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

Holy smokes, Ditto Press is so cool we could plotz. The UK-based independent publisher produces the most beautiful books imaginable using Risograph technology (do we sense a growing sector of Risograph devotees?) and incredible bookbinding techniques. The shop and blog are practically epilepsy-inducing in its variety and desirability, offering books that range on topics including academia, fine art, photography, popular culture, literature and poetry. Zoinks? Zoinks.

Selected highlights include a revisited Edgar Allen Poe story (designed and produced in-house), prints by WLYS favorite Jiro Bevis, a limited edition book by Joseph Clayton Mills, “Herschel’s Telescope”, a 2-color riso printing for Laurence Barber with exposed-sewn single page sections and 9 digitally produced gate-folded inserts…and so much more.

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!

Not only do we love Jon Boam’s mural at digital marketing and communications agency Code Computerlove, we love the process photographs on Boam’s blog that illustrate paintings-in-action (as well as selected shenanigans, naturally.) See here for more.

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.

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!

The varied and colorful talents of Ellen Kling are almost too far-ranging to summarize in the form of a single blog post, so we’ll just introduce you to the artist/designer and then set you on your path toward discovering her Midas touch.

Klings illustration work is truly a portfolio to behold, and her design aesthetic is one that we can only describe as “delectable” (we especially dig the ice-cream colors and celestial dessert illustrations.) The dossier also includes “Forbidden Love”, a 24-page zine about Kling’s love-hate relationship with deodorant, a couple of other small book projects, a giant red snake painted on canvas with acrylic and “Cats”, a work of paper cats embedded in layers of plexiglass. Among much more.

Finally, there’s Kling’s blog, which is an ever-unfurling document of the artist’s life and work, interspersed with charming notes on friends, movies and the way that energy drinks make her feel (weird).

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.

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.