Wish we knew how to say enthusiastic things in German, but alas! Gotta do it in English. Thomas Wellmann is a comics maestro who recently released Der Ziegensauger, a 100-page comicbook adventure in his signature style. (This is where the “wish-we-could-speak-German” urge kicks in really strongly; for now we’re gonna rely on a heavy visual exegesis plus basic dictionary for our reading strategy.)
Book aside, Wellmann makes nutty/awesome fantasy illustrations and game designs and more. His sketchbook/zine Schulheft is one of our all-time favorites: an intimate, prettily-produced pocket of sketchy joy.
Whether shooting high schoolers, skateboarders, friends, the Golden Gate Bridge or fossils, Brayden Olson has an eye for the key detail that makes it all work. Browse his site (it’s minimalist! yet totally functional) and allow yourself to fall down a wormhole of photographic delights.
The term “fluorescence”was coined by one George Gabriel Stokes in an 1852 paper for the Royal Society of London titled “On the Change of Refrangibility of Light”. Chemically speaking, fluorescence occurs when an orbital electron relaxes to its ground state after being excited to a higher quantum state by some kind of energy. Then it gets really complicated.
Fluorescent lights, on the other hand, were first brought to the public at the 1939 World’s Fair, and we can thank that event for eventually precipitating glow sticks and highlighter pens. At the very end of this long stream of influences lies Dan Bina, an artist who creates images that often incorporate hints of fluorescence. The paintings are magical—check ‘em out at Dan’s blog. Deploy shades if your eyes are sensitive.
The world needs more independent publishers like Aki Books. Named after one of the founders’ dogs, the publisher aims to produce books of art and photography in limited (beautifully designed) editions, as well as zines and posters.
The outfit is pretty new— it was founded in 2009—and we’re eager to see its future output. We’re especially excited for an upcoming project involving a new edition of Robert A. Robinson’s 1958 classic collection of photography Captured by the Norwegians. Sounds rad, no? For now, a person could furnish a very handsome (if tiny) library with books from the Aki catalogue.
Norwegian-born and Brooklyn-based artist Espen Friberg is a wizard of various mediums. We like his collages and amazing collection of papercuts for the Helsinki Biennale, to start, but there’s also the captivatingly “primitive” animation piece, the tee-shirt designs, the incredible posters, the fanzines, the adorable children’s book published in collabration with Øystein Dolmen (too bad we can’t read it), and, last but not least, a tumblr called Pimple Zoo which collects various digital shots by Friberg, because why the heck not?
A nice selection of Friberg’s work is available here, and we especially love the limited-edition silkscreened tote bags. Perfect for toting your colored pencils around the city.
There’s something vaguely Henry Darger-ish about Maarten Donders’ art and illustrations. Not in a weird reclusive sense, just in the sense of having a seriously unleashed imagination and a knack for fantastical colors and comics-influenced imagery.
Donders has lent his style to record covers and 140 Hits in Art, a book in which 140 artists illustrate one of their favorite songs. Donders chose Earthless, “a heavy psychedelic band who play facemelting jams.” We’d say the artist fits the subject perfectly.
L.A. band The Soft Pack’s rad new video features an increasingly absurd, awesome and insanely messy cafeteria food fight with the kids from Kick-Ass: Chloe Moretz, Clark Duke and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Directed by Mean’s Kashy Khaledi. This is just the latest installment of Mean’s ongoing series of cinematic mash ups– more to come!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Is there anything more exciting than discovering a promising small press of exacting standards and prolific output? (That’s a rhetorical question.) Napa Press has been publishing art books and graphic novels and hosting flipbook competitions since 1997, and it’s still going strong. Managed by artist Jenni Rope and a gallery board, the press is rooted in a gallery and shop in the heart of Helsinki and supplements its bound output with limited posters and prints by Napa artists.
The creativity stemming from Napa is astounding and never-ending. There are egg-painting parties, illustration exhibitions, animation DVDs, documentary photo books and so much more. Check out the web shop here, or hey! Why not take a stroll past the gallery in Google maps to round out your conception of it?
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