pic of the day:
Collaboration: Michael Olivo, Jesse Balmer & Niv Bavarsky
Michael Olivo has a versatile, multi-layered and certainly psychedelic style of comic illustration:
“Sometimes you look at someone and just see legs, or a head, or hands, and that moment of narrowness is more interesting to me than “the whole picture”. Memory tends to recall an ideal form, like an arm in a classical pose or in a diagrammatic way, instead of that awkward way an arm can be when viewed straight on. I would say there’s excess in that awkwardness. Plus, if you can freeze a moment why freeze a mundane one. Big legs, I enjoy biking and Frisbee, so I’ve got relatively big legs compared to my boyish upper body, throw in some Crumb, and some Japanese woodblock prints, and you got some big legs. I also love to watch football, so I’m see a lot of dudes at the optimal fitness level. As far as segmentation of the body goes, I can see why that would be viewed as decapitation, but I view it more so as integration. Just like if I cut my arm off and leave it in the dirt, my arm would achieve full integration through decomposition and animal digestion, and that would be nice.”
Abstract, enigmatic and visually disconcerting collages by Ryan De La Hoz:
“I am interested in Halloween. The basis of it is similar to the Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. The idea is that you are celebrating the gift of life from the dead. People go wild because they are happy to be alive. My Dad died in 2005 and ever since I have been analyzing the duality of life and death – love and loss – joy and misery. I use the skeleton glove to signify the remains of a person or society that is no longer. I have an affinity for the Reaper because my last name de la Hoz means “of the sickle,” and when I was little I attributed a sickle to the Grim Reaper’s scythe.”
Jesse Fillingham’s work brings so many of my favorite visual art elements together it’s hard to know where to start. His style combines highly detailed characters, such as the eerie figures or hands which appear in his most recent pieces, with a minimal composition full of striking geometrical shapes. I love how reminiscent some parts of his work are to a lot of contemporary graphic design, and yet other parts take a nice distance from this through use of non-digital materials.
“Two things that seem to be present in a lot of my work is an emphasis on nature/natural phenomena and mythology/fantasy. Rendering is also a process that I put myself through in most of my work, which I find to be extremely rewarding.”
Psychedelic, layered and stripped bare drawings by Clay Hickson:
“My philosophy has always been to avoid artistic philosophies, but I guess, philosophically speaking, that’s impossible. That was my biggest struggle in art school. I felt a lot of pressure to force some concept onto my work, and I always felt a little dishonest when I had to talk about my work conceptually. And that’s not to say that I don’t have intentions or ideas of how I want my work to be received. I want people to feel a certain way when they see my work. I really just try to maintain a relaxed attitude towards art. I don’t know what draws me to the imagery I enