Our visit to the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection this week (a collection! and you can use it!) has us reeling with an aesthetic inspired by the specimens: “hard angular forms that reflect mechanical origins”. Big and bold, and fun, and (maybe this is just us…) the kind of beautiful fun that smells of popcorn. So… we rounded up some things we liked. A big thanks to the amazing David Shields for the tour!

Wood Type and Wooden Toys. Get it? We couldn’t miss the opportunity to praise Timba Smits and the amazing mag “Wooden Toy Quarterly” (“Direct from Melbourne and Sydney!”)

Carli Dottore wento to school in Ohio and then lived in NY and then in Nashville and then in Philadelphia and now she lives in Rome, Italy, but only for a bit. She keeps a tumblr and has a website

We found this at the Parliament of Owls site, made by Owl Parlamentier (that’s totally a word) Lauren Sheldon, who spends her days with “like-minded designers hell-bent on pushing each other to create the best work possible (and occassionally taking a break to stuff our faces with dumplings)” Dumplings are serious business, people.

There was a Pecha Kucha event. We went. We stood outside. It was cold and there was a line and it was cold and we… left. And what that means is that we forfeited the opportunity to nab one of these babies by Stu Taylor and DJ Stout of the Austin Pentagram offices. Maybe next time we’ll take some gloves and wait it out.

Crochet art comes in more forms than just your grandmothers artfully studied bunny-patterned sweaters. As amazing as those are, now that it’s getting colder, and since my grandmothers most certainly do not knit, my sweater-loneliness has found solace in the strange and wonderful creations of three women.

My first encounter with crochet public art only a few weeks ago, looking up while I waited for  some food sitting in a patio. It was a pair of shoes, laced together and thrown over some electric cables. Except these sneakers had a layer of crochet over each sneaker. Cute.

Some days later It happened again – in front of Domy Books in Austin – this time it was a lamppost. That day I felt sorry for the thing, it was about ninety degrees out. And so I asked about it, it turns out this is the work of Magda Sayeg, Austin-dweller and founder of the “knit graffiti” crew Knitta Please. And then I was scolded for living under a rock.

Knitta Please works to redefine a craft that has been relegated to the stuffy attic of people’s brains and dismissed by a limited vision for knitting’s purpose, its function, its practitioners. Sayeg’s work repositions this granny pastime in public spaces, streets formerly dominated by a hard, masculine public art culture.  The fuzzy tags invoke entirely different connotations, antagonizing expectations and initiating dialogue about community-driven art and intersections between art and craft.

When Knitta Please first began tagging in 2005, yarnbombing was the collective’s response to the mass-produced.  By inserting handmade art in a landscape of concrete and steel, they were cheekily adding warmth to our urban fixtures.  Knit graffiti reengages us with our environment: the parking meters, buses, bike racks, lamp posts, car antennas, columns, statues, exposed plumbing, all of the furniture in our urban world that goes unnoticed every day.  And of course, Knitta makes the streets prettier along the way.

There must be some badass yarn in Texas, because a few days later I stumbled upon another crochet artist’s work, this time, the place is Houston. Elaine Bradford, whose work, like Magda’s, has also been exhibited in Austin’s Women and their Work (coincidence? Conspiracy!) covers taxidermy in yarn. Bradford’s family was apparently big into deer hunting, meaning she grew up surrounded by decapitated Bambi’s mother and “she recognized that her own personal relationship to what she saw as familiar interior decor could confront a more complex set of cultural and political associations attached to the objects. For this reason she thought they would be ideal objects upon which to continue her earnest and perhaps impossible effort of offering comfort despite a ridiculously sad state of affairs.”

A recent post by Elaine on her site reveals that she’s taking the crochet-creations, already filtered through the medium of the unliving and the deformed, and slapping them back on humans. Proof:

Shauna Richardson lives far from Texas, in the UK, which also boasts a rich hunting heritage. Shauna’s crocheting is also inspired by taxidermy, but her work may well be the exact opposite of Bradford’s; her work creates desiccated animals… without the desiccated animals.  She calls this “Crochetdermy”.

