Kelvin Okafor

Flicking through the Daily Mail on Jan 31, 2013 and came across this artist. Okafor is a British photorealist artist based in London. I think his work is very good, extraordinary even, and he creates a very impressive likeness, however I have seen alot of these very realistic pencil drawings and so the impact of seeing them has worn off. There is no doubt however with regards to the artists skill, which as shown is extremely good.

Kelvin Okafor- Website

Berlin Trip

Last year in November some of us went on a whirl wind one week uni trip to Berlin. Let me tell you I saw more pieces of art work and visited more galleries in that one week than I had in my entire life and I was completely worn out by the end of it. We stayed at the A&O Hostel Mitte, which is a 7mins walk from the Heinrich-Hein-Strasse U-Bahn. Also because it is Berlin they all speak really good English in the cafes and restaurants.

List of Galleries

• LoBe Gallery
• Galerie Max Hetzler
• Gallery Mehdi Chouakri
• Hamburger Bahnhof- FYI the people who monitor the gallery are really unfriendly and watch you constantly like hawks incase the touch the work, heaven forbid.
• Galerie Crone
• Carlier Gebauer
• Galerie Cruise&Callas
• Konrad Fisher Galerie
• Zak Branicka
• Kunstlerhaus Bethanien

Places to Eat

• I-Shin (Cheap Japanese Food) on Mittelstrasse
• Chaapa, adalbertstr 9/10999 (Thali Food- tastes really) you get off at Kottbusser (Google map is a bit outdated, but that is the right place and if you keep walking up that road there are a bunch of other places to eat too.
• The Hostel Food is not bad either

Also Berlin has some really interesting architexture and there is grafitti every where, most of which is quite interesting.

 

Natalie Dybisz

Natalie 'Miss Aniela' Dybisz is an English fine-art and commeriacl photographer based in London.

"Photography is always my 'living' whether I am working on personal or commercial work, because it is creating that keeps me feeling alive. I pour my mind into everything I create, and always aim to push the envelope with consistently compelling imagery with the highest production value I can make possible. In my personal work I want to stir people to question and think, intelligibly- about problems, the beauty, and the conflict between them, in the world around us today."

 

Natalie Dybisz- Website

I really like her dramatic photographs, especially her outdoor scenes an I really love the glamerous outfits she somtimes uses, especially the evening gowns.

Kirsty Mitchell

Mitchell is an English artist, her earliest memories were always of the stories read to her by her mother as a child. Her mother instilled in her an imagination and a belief in beauty, which became Mitchells root and the place she would constantly return to in her work.

After her mothers death photography engulted Mitchell, she found herself producing pieces that echoed the memories of her mother's stories. By combining her various backgrounds, she started to create images in which everything was made or designed by Mitchell, with the occassional help of a few friends.

Kirsty Mitchell- Website

I love her work, the exquisitness of the photographs, the attention to detail. I have always loved fairytales and now hope to into my work, the fantasy of another world, a different time, a different place.

Paul Morrison, Millennium Gallery

Paul Morrison is a Sheffield based artist. His work finds inspiration in the historic and contemporary, from engravings and botanical illustrations to comics and animation. The resulting pictures may look comfortably familiar at first but look closer and oddities or contradictions soon surface. This exhibition was about distance and value systems. Some works were made from gold leaf, giving a feeling og high value, yet the illustration was almost cartoonist, showing the distance in the value systems.

Chris Geall, The Geall Gallery

We visted this gallery in Gosmont on a family trip out. Chris Geall wasn't always a painter, originally he trained as a potter after finishing his degree in Chemical Engineering. However after being unsuccessful with his pottery buisness he moved on to painting.

 

Chris Geall- Website

The painting technique reminds me abit of Leonid Afremov's work, they both use the palette knife to great effect when using oil colours. I like so many of them I didn't know which ones to show, so I kind of went abit mad, I promise I havn't posted all of his work so you can still go to his website and see his other paintings.

Joan Vidal Gallery

Whilst on holiday in Spain we visited Guadalest where we stumbled upon this gallery. Joan Vidal is a self-taught artist who after achieving a degree in Economics and Electrical Engineering discovered the joys of painting. He sees his paintings as a journey of the soul and is guided either conciously and subconciously to create his works.

 

Joan Vidal- Website

 

 

I really like the colours and how they are used to create light in these surreal paintings of the solar system and space. I like how they all feel so real and yet you have no idea what these worlds really look like. I like the range of size and shape with these pieces and the combinations of colours.

