The Art of Niloufar Farzam

"Tenderest Mood"
Artist: Niloufar Farzam
Twitter: @niloutableau
Website: http://niloufarfarzam.com
Specs: 24x24x1” Mixed Media

Grey's Notes on This Piece: One thing in particular really caught my eye in this piece. The subtle use of blue. By using the blue she created a depth to the piece that I doubt would have been there without it. With abstraction its very easy to create a flat one dimensional image and lose the opportunity for multiple dimensions. Niloufar shows a particularly adept hand at recognizing dimension through not just texture, but color. 

Additional Artist Information:

Niloufar notes that part of the inspiration for the concept was from reading Eckart Tolle’s book “A New Earth”. To see more of her work, check out her website above, or her Saatchiart site at:

http://Saatchiart.com/Nilou

Mother Please!! The Dystopia Project

This is a first look at the fourth urban ruin being built for the Dystopia Project. For those not familiar, the Dystopia Project is a series of lifelike urban ruins, each with a specific theme placed throughout each buildings as graffiti. 

"Mother Please!!" is an abandoned warehouse filled with graffiti and street art that involves the AIDS epidemic. The images you see here shows the inside of the warehouse and the graffiti being added on each floor. Once the inside is complete, a front facing will be placed on the building and then the outside walls will be filled with graffiti. 

The Art of Landon Huber

"Heads Vomit Heads"
Artist: Landon Huber
Twitter: @HuberLandon
Specs: This piece of art was first drawn by hand using pencil and paper and made into a tight drawing. Then scanned and digitally Painted using photoshop.

Grey's Notes on This Piece: Landon has an amazing sense of imagination. Viewing his work is more like taking a trip into the dark side of ones mind. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes enlightening. What I find interesting about the above piece is the symmetry. Surrealistic art is some of the hardest art to create symmetry within. But if you move your eyes clockwise starting at the raised hand and follow around in a complete circle, the symmetry is nearly perfect. The angle of the floor and walls, the archway, even the pattern on the floor still allow for an easy transition around the piece. If you flip the image, its easy to see that the symmetry does not work in the opposite direction. I look forward to viewing more of Landon's work in the future. ~G~


Additional Artist Information:

Landon Huber is both a visual and a musical artist. To see and hear more of his work you can visit these links.

https://twitter.com/HuberLandon

https://www.instagram.com/huber.landon

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCwk6Gb8UM17hI7XjV5cvU5g

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCsgsqfbfLDljFSItK2iPWCg

https://enclavedsoul.bandcamp.com/releases

Landon Huber has also illustrated comics, The Punctuation Men, and Bleen( a 94 page Graphic Novel, for sale Now through amazon.) -go to these links to buy "Bleen". Published Now by Caliber Comics.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/163529939X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1526355903&sr=8-1

Also to see and Read "The Punctuation Men Comics , online now for free,...use the links below.

http://landonhuber.wixsite.com/punctuationmen1

http://landonhuber.wixsite.com/punctuationmen2

Watermarking

Weigh the benefits of plastering a watermark on top of your art or using something more discreet in a corner of the work. In today's online art environment, the cost of covering up your art in order to protect it can mean the cost of losing a sale.

The Bones of Old Buildings

As the Dystopia project continues, the studio is filling up with Urban Decay sculptures. Its a strange scene when entering the space to see the bones of these old buildings rising up. Work has begun on building the next sculpture while the graffiti and street art is being added to the previous piece. Its taking me about two weeks to complete each one, but as the designs get more complex, the construction time will get longer. 

Photographers 

If you rely on your equipment and gear more than you do your imagination and creativity, then you will never find the edge that makes your work different from everyone else. 

Any fool with an Iphone can take a professional looking photo these days. 

If you do not evolve past the equipment then you will never evolve as a master of your craft.

