Elsa Schiaparelli

Elsa Schiaparelli, aside from being an outstanding fashion and jewelry designer was also very involved in the surrealist arts movement with various collaborations.

Schiaparelli's fanciful imaginative powers coupled with involvement in the Dada/Surrealist art movements directed her into new creative territory. Schiaparelli collaborated with a number of contemporary artists, most famously with Salvador Dalí, to develop a number of her most notable designs. Schiaparelli also had a good relationship with other artists including Leonor Fini, Méret Oppenheim, and Alberto Giacometti.

In 1937 Schiaparelli collaborated with the artist Jean Cocteau to produce two of her most notable art-themed designs for that year's Autumn collection. An evening jacket was embroidered with a female figure with one hand caressing the waist of the wearer, and long blonde hair cascading down one sleeve. A long evening coat featured two profiles facing each other, creating the optical illusion of a vase of roses. The embroidering of both garments was executed by the couture embroiderers Lesage.

Dalí

The designs Schiaparelli produced in collaboration with Dalí are among her best known. In addition to well-documented collaborations such as the shoe hat and the Lobster, Tears, and Skeleton dresses, Dalí's influence has been identified in designs such as the lamb-cutlet hat and a 1936-day suit with pockets simulating a chest of drawers. While Schiaparelli did not formally name her designs, the four main garments from her partnership with Dalí are popularly known as follows:

Lobster dress

The 1937 Lobster dress was a simple white silk evening dress with a crimson waistband featuring a large lobster painted (by Dalí) onto the skirt. From 1934, Dalí had started incorporating lobsters into his work, including New York Dream-Man Finds Lobster in Place of Phone shown in the magazine American Weekly in 1935, and the mixed-media Lobster Telephone (1936). His design for Schiaparelli was interpreted into a fabric print by the leading silk designer Sache. It was famously worn by Wallis Simpson in a series of photographs by Cecil Beaton taken at the Château de Candé shortly before her marriage to Edward VIII.^[64]

Tears Dress

The Tears Dress, a slender pale-blue evening gown printed with a Dalí design of trompe-l'œil rips and tears, worn with a thigh-length veil with "real" tears carefully cut out and lined in pink and magenta, was part of the February 1938 Circus Collection.^[65] The print was intended to give the illusion of torn animal flesh, the tears printed to represent fur on the reverse of the fabric and suggest that the dress was made of animal pelts turned inside out.^[66] Figures in ripped, skin-tight clothing suggesting flayed flesh appeared in three of Dalí's 1936 paintings, one of which, Necrophiliac Springtime, was owned by Schiaparelli; the other two are The Dream Places a Hand on a Man's Shoulder and Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra. Richard Martin saw the Tears Dress as a memento mori produced in response to the Spanish Civil War and the spread of Fascism, declaring that to "tear the dress is to deny its customary decorum and utility, and to question the matter of concealment and revelation in the garment."^[67] He noted that even if the tears in the dress were mere ornament like slashing, the real tears on the veil negated this, offering visual disagreements between reality and pretence.

Skeleton Dress

Dalí also helped Schiaparelli design the Skeleton Dress for the Circus Collection. It was a stark black crepe dress which used trapunto quilting to create padded ribs, spine, and leg bones.

Shoe Hat

In 1933, Dalí was photographed by his wife Gala Dalí with one of her slippers balanced on his head. In 1937 he sketched designs for a shoe hat for Schiaparelli, which she featured in her Fall-Winter 1937–38 collection. The hat, shaped like a woman's high-heeled shoe, had the heel standing straight up and the toe tilted over the wearer's forehead. This hat was worn by Gala Dalí, Schiaparelli herself, and by the Franco-American editor of the French Harper's Bazaar, heiress Daisy Fellowes, who was one of Schiaparelli's best clients.

 

Stephan Mackey

Stephen Mackey is a contemporary British artist whose dreamlike images of surreal fairy tale encounters and twisted romanticism have earned him a growing international reputation. He work conjures a time of artist Richard Dadd, taking the viewer into a new, sometimes dystopian world.

There’s a world veiled in static on the periphery of our vision, where dreams and nightmares bleed into one another. Glimpsed in flickering candlelight and whispered shadows of tangled vines in fairytales, we sense it creeping, seeping into our reality. We’ve entered the unrestful realms of British artist Stephen Mackey, where his paintings serve as portals to lands of darksome lullabies, unsettling dreamscapes of perpetual twilight evanescence. With each brushstroke, Mackey weaves secret tales of the precious and the sinister, the twisted romance of unquiet beauty.