The intention behind the craft is different from Knitta’s idea of making lampposts and fire hydrants cuddly, or Elaine Bradford’s hopes of bringing comfort. She uses rough and coarse materials like mohair and puts in details like reproduction claws and glass eyes on her faux-taxidermy. She’ll create stitches that mold to the shapes she’s creating, and the work is amazingly intricate. Her current project will create three giant lions for London’s 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

While the expression “art that haunts you” is applicable to plenty of artists, we must admit that when the imagery of the artist is built on skulls, decaying corpses and the re-visiting of deities, well, the results tend to get much more ghoulish. Louie Cordero [ Manila, 1978 ] is a painter, sculptor and illustrator [and not a musician, though there is a Puerto Rican musician with the same name – we’re verry sorry Louie!] who reinterprets contemporary pop conventions by merging traditional Filipino iconography with pulp aesthetics and exploitation codes. While we could venture to say that he bridges lowbrow and fine arts we rather give you this wonderful review found at ever-so-kind Philippine Daily Inquirer:

“While [ Cordero’s ] works aren’t exactly selling like hot bibingka after midnight mass, Cordero and his peers have been embraced both here and abroad by the hipeoisie at the cutting edge of contemporary global culture. Case in point: Cordero was recently featured in Juxtapoz magazine, the bible of postmodern art freaks who seek to elevate all manner of low culture –tattoos, graffiti art, underground comics, custom cars and vinyl toys– to the same heights as the traditional bellas artes”

Cordero’s exhibition “Sacred Bones” at the Jonathan Levine Gallery closed on June 12th but Levine’s website is filled with additional information and images, if you care to explore further [ be sure to check the video! ]. And Louie, if you happen to be reading this, we would love to meet you, do drop a line.

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All images from the Jonathan Levine Gallery, Super Touch Art, Universes in Universes, and Osage Gallery amazing websites, be sure to visit them!

I always suspected that bats and rats and strange cave-dwelling animals have their very own theme parks among all the rock and humidity and general yuckiness of those holes in the ground. Obviously, I mean, how could all those little larvae looking creatures grow to be so scary without a little bit of formative fun, a cavernous-christmas if you will. On second thought, maybe I’m thinking about that recurring dream that made my parents drag me to the school counselor for about a year. Anyways, Nick van Woert proves that I was right and they were wrong and that there is nothing crazy about dancing rodents in a hidden wonderland. (Nick, get in touch with us. I have an idea for an  AWESOME documentary)

It seems that Mr. van Woert is a man of few words, so I’ll tell you what I know. He’s in his early thirties, lives in Brooklyn and was born in the state of Nevada (further proof! There’s caves in Nevada! And candy colors!) His work seems to come back to the practices of building large and strange structures made of wood and metal, and of dipping stuff in paint, and repeating until an awesome stalagtite-like structure forms. Needless to say, I love it.  Anyways, this post is not for any of you, though you’re free to look at my own personal trainwreck, but for you Señorita Lopez. HAH!

Denis Carrier is the mind and hands behind Studiofolk, source of a bevy of wonderful, unfussy and clever illustrations. We imagine him exactly as he describes himself – his work mirroring his persona, and according to him, even his looks. “Denis Carrier, looks like his work : not so big, not very muscular, but really funny and simple.” (the real mystery to us… how does a person look “simple”?) Simple and not-so-big as he may be, Carrier is a busy bee. In addition to Studiofolk, he co-founded the graphic design and art direction studio PNTS and has created work for books, mags and even mobile devices and iPads.

What inspires your aesthetic?
My aesthetic is inspired by lots of things. I try to read different kinds of books and look all around me. My aesthetic reflects my everyday life.
In the illustration world, I’m a big fan of Raymond Savignac and Seymour Chwast, I like how they manages to express complex ideas in very simple design. Currently Jean Julien is one of my favorite illustrators.

Tell us a bit about your work at PNTS.
I co-founded PNTS with Aurelien Arnaud a year ago. PNTS is a graphic design studio where we work on differents projects. We create cd packaging, layout, artistic directories, etc… At the moment, PNTS is my main daily occupation.

