I absolutely love being near the ocean — as a water sign, it’s where I feel most complete and in tune with myself, which is always a good thing! So I’ve been to many beaches in my time, from the Jersey shore to California to Australia. But this beach at Sydney’s Gordon’s Bay along the coastal walk between Bondi and Coogee is by far my favorite! As you can see, it’s just a little strip of sand, but it’s such a quiet, beautiful, peaceful place that I have a feeling this is what heaven looks like!
“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”
The view from above reveals people out and enjoying a bit of a nosh, whether waiting to order at a cafe in Sydney’s The Strand shopping gallery (above), or enjoying take-away oysters in San Francisco’s Ferry Building (below). Either way, the view is yummy!
Part of what I love about art, particularly surrealist art, is wondering what went on in the mind of the artist in the creation of a piece. I always wonder what mindsets were at work that produced such interesting, thoughtful, sometimes bizarre art. One hopes to glean a bit of information by looking between the lines of a piece, but when it comes to the robots and donuts of San Francisco-based artist Eric Joyner, I have no idea what’s going on behind the curtain.
Joyner, who has also done work for Electronic Arts, Mattel Toys, Warner Brothers, Hasbro, Microsoft and the San Francisco Chronicle, has had great success with his Robots and Donuts series that date back to 2000. But when asked in 2012 by the website Eclectix about his motivations, he replied, “Upon deciding to become a gallery artist, I had to make some rules, or guidelines. They were as follows: 1: I will only paint things I like; 2; The subject(s) had to be something that I could paint for 30 years; and 3: That people like it. Donuts & robots together make no sense. I find this interesting.”
That doesn’t necessarily clear things up, so the best you can do is sit back and enjoy the mystifying robots and donuts of Eric Joyner.
If you’ve listened to any music at all in the last forty years you’re no doubt familiar with the work of British graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, who passed away last week in England at the age of 69. A prolific designer, whether solo or in conjunction with his design firms Hipnosis and Stormstudios, Thorgerson has been responsible for the design of some 300 album and CD covers for groups as diverse as Led Zeppelin, The Cranberries, Phish, Anthrax, Muse and, of course, Pink Floyd. His most famous work, the cover for Pink Floyd’s 1972 classic Dark Side Of The Moon (above), has transcended art and music to become an iconic, instantly recognizable part of pop culture.
A graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, Thorgerson was a teenage friend of early Pink Floyd members Syd Barrett, Rogers Waters and David Gilmour. His collaboration with that band began in 1967 when he designed the cover for the group’s second album A Saucerful of Secrets, and has since extended over 45 years and 15 album covers. Indeed, his artwork is as synonymous with the Pink Floyd brand as the band’s eponymous sound, to the point where his images complement the music and vice versa. “The artworks that he created for Pink Floyd from 1968 to the present day have been an inseparable part of our work,” said guitarist Gilmour on the band’s website.
A surrealist at heart, Thorgerson was evidently influenced by classic surrealists like Man Ray, Magritte, Picasso, Dalí, Kandinsky and Juan Gris. He worked mostly with photographs, creating harsh collages, weird juxtapositions, infinite mirrors and reality-defying cityscapes, images that often required elaborate constructions, such as the giant inflatable flying pig in Pink Floyd’s Animals, or the bizarre lunarscape of Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy (below).
To quote Thorgerson, “I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality … to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not?”
Science fiction author Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) once called Thorgerson “the best album designer in the world,” but the passing of Storm Thorgerson is a major loss to the worlds of music and art as well as design. Here is but a small sample of the amazingly surrealist work of Storm Thorgerson.
I’ve seen San Francisco in many forms, up and down, good and bad. I’ve seen in portrayed in photos, essays, TV and the movies, which means I’ve seen it attacked by a deranged terrorist (The Rock), overrun with apes (Rise Of The Planet of The Apes), invaded by body snatchers and a giant sea octopus (It Came From Beneath The Sea). I’ve seen all of this and more, but I’ve never seen it made of Jello!
Liz Hickock is a San Francisco-based artist who creates entire miniature city landscapes from this classic dessert which she then lights from underneath to produce this weird but interesting luminous effect. According to the artist, “I drew the inspiration for this project from my immediate surroundings — San Francisco, where the geological uncertainties of the landscape evoke uncanny parallels with the gelatinous material.” Since Jello doesn’t last long in room temperature, she captures the scenes for posterity in photos and video … check out the vid of an “earthquake” on Telegraph Hill at the end of this post.
My city in Jello. Looks like yet another “only in San Francisco moment!”
Ferry Building
City Hall
The View From Alcatraz
A homeless guy gathering his belongings in front of one of America’s biggest financial institutions offers a telling contrast between the haves and the have-nots in America, while the Go West sign offers more than just a little irony.
As you climb up the staircase of life, you can always expect to run into a few obstacles.
Hi everybody! I subscribe to many art-related blogs and websites, and that’s where I find many of artists I am fond of. And thanks to the website Visual News, I just recently discovered the interesting art of Vancouver-based surrealist Andrea Wan.
At this point, other than the fact that she works in pen, pencil and watercolor paints, I still don’t know too much about her background. But I do know that she hits a lot of chords in what I like in surrealists. At first glance her works looks dreamlike, almost childlike with a real sense of innocence, but just underneath lie grown-up themes and perhaps an element of malevolence. I’m attracted to the way she bridges those gaps.
Let’s discover the intriguing art of Andrea Wan together, shall we?
With so much to see and do in Sydney, sometimes you just want to kick back, sit on the nearest bench and take it all in!
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65th birthday...a perfect reason to return to the Continent, dust off my German, and take a hike.
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