Givers are coming

Previously talked about Andrew Bell's Giver last month here. Look at how they are coming along. I was not aware there was a green variant or maybe it is just a base coat. Nah, I think it is a completed green. Still like the orange best.

Above image taken from Andrew's flickr.

Jörg Block illustrations

I was looking out at Drawn! and this particular artist caught my eye, not immediately but luckily I took the time and ventured into his site and through his portfolio.

Jörg Block's style, almost repetitive and simple yet what really stands out is his infinite flow of ideas and play of irony. Face it, whatever it is you do, the core idea is the essence. Originality and innovativity will certainly get you far.

Lots to look at on his site. He plays with quite a few mediums too. Brilliant ideas coming from this artist's head.

the human informs about the scale while the emptiness of the roads emphasizes the intimadating sheer size of the superstructures

One section of his works deal with the highways. Personally, I came across some really interesting ideas and debates about highways, particularly American highways (or freeways is probably the more correct term here). Freeways, flyovers, cross sections were built extensively during the 1960s and 70s as they were considered the new modern road system. So I suppose you could call it a construction-hype thing. People just thought it was the right and timely thing to do.

So, gradually in the 80s, enviromentalists started to complain about their affects to the surroundings (noise, pollution, urban decay, aesthetic). I remember hearing one American city (probably Boston?) had these superstructures running through the city, they were considered efficient back then but now obsolete and unable to deal with the immense traffic volume and in the process, divided the city and created run-down unused areas around them. I think they took them down and replaced them with underground highways.

The other scenario that I came across was; what if there will no longer be cars? In other words, the cars superseded the roads. Cars will be floating in mid-air, so what do we do with all these roads?

I'll leave you at that.
Oya-sumi~

"Navigating Imaginary Skies" by Dave Pressler

At the same time, Dave Pressler has his first solo show with MModern as well. An artists I only recently came across as it coincides with Jeremiah Ketner's solo. I am very much attracted to his works particularly his sculpts of the blimps, which are also featured quite occasionally in his paintings. Those blimps are getting many well-deserved praises.

The blimp and the gondola are 12" and 8" long respectively. Each costs $1,500.

He mentioned about having these made in vinyls and obviously smaller next year.

For his show pieces, refer here.

"Another Tomorrow" by Jeremiah Ketner

Jeremiah Ketner's first solo show with MModern opened on the 19th of this month. What could be considered his new style is getting quite a bit of attention, particular after showing off his rendition of of Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss", retitled "After the Kiss" in a previous group show (mentioned previously here).

Many large pieces, with a few affordable small-to-medium size paintings. You will notice the presence of a female character and that is kind of what I mentioned about his new style.

See all the pieces from the show here.

what's your ecological footprint?

I find this a stimulating method of indirectly reminding one of his/her ecological footprint. Brilliant idea! Makes me wonder whether I have the brain for such innovative designs. I ought to venture into that field rather than what I am doing now.

ah, animal tracks!

Source: NOTCOT

Doktor A Mr Head

Infinite thanks to Anna for securing (don't like the word mule) Doktor A's resin hand-painted Mr. Head from MINDstyle's booth at NYCC (blogged). She is absolutely super.

Considering its run of 10 pieces, flown from England to NYCC and back, I am extremely happy about possessing one. So this is X/10.

Not knowing yet how the Mr. Head in the mass-produced series will be, I would assume this resin one has much more weight to it. It reminds me of a Soul of Chogokin (SOC) , notably for its diecast metal and good weighty feel in your palms. And of course, the details to this are brilliant. Hopefully they are evident in my above shots.

Wouldn't mind a Stephen LePod to go with. *gulps*

more Custom Red Birds

So, apart from the exclusive 25 pieces Mexican Red Birds that were released by Kathie Olivas, she was real sweet to personally released 8 additional customs of the Red Bird just couple of hours ago at the Kidrobot forum (page), partly due to popular demands. They are meant to be for colour testing purposes in the first place, as per mentioned.

A few generally liked pieces were gone pretty quickly. In a way, these made the first 25 pieces not that exclusive anymore. With the exact price tag, I would choose to purchase any one of these pieces instead.

check it

*Edit 23/4 : All gone now.
And I shall be saving up instead and aim for a larger piece. Top notch works there, Kathie.

Thievery Corporation

The more lounge tunes I search and come across, the more the name Thievery Corporation seems to get embedded into my head. I am aware that they do a lot of remixes and of course, their own compilations but only recently I found out that they are quite the big guns in what they do. It does seem that they rely heavily on various artists and their songs to implement their remixes on. Unlike Blue Six (mentioned here) which I particular love, Thievery Corporation does a much wider range of electronic music, to name a few; Indian classical, Brazilian and Zen. The wide range helps to cover listeners of various taste.

