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 In other words, the cars superseded the roads.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 ;)