Your work has been described as naive. Do you agree with this?
I don’t know if my work is really naive but it looks that way. I think it’s more simple than naive.
I try to simplify each of my ideas and their shapes as much as possible. In my latest work. I decided to use only two or three colors because I thought the idea I want to translate doesn’t need more than that.

You create both vector illustrations and handmade drawings. Which technique do you feel most comfortable with? Why?
I prefer handmade drawings because I love spending time with my pencils. But sometimes, ideas are more powerful without human imperfections so I use vector technique.

What would you consider a great achievement for Studiofolk?
I would like to do illustrations for magazines I like (GOOD, the New Yorker, the New York Times for example). And I would like to make an illustrated book.

Describe a typical day for you (cereal preference, songs in your head, daily walk… whatever you’d like to share!)
7 : 30 : I wake up and listen to the news on the radio
7 : 40 : shower
7 : 50 : go to work on my red bike and listen tosome folk songs (This morning “The Tallest Man on Earth”)
8 : 00 -> 12 : 30 : coffee and work
12 : 30 -> 14: 00 : sometimes I eat a BigMac with my girlfriend
14 : 00 -> 18 : 00 : work
18 : 00 : coffee
18 : 15 -> 20 : 00 : work
20 : 00 -> 23 : 00 : back home and  have a sweet evening with my girlfriend

Some of the Gopher staffers grew up surrounded by Op and Kinetic art: stripes of fluorescent color, geometric forms of dubious contours and beams of tinted light were part of our childhoods in the Caribbean. Given our record, it is not surprise that we find a home-y feeling in Carol Salmanson‘s work, a kind of warm sensation provoked not only by the glow and hue* of the LED lights that she uses in her work, but also by that familiar feeling of visual otherworldliness, just-about-to-hit-you.

Salmanson is a native of Rhode Island currently living in Brooklyn. She started working with light almost a decade ago and has showcased her work at spaces such as Dam Stuhltrager, Mixed Greens, Gallery Ju-ichi Gatsu, Kawaguchi Art Factory and many more. On her website she explains that she “started working with light in 2003, as newly available technologies allowed me to completely transform the effects I had used in my painting. I began layering and blending different colors of light, and adding newly developed materials to play with space, form, color, and relativity of scale. I use a multiplicity of means, employing optics along with various lighting technologies, different kinds of reflective and refractive materials, and diverse structures to simultaneously contain and disseminate light. By combining spatial and color concerns with architectural and theatrical elements, I focus on both object and space so I can go beyond light, exploiting walls and other surfaces as well as the work’s surroundings.” After this, just a couple more words: we want this in huge public spaces. Who should we talk to?

From top to bottom:

1 & 2) First two images: detail of “Diaphany“, exhibited at Mixed Greens Gallery, NY.

3) “All That’s Left” [ full dark view ]

4) “Luminous Layers” at Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery [ view toward street ]

5) “Luminous Layers“

6) “Luminous Layers” Southwest Elevator, 45 Main St.

7) “Luminous Layers” Southwest Elevator, 55 Washington St

8) “Luminous Layers” Northeast Elevator, 45 Main S.

9) “Luminous Layers” Southwest Elevator, 55 Washington St.

10) “Split Screen” [ yellow view ]

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*we had no idea how complex hue is until today, thank you dear W.

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All images copyright of Carol Salmanson.

Just like that. Aquiles-Hadjis-is-the-shit. This is an unashamed, blatant post of love and imagery about our most recent entry in that narrow category called art we can’t live without. And, to make it even more tempting for our dear readers, a fact of disturbing awesomeness: here’s the only place in the whole wide internets where you can find some of the work that Aquiles is doing currently at Tokyo. Because not only is he an astonishing painter, he’s also the kind of gentlemen of the arts who finds in seclusion the space for inspiration. And that means not that many journalists on your doorsteps. Beyond his method for madness, here’s another bold statement: Aquiles is destined to be a hugely famous painter; his work, a mixture of Japanese Edo-inspired painting and abstraction, leaves the onlooker confused, wondering about materials, techniques and whatnot, but also about levels of discourse and subject analysis. Even more, he’s currently working on incorporating antique techniques of Japanese craft into artworks that go beyond the two-dimensional, so be ready to hear more about him in the upcoming months.