Beneath the whimsical surface of Mackey’s paintings lies a darkness that lurks, unseen but palpable. Ethereal maidens appear to frolic with fantastical creatures, beauties dream soundly in enchanted canopied beds, and primp before shimmering mirrors. Yet, closer inspection reveals scenes fraught with lurking tension – the subtle dance between predator and prey, the maze of perils and pathways dark and bewitched.

Are these glimpses into a world existing just beyond our perception, where fairytales take a darker turn? Or are they manifestations of Mackey’s own subconscious, a shadowy reflection of the human psyche?

Beneath the whimsical surface of Mackey’s paintings lies a darkness that lurks, unseen but palpable. Ethereal maidens appear to frolic with fantastical creatures, beauties dream soundly in enchanted canopied beds, and primp before shimmering mirrors. Yet, closer inspection reveals scenes fraught with lurking tension – the subtle dance between predator and prey, the maze of perils and pathways dark and bewitched.

Are these glimpses into a world existing just beyond our perception, where fairytales take a darker turn? Or are they manifestations of Mackey’s own subconscious, a shadowy reflection of the human psyche?

Mackey's bio sums it up, “No information = mystique. That's definitely part of it, although it does sound a little contrived put like that. You can have any facts you want, but you're sworn to secrecy. Only kidding, I just hate those sites where they have a moody photo of the artist with some trenchant quote about their life and art underneath. I'm 45, married, lots of children, cats, rabbit. I'm also self-taught, so if you're going to give anything away, let it be that.  People love it, it's democratic.”

Mackey currently resides in the U.K.

 

 

Judith Ornstein

Judith Ornstein describes her work as such:

In the making of art I discover my humanity, which often becomes obscured amid a life that is moving too fast and filled with too much. Making art is a working process, every day, that engulfs my whole being. My work is very much about the process. It itself takes me places, suddenly and without reason and I delight in the things I do not plan.

I’m an abstract artist whose imagery melds poetic impulse with networks of shapes and forms. My current work recycles the detritus materials from the ‘Amazon Generation’. Various kinds of honeycomb, fluted and flat corrugate are the familiar by-products of our throw-away society and my raw materials. For me mundane, everyday objects are tools, shape-shifters for my creative use.

Cardboard imbues my sculptures with the conflict of permanence and impermanence. Humble materials, like corrugate, brings up the issue of ‘what gives art value’. The material lives as a sign of cultural excess and has a strong sustainability message. Viewers may see me as just a rescuer of recyclables but I also have a real love of these materials. They have a raw elegance that keeps these pieces timeless looking.

My work reside in a space between solidity and fragility.  Hovering between 2 and 3 dimensions. The throw away quality of cardboard reflects an almost organic life span from development thru deterioration. Sculpture reveals itself in time and its deterioration adds to the process and mimics biological life. However Picasso’s cardboard guitars are over 120 years old and still looking great.  So the material is more durable than we think.

My sculptures are put together in a tangled space as a kind of  improvisational universe. The process is a living experiment forming a bridge between thinking and doing. It is a process that overwhelms my conscious thoughts and instinctive reasoning. Without a color pallet the simple abstract, irregular shapes in various textures are combined to morph into a language dependent on position, shape and surface.  I am always looking for a structure while moving parts around.

I want the work to be fun and humorous as well. So my shapes are often childish, poking fun at themselves. Shapes without a beginning or an end intrigue me most. The circles and ovals that have overwhelmed my work for years have extensive meaning, representing notions of wholeness, self and infinity. They are cyclic movements relating to women, celestial positioning and emotions. These organic shapes (out of stiff material) refer to our humanity and sensuality.

Lucienne O'Mara

Lucienne O’Mara’s paintings unlock the linear structure of the grid. The freehand geometry attempts to discipline and battle against the emotion and movement brought by the use of colour, and the physicality of the brushwork. The limitless potential of this single compositional method allows Lucienne to explore the boundaries of colour, rhythm, and space. Lucienne’s engagement with the repetition of squares within squares is seeking to break down visual order and imbue it with a kind of chaos and poetry more akin to our experience of life.

Lucienne was born in South London in 1989 where she still lives and works. She received a BA and MA from City & Guilds of London Art School and is currently in the final year of the Turps Banana Studio Programme.

Her work is featured in collections such as Simmons and Simmons, John Jones, and the Currell Collection. She has been the recipient of the Painter Stainer’s Prize, the Tony Carter Award, and a finalist of the Ingram Prize.