I personally very much prefer the usual mild down-tempo lounge-type sort of music. Never the Indian-influenced ones at all, which tends to be quite popular.

Bottom line is, they create some of the best lounge tracks known out there, in many languages too.








For those in the UK, catch them live at The Big Chill Festival on 1st August at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Herefordshire.

good stuff from NYCC

In my opinion, MINDstyle takes the pie as the company with the best releases for this year. I hope it is not too early to proclaim that. Of course, they deserve it when big name artists such as Kathie Olivas and Doktor A are having their debut figures made by them. It is a win-win situation, good quality produce = growing list of artists, particularly big name artists.

So far, I've mentioned this year's NYCC's releases that impress me. Not surprisingly, most of them are by Mindstyle. Big kudos to them.

image courtesy of toysrevil

image courtesy of Vinyl Pulse

Doktor A's Mr. Head and Stephen Le Pod (as mentioned here) are looking pretty good. With that limited number and price tag, I wonder whether they got sold out on day one. The blue Stephen are even harder to acquire, apparently. A fellow boardmember managed to secure a piece of Mr. Head on my behalf, in which I am deeply grateful. I think these would look mighty impressive in person. Particularly these are hand-painted resins, anything hand-painted by this artist will look brilliant and should not be compared with the production series which follows later.

I am finally able to see Kathie Olivas's Scavengers (as mentioned briefly here) in the above shot. They look absolutely gorgeous in their own right. Definitely look different in terms of finishes but the colours are pretty much there. There seems to be quite a few of them, I wonder how I would anticipate them in person, each piece. It will be some time before they reach our shores, just maybe in time for Kathie's debut show in the UK next month (mentioned here), in which we can expect special colourways of the Scavenger series.

Found some shots of the individual Scavengers via Tomopop.

image courtesy of Vinyl Pulse

I always anticipate just about anything released by Tokyoplastic, in hope of their continuation of their line of figures introduced in their animations. Fret not, next in line is the above Koguma. It's a classic piece if you're familiar with their animations, since this was featured a long while back. However, I am having mixed feelings about it being a toy since the bulk of it is the seat. More like a... modern miniature furniture? Not too sure about the character just lying on it.

Good stuff this year.

Mexican Red Bird

News has it that Kathie Olivas' exclusive release for NYCC will be a hand-painted "Mexican Red Bird", limited to 25 pieces for a whopping $250. Reading through in the early morning, I thought the pricetag was for a set of Benny & Red Bird. I know it is quite limited and the art is of course amazing on it, but just for Red Bird??

Oh well, I know I'm content with these two:

But I still crave for a KO custom piece ;)

Zatoichi

I have recently completed watching (most likely) all Zatoichi films which consists of 26 series of films spanning from its first film made in 1962 to 1989 led by the same lead actor, Shintaro Katsu, and finally the last 2003 remake produced and played by Takeshi Kitano. Yes, the guy who played The Lord in Takeshi's Castle.

If you dig well-made samurai-genre movies, this is one of the best anyone can ask for. I enjoyed pretty much all of them, with the exception of a few that had real fragmented storylines. I particularly enjoyed how the series seem to improve and change due to influences over the many years. Basically tells the story of a blind masseur travelling all over Japan, almost aimlessly, helping people; getting into troubles & duels and finally walking off much move alive at the end of every film.

I personally love the ones made in the 1980s (1970; 71, 72 and 73). Those were quality. Compared to the older ones, the storylines seem to gradually become fragmented over the years. I would like to suggest that they were going in the direction of an artsy movie, incorporating music and emphasizing the japanese way of life, which is fair enough.

The 2003 remake, is probably my least preferred. I thought it went a little overboard but since it's made in the 20th century, I suppose it's fair for the remake to suit the taste of contemporary viewers.

Note: Best massacre scene comes in the 1989 "Shintaro Katsu's Zatoichi". Zatoichi slayed 30-50 henchmen in like 10 minutes.

Watch them here.

new Dan May prints

Been a little quiet lately for Dan May. He is probably onto something massive, just to be unleashed in due time. Had a quick look at his site and there is a post about new affordable prints of his being put for sale via Charmingwall for just $20 each.

I have always loved his choice of green.

Direct link to Charmingwall's temporary Etsy store here

new Kehoe prints

Andy Kehoe put up three new prints. Two relatively small ones. On top of that, Tiny Showcase has Andy back for another round of mini print, entitled "Passing Away into Unseen Worlds" (edition of 200, 4.5" x 5.6") for a mere $20.

Believe it or not, I still have yet to decide on my two print purchases from Andy. Tsk... tsk...

There are some affordable open edition prints of Andy's works from Charmingwall.

Angry Woebots print in the mail

Just received my Angry Woebots print that I recently mentioned here. Great packaging, it's quite different when you get a fellow collector doing the packaging. He/She would pack it the way it is expected from a buyer's view.

