Posts Tagged ‘artist’
NYC Artist Profile; Deno Angelopoulos
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
There are a lot of artists out there. I mean, tons. We hit dozens of indie art craft fairs this past year spreading the F&F word and in the process were able to meet some very talented individuals with a wide range of interests and abilities. To be sure, we didn’t love everything we saw. That’s the really great thing about art though. The old cliche that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. These visits to the shows actually got us to thinking, how many more artists are out there that we will never ever hear about but would love to meet?
One such artist that we have been fortunate to get to know and work with is Deno Angelopoulos from NYC, born and raised.
As part of our collaboration with Deno, we are offering in limited production 4 t-shirt designs that feature Deno’s work. All are photographs taken and altered by him. His vision, in his city, by his hands.
We are very excited to offer these pieces, and as with all artist collaborations, a % of every shirt goes right back the artist.
Browse and purchase from the collection Here
Watch our video clip of Deno Here
Read the interview, now:
1. Tell us a little about yourself…a quick primer on Deno, if you will;
I was born in New York, NY on March 21, 1980. I currently reside in Flushing NY. I am a self taught artist, and I started to express myself creatively from an early age, doodling and drawing on anything I could get my hands on. Teacher’s friends, classmates and even the police department were the first people to recognize my work. Graffiti and cartooning was my inspiration and then it became a form of expression, at this point I knew that I wanted to become an artist. I then applied to the high school of art and design but wasn’t accepted. I was introduced to the real harsh world of rejection and didn’t pursue going on to school to study after that. Instead I kept sketching, keeping my art more of a hobby and a form of expression. I started to paint in 2007 for therapeutic reasons, as I needed to express the pain I was undergoing and my passion for creating art became a vital part of my existence and I haven’t looked back since .
2. If you had to describe your style…
My style is constantly changing, it branches off into multimedia expressions and always keeps you questioning what’s coming up next.
3. What inspires you?
Music is one of my biggest inspirations, so listening to music while I paint is essential to my creative process. Living and working in NY also has a tremendous impact on how I create. NYC is full of chaos , diversity, and energy which I portray in all my art work .
4. What role in your life does your art play?
Creating art plays a major role in my life; it gives me a purpose and allows me to express myself. I am grateful to have a creative outlet which gives me peace and happiness.
5. Lastly, what’s something we might not have guessed about you?
That I own a used car dealership and I enjoy working on cars.
You can learn more about Deno and purchase his work here at http://doastudio.com/
Stay up to date on his shows and other happening by liking his Facebook here
Tags: artist, collaboration, collection, Deno Angelopoulos, nyc, tshirt
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Part II of our interview with artist Ben MacAdam
Friday, March 19th, 2010
See our previous entry below for part I!
4)From looking at your work, you have a wide range of styles and abilities. How would you characterize your style?
In my paintings I have developed a consistent vocabulary and intentionally limited palette. I’ve been using painterly lines against sharper edges created with painter’s tape. From the work I produced in New York, I developed a sort of ‘editing of hand’ as I would describe it and have incorporated that since then. By ‘editing of hand’ I recall when I heard Jasper John’s say ‘I take something, do something to it, and then do something to that’. I took interest in working with that kind of freedom and layering of forms. Such freedom has also come from a concept Bruce Herman learned from Philip Guston, which is that a painting is like stuffing a mattress. (And I paraphrase the concept) If you put too much in it will overflow or pop out, but if there is something good going on it will turn up in another painting so you don’t need to fuss over it.
I can see now that my style came about from a variety of influences in my life and what interested me. I took elements from what I loved in the motion of video and even the crafts I did as a child. I’m drawn towards child-like mark-making. There is something so calming and confident about it. It has always seemed funny to me that we spend so much time as children learning how to draw and color and do crafts, but when we get older somehow it seems less valued. I recall how as a kid I used to always win these coloring contests at the local video store. I took them seriously and if I ever made a ‘mistake’ of coloring outside the lines, I would begin a new one. I can see how there is some connection now in that I am still drawn to the act of coming close to a line with paint, sometimes covering the line accidentally and then putting a new line back in its place and that is somewhat obsessive.
Marsh Stream, 12" x 39" acrylic on wood
5)Who are your artistic influences?
Jasper Johns, Rothko, Barnett Newman, Richard Diebenkorn, Richard Tutle, and Agnes Martin have had a strong influence on me. Minimalism has always appealed to me as well as diverse surface materials, using found objects, and simpler ways of seeing things. When I began painting abstract landscapes I was introduced to the work of Richard Diebenkorn at the Whitney in Manhattan. He was wonderfully describing space, balancing the use of line, and layers of color. He is an artist I keep going back to for inspiration and instruction.