Sheffield Hallam Degree Show, AGC and S1, 2012

Not that I am bias in anyway shape or form, but I do prefer the Creative Art Practice students work to the Fine Art students. I think because I am on the CAP course I understand their work better and therefore can appreciate it more.

Alsion Swinney                                        Ruth Dacre

I particullary like Ruth Dacre and Alison Swinney's work as they are very intricate and there are lots of thing to hold your attention. I especially like how each scene in Alison's work links to another via a staircase or a life form from another. I also like the fact that I can recognise some places.

Near and Dear, Archipelago Works, Sheffield

The last of the student exhibition groups. The artworks displayed by Near and Dear were all related to family or self. The gallery space was very muck like Bank Street and for that reason I wasn't fond of the space. I felt that because there was only four artist some of the walls felt a bit empty and there needed to be more artwork inorder to fill the space. However some of the artwork worked really well in the space and for them it was more appropriate for them to be displayed in a more rustic location.

Operam VI, Bank Street Gallery, Sheffield

Operam VI was another student exhibition going on at the same time as Art Ark. Bank Street is not my favourite gallery as it always looks damp and grotty and I wouldn't want to display my work in there. But for some people it might be really appropriate for their work. I don't think the layout of the exihibtion was very good and like Einfuhlung separarting the artists work and having them in separate rooms doesn't work. I felt the artists artwork as a rule should be kept together. I also didn't like the informatin tags that went with the pieces, they were very poorly done. They were rough and looked unprofessional and personally I would have taken them down. The catalogue was also very poorly done, as it was just black and white images and information stapled together in a book format.

Overall there was much to be improved on and I felt this was a good learning experience for the group.

Einfuhlung, Workstation, Sheffield

Einfulung was an other student exhibtion and means feeling in to (empathy) in german. I like the layout of the exhibition upstairs, but the downstairs area did not work for me. the work upstairs and the work downstairs felt separate from each other and not part of the same exhibition. The exhibition layout was very professional and the way the art works were hung were very well done.

The catalogue was very professional and well put together.

Elemental, Butcher Works Gallery, Sheffield

During the time me and my friends held the Art Ark Exhibtion other members of our course were also holding there own exhibtions. Elemental was one of them and it surrounded the theme of natural and each artist looked at that within their own work.

The layout of the exhibition was good, although at times I felt it was a bit cluttered with too many objects in the same space. The room was quite small considering how much money they were paying for the space. I am not sure how I felt about the display cabinates, I know elemental was forced to use them for security reasons. However I felt for some pieces it wasn't appropriate for them to be displayed in that manner.

Jennifer West, Aloe Vera and Butter, S1 Galler, Sheffield, 2012

West approaches filmaking like alchemist, experimenting and transforming the surfaces of blank film stock, shot footage, found photographs or off-cuts from Hollywood blockbusters into abstract kaleidoscopes of colour, allusion and direct reference.

The video projectors were placed on the ground so as you walked infront of them you became part of the installation. I found this rather distracting as my body got in the way of the video. Once my figure got in the way of the videos I could not longer focus on it but rather the image of my silhouette. I now found mysel playing shadow puppets with my body and those of my friends at the gallery and had rather an amusing tim. I don't know whether it was the artists intention for this to happen of whether I just got bored and thought this would be a rather amusing way to occupy myself. In the end I didn't pay much attention to the actual footage.

Definitions

I don't know about you but my art tutors keep telling us we can't use the words pretty, beautiful and ugly, because they are subjective and there meaning depends on each individual person. But I say stuff that use them.

Collins Pocket English Dictionary: New Edition

Art 

• Creation of works of beauty, esp. paintings or sculpture.
• Works of art collectively.
• Skill
• Nonscientific branches of knowledge.

Artist

• Person who produces works of art, esp. painting or sculpture.
• Person skilled at something.

Beautiful

• Possessing beauty.
• Very Pleasant.

Beauty

• Combination of all the qualities of a person or thing that delight the senses and mind.
• Very attractive Woman.
• Informal something outstanding of its kind.

Pretty

• Pleasing to look at.

Ugly

• Of unpleasant apperance.

     

Joe Hill

Joe Hill is a London based 3D pavement artist. I really like his work and think he must have a great sense of spacial awareness to be able to draw these scenes. I think artists like him are really under-rated and I think that what he does is amazing.

 

Joe Hill- Website

Kieron Williamson

I remember seeing Kierons work in the Daily Mail some years ago and when it popped up again I thought I would compare his work with that of the Olympic posters.