George Ohr

Known as The Mad Potter of Biloxi, George Ohr was a genius of clay. Not only does his work in porcelain defy shapes and forms, they hold a certain grace and unique beauty. Wikipedia describes Ohr and his work as follows: George Ohr (July 12, 1857 – April 7, 1918) was an American ceramic artist. In recognition of his innovative experimentation with modern clay forms from 1880–1910, some consider him a precursor to the American Abstract-Expressionism movement.

He is considered one of the first art potters in the United States, a precurser to other art pottery designers and creators such as Rookwood. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes him as "arguably America’s quintessential art potter. He built his own kiln, dug his clay, threw his vessels with extreme proficiency on the potter’s wheel to wafer thinness, altered those shapes, and then covered them with his own novel glazes. In form and decoration they are essentially Abstract Expressionist objects—almost 50 years before that movement was founded. In fact, deemed ultimately very modern in this century, they had great appeal to such modern artists as Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, who formed collections of them. Ohr’s work is extraordinarily idiosyncratic and he practiced his own mantra of "no two alike," as exemplified by these works.

Ohr was a colorful character, and his quirky pottery became one of the added tourist attractions on Mississippi’s gulf coast. Self-proclaimed the "Greatest Art Potter on Earth," he was well ahead of his time, and the vases that he deemed "worth their weight in gold" would not command such prices until a few decades ago. Barely ten years after he began making such vases, Ohr closed his pottery, and packed up his pots, literally not to be discovered for another 50 years. Both of these vases came virtually straight from the artist’s cache, and were purchased by Martin Eidelberg, the donor, when the rediscovery of art pottery was in its infancy in the early 1970s."

 

 

 

 

Larry Silver

Larry Silver is a New York based artist whose paintings and drawings evoke an energetic intensity. For his paintings, he uses ceramic-sprayed masonary board which allows the colors to emanate light giving his work a transcendent vibrancy.

He writes, "My paintings are predominantly constituted of oil paint mixtures, graphite and charcoal interlocking atop the surface of clay panels. It can be perceived as though the multitude of exposed layers are a diagrammatic suggestion of notation, juxtaposing the faces of neural pathways and emotive reactions to memory. The practice of pouring and sanding facades is to deliberately unveil the chronology of a painting's emotional thesis. The work is to suggest a simultaneity of time via an exploration of visual systems, self contained logic, and internalized iconography. In preserving the faint suggestions of what was erased, constructed and removed, I intend to hint at forms of psychological graffiti. It imbues something which is essentially abstract via a historical and narrative framework that communicates without being literal.

My series of drawings 'Mapping of a House/Structure and Incidence' started in the mid-2010's ascertain a similar logic in employing marks made initially through a cartographic blind contour process intended to realize structures which house childhood memories. I feel my way around the page as to explore the architecture and furnishings of the house in which I grew up utilizing charcoal- a barometer for my recollections of rooms, stairs, closets and doorways. In returning to the blind contour, more deliberate decisions are made to enhance the visual power of this trance-like exploration. My recent vision has been to interlock the drawing and painting processes in unison."

Jennifer Packer

Jennifer Packer creates portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes that suggest a casual intimacy. Packer views her works as the result of an authentic encounter and exchange. The models for her portraits—commonly friends or family members—are relaxed and seemingly unaware of the artist’s or viewer’s gaze.
 
Packer’s paintings are rendered in loose line and brush stroke using a limited color palette, often to the extent that her subject merges with or retreats into the background. Suggesting an emotional and psychological depth, her work is enigmatic, avoiding a straightforward reading. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” she explains. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.”
 
Born in 1984 in Philadelphia, Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler University School of Art at Temple University in 2007, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. She was the 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014-2016. Her most recent solo show, Tenderheaded, exhibited at the Renaissance Society, Chicago in the fall of 2017 before travelling to the Rose Museum at Brandeis University in March of 2018. Packer currently lives and works in New York and is an assistant professor in the painting department at RISD.

Stephanie H. Shih

“Shih’s food products speak to a seismic shift in America’s demographics that began to take place around the time of the Civil Rights movement... [The] work is both aesthetic and political, a commentary on assimilation as a process in which one’s national origin is not forgotten or erased.” —Hyperallergic

STEPHANIE H. SHIH explores the diasporic nostalgia and material lineages of migration and colonization through the lens of the Asian American kitchen. Her painted ceramic sculptures examine the relationship between consumerism, cultural interchange, and identity in immigrant communities. Shih was born in the US, is of Taiwanese and Miao descent, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Shih has had solo exhibitions at Stanley’s, LA (2021); Perrotin Editions, NYC (2020); and Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, OR (2019). Her work has also been shown at The Hole, NY (2021); Dinner Gallery, NY (2021); the American Museum of Ceramic Arts, Pomona, CA (2020); R & Company, Miami (2020); Hashimoto Contemporary, SF (2019); Underdonk, NY (2019); and Pioneer Works, NYC (2018). She has been featured in the LA Times, Hyperallergic, Cultured Magazine, Artsy, The Guardian, and NPR.