Aquiles not only kindly accepted the invitation to feature some of his work at this website of yours, but also joined us for the first edition of the Gopher, doing some amazing illustration work for William Giraldi’s “Legend Has It” and “Famous Lesbians” stories, so be sure to check his work [ i.e. buy the magazine at our soon to be ready store ] and be among the firsts to hold a copy of some of Aquiles’ published works. Below this lines, some of our favorite works, salut!

New Strange Place to Live

We fell in love with the woozy, eerie colors of Ana Pais Oliveira’s work immediately. Twenty-eight year old Ana has had a busy year, receiving a bevy of prizes and being a part of the faculty at Oporto University in her native Portugal. Her most recent body of work New strange places to live “reflects about the places where we live, the spaces we inhabit, occupy or pass by, and also the ones that we don’t really know but usually live in our imaginary. Our houses, streets and predilection places are part of our identity. An effective change of place involves the creation of a new individual and collective identity.” Ana Pais Oliveira answered some of our questions, published below.

Uninhabitable #7

Tell us a little bit about yourself
I was born in Sandim, Vila Nova de Gaia (Portugal) and actually live in Arcozelo, Vila Nova de Gaia. I started painting when I was 15 years old. Since my first day in that painting school I had no doubts about what I wanted to do in my life. I went to Fine-Arts Faculty of Oporto University to study Painting and when I finished my degree I started searching every opportunity I could have to commence my career, participating in painting competitions, showing my portfolio, working every day. Today I feel that it’s a great privilege to me to do what I like and always wanted and, in fact, live with that. It is my profession and, despite all its incertitude, regarding future achievements, I keep myself motivated and with well-defined purposes.

Besides painting I have another passion and occupation in my life: dance. I must admit that it is, to me, the perfect shelter to the hours that I spend alone in my studio, painting. It is the social and physical part of my life, keeps me healthy and balanced. And it’s another way to express myself artistically. When I dance my mind is necessarily occupied with different thoughts, or unoccupied with the same daily thoughts regarding the critical thinking about my work. When I get back to work, my mind is cleaner.

I did competitive dancing for 8 years (Ballroom and Latin dances) and opened, with my husband, a dance academy, where I teach. Nowadays I think I found the perfect balance between my profession and this activity.

The best of all the journey was the time that went slowly #3

A moment's sleep #2

What constitutes a typical day for you?

When I graduated with a painting degree, I thought I should have something stable to do to conciliate with painting. Something to subsist. So I worked in a Fine-Arts store, gave dance and plastic arts classes in primary schools and also with teenage problematic students. Last year was an extraordinary year regarding painting [for me]. I won several prizes, made two individual exhibitions, got invitations, contacts, gave interviews. I realized that I had to dedicate myself to painting even more. So, this year, my typical day is very simple to describe: I paint from 9 am to 6 pm, with an hour to have lunch. I try to be disciplined and fulfill this schedule as if I had a boss there controlling me. From 6 to 8 pm I practice dance and teach dancing during some nights in the week. At weekends I have those dance classes and don’t usually paint. It is an important strategy to reflect about the work I’m doing. When I get to my studio on Monday it is easier to realize what I have to do with that work in progress.

Uninhabitable #4

Strange Place

Why have you chosen to work with the theme of strangeness and strange places? Was this an aesthetic choice?

When I did competitive dancing I used to travel a lot to dance competitions, especially in Spain and Germany. I did it by car for 10, 15, 20 hour journeys, passing by strange places or non-places where people never stopped by, where people never lived or stood. Spaces full of nothing, with an impressive vastness and few things to show or tell. Sometimes I saw a strange human construction, uninhabited, with no purpose, only with an aesthetic meaning to me. Those spaces with an expressive and seductive emptiness and strangeness really made me think about the places we inhabit and the ones we don´t. About the several curious places that I met in those travels and that always made me imagine: what if I lived here? Our life is necessarily different according the place we inhabit and, of course, the people we meet.