I think his work is really good for his age and in my opinion is much better than the artists who did the commemorative Olympic posters. However I do fear his work is a bit of a fad, that people are only interested in his work because of his age and not the quality of his work. I think that as soon as he gets older people wont be interested anymore, that people are just buying his work becaus ethey want to say "look at this amazing painting, it was painted by a 9 year old."

Leonardo Da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine, Daily Mail

On November 9th, 2011, p36-38, the Daily Mail wrote an article on Leonardo Da Vinci and decoding the Lady with an Ermine, which was quite interesting. It was really fascinating to see how he had painted the work and how he had left hidden clues in the work, suggesting the lady in questions importance.

Olympic Posters

 I don't know what everyone thought when they saw the designs for the Olympic posters, supposedly done by Britians best asrtists, because I know what I thought. What a load of rubbish, I could do better finger paintings than that when I was five. For me they seemed to lack imagination, they felt as if they were almost a half hearted attempts. I found them all too simplistic, maybe there simplisity was meant to make them iconic. Who knows, what ever your opinion is, we are stuck with them now.

 

Howard Hodgkin's

Bae Sehwa, Haunch of Venison, London

Also whilst in London we visited the Haunch of Venison and saw Bae Sehwa work, a Korean funiture designer. The pieces we saw were created from walnut wood that had been made using a steam bending technique as Sehwa wanted to create a sense of rounded landscapes and organic natural forms.

 

Bae Sehwa- Website

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

During trips week me and a couple of friends went down to London for a day to do a whirl wind tour of some of the art galleries. Our first port of called was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was awesome by the way, it had some really good stuff in and if it was up to me I would have stayed in there all day. However it wasn't and we only got to spend 30mins there. Mega Disappointed. So if you are in London I suggest you go see the Victoria and Albert Museum. If you get the Circle, District or Piccadilly line on the London underground and get off at South Kensington it is a 5mins walk to the V&A.

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Went to visit the Walker Art Gallery in 2011. I wasn't that interested on what they were exhibiting, it wasn't my thing, but I really did like their portrait exhibition. It wasn't the pictures that I was interested in it was the wallpaper and the ornate picture fames. I have a thing for antiques and old fashioned patterned wallpaper. So if you are passing though Liverpool and you are interested in that sort of stuff, nip in to their portrait section and have a look around.

Jaume Plensa

Jaume Plensa is a Spain sculpture. In September 2011 his work was shown at the Yorkshire Scuplture Park.

I really like his scultpures and I like how they are made from different countries alphabets. it made me wonder if it accually said something. I was dissappointed I couldn't stop later to see it lit up at night but I had been there five hours already.

 

Jaume Plensa- Website

Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson is an English figurative painter in London. His Almost There there exhibtion comprises of twelve paintings that have been produced as a response to songs by up and coming bands, each painting having an accompaning soundtrack.

Each painting has a song specifically for that piece, inspired by the scene which compliments the mood of the image.

Joe Simpson- Website

Craig Fisher

Craig Fisher make large scale installations using various fabrics that question the representation of violence, disaster and macho stereotypes. He references and makes work from cloth due to its many associations and employs textiles and craft, which are traditionally precieved as womens work. Fisher questions how masculinity is defined and what he as a man is allowed to do.

I really like Fisher's work because of the fabrics, they are so plush and colourful and you just want to touch them, even though you know you can't. I like how he can make something as horrible as knives and blood look so pleasing. Surely our brains must be having an infight battle as to merely whether we should like the work because of what they are portraying.

 

Craig Fisher- Website

Rose Butler

Rose Butler is a video artist and lecturer of Fine Art and Contemporary Media Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

My two favourite works of hers are One Lime Street and Platform. I find video art very difficult and in general I avoid it, however I really like these pieces.

One Lime Street is a series of parallel journeys in the glass lifts of the Lloyds building. People enter and leave one of the six lifts. each journey is filmed from inside the film and has the background buildings and horizon locked in position. The result makes the lifts travel past the screens.

Platform was filmed at Blackfriars Station ans sychronises three screens of commuters in the station. Using tracking and stablizing software the frame is manipulated to become, creating an animated black wipe across each frame of the screen.

Nancy Holt- Sun Tunnels

Nancy is an American Artist famous for her public sculptures, installations and land art. Sun Tunnels is located in the Great Basin Desert outside of the town of Lucin, Utah. Sun Tunnels is a product of Holt's interest in the variation of the intensity of the sun in the desert compared to the city. The work consists of four 18 foot by 9 diameter concrete tunnels which are arranged in a cross, each aligned to either the sunrise, sunset, summer or winter solstice.