The Flames of Dystopia

For this image, two of the new Dystopia sculptures were brought back into the studio and lit from behind with small LED candles and two sets of LED twinkle lights placed at the base of each structure. All other lights were extinguished in the room and it was photographed on low light with a black background. The flame and smoke was added digitally. 

These 7 foot sculptures are really quite amazing when lit up and I can't help but wonder what a dozen of them would look like photographed together. I have 4 built so far, so who knows. 

Studio Reset

My studio went through a pretty major reset yesterday. Art Studios can get pretty dirty and cluttered. Some artists thrive in this setting. But when I am working on a new project, I like to move everything around first to accommodate whatever I am doing. On the occasions where I have not done this, its not worked out so well. The space closes in and I end up with havoc around me. But I am quite pleased with the results of this reset and its now ready to really get into the City Lost project. 

I'd love to see images your own studio spaces, whether they are small or large, or just the corner of a room. Submit your studio photos to gcsartno@aol.com and we'll post them to this thread! 

The Art of Dante

"Enigma"

Artist: Dante
Twitter: @magemancer
Specs: Materials Used to Create Art Piece The traditional aspects used ink, ballpoint pen, art markers. The digital aspects were done in MyPaint program
Artists Notes: Left and right hemisphere of the brain working together in unity to create evolution of physics and metaphysics from the discovery of fire to electricity to the invention of block chain. This piece is not for sale.

Art reflects the complexities of the artists mind. I like to think that every piece of art in some way is a mirror of what the artist was going through when they created the piece. If we are in a troubled turbulent time in our career, the art will show it. If we are at peace and in a tranquil place, the art will in turn also be tranquil. This piece by artist Dante is layered with underlying messages that I can't help but feel reflects who he is and where he is at in the world. Madness often makes for the greatest art, even if the artist is controlled outwardly, an inner madness can often be the most enlightening. We look forward to seeing more art from Dante and trying to grasp the inner struggles revealed in his work. ~G~ 

A First Look at The Displaced Sculpture

Work has begun on the next sculpture the City Lost series. I am calling this one "The Displaced" for reasons that will become clear later. This is slightly taller than the last sculpture, almost 8 feet in height. Here you see it with its completed base color using two shades of gray with a very light rose color. These are latex paints as opposed to acrylics for durability. There is also a small amount of copper and silver spray paint added in places to give it the look of having been a much fancier building once. Tomorrow begins work on the massive graffiti and street art that will be added to it along with some radical rearranging of the studio to make room for these larger pieces.

The Key to Experimental Art

The key to experimental art is to not start out with a concept, but instead to start out with a technique. If the concept is introduced to soon then the experimental nature of the art does not have a chance to evolve. 

If you decide what its supposed to be first then the technique is squelched. But if you just let the technique flow and evolve, more often than not the concept for what to do with it will emerge in its own time.

Consider when you first became an artist. You learned the technique first. Later you used that technique to develop new concepts in your art. The problem is that once we establish our base skills, we reverse the process, placing the concept first. So when we do experiment with something new, we are unprepared to change back to the original way we learned.

When we change our perceptions, we change the way we look at the world. In turn we become much better artists. 

Your professional name reflects your creativity. 

A boring professional name says "no imagination". 

You are in a creative field! 

Be creative! 

A Look at Dystopia the City Lost Sculpture Project

Some views of The City Lost.This is scale model of a dead city encompasses several different distinct art concepts. City Lost focuses on urban decay and urban ruin. Other areas that are being explored in other series include a body painting series. A graffiti series and a surrealism series. 

Upcycling in Art

A great midnight haul of Styrofoam for the City Lost project. Styrofoam is one of those substances that once you know how to work with it, the possibilities become endless for how to use it. I've always been proud of the fact that most of my sculpture work involves upcycling. There are so many remarkable things out there in the world that can be gotten for free if we as artists just have the ingenuity to turn them into something. When you consider that the Styrofoam found above will become something similar to the sculptures seen below, then you know the true value of what others perceive as junk.

Art is About Everything