BEAUTY: Photography--Paul Octavious

Not only did photographer and designer Paul Octavious photograph these whimsical flying cameras, he built them himself! He says, "I built Camera Birds from cameras handed down to me from my Grandpa and others that I've collected over the years. Sometimes I wish I could get really, really high off the ground to shoot a scene below. I know these guys will get the perfect shot."

Prints are available at his shop. Visit his site linked below.

http://pauloctavious.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Matt Molloy

These colorful time-lapse clouds at sunset were created by Matt Molloy, who overlaps hundreds and hundreds of photos of a sunset to achieve this bewitching effect.

http://500px.com/MattMolloy

BEAUY: Installation--David Altmejd

The work of Canadian artist David Altmejd is very difficult to describe. His enigmatic pieces consist of large-scale installations that often involve the idea of a vitrine, or a glass display box. Such boxes are usually used in museum settings to display collections of mineral specimens, or perhaps taxidermied birds. With this sort of "cabinet of curiosities" approach, Altmejd uses natural materials in his installations, but these cabinets are puzzling, offering no logic to a coherent "collection" which is clearly not the point. The cases are often enormous and the objects in them are not... leaving lots of space. The objects can be composed of quartz, pyrite, amethyst, sand, resin, thread, metal wire, pins, needles, synthetic hair, glass eyes,chain, bronze, wood, pinecones, burlap, leather, and foam. It is this juxtaposition of natural, uncontrollable, living elements, placed haphazardly and sometimes with a sense of sweeping movement, against the sterilized plexiglass and mirrored plinths that generates a seeming clash of meaning. It suggests the unpredictability and messiness of life captured and frozen just as it is, in the midst of its drive, life force, heartbeat...

Although some pieces can be small to medium sized like the modernist doll house of The Outside, The Inside and the Praying Mantis (fifth image down), some are staggeringly large like The Index, which he assembled in the Canadian Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Bienale (third image down--click for a larger view). It is obvious that the power of his work lies in experiencing it first hand. I would love to see one of his pieces...

David Altmejd at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City:
http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/david-altmejd/#

BEAUTY: Art--Susan Siegel

New York artist Susan Siegel knows how to get to my heart. Long time readers of "Oh, By The Way" will have deduced by now that I am a sucker for animals behaving and dressing as humans. I love fables, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and anything that shows an anthropomorphized view of creatures great and small. Siegel paints bucolic scenes of barnyard or farm animals, but in 18th century French country or court dress, à la Fragonard (she even has a cow on a swing!). In the 80s, there was a fantastic store in San Francisco called La Ville du Soleil which sold French housewares and objets, and every nook and corner of the store had life size mannequins with farm animal heads, all dressed like characters from a Mozart opera, just like a Siegel painting!

Her work reminds me of another artist I love, Sarah Higdon, previously here. Higdon's work is fairly clean, but I also love Siegel's very painterly, softly romantic, nearly Impressionistic style.

Top to bottom: Cow Swing; Family of Three; In Pink; Solitary Goat (Blue); untitled

More delightful images at her website:
http://susanlsiegel.com/

BEAUTY: Art--Trevor Young

Trevor Young's ode to empty urban spaces is reminiscent of other artists like Edward Hopper and Ed Ruscha who have been hypnotized by the inexplicable lure of these void-like places. His minimalist-realist approach to portraying these spots adds to the blandness of each landscape...

Top to bottom: Automated Convenience; Automatic Cut-Off; Beautiful Erection; Buttress 3; Caress; Claim Etiquette; Full Pump; Hire; Man In A Box

Watch Trevor Young explain "non-places" in this video interview... I think I have a new art crush: that hair, those sideburns, that smile, those eyes... that stubble! *swoon*

http://www.trevoryoung.net/home

BEAUTY: Art--Aaron Smith

I can't believe I have never posted anything about Aaron Smith or his art... until now. He is all over the blogosphere for reasons other than his art (his tattoos, his nostalgic waxed moustache, his general masculine woofiness), but it is his images of Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen rendered in glorious, glowing gobs of paint, thickly applied with a palette knife thus looking more like cake frosting, that interest us here...

Top to bottom: 2 Beards (Czar Nicholas II and George V); Buck; Ginger; Kicker (Roger Casement); Left Handed Likely; Shirkster (Prince Albert Victor); Zhooshy (Prince Albert Victor)

And here is the man himself, along with his sexy tats and stache...down boys, he has a husband.

http://aaronsmithart.com/

BEAUTY: Art--Jeremy Mangan

Painter Jeremy Mangan's simplified, surreal, rural narratives are full of wonder and humor. There's a do-it-yourself, cobbled-together, country idea in nearly every piece below. But the titles are the punch lines, and are necessary to see after taking in the image.
I love his use of glowing lights, whether electric or from some mysterious source...

Top to bottom: Dancefloor; Good A Place As Any; Harbor Crossing; Just Right; Occasionally One Or Two Get Out, But They Never Go Far; Visitation

It is always fascinating to see what artists become fixated on, obsessed with, and to see how they work through a particular idea that has captured them, snagged them. And Mangan seems to be working on and through the idea of rural barns, sheds, and morphing, dream-like permutations of such structures. Just look at the absolutely massive barn structures that make up the feed and tack super mall (like a big box store on steroids for the Mid-West) in the last image entitled The Gettin' Place...

Top to bottom: Life On The Cornice; Crossroads; Oak Head; Every Effort Made To Preserve The Original Structure; Second Story Addition; Pier 29; Seine Shed; The Gettin' Place

http://www.jeremymangan.com/index.html