne of stuff (on this, Hackney Council you’re hampering my efforts. It’s been three weeks now. Pick it up)  but I can safely say, that despite sustained and frequent efforts in various lectures, bus rides and talks, I have never created anything with a biro as wacky and cool as these paintings by Shane McAdams, which use ball point pen ink. Indeed, I think the farthest I’ve ever got was the biggest game of squares ever seen. In fairness, I only have the Bic biro itself – Brooklyn-based McAdams heats the ink and uses solvents before working the ink and resin mix onto panels – but you get my drift: dude’s the doodle king.

–

–

–

{More images here}