We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Recognize the name? Hisham Akira Bharoocha is known for his legendary status as founding member of Lightning Bolt and Black Dice. But oh, he’s so much more: a photographer, an image-melter, a collaborator with Doug Aitken and Boredoms and Gang Gang Dance on sound pieces, and a creator of works “that show the absurdity and logic of how each mind works, what kind of relationships it creates between experiences and images that we absorb through our senses moment by moment.” (That’s from his artist’s statement.)

At the moment we’re particularly enthralled by Bharoocha’s photography. As the old cliché goes: every picture tells a story.

Luke Ramsey’s zines, prints, drawings and collaborations (like the above collection of monster mug shots executed with Finlay Pogue) could keep an attentive viewer absorbed for days on end.

But there’s more! Along with his wife Angela Conley, Ramsey runs Islands Fold, an independent publisher and artist residency on Pender Island, B.C., Canada, founded in 2006. Available for purchase at the website are a multitude of prints, drawings, shirts and zines, the proceeds of which go directly toward funding the residency. Good work, guys!

Thank goodness for the web: it allows artists like Mark Mulroney to amass their high-concept weirdness into one viewing zone for home audiences to pore over. We dig the site’s surreal categorical distinctions almost as much as the work contained within: collages, drawings, scanned sketchbooks and more. Give it a look.

Looking for a one-stop shop for all your zine and small-press book needs? Search no further than Famicon Express, which deserves permanent status on the ole’ bookmarks list.

The shop provides a vast selection of comics, special projects books, travel adventures, ghost stories, prints inspired by Grand Theft Auto imagery, and more, all of which are immaculately designed and many of which feature special crafty bonuses (like hand-pulled silkscreen covers or neat stitching).

We’re suckers for crafty bonuses. Who isn’t!?

Australian photographer Scottie Cameron’s photos are big and vibrant, even when they’re diminished to the size of your computer monitor. Like WLYS favorite Sleigh Bells, Cameron’s work comes across as large and loud even when it’s technically shrunken down to the system requirements of whatever machine you’re accessing it on. We’d still kill to see the photographs in real life, though!

Illustrator Joost Stokhof has a cool project that he has dubbed “Without Thinking”. This project involves a constant production of zines composed of sketches, photos, and whatever other work the illustrator finds laying around his studio. It’s a cool little project: instead of throwing all the ephemera away, Stokhof repurposes it into beautiful objects. And that’s not all!

Stokhof spends the rest of his time designing 7″ records, producing beautiful artist books like the above, and drawing and illustrating out the wazoo. We’re big fans.

RJ Shaughnessy has a new photo book out this week, if you are in Los Angeles we’re sure the opening party on Thursday is going to be a madhouse.

Alex de Mora has an unerring eye for complicatedly beautiful scenarios, panoramas, and models in Metallica accessories. It’s important, these days, to be versatile, and de Mora fits that bill. He’s equally astute at photographing live music and adorable cats— a range to be envious of, for sure!

The artist’s blog is a running document of his adventures in picture-taking, and we highly recommend a visit. Not to mention the portfolio—which is truly a thing to behold.

Loren Filis draws, photographs, makes prints, devises installations and noodles around in 3D. As if that weren’t enough, the artist also runs an independent screen-printing studio, Loligo, out of an old peanut factory in London. Oi! Is there anything more inspiring than a person who busies herself with such pursuits? We’re sold on Ms. Loren.

Laurence Punshon’s sculptural set-ups remind us of hotel lobbies, alien invasions, blue seas and nameless horror. The still-lifes are sort of an artistic Rorschach blot test: a viewer will look at them and see the contents of his own consciousness reflected back at him——or that’s how we’re calling it, anyhow.

However you interpret the pieces, they’re certainly compelling and more than a little weird. But understated-weird, like dreams that border on scary but don’t quite cross that border. Tell us, what do you see?