6)How have you handled the business side of being an artist? Advice for those looking to make a career out of their talents?
The most important thing to do is to show up at the studio. Having a strong body of work is definitely at the root of being able to get it out there and to continue to sell. My first year out of college I was fortunate to show at a variety of restaurants, a small gallery, open houses and even a muscular clinic. Having those experiences helped me become more confident with the business side of dealing with people and being a professional artist. No matter how ‘insignificant’ a venue it may seem don’t be afraid to ask. Network and make yourself some business cards because you never know what connections may come of it. I highly recommend artists to study under or intern for other artists if they have the opportunity to see professional work being produced.
7)What are your favorite works of your own? What are you most proud of?
The series entitled ‘Northshore’ seemed to successfully convey what I discovered to be interested in and became a launch pad for all the work I’ve done since. The video piece ‘Linear Studies’ is an extension of how I am often looking at landscapes, which I am equally proud of.
———————————————————————————
We would like to thank Ben for taking the time to thoughtfully consider these questions! We hope you’ve enjoyed some insight into what he does and how various influences in his life brought him there. If you would like to see more of his work, visit him at http://benmacadam.com or http://macadamdesign.com
Tags: art, artist, ben macadam, graphic design, interview
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Part I of our interview with artist Ben MacAdam!
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
Our desire at Faith & Fortune is to dabble in the serious and the juvenile, the artistic and the entertaining, the day to day things that capture our attention, and the beauty in our world that makes us stop and ponder. When doing this, it’s essential that we involve those who are the creators and visionaries of these things. One such artist is Ben MacAdam, who was introduced to us through our current featured artist Grant Hanna. Below is part I of a two part series of an interview with Ben. We hope you enjoy!
1)Where do you currently work, and what do you do there?
I was born in Colchester England, but most of my youth was spent in historic Concord, Massachusetts. I moved back to this area with a new perspective of it as an adult. I’ve come to appreciate the landscape here with all its open fields, barns, and farms. As a kid I was mostly occupied with skateboarding so pavement was more appealing at the time. I see a large correlation between the landscapes I experience and the elements in the art I make. The solid grid-like urban scape and the soft countryside always have their voices of conversation in my work.
I worked at the design firm Bartlett Interactive in West Concord, and then began taking my freelance design a bit more seriously. I also wanted to spend more time painting. I now work part-time at Francesca Anderson Fine Art Gallery in Lexington, MA. Being surrounded by paintings, meeting experienced artists, critiquing art, is a healthy environment for me as a young artist. At the end of this year I will have the honor of curating a show, hopefully I can slip some of my work in! I’ve been selling pieces I’ve done in the past every now and then so whenever that happens I get pumped to keep painting. Also, I’ve just recently started working part-time as a junior designer at http://abovethefolddesign.com.
2)When did you know that the Arts were your “calling”?
In the act of drawing from still life and the human figure I discovered art was ‘my calling’. My professors played a large role in how I began to value art, to be interested in how light told stories, and be able to participate in the dialogue of art today. But to be more specific I remember a direct affirmation from my life drawing and painting professor Bruce Herman. During a personal critique at the end of one junior semester he said ‘Ben, Art is your vocation”. I thought to myself ‘perfect!’, and I wasn’t sarcastic to myself at all. To hear that from someone I so admired as an artist and person, I couldn’t help but let go of any doubts and continue the pursuit.
3)What kind of impact did studying art in school have on you?
I am thankful for how my teachers shared their personal world views with me, how it infused their work, and created a sacred atmosphere in the studio. As a student looking to worship Christ, I absorbed so much of what they expressed in their lectures and what they said about their own art. The result was that I was able to build myself up with a concrete base of how and why to make art. I thank them for that.
I also appreciate that studying art in school gave me the opportunity to explore different mediums. Having a broad understanding of the tools helped me realize that the idea had to come first and the idea would choose an appropriate medium, not vice versa. From a semester in New York City I was able to see this more and more in the galleries. And discussing with peer artists I could see my own work expanding outside of the traditional idea of painting being ‘a window’ and into a more interesting arena. One example was to use found surfaces, such as the ‘Graffiti’ series (using surfaces already covered in another person’s marks), which helped launch my work into creating dream-like abstractions of landscapes and even textures on their own.
To be continued….
