Atlanta Art: group show appearance

I had the pleasure and privilege to join fellow Atlanta artists Laura Asherman, Peter Brooks, Chandler Cox, Kelly Crosby, Crystal Desai, Larry Holland, Hillary Jourdan, Nick Madden, Sara Santamaria, and Dallas Ward as part of WonderRoot Gallery’s Members Only exhibition which runs from July 24 to September 9 at WonderRoot Community Arts Center in Reynoldstown. I had to miss the opening because I had to work, but the missus and I went over there this morning to check out the exhibit. I know a couple of the other artists, but hadn’t seen work by many of them before. It’s a variety of mediums, crafts, and sizes that come together nicely. I had hoped to post a few pictures of the exhibit, but this morning was a very busy time for the arts center. In the gallery, aspiring dramatists awaited their auditions for a casting call downstairs while a candle-making class took up most of the gallery and the entire building shook with the live drums coming from the recording studio. It was a little too cramped and all the actors were sitting underneath the pieces so it would’ve been presumptuously invasive of me to start snapping photos. If you live in Atlanta, I definitely encourage you to check it out.

Here’s a picture of my piece:

 

The Jumpman Cometh

Here’s a quick piece I did, paying tribute to two of Japan’s greatest cultural exports from the worlds of Godzilla and Nintendo by depicting the Mothra twins from the 1964 film Godzilla vs Mothra as the Mario brothers Mario and Luigi. I haven’t seen the new Godzilla movie, but I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart 8.

亲爱的 Dracula: Looking So Paisley Right Now

Both of these images are based on photographs I took at the Gay Pride Parade two weeks ago in Atlanta. The parade was mostly corporate sponsors and churches, but luckily there were a few truly fabulous souls to keep parade attendees from falling asleep like those sexy firemen from Swinging Richard’s. During the parade, I saw a lot of individuals who identified themselves as “bears.” I may need to infiltrate this community for the purposes of finding models for my pictures. Seriously, who makes a better panda than a bear?

Also I can’t take credit for the paisley pattern in the first picture. I just grabbed that the ol’ internet. I probably won’t stick with it as I’m trying to work solely from my own imagination and photographs, but I think it looks good so I thought I’d share it here. I wish somebody would invent a good paisley generator where you contribute a few squiggles and a robot transforms your input into beautifully detailed, yet unassumingly elegant patterns.

Last weekend, I attended the Little 5 Points Halloween Parade. There was an army of David Bowies from various points in his career and a very tall Godzilla that breathed smoke. Perhaps the strangest sight was a van covered in a full graphic wrap featuring premium strands of marijuana and they were distributing medical marijuana lollipops to raise awareness of attempts to decriminalize and legalize marijuana. Other advocates for marijuana’s legalization made their voices heard at the parade, but this van was truly something out of the ordinary. I expected the driver to pull off her mask to reveal McGruff the crime dog, but that didn’t happen. Maybe she took the mask off later.