How many steps do you take in getting your face erased in the morning? A lot? None? Here’s a guy whose done a project three times, each of them a charcoal drawing on vellum, each of them taken through a process of nothing to life to death, all the while displayed at Galerie Pangee in Montreal. This project is interesting in that when I first glanced at it, I expected the face to go from black to full, full as in an instantly recognizable face. But nay! It goes from start to start! This is a project of deterioration called “(TRANS) FORMATIONS.”

This artist here, Jason Botkin, he’s cool. He’s got a sense of the ghost in the machine. That is, the ability to capture moments, time lengths, even people’s souls, in a video or still camera. Of course it’s all false in the sense that we can’t converse with it, we can’t interact with it the same way we’d of been able to if we’d been there while it was the way we’re looking at it through the camera now, but all the same, it’s still here for us to look at. And the whole idea’s stronger for it.

These drawings still exist somewhere in their “finished” state, but I don’t think you’re going to find them at the Pangee anymore. Look below the gallery for the three videos of the pieces that were displayed alongside them during their tenure at the gallery, sitting side-by-side as shown in the preview pic above.

Take a look through the gallery below and if you’d like to get in contact with Jason Botkin, email him at jjbotkin@yahoo.com or go to his website to see more of his works in their natural habitat http://jasonbotkin.com/ and tell him I think he’s cool.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies deconstruction category.

It puts the lotion on the skin? No. Put shoe on head? Yes. The following is a set of selections from graphic design group Akatre‘s photo project “Mains d’Œuvres” – Series pictures for annual communication. They take these photos, yes, then they print them up and mail them out as “mailers” – communication papers to their former and current clients, friends, and maybe even family. This is not only a perfect example of taking the basics of one’s life to an extraordinary level, it’s also just the sort of pie anyone could make to fly over the pages of the entire internet overnight.

What pie, what? I’m talking about modern internet skateboarding. Getting around, getting up, getting to the eyeballs of people for your own personal purposes. Get up and get noticed so you can get a job, get up and get noticed so you can have a popular blog.

Here’s the formula:

1. Base, understandable canvas.

2. Slight tweak of color OR mix with another canvas.

3. Repeat, repeat.

4. Collect into one set.

5. Proliferate.

Now this canvas thing could be anything from a set of photos to a wildly popular film series to an actual canvas. Sometimes all you’ve got to do is the collecting. In the project you’re looking at right now here in this post, it’s two canvases mixed together. You’ve got the portrait and you’ve got the coverup. Smashed together, simply, they get hot, so hot.

It’s a set to be admired and shucks about. Modern art, as I’ve read about a billion times is: “I could do that” “yeah, but you didn’t.” Ain’t that the truth?

To contact Akatre, email them at akatre@akatre.com or visit their portfolio site: http://akatre.com/. They’re really quite brilliant. Lots of projects. Lots of brilliance. Lots of professional amazingness.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies advertisements category.

BONUSSS experience our new GALLERY VIEW by clicking any thumbnail here!

This man’s photography categories include: Boys, Girls, Fashion, Lovers, Smokers, Larpers, and Umbrella NYC. His name is Gordon Ball and he’s pretty fabulous. He’s one of those fellows who has a rather large joy on for collecting all sorts of photos, from nudes to blurry color fields. He’s got a love for cutting photos in half, finding moments in time, and lifting something special from seemingly silly single moments of people smoking cigarettes. Smoking sucks but photos of people smoking are pretty cool, always will be.

Do take a look through this collection of master clicks, then head on over to Ball’s ever-updated blog, with a fabulous “blogroll” on the side to show what he appreciates.

He appreciates fashionable photographers by the pilefull.

As a hardcore pop designer, you’ve got to have an appreciation and command over simplicity that must come as a first, or at most second nature. You’ve got to be able to turn difficult to understand concepts and ideas into short, concise depictions. Once a simplified idea reaches its intended audience, the audience takes over and your job is done.* The audience can then take the idea apart and investigate the greater intricacies themselves, thus, the great chain, of life. This process is understood and enforced emphatically by the illustrator of the works you see above and below.

