Art + Word

Artist of the Day: Joshua Tree National Forest - Christine of 9th Cycle Studios

joshua tree national forest christine 9thcyclestudios

artist bio: I am a self taught photographer who has no defining style. I just love taking photos and, often times, transforming them to suit my tastes. Sometimes it's to convey a particular message and/or theme, and sometimes I just want to present things in a very visceral way. As a whole, my work varies in tone and character because it is a reflection of myself and, like everyone else, my moods can run the gamut. My inspiration comes from many sources. Music, film, people/society, nature, books... The good, the bad, and everything in between. My eyes are open and I want to capture it all.

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Can't you just feel that freedom on your face as you fly down the road?

Song of the Day: Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

The Avett Brothers
Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it.

These lines from the song are a lifeline to cling to in this pre-election malestrom.

I don't necessarily agree with the first line, because as history shows, a president's decision will certainly affect your life, as well as the whole world. Enough said. How about we let the politicians sling mud for the next few months, while we enjoy our lives. Mud fights are better left for the dirty players.

The second line of this states what every living being wants: to be loved for who you are.

And the last line reminds me of George Elliot's quote that, it's never too late to be who you might have been.

Can somebody give me an "amen" to that!

Utah Arts Festival: Chris Roberts Antieau

Chris Roberts-Antieau began her career in art by walking out of an art class.

On her very first day in art-school, the instructor had given the class an assignment to draw an ink bottle. The other students drew literal, realistic sketches. Chris drew a blocky, childlike bottle that took up the whole page. The professor singled it out for mockery in front of the whole class, asking her, “Who told you you could draw?” Chris walked out and never looked back.
Marriage and the birth of her son, Noah, put her art on hold for a few years. But when Noah was old enough to hold a crayon, the two of them began to draw together. Chris found herself fascinated by the raw childlike vision she saw in her son’s drawings, and it wasn’t long before she herself was ‘back at the drawing board,’ creating fanciful cloth sculptures for regional art shows. Her first sale: a trapeze artist, which took her two days to make, and sold for $18.

Barely a year later, a visiting artist ran across Chris’s work and suggested that she take a crack at creating designs for the then-hopping wearable art market. Chris took her up on it, creating 2 jackets and 3 vests, which the two took to Baltimore, for the American Craft Enterprises event—Chris’s first show ever outside her home state of Michigan. The response was overwhelming. Buyers crowded a dozen deep around the makeshift booth, elbowing each other for place. When the smoke cleared, Chris had hundreds of orders from stores across the country—including Neiman Marcus. She returned home, hired a staff of fifteen, and set out to meet her commitments—doing the complicated and time-consuming detailing on each garment herself.

“I’m An Artist”At the end of that year, Chris had a thriving business, but she was miserable. She wanted to be an artist, not a manufacturer. Wearable art took up an enormous amount of time in management and production. And it wasn’t like other fine art: people didn’t just care about the design–they wanted it to match their new shoes, or favorite sweater, too.

So despite her remarkable success, Chris left the wearable art world and spent the next year exploring other options from her Ann Arbor studio. Again, it was a chance comment from a friend that set her on a new track. Chris had been struggling to find a medium, torn between her roots in sculptural objects, and the freedom she’d found in her flat designs for wearable art. “It doesn’t have to be on a jacket to be flat,” her friend suggested. “Why don’t you make something to hang on a wall?”

“Fabric Paintings”The next year, Chris returned to Baltimore’s American Craft Enterprises show with the pieces that have now become her hallmark: “fabric paintings” composed from freehand-cut cloth shapes, hung behind glass in hand-painted frames. Response to these unique pieces was strongly positive as well. Today, a dozen years later, the best folk art galleries across the country offer her work, which has also won major awards at the prestigious Ann Arbor and St. Louis Art Fairs, and the attention of HGTV and Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion Magazine.

True to her roots, Chris’s gaze is still distinctly child-inspired. Her compositions have the delightfully off-kilter feeling of children’s drawings, and the subjects sometimes seem to be a child’s choosing as well: “Playing With Dolls”, “Bad Dog”, or “Bug Jar”. But like her better-known inspirations, Picasso, Miro, and Van Gogh, Chris takes the honesty, freedom, and new perspective of children’s art to a new level. She doesn’t just mimic a child’s style—she applies a child’s eye to adult realities, reminding viewers not to take themselves too seriously, and giving them a chance to remember again the wonder and joy that children find in the everyday.“People always want to know what my work is about,” Chris says. “But I’m an artist, not a writer. If I could put it into words, then I wouldn’t have to make the pictures.” Everyone who sees her art brings something different to it, she believes, and she’s happy with that. But while the meaning of a given piece may not be clear-cut, Chris does have some sense of what she’s trying to get across. “My vision of the world is joy-based,” she says. “Even when awful things happen to me, I’ve found wonderful things along the way. That’s what my art is about: the joy and wonder and humor that’s all around us, every day.”

You won't find Roberts-Antieau, but you will find her gorgeous work in Booth 46

Utah Arts Festival: Hayley Nolte & Scot Ray

Hayley Nolte and Scot Ray are mixed-media artists who make applique-like art using recycled materials form a cache of over one-thousand tins bequeathed to them. Their process begins with recycled tins, cans, roofing metals, & distressed copper that are then hand cut and layered and nailed to a wooden base.

I purchased a fabulous bird-themed key holder from them. I really wish they made jewelry, especially earrings. Or bracelets using rivets instead of nails.

Here's hoping they'll start a jewelry line. And that they get a website!

You can find them in Booth 28.

Utah Arts Festival 2012: Cat Palmer

cat palmer was born and raised in orange county, california. she got her passion for photography from her grandparents, who raised her, who had a small black and white dark room in their house.

cat was drawn to capturing the beauty she found in people. at the age of fifteen, her photography teacher told her that her work reminded him of diane arbus. he sent cat to look her up, and cat fell in love. arbus too found the beauty in people. cat started shooting different people who intrigued her - anyone from the people on the streets of mexico to the homeless people in los angeles.

cat studied photography from 1995-1999. cat used to only shoot 35mm black and white, but she joined the “dark side” of professional digital in 2005. it will never truly be the same – she misses those smelly chemicals. cat has exhibited all over the salt lake valley and has won many awards for her art and photography including 2007, 2008 & 2011’s Arty’s award from city weekly. she won best in show at the utah arts festival in 2009.

women are cat’s main subjects because, to her, they have such beauty and strength. since 2007 she has been focused on art with a message. some of her themes have been: self-esteem, peace, self-reliance, i am human, there’s no place like home, peace to the middle east, age of aesthetics in defying societies definition and super hero women. her next project is 'i have a secret'. she has been collecting secrets from women all over the world for over a year.

You can find her in Booth 95.

Utah Arts Festival 2012: What Would Street Jesus Do

WWSJD

I love this pin.

When I picked it up at the festival, I thought it was a spin on the original WWJD. Turns out Salt Lake City has its own Street Jesus, who is the owner of hip-hop store Uprok and DJ for Sunday Night Soul at the Bourbon House.

Months ago I watched an indie music video I swear was titled Street Jesus, so after I met Uprok's Street Jesus briefly yesterday in the Urban Yard, I thought it was him. It wasn't.

If you run across the video or band or song, will you please leave a comment since I cannot find it anywhere.

Anyway, I found this interview by Urban Media Episode 6: Uprok Street Jesus and that Aerosmith's new album will feature a song titled Street Jesus.

If you want a What Would Street Jesus Do pin, pick one up at Uprok.