Multimedia artist Nida Bangash is featured at Clay and Canvas Studio’s Open Studio Night
![[Installation shot of Nida Bangesh's work at Clay and Canvas Studios.]](https://starehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/img_2513.jpg)
[Installation shot of Nida Bangash’s work at Clay and Canvas Studio.]
Pattern Energies
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We Can Be Heroes
Photographer Roy Berry chronicles the colorful characters of Fan Cons
![[Trekkie and Son.]](https://starehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/trekkie-and-son.jpg)
[“Trekkie and Son”]
Fast forward three decades later to 1939. Pioneering science fiction author, editor, publisher, and visionary polymath Forrest J. Ackerman attended that year’s inaugural World Science Fiction Convention in Manhattan donning a “futuristicostume.” In a memoir piece penned by sci-fi author and fellow attendee Dave Kyle, Ackerman arrived at this ground-breaking event with his shirt imprinted with the superhero-like-symbol “4SJ” (as in Forrest J. Ackermann) while “wearing his eye-catching street costume with green cape and baggy breeches.”
Since his death in 2008 at the age of 92, Ackermann has been credited as being the undeniable spearhead in launching genres such as horror and science fiction from the underground world of pulp magazines into the stratosphere of popular culture. Among his many accomplishments, Ackermann coined the term “sci-fi,” helped propel and push the literary and creative careers of writers including Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, L. Ron Hubbard, as well as über-cult hero Ed Wood, while amassing a personal collection of over 300,000 pieces of memorabilia.
Game of Thrones
Artist Lee Walton has got you all in check with his upcoming mass chess challenge
![[Screen still from Lee Walton's video "Mato Jelic."]](https://starehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/mato_jelic_walton_video_still.jpg)
[Screen still from Lee Walton’s video “Mato Jelic.”]
Material Flow
Marcus Kenney streams his vision through mixed-media with Shed My Skin
[“How to Make a War,” mixed media, 48″ x 48″; 2007.]
Circular Motion
Liz Rodda explores belief, fate, and the unknown with Clockwise
[Liz Rodda’s, “Plan For Victory,” black jade icosahedron, 16 millimeters.]
Collective Impact
space: eight gallery prepares for the visual onslaught of Art Dorks Rise
![[Brendan Danielsson's "Cpl. Brach Lee," 12 x12, oil on panel, 2013.]](https://starehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/brachlee.jpg)
[Brendan Danielsson’s “Cpl. Brach Lee,” 12 x12, oil on panel, 2013.]
The line-up for this exhibit of original work is an impressive regime of visual artists that includes Aeron Alfrey, Dan Barry, John Casey, David Chung, Brendan Danielsson, Justin DeGarmo, Mark Elliott, Jad Fair, Joseph Daniel Fiedler, Charles Glaubitz, Robert Hardgrave, Gregory Hergert, Gregory Jacobsen, Jonnie Jacquet, Colin Johnson, Jason Limon, Jon MacNair, Dan May, Christian Rex van Minnen, Chris Mostyn, Heiko Müller, Jason Murphy, Katie Ridley Murphy, Kristian Olson, Matthew Pasquarello, Anthony Pontius, Meagan Ridley, Kim Scott, Scot Sothern and Scott D. Wilson.
Individually and collectively, the Art Dorks work in a variety of media ranging from illustration and painting to photography and mixed-media. Some are highly trained with extensive academic backgrounds; others are purely self-taught. And their work is just as diverse, with imagery and concepts that exist on the outer terrain of contemporary art. Bizarre, humorous, poignant, brilliant and even baffling, the Art Dorks strength lies not only in the numbers of their ranks but also in their respective array of vision and approach to present-day art. A link featuring bios and images of their work can also be found here.
Cryptical Envelopment
The Estlunds’ “Out of Nowhere” is an invitation to embrace the unknown
![["Surfacing," by Shannon Estlund; mixed media; dimensions unknown.]](https://starehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/01-estlund-surfacing.jpg)
[“Surfacing,” a Shannon Estlund piece to be featured in “Out of Nowhere”; oil and enamel on panel; dimensions unknown.]