His name is Nicolas Henriot and he rocks the house.

Mister Henriot works closely with Seize Galerie in Marseille, France. This gallery holds entire exhibitions of works that fall under the pop-design definition I just shot at you above. Of course, they’d call it some derivative of pop ART. When the message IS the medium, often the project turns thusly INTO artwork, and is also sold as thus.

Now take a look at this recently completed collection of illustrations. Artwork, pop design, illustration made of a reduced amount of lines. Simplicity, magnificence, excellence.

The people in the illustrations are, in no particular order: Donovan Le, Mona Fabiani, Jose Lamali, Myrtille & Christina, Nicolas Ouvrier, Vinz Crostwo, Marion Biju Duval, Damien Boy, Christophe Guinet, Jeremie Morjane, and Yan San Martin. This collection of illustrations is called “French Connection” and those people are all artists, designers, and fashion icons from or having to do with the social state of France.

Aren’t they all just so completely fabulous looking?

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies headshots category.

*This of course in itself is a simplification of a much larger process, one that never, ever ends. Designer for life, never stop moving, aligning, and shaping.

How does one go about designing a box in which there will be, in fact, cannon fodder, or bullets, which one knows will be used to injure, maim, or snuff out life? How does one make letters spell out the word bullet? Well ask any of these fellows or ladies! Designed here is a collection of over 100 boxes of shells. Shells for shotguns, shells for pistols, shells for this and that. Kill those ducks! Kill them dead. And buy the nicest looking bullet.

You know good and well that it’s the nicest bullet brings home the heftiest bag of meat. Right? Right. That’s just plain right. And so, thus, these designers put it upon themselves to design the nicest box of gunlogies. How can I speak of this without mentioning the amount of skulls that I’d have to add if I were the one doing the deed? How could I resist the “poisonous to life” label I’d need to add? I could naught!

So look ye! Look upon these. Each of them is from a gun store either closed, shut down, or in poor care on the internets. Photographed “unprofessionally” by clerks and shop owners just to show some of the details as they saw fit. Exactly how I like em! Fry em up Lou! Gimme a coupl’a gloc clips stat!

All “vintage”, all from years past. Self evident.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies desctruction category.

Should you ever find yourself in feudal Japan, you’re gonna need, NEED!, to know what symbols are what. And I’m not talking about signs for the bathroom and the sword hut, I mean crests. Badges that express heraldry in Japan since 900 A.D., peaking in production and diversity in the feudal age. Lots of badges made right around there in time. In this post there are over a hundred unique crests, each of them marked and categorized, each of them reproduced faithfully from the greatest book in the world, Ernst Lehner’s long out of print hard and soft cover symbologists dream book “Symbols, Signs, & Signets.”

Some of y’all might remember earlier this month when we took a look at a different part of this same book for some Hobo Symbologies. Really excellent stuff. The symbols you’re about to take a look at are from a completely different part of the universe – Japan.

Worn on garments on the back of the neck, the shoulders, and on each breast. Worn on everything, fighting uniforms, skateboard gear, birthday suits, figure skating costumes, everything except wedding robes, mourning robes, and hara-kiri garments.

Below you’ll find symbols from basically every wild category you’d ever want to symbolize about: flowers, fruits, vegetables, canopies, umbrellas, fans, ships, sails, weapons, helmets, butterflies, insects, birds, fish, mammals, scrolls, and dragons. There’s also a few illustrations of some folks from that era by artist Totoya Hokkei. – and on that note, if anyone has any Hokkei prints just lying around their house, they can feel free to send em on over!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies museum category.

When Jo Hamilton gets down, Jo Hamilton gets funky. This is the most intense crochet craftwork I’ve seen, sitting right up beside our reigning champion on the cross-stitching tip, Ruby Khan. Jo Hamilton gets extreme points for doing this whole thing with the crochet. Portraits with crochet! Look at this madness. It’s mad beautiful.

What you’re about to get your eyes on here is 9 projects, 8 in-progress photos. These are portraits of either people or the city. Witness the rough elegance in connecting one loop of color to another, another to another.