The print is real lovely, as I expected from the previous post. The size is just about right, any bigger, I personally do not think it will be as nice. However, I think the resolution is slightly off. That's only evident if you really squint your eyes and glare at it upclose.

uber limited Mechtorians

MINDstyle just reeased news of two of Doktor A's Mechtorians, uber limited to 10 pieces each. They are Mr. Head and Stephen LePod. Mr. Head will be made available at Mindstyle's booth at NYCC on April 18th whilst Stephen is only available to "Art Toys Society" members only.

I know nothing of the said ATS club. I am giving it some faith and hope that a samaritan will be able to pick a Mr. Head for me, though it seems almost impossible.

More info at MINDstyle

Angry Woebots customs

image courtesy of Angry Woebots, via.

Angry Woebot's next batch of customs is an impressive bunch. With the addition of the gold brush strokes and the angrier expression bring these custom pieces to a whole new level. Looking back at his older pieces, I must say that I really dig these ones better.

I hope that is my Mellow there. For more shots, check out his flickr.

Amy Sol print

Picked up my "The Apple & The String" print by Amy Sol from the post office this morning. It's beautiful. It will be placed at the front of my desk till I have enough of staring at it.

Love the creatures. With all their eyes closed, I wonder where they are heading to.

Noferin wooden sculptures

Still looking up for actual photos at the show of giant Pecan and Pandacake. Should be quite impressive.

If anyone is up for Noferin's brilliant wooden sculptures showcased at CoproNason recently, they are still available. What a tease for the upcoming little pecanpals sculptures.

See what are still available here.

"Down the Bunny Hole"

Looking forward to the show pieces in this show in May at Rivet Gallery as mentioned briefly with Malota's piece. Awesome list of artists participating in this one, I can't wait for the preview to go up. I have always liked the Labbit as a custom platform, there is so much room to play with.

Doktor A's custom piece above reminds me of my Custom Dumb Luck. There are a few pieces with the green goggles-like eyes and I absolutely love that bit.

More info here.

Smash colourways

So my brief entry of Joe Ledbetter's Smash here revealed four colourways. I was expecting more, but not like (possibly) TEN?? as 'hinted' at Toy2R's page.

It will all soon be revealed, not there is any rush for it. I am an anti-variant person, however once or twice I too succumbed to it.

Angry Woebots giclee print April '08

So earlier this week, I witnessed Angry Woebots' release of his giclee print (limited to 50) sold out in a mere three minutes. I wish he had given it a title, so I do not have to keep repeating 'Angry Woebots giclee print'.

I must say this piece is looking absolutely fresh. I particularly love the green background, it makes a beautiful contrast. Credits to contra808 aka John for managing the sale on Aaron's behalf and for the courteous messages. Sorry about the long address, mate. ;)

This is John's shot of the prints, which should be well on their way to those who managed to purchase one.

On a sidenote, John is a big fan of Angry Woebots, evidently in his shot above.

Evisu denim accessories

Evisu recently released these real cool denim-look accessories. I thought the helmet is exceptionally cool, keeping the vintage feel to it while the zippo looks just brilliant! Obviously nothing compared to my previous vintage helmets post.

They are available through ripe. Just do a search on evisu helmet or zippo.

Takashi Murakami @ Brooklyn Museum

Exhibition lasting from April 5 – July 13, 2008. Major exhibition with the process of transfering everything from his LA exhibition to Brooklyn shown in these slides available here and more images here. There is also a video of his presentation via design:related.

Someday, I will like to see his works in person.

My previous post with his works in a collaboration with Louis Vuitton here.

May Ann Licudine artworks

"Black Forest Princess"

May Ann Licudine aka Mall is an artist I came across through flickr last year. She is quite a particular artist as she does her paintings mainly with colour pencils on either wooden boards or canvas. It all comes to her themes part and innitial pencil drawings that I actually really like. Dreams and fantasies. You will often see her charming character, Babu, in most of her paintings.

I shall just let her artworks do the talking.

Mall's website / flickr / store

Malota Custom Labbit

So dear Malota has been doing real well with custom pieces lately. She outdid herself this time with a fantastic job on a smorkin' labbit. I love it the moment I saw it. And thank God, she got rid of the cigarette. Just got slightly tired of cigarettes. This is for her May show at Rivet Gallery, Ohio.

Again, LOVE IT!

More images via Mar's flickr.

Jeremiah Ketner "After the Kiss"

"After the Kiss" 20 x 24 inches, Acrylic on wood

I was in awe when I came across Jeremiah Ketner's rendition of the famous "The Kiss" painting by Gustav Klimt at his flickr. I just had to write this up as I myself have previously come across other smaller paintings by Gustav in Vienna. But definitely nothing as grandeur as "The Kiss".

"The Kiss"

Jeremiah's painting will be featured at this upcoming intriguing show, opening April 3rd:

via.