While CoRK Arts District is best known as being the home base to sixty artist studios, the complex has also introduced an engaging Artist-in-Residency program. In February of this year, New York-based multimedia artist Rachel Rossin was the flagship visiting artist-resident at CoRK. Rossin’s spiritually-inspired piece “Holy See,” was an installation that combined 2,500 hollow eggs and curtains of holographic light into a fully immersive experience. The following month, Brooklyn, NY-based artist Casey James was invited to stay and work at CoRK; the North Gallery was then home to his multimedia show, “Nawth Ta South.”
“The reason for the Artist-in-Residency program was to bring in new and different perspectives from other artists and art communities around the country,” explains sculptor and CoRK main man Dolf James. The CoRK AIR program offers a modest stipend for travel and materials, a private studio for the visiting artists, and then culminates with an exhibit of their work in one of CoRK’s available galleries. “We wanted to see what they were doing, thinking and experiencing, and for them to do the same with us. Building these relationships extends the reach of our community and helps keep a fresh flow of ideas moving.” James is quick to cite Aaron Levi Garvey as the chief curator of CoRK’s AIR program. “There is absolutely no question this program would not be happening if it were not for Aaron.” James explains that Garvey is essentially the one that attracts, communicates with, plans, promotes and ultimately takes care of all the details for the resident-artist coming to CoRK. “The idea behind having the artists come to Jacksonville is to give them a studio/exhibition experience out of their usual experience,” says Garvey.
Adhesive Forces
The subconscious and grotesque stick together in the art of Russell Maycumber
(Russell Maycumber’s “kclub,” ink on Post-it Note; year unknown.)
Since the early nineties, Russell Maycumber has been documenting his life, travels and interior reality onto three inch, yellow squares. Introduced by the 3M Company in 1980, the Post-it Note is a small square of paper with an adhesive backing – initially introduced as an office-friendly product that could be used to jot down reminders, appointments and upcoming tasks, and then applied to any available flat surface. Yet Maycumber uses these ubiquitous pieces of sticky stationary to create images that explore memoir, humor and the phantasmagoric, creating them systematically, if not compulsively; a kind of hypergraphia barely contained in magic marker and yellow paper. The 44-year-old Maycumber admits to owning “volumes” filled with these images that date back to the early nineties. But rather than having them tucked away on some shelf in his house, the St. Augustine-based artist creates massive installations and sculptures that can contain hundreds upon hundreds of these carefully arranged Post-it Note drawings. Viewed in mass, the small squares can have an overwhelming effect: these images of chimerical creatures, people captured in mundane activities, classic automobiles, flying skulls, sexuality and playful demons seem to exist in a weird realm that splits the difference between the subliminal and the obvious. Some images feature cryptic text, while others offer little help in deciphering the odd, miniature graphic. Maycumber’s work seems to find company in the fever dream-styled imagery of artists like Francisco Goya, Edward Gorey, Max Ernst (especially the surrealist’s pioneering, 1934 collage work “Une Semaine de Bonté ,” translated as “A Week of Kindness”) or even underground comic raunch lord S. Clay Wilson. Yet Maycumber’s concepts and delivery are wholly his own, blasting these images at the viewer in the form of a mob of hundreds of pieces of visual shrapnel, aimed for the bull’s-eye of the viewer’s retina and mind.
Class Action
Jacksonville University now offers MFA in Visual Arts program
Northeast Florida’s current spate of artistic activity is surely due in no small part to the art and design programs offered at local colleges and universities. The Art Institute, Flagler College, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida all offer programs geared towards students seeking an education and guidance in creative careers in a variety of disciplines and media. These same schools certainly benefit by featuring faculty members and instructors that are as serious about their respective artistic disciplines as they are in sharing their experience and wisdom with their students.
Jacksonville University (JU) is now stepping up their game with the implementation of a Masters of Fine Arts in Visual Arts degree, the first of its kind ever offered by a local college.
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Graphic Language
Donny Miller creates provocative text-fueled imagery for the 21st century
Donny Miller has a message for you. In fact, for the past two decades the L.A.-based artist has been creating thought-provoking images that combine clip art, self-branding and even pictures of the cosmos with messages that run the gamut from sardonic observations, to social commentary and even encouraging affirmations. In one Miller piece, a still life image of wine, cheese and fruit acknowledges, The hardest thing to do in art is something original. In another, a man and woman reveling in a cloud of confetti and party balloons are sprawled into over-sized champagne glasses, crowned with the header, Enjoy ignorance. A dark-haired woman adjusts her hair, seemingly deep in thought: I’m making new memories because I don’t like the old ones. Continue reading
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