Slow yourself down, speed affecting your world up.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies handmade category.

Set your eyes on this expanded look at the cover of the new CLONE magazine designed and fully illustrated by Grzegorz Domaradzki aka GABZ. It fills me with love for yellow and purple. Or violet. Whatever you want to call it. I’ve never seen faces illustrated with such grace in the color purple. I love them so much I can barely believe it. I’ve read CLONE magazine only a couple times, I think they were sitting in the waiting area at Rhymesayers. The inside’s pretty interesting, but the cover is where it’s at.

Below you’ll find a bunch of pictures, close and far, of the CLONE cover in question here. Of course, what are you going to ask about it though? Not much. It’s pretty much all there right in front of your now wet-tongued eyeballs.

I’m gonna look for some more colored penciled subject matters right about now. Some new contents with colored pencils like THIS. Because that’s what’s up today.

HELLO I’AM GABZ / LET’S TALK

Mobile +48 604 52 95 97

Email grzegorz.domaradzki@gmail.com

Address ul. Królewska 19 / 11 60 – 685 Poznań / Poland

See further works of GABZ’s and hire him too because he’s freelance as hell. Also I don’t know who’s illustrated there on the cover. They look nice though.

I don’t have enough room in the apartment, so that proves it wasn’t me! Frederick R. Weisman, the man who provided the University of Minnesota a bunch o money to create the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum on campus in 1993 (that’s how peeps in MN would know him) has had a bunch of portraits stolen. Portraits made by Andy Warhol. Weisman had this series of sports figures prints commissioned for his collection in 1977-79. One other print portrait of Weisman himself from 1986 was also stolen. Bummer!

IMPORTANT EDIT: Thanks to an important comment left by Dianne below, it’s been pointed out that due to an idiot error on my part, I identified both of these Weismans as the same person. They are TWO SEPARATE WEISMANS. The guy whose prints were stolen is a buisinessman in LA, while the Minneapolis-Museum Weisman is dead. That makes them separate people. Take heed!

Jack Nicklaus
Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Willie Shoemaker
Dorothy Hamill
Chris Evert
Pele
Tom Seaver
Rod Gilbert
OJ Simpson
Muhammad Ali
and
Richard L Weisman

Warhol’s sports superstars stolen from LA home
Sep 11, 11:47 PM EDT
By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A multimillion dollar collection of Andy Warhol portraits of Muhammad Ali and other sports superstars was stolen from a Los Angeles home, police said Friday.

The 11 color screenprints were taken from businessman Richard Weisman’s home sometime between Sept. 2 and 3, said Detective Mark Sommer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s art theft detail.

Ten of the 40-inch-square portraits feature famous athletes of the 1970s, including golfer Jack Nicklaus, soccer star Pele and figure skater Dorothy Hamill. The other is of Weisman, likely a commissioned portrait.

A $1 million reward was being offered for information leading to the return of the artwork.
…
“The theft of Warhol’s ‘Athlete Series’ represents a profoundly personal loss to me and my family,” Weisman said in a statement. Weisman, who published a book about his art collection called, “From Picasso to Pop,” declined to comment further, saying he did not want to interfere with the investigation.
…
According to a catalog of Warhol’s work, Weisman commissioned the artist in 1977 to create portraits of sports figures, including Chris Evert, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Nicklaus, Pele, Hamill, and Ali, said Brenda Klippel, the director of Martin Lawrence Galleries in Los Angeles, which has a large collection of Warhols.

“Warhol was always a portraitist and fascinated with anyone of fame or fortune, anyone in the public eye,” Klippel said. “He wanted all of his imagery to be instantly recognizable. If Weisman was in his circle and had the money, he could commission what he wanted.”

Detective Don Hrycyk said the weeklong delay in announcing the theft was to allow detectives to confirm the reward and gather descriptions and photographs of the missing artworks.