Each concrete tunnel is drilled with holes which correspond to either the constellations of Draco, Perseus, Columba or Capricorn. Once inside the sculpture not only provids shelter from the desert sun but also allows you to see the play of light as the sun moves across the sky.

 

Nancy Holt- Website

Theo Jansen

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist and kinetic sculpture. He builds large works which resemble skeletons of animals and are able to walk using the wind on the beaches of the Netherlands. His animated works are a fusion between art and engineering.

What I really like about Sandbeasts, is how clever and ingenious they are. I'm not that into sculpture and I wouldn't do anything like that in my practice, but I just can't not like it or appreciate it because it is that clever and just plain cool.

 

Theo Jansen- Website

Millennium Art Gallery, Sheffield

The train was cancelled and while I was waiting me and my friend decided to look around the Millennium Art Gallery. I was particulary interested in the Metalwork Gallery, which is a perminant exhibition at the gallery. I was drawn to the ornate camdle sticks and the intricate detail of the table legs.

 

 

I have come realise that I love the intricate detail of the works of art and that for me it is all about the aesthetics, how something looks and how pleasing it is to the eye. I think it is more easy for me to value the work if I can see the effort and skill that went into the work and the making of it.

Venetian Masks

I know I use the word beautiful alot, but I only use it if I mean it and these masks really were beautiful. I love the fact that it couls be anyone behind the masks, there is a certain mystery about them, maybe even an aura.

 



The mask witht the black feathers is the one I bought from Venice and this picture was taken by a fellow art student Rebecca Eastwood as part of her work.

Museum of Asian Art, Corfu

If any of you are in Corfu, once you have visited the Archeological Museum you should also go and visit the Museum of Asian Art, which holds a collect of artifacts from Japan, China and India. Chinese pottery was extremely beautiful, especially the white and blue porcelain plates. The figurines and pottery are very delicate looking and have lots of intricate details, especially the Votive Disc and the Bowl of Red Peking Lacquer with relief decoration.

For those of you who don't know what lacquer is, it is a resin collected from the trunk of the Rhus Vernicifera Tree, which grows mainly in Southern India. This particular fluid seals and protects the surface over which it is spread.

I also like the collection snuff boxes which were exquisitly crafted and the collection of hand painted hanging scrolls. The Japanese exhibition was the most fascinating and I especially loved the Kimonos.

 

 

Unfortunately the picture isn't very good and you can't see the delicate embroidery on the hem and sleeves, but I can assure you it was exquisite. The kimono was silvery grey with white, pink and gold embroidery.

The Archeological Museum, Corfu

If any of you are in Corfu I recomment visting their archeological museum, it is full of really interesting Greek pottery, coins from all over the Greek Empire, sculpture and pieces of architexture. The pottery was very beautiful and very delicate and I find it amazing how skilled the people were at making things all thoughs years ago even though the had limited resources.

I like the intricate detail of the pots and the skill and effort that went into making them. I can truely appreciate the craftsmanship of the work and its uniqueness. Sometimes I feel that with the modernity of technology and repoduction  that skills today are no longer appreciated and it is nice to see work invovling such skill again.

Leonid Afremov

Leonid Afremov is a Belarusian painter. He often paints vividly coloured oil paint landscapes, cityscapes and figures using only a palette knife. As soon as I saw his work I felt drawn to it. I love the use of colours, especially how he uses whites, yellows, oranges and reds to create light in his pieces. I also love how his work just seems to come alive and how he paints the light reflecting off the water.

 

Leonid Afremov- Website

Mark Crilley

Mark Crilley is an American illustrator, author and Youtuber with over a 9000,000 subscribers. He has wrtten and illustrated the Miki Falls and Brody's Ghost Manga Series and Mastering Manga. He is extremely talented artist and I can only describe his futureistic cityscapes as amazing. He produces excellent how to draw youtube videos covering a range of topic from how to draw armour to headphones to manga faces. He also has a really interesting way of using panneling or a lack of them in his work, allowing entire figures to break out of all the pannels of the paged and occupy there own pannel-less space. He also discovered an interesting technique called "text snaking" in which text ballons snake there way from the top to the bottom of the page in a percievable line. I recommend anybody who is interested in how to draw manga to subscribe to his Youtube channel.

 

 

Mark Crilley- Youtube