View CV. See more on Instagram. For all inquiries, including exhibition, price list, and press, please email Alli Gelles at studio @ stephanie h shih . com.

 

 

LA2

Born and raised in the Lower East Side, Angel Ortiz (also known as LA2), like so many other kids would write on his desks and chairs in school. When his mother put him in the NYC Boys Club, which he loved because of the access to a swimming pool. His friends at the Boys Club were already tagging up in the streets, buses and sanitation trucks when asked him to join them in using the streets as their canvas. After that, Ortiz was tagging non-stop. He became the King of the buses and sanitation trucks. His tags were everywhere, At the age of 14, Ortiz met Keith Haring, an artist from Reading ,PA. Haring was attending The School of Visual Arts and had a studio in the Lower East Side (The Rat Studio). Of all the tags he saw around the city, the "The LA2 tag" stood out to him. He asked around to see if anyone knew whose tag it was and looked for Angel for months before they were finally introduced at Junior High School 22. Here, Haring and other graffiti artists were creating a mural. He asked if anyone knew LA2, to which SOE, Angel's friend responded and said, "I can get him for you." He went to Angel 's house, told him there is a guy with funny shorts and glasses asking for him. When he skeptically went over to the school, Haring could not believe Angel was a kid! They got along right away and loved learning from each other. Ortiz showed Haring some markers tricks- Keith did not know too much about markers, but he was the King with the brushes. It was as if they had always known each other.

Their first collaboration was that first day on a taxi hood in The Rat Studio. LA2 added his tags and crew names and asked Keith if he could add squiggly lines to add energy.  Two weeks later, Haring called Ortiz and told him he had sold the piece and he wanted to collaborate with him.  Tony Shafrazi gave him his first show with their collaborations in the Fluorescent Room.  Keith Haring then asked his mother's permission to take Angel traveling. He wrote a letter to his teacher and at the age of 15 he was exhibiting in Europe. Through Haring, Ortiz met art icons like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Hambleton. They exhibited for almost seven years, but continued collaborating till Keith's passing in 1991. 

 

Angel Ortiz lives in NYC and is still creating and exhibiting world wide.  LA2 HAS done work for various museums and programs, such as the Children's Museum of Arts, the Children's Museum of East End, Apple Village Arts and the Renaissance Charter School.  

 

He believes meeting Keith Haring was a blessing for both.  Humbled to this day that it was his tag that caught Keith's eye.

Jean Smith

Once an inspiration to a generation of would-be Riot Grrls, the Vancouver-based painter Jean Smith is now carrying a torch for every artist who dreamt of quitting their day job and making a difference through their work.

Since 2016, Smith has been creating a series of enigmatic portraits that are selling like hotcakes on her Facebook page. So far she has sold more than 1,500 canvas works that get snapped up within minutes.

The haunting portraits of women with angular faces, expressive dark eyes and plump red lips—differentiated by their accessories—are selling fast thanks to their US$100 price point.

The artist—half of the seminal 1980s punk rock duo Mecca Normal and precursor to the underground feminist movement known as Riot Grrrls—was inspired by the tradition of bands like the DIY style, anti-establishment Fugazi, who performed $5 gigs to increase accessibility. Her success has allowed Smith—who is also a novelist—to quit her day job at a Vancouver garden centre and work full time as an artist.

Smith has now raised more than $150,000 for her pet project, the Free Artist Residency for Progressive Social Change. She plans to purchase a suitable property for the residency, which will house her as well as visiting international artists. With Vancouver real-estate prices some of the highest in North America, edging out the city’s creative class, Smith is looking beyond the metropolitan area, although she says she is “open to sponsorship, partnership, collaboration and philanthropy” in order to secure a more centrally located property.

Inspired by photographs, Smith’s paintings (larger works are available at US$650) bear a certain resemblance to the artist. Divided into themes that include Pioneer of Aviation (one work offers a bemused fusion of Smith and Amelia Earhart) Skier, Nurse, Hat and No Hat, the works play with both female stereotypes and aspirations—such as the Affirmative series of mainly black women astronauts—in a way that is fittingly performative.

“There is an intention for emotions and injustices surrounding these images to be visible and understood,” says Smith.

The ArtNewspaper