—

AP writer Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Why are you publishing this story when it’s already been covered by a billion other news sources in the past few minutes? …you might ask. Because I’ve got something they don’t have: big pics! Take a peek below for the largest versions of the paintings you’ll find, straight from the Los Angeles Police Department! Thanks, cops!

This post is straight outta Compton.

CLICK THE IMAGES FOR LARGER VERSIONS, SHOULD YOU DESIRE.

Bonus ‘just chillin’ pic!

A chopped-off wolf head that’s so intense that it continues to reflect on the wilderness, and a boat floating up to mars surrounded by houses on fishing line. These are two examples of the utterly majestic art show that’s coming to the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. This show is sharp and yet dreary, heavenly and yet vintage junky (vintage junky stuff is good stuff!) Get your heart set on artists Kevin E Taylor and Erik Otto, cause they gonna set your heart on fire. With oil paints!

NOTE: No tripping balls allowed in the gallery without express permission.

This show has sketches on paper, mixed media on bookbacks, oil on canvas, screenprint on wood, and one giant installation that “serves as the cornerstone for the show.” Can’t wait! What you see below is a bit of info on each of the two artists in the show, information on when the show takes place, the address and such, then a full preview of what the show contains!

Erik Otto visually illustrates a beautiful dream battled by an undercurrent of destruction. His paintings take the viewer to a place where chaos meets peace and loose meets refinement. Otto intuitively creates his works with found objects and recycled materials, providing an inherent history. All elements in his paintings enhance the significance of the other, from the warm colors, to the geometric figures to bursts of brilliant paint. His work narrates an autobiographical story, depicting the struggle to connect the awakened state to the desires found within.

Kevin E. Taylor’s body of work is devoted to the mystery of nature. Branching out to incorporate a brighter color pallet, Taylor paints in serene earth tones with subtle deviations. The creatures he paints are neither human nor animal but rather a mutated combination, questioning concepts of human posture, genetics and mortality. His oil paintings on wood reveal a beautiful symbiotic relationship in a melancholic environment. This collection of works act as a metaphor for an impending future by visually referencing the uncertainty and insecurity felt in today’s world.

“Terrestrial Syndrome”
New Works By Erik Otto and Kevin E. Taylor
Opening Reception: September 12th, 2009 from 7pm till 11pm.
Show runs through: October 3rd, 2009 and is open to the public.

Bust a move on down!

The Shooting Gallery
839 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(P) 415 931 8035

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies unnatural nature category. Chop a wolf head!

Designer Victor van Gaasbeek is a reducer. He’s all up on the thang where you take the most basic elements, the pixels, the colors, of the object, and use those to describe it. The difference between him and say, Pedro Biz, is that Victor van Gaasbeek’s pixels go fully triangular. The result? It gets all diamondy-like.

The effect is all shiny and splendiferous!

Yes, these are all made “with the computer” indeed. The next step is of course to now cut them out of construction paper and paste them to walls. Any reasonable person would come to the same conclusion. Furthermore, this post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies Unnatural Nature category.

An art installation in which blood spurts from hospital drips when kills are made by players connected to the installation on the internet through the first-person shooter Counter Strike. This game known as “CS” is addictive to the max. It’s a very simple concept, where one team is meant to protect an area and the other team is meant to blow it up. If you succeed at murdering the other team, or if you blow up their area, you win.

Blood for blood, interactivity for fun.

Designer Riley Harmon makes death bloodier with the real deal the real bloody, bloody deal, with this interactive installation sculpture thang deal. Read about it instantly!

Acrylic glass, medical bags, custom electronics (based on Atmel microcontroller)
title is inspired by [the] Telefon Tel Aviv Song [by the same name].

Violence is an inevitable, mechanical function of the human brain, hard-coded down through time by culture, genetics, and evolution. Mediated experiences of killing change our perception of violence and death. As players die in a public video game server for Counter-strike, a popular online first person shooter, the electronic solenoid valves spray a small amount of fake blood. The trails left down the wall create a physical manifestation of nebulous kills.

In simple terms it is about manifesting experiences that are purely virtual, or only ‘real’ in a psychological sense, into the physical world – physical computing.

