Tawni Shuler

Paints from life experience, inspired by memories of growing up in rural Wyoming where she studied different stages of life cycles involving birth, growth, death and decay of organic life. Studied bones, animals and the environment. Her paintings are a blur between abstraction and representation. She uses opaque paint and transparent washes to reflect the way a memory would function and how a haze can congregated against more crisp details.

Images from the artist website: http://www.tawnishuler.com/index.ydev

Oliver Benoit

Featured is a painting from the title Outbursts, "Men Prohibited from Speaking" and "Man with Sealed Lips." The works relate to an individuals desire to escape. In this case the escape is from the self from a prevaling social order. The paint inside the canvas reflects the trepedation and freedom one would experience when posed with this question. I enjoy how the painting is an abstract representation of this struggle, the physical movement put down on canvas to display the mapping one's mind would take when questioning this type of event.

I love the rest of his painting series that include names such as: Love, After Ivan, Men without Head, Carving out on Identity, Disasters and Emotions. The titles themselves are fueled with a subject matter that included the same techniques.

Artist site: http://www.oliverbenoit.com/index.html

Images site: http://www.agora-gallery.com/exhibitionannouncement/10_27_2009.aspx

Yuriko Yamaguchi

Web #521'x8'x8‘,

Flax, abaca, wireUniversity of Maryland Gallery, 2007

Web #5 (detail), 2003

Interior Resin, 2007

Return (with heartbeat sounds)

8'x12'x12‘ Resin, stainless steel wire, 4 speakers, 4 sensors 2005


'No other sculptor can turn paper, wood, flax and wire into wall sculptures of such intriguing ambiguity as Yuriko Yamaguchi. In the ongoing series of works titled "Metamorphosis," begun in 1991, she conjures those materials into shapes so familiar yet so enigmatic that it's almost impossible to keep from touching them, from physically examining them to try to divine their meaning...Such evocative power -- aesthetically and psychologically -- of her sculpture.'

"Metamorphosis" is an apt metaphor for what has gone on in the series over the years...But what makes Yamaguchi's work so compelling is its audacious ambiguity, Nothing is quite what it seems, beginning with the physical appearance of the works. With many of the pieces, it's almost impossible to know without referring to Yamaguchi's written description whether a sculpture is animal, vegetable, or mineral.' - Ferdinand Protzman, The Washington Post.

From the website http://www.yurikoyamaguchiart.com/

Balloons

This picture had me thinking we could constructively make artwork with all the parties we have been having. Party balloons being put to good use.

Photo from http://media.photobucket.com/image/artist%20website/gmgarriock/german_panther.jpg

The Blue Feet

I couldn't pass up this find on flickr. Beautiful organic, natural images...and color! From the site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doubtful_guest/397388183/in/set-72157594553172409/

"the blue fleet is a term coined by Sir Alistair Hardy to describe a community of floating animals including the infamous bluebottle, blue dragon nudibranchs, violet snails and other associated organisms. a floating raft of monochrome drifters, the blue fleet sails the world's oceans at the whim of the tides, winds and currents.

Blue bottle

"Bluebottles have a float or bottle-shaped blue sac, which sits on the water's surface. They have many string-like tentacles hanging down from the float."

Blue Dragon
"A blue dragon, a pelagic sea slug which floats about the ocean on its back (that's it's belly and foot you're looking at) feeding on blue bottles."

Violet Snail
"violet snails also feed on blue bottles. they produce a "raft" of mucus bubbles, float about the oceans with the flocks of jellys, and, i imagine, chow down whenever the fancy takes them. this one had picked up a bunch of bivalve hitchhikers. "

Blue Button Jelly
"the blue button jelly (Porpita porpita) forms part of the "blue fleet", a huge drifting community of organisms which includes the infamous bluebottle. the blue colour apparently provides protection against uv light and, i imagine it also provides quite an effective camouflage against predators hovering above. "

More: The Blue Feet

More images of blue dragon and blue bottles

The Blue Dragon is a species of medium-sized, floating, blue sea slug, a pelagic aeolid nudibranch and preys on other larger pelagic organisms such as the dangerously venomous Portuguese Man o' War, also known as Blue Bottle.

Glaucus Atlanticus or Blue Dragon

Physalia, Portugese Man of war or also known as Blue Bottle.

‘All these animals float on the surface of the ocean being carried by the currents and the winds. Most of us are only aware of their existence when days of onshore winds blow great fleets of them on to the beaches, causing pain and angst for swimmers. Both species spend their life floating upside down in the water, partially bouyed by a gas bubble in their stomachs.'
http://www.seaslugforum.net/factsheet.cfm?base=glauatla, Photos by Bill Rudman