Tags: apparel, artist, ben macadam, interview, t shirt
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Meet the F&F lead designer Grant Hanna
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Every business is composed of many cooperative, moving parts. It’s a balance of weighing one’s strengths and weaknesses, creating ways to fill deficits without compromising one’s objectives. Doing something you are passionate about, with people you believe in. Those relationships are NOT often easily found. It is in that spirit that we would like to introduce you to our lead designer, head of creative, branding expert extraordinaire….Grant Hanna.
Approx 3 years ago when we (Jason and Jim) began hashing out the idea for Faith & Fortune, we were presented with one MAJOR issue; we have zero graphic design background. This was a slight problem which needed addressing. Enter Grant.
A world class guy and a supreme talent, we knew immediately that we had the potential for a special relationship. One look at Grant’s range of work will attest to the fact that this is one, incredibly well rounded artist who takes great pride in his projects.
We feel blessed to have come to know Grant not only as an artist, but as a person.
1) For the record, your name and where you are currently at school and what your area of concentration is there?
I’m Grant Hanna, Faith+Fortune’s featured shirt design artist. I got my undergrad degree in sculpture and graphic design at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, and then spent three years working as a web editor before I moved on to grad school. Currently I’m an Illustration MFA candidate at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia.
2) Why are you an artist, and how did you first decide that art was your path in life?
I think there are a lot of different answers I could give to this one, but the most basic is that I love to draw. The feel of moving my pencil across the page, and controlling and finessing the line until it creates something new and perfectly formed, is very powerful. I have a big imagination and getting stuff out of my head and onto the page is really exciting for me.
3) How would you describe your style?
A lot of people have described my style as very Asian influenced, which makes sense as I grew up overseas in Thailand, a country with a very rich visual tradition and a pervasive cultural sense of design that flavors every aspect of life there. Other influences are Art Nouveau and anime. I guess the broadest thing you could say about my style is that I find delight in the details.
4) What artists have influenced you, and why?
Probably the first artist who influenced me was Beatrix Potter. My mother used to read us Beatrix Potter books all the time, and if you smell my personal work, the scent of small furry animals living in the British countryside is one of the basenotes. Probably the first artist that I looked at consciously as an art-maker to emulate was Alphonse Mucha, the father of the Art Nouveau movement in the late 1800s. Nowadays the two artists that I think about most are probably the Japanese painters Hokusai (the greatest designer who ever lived? maybe?) and Takashi Murakami, whose contemporary works deal with Japanese pop culture and global greed.
5)How does fashion related design differ from more “traditional” artwork? What challenges are presented here?
One of the biggest differences is that my fashion designs are for a wide audience and are 100% commercial in purpose. Yes, I do things that I think are beautiful, and try to weave meaning into the designs, but ultimately these images have to have a broad enough appeal to sell to a varied audience. Of course I hope that my personal work will sell too, but I make it for me and then hope that someone will like what I did enough to buy it. With apparel design you have to be aware of trends in color and imagery, and of how the design will interact with the body that wears the final apparel. Unlike a painting that hangs on a flat wall, these designs are draping and moving with human bodies, and you have to take that into account when you design, especially here at F+F where we’re rebelling a bit against the ‘design in the center of the chest’ norm of the t shirt.
Grackle from the series "Ex Nihilo"
6)What other interests do you have (besides art)?
Cooking! I love cooking and eating with friends. Cooking and then eating a meal with people you love is one of the greatest things there is in life. I also dabble in songwriting, but most people don’t hear those.
7) How have you handled the business side of being an artist?
The most important thing for me is to never be afraid to ask questions. I would say that most of the clients I’ve had have never worked with an artist before, and are happy to have as many questions and details hammered out as possible before they seal the deal. You might feel awkward talking about money, legal rights to your work and other “business” matters at first, but it’s way less awkward than having to do it afterwards if you or your client feels that something has been unfair. Also, get yourself a copy of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines, put out by the Graphic Artists Guild. It covers everything.
8)What advice would you give to artists just starting out?
Buy art books – they can be expensive but they are totally worth it – and study the art of people who inspire you. Hang out with other artists. Talk about your work and their work. Draw or paint or whatever you do EVERY DAY. Art is a discipline and it cannot grow without community and hard work. Sometimes art will not be fun. Do it anyway. Gummy bears will help. Your art does not exist in a vacuum; it is part of a conversation going on with your peers and with those who have gone before you. The richest art comes from internalizing this conversation and using it to feed and build your own skills and ideas.
You can see more of Grant’s work by visiting his website
Tags: artist, faith and fortune, grant hanna, interview
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
.
.
.