I started needing those travels to build my imaginary. Never took photos, always trusted in my memories. What I brought to my painting was, in fact, an amalgamation of memories that I thought I had. But even memories may be deceitful. They aren’t simply and objectively what we saw and learned, they are what we remember. And what I remembered always included the aesthetic meaning and importance of spaces that normally mean nothing to people, that aren’t their homes, where they build no memories or life experience. So, what I finally bring with me to my paintings, something that I can transfer and rearrange, doesn’t exist and one cannot write or tell it. However, it is supported in a generally disarranged amalgamation of sudden and inevitable memorizations, which is consequence of the act of seeing without necessarily knowing. I invent what I don’t remember. The consequence is the representation of imaginary and strange places and landscapes. They don´t exist, but you may thing they do, and you may desire to live in them. Briefly, this strangeness I look for in those places is, in fact, an aesthetic choice, where color is the most relevant composition element. I start composing using the colors that remained from those travels, forgetting the particularity and individuality of each place.

Floating Memory Houses

Editor Shane Lavalette was awesome enough to let us give you a sneak peek into some of the work featured in this issue. Once you are mesmerized, go pre-order yourself a copy (seriously, there are only like 2000, so get them while you can!) You can thank us later.

Woman With A Camera (Candice Bergen 2), 2008 by Anne Collier

Hourglass, 2009 by Talia Chetrit

Towards Euphoria and Madness, 2009 by Noel Rodo-Vankeulen

Red Diamondback, 2006 by Roe Ethridge

Portrait Study (Nina), 2009  by Lucas Blalock

For the Gopher follower [ we love you! ] this won’t come as a surprise: we effing love collage. Tonya Harding + Tokyo + Macrame we like. Velázquez + The Maharishi + Oscar D’Leon we like even more. So, as the year comes to an end, read a short interview with one of our favorite cutandpasters – and a hell of a good artist with paint and brush – Jimmy Turrell-and when we say “short” we mean “short”: this interview is six questions long so no there’s excuse for the holiday non-reader! Reading is good! And math, and yes young man you have to go to school! (oh mom!)

Tell us about your upbringing in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Were you friends with footballer Michael Carrick?

No, but strangely enough I did go to the same school as Paul Gascoigne.

When did you know you wanted to become an artist?

From about 5 years old.

Tell us about your work: what drives your aesthetic?

I guess I’m obsessed with finding the little eccentricities in life that surround us everyday. A lot of my work is steeped in nostalgia but I try hard to examine it in a contemporary setting. As an artist I try to use methods that produce strange and portentous combinations of images and ideas – I want people to question my work.

What materials do you use? Generally speaking, how is the process of creating a new illustration / collage?

I sit down with my sketchbook and flick through old books and magazines to try and get a feel for the piece. I’ll then start cutting things out and sketching and I’ll begin to make a visual scrapbook of ideas and themes. Once I’ve got my primary ideas fleshed out I’ll begin the drawing/painting process proper and then I’ll scan the work into the computer and continue from there.

How did the relationship with Tokion Magazine develop? What are, in your opinion, the most important works you have completed for them?

I worked for them when Deanne Cheuk was A.D. I did a couple of covers for them which was great.

How is your relationship with the analog and digital work in your projects? What do you enjoy the most?

Both really. Strangely I came out of a graphic design degree with minimal knowledge of Photoshop, Quark or Illustrator. I just remember being really turned off at seeing so much over filtered, over digitised work all around me. I was obsessed with keeping things raw and hand done. I now realise however that the computer can be a great tool – as long as you keep it that way and don’t over rely on it. It basically offers you more choice.

In your personal opinion, what are you best at: cutting, pasting and hand-drawing or clicking, dragging and editing?

Probably hand rendered collage.

Where would you like to take your work now?

To new levels. I really want to start mixing together new and old techniques to produce work that is truly of its time.
What do you most enjoy or dislike about being an illustrator?

I love getting up in the morning to a new challenge. I love creating something that an hour before had not existed. I’m not really enamoured with chasing payments and stress inducing deadlines.

And to finish, a quick mapping of what’s on Jimmy’s mind these snowy snowy days!

Your favorite commission: Tokion.
Your worst one: The Real Pub Company.
Your dream commission: Colours Magazine cover.
Your favorite illustrator: Milton Glaser.
Your favorite artist: Peter Kennard.
Your favorite designer: FUEL.