Custom electronics based on an Atmega8/168 micro-controller are connected to a PC running a dedicated Counter-strike Source server. Players across the internet can connect and play live on the server, and each time a player dies, EventScripts and a java applet written in Processing 1.0 send serial commands to the micro-controller, controlling electronic solenoid valves to dispense fake blood from 1000mL Gravity Enteral Bags.

To connect and play on the server while it is being exhibited during the week, launch Counter-Strike: Source and type the connect command along with the IP (TBA).

This sculpture will be on display Sept 19 – 21, 2008 at ARTBOTS in Dublin, Ireland. To connect and play on the server, you need COUNTER-STRIKE: SOURCE. TYPE ‘CONNECT 134.226.133.127:27015′ INTO YOUR CONSOLE TO CONNECT. FRAG ON!

Blagh! When you play for money, you play differently than if you play for free. Some people play cooler, some people play with more heat. How about if you play with real blood?

Yes, oh yes. Vinyl is given the courtesy it deserves. The one true format, the gorgeous, the perfect, the giant: the 12″ record album. The following is a photo collection made by the wild-eyed artist Horacio Salinas. He has draped the cloth, added the apples, and slipped on the shoe. Glare at the elegance of this collection of your favorite rock and roll music.

Pinpointed! You know here at World Famous Design Junkies we’re so very extremely info-oriented, detail oriented, and slap-happy-fact oriented. So what’ve we got here! A shipload of album covers photographed in lovely ways, yes, but which ones?

Bob Dylan’s explosive pop-art “Shout of Love” shot up!

The Greatful Dead’s untitled live album aka “Skullf***” draped in drapery.

Jimi Hendrix’s psychedelic godliness wrapped in underpants “Axis Bold as Love.”

All four KISS solo records “Ace, Paul, Peter, and Gene” all hooved up.

Queen’s promiscuous ladies of the “Fat Bottomed Girls” guild.

The Rolling Stones “Hot Rocks” with a hat on.

The Beatles “White Album” with the very very very literal translation of the four.

And the Yarbirds?

Fear not! You collectors of albums. Even though this set of photos will certainly shoot the popularity of classic rock albums through the roof, you can rest easy knowing I already own most of them. I hope you do, too.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies album art collection.

Photographer Bela Borsodi has a knack for tearing down the fishing pole, getting straight to the hooks. That’s all you really need to catch the fish. And here she’s lit up a rather sensitive subject with the light of modern fashion. But should she? Take a peek at these color clashing women under cover.

These photos were arranged and photographed by Italian designer / photographer Bela Borsodi with Art Department design group. In Italy with nice lighting. And that’s all the info we’ve got! But what else do you need to know? Look at these fantastic images – they speak quite loudly in their silence, if I do say so myself.

This post is a part of the World Famous Design Junkies photography category.

Best believe that. This is a show of everlasting proportions and I think you’re soon to see why. This particular set of works is currently on display at White Walls gallery in SF, California. These artists hit hard in the heart with hand-painted works on found objects and canvas. The found objects are borrowed street signs and etc. They are returned to different locations after the artist has added to them. The oils are fabulous, the paint on signs is fabulous, the absolute abstractions of the stars and bars are fabulous.

New Works by Hugh Leeman and Michael Holman

Opening Reception: August 8th 2009 from 7-11pm – Open to the Public

Showing: August 8th through September 5th, 2009

White Walls is proud to present “Recognition”, new works by Hugh Leeman and Michael Holman. The artists bring together pointed criticisms of American society tinged with personal history. Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 from 7-11 pm.

Hugh Leeman is a self-taught artist based in San Francisco. Emerging from within his layers of graffiti text and dripping paint are realistic portraits of his subjects. Outside, Hugh’s larger than life wheat paste portraits as well as his original, graphite drawings on “borrowed” street signs illegally adorn walls from Bogota to Bethlehem and New York to London.

Hugh Leeman is not a thief. He simply borrows street signs, transferring them from one place to another. His wheat paste and graphite portraits are an attempt to communicate the displacement that homelessness is defined by. It is not meant as “street art” but rather a lower form of advertising. The real street art exists when Leeman meets his subjects and gathers the material from which he works by giving away food, clothing, and cigarettes to those living and working on our streets. His works carry stories of people hoping to be heard and acknowledged. However, painting them also convey imperfections illuminating his subject’s lives as well as his own, reminding us of society’s deficiencies.

Michael Holman is a screenwriter, director and artist based in New York City. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of San Francisco, and a Master’s degree in film from New York University. This will be his first show in San Francisco, although he has had solo exhibits in Atlanta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina as well as group shows around the globe.

Michael Holman is an artist haunted by American Confederate history. The confederate flag is a commonly used symbol whose contemporary purpose is to oppress and intimidate; however Holman deconstructs the flag and takes ownership of it. Thus, creating a revitalized image that embraces its contradiction. He explains, “From the beginning, I’ve always wanted to explore the contradictions and dualities we Americans are forced to live with daily, so it occurred to me that my family, a long line of mixed-race Blacks on both my mother’s side and father’s side, embodies and displays that contradiction perfectly.” His great-great grandfather, Dick Holman, was a mulatto, a slave and a confederate soldier. He believed he’d fight the Yankees atop a great white horse and wield a saber like his father, but the only metal he would wield was a shovel, digging military ditches for the Confederate Army of Texas. In response, Micheal Holman alters the confederate flag in an effort to re-write history, turning symbols of mass influence, control and oppression into tools of individual power, enlightenment and personal sanctuary.

You gotta get there, so get there!

White Walls
835 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(T) 415 931-1500

Showing at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco through September 8th – GET THERE.

And for the record, this one’s my favorite:

So if anyone feels that uncontrollable urge, this is the one.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies Custom Culture category because the signs belong to the people they were put there for. If I ever see one of these on the street I’m going to flip out!

Sometimes you just have to turn into a ghost or transport to a different dimension and scream a little, then transport back. Photographer Darek Fortas understands this, and has decided to share with everyone that it’s not just regulated to you. Everybody poops.

This project is Untitled, which leads me to believe that it is a personal project. Some people get down on “Personal Projects” because they think they are useless. But I am all like “yeah whatever,” because when the internet happens, personal projects get mad hits. And mad hits are so good. So good for everyone.

This post is a part of the World Famous Design Junkies photography department.

It’s a project called “Close Up and Private.” It is a super-up-n-close exploration of modern style of what I’d call the “hipster generation.” You get the feeling from these photographs that these people own vinyl records and probably don’t play them very often. Clothing in these photos are from LOTS of different places, amongst them Comme des Garçons, Barneys Boutiques, Polo, Experimental Jetset – the shirt for 2K/Gingham (Beatles), Ray Ban, Vans, Adidas, D&G – Dolce&Gabbana hello! – + more I can’t recognize or type n such.

The above picture is my favorite. Looks like there’s a place for a little photo to be installed in that tie, doesn’t it? If not, there should be. Dibs!

Photography by Sergei Sviatchenko
Art direction and design by Nello Russo
See further seasons at http://closeupandprivate.com/

If you’ve got any more tips on the types or brands or clothing stores these threads come from, flick me a tip below! Or on twitter at @design_junkies – now with bonus food tips!

Ho! Behold photography in its glory day – today!

Currently in residency with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Erin Nicole Johnson graduated from the MCAD with a BFA in Photography in 2007. She currently promotes the college with her mystical hand and eye coordination technique in collaboration with an amazing camera. This particular post has a sampling of her international photography collection. She’s been to a bunch of places, including, but not limited to: Toronto, Coney Island, Rome, Berlin, Harlem, New York City, Honest Ed’s, Crown Heights, Basel, and Uptown Minneapolis. Discover the pallet!

Check out this: Miss Johnson has taken many portraits of important MCAD heads during her residency, including our pal Erik Brandt. Lookin sharp!

Interdisciplinary Initiation: Photography, et. al by Ms. Erin Nicole

Absolute top of the line photography for MCAD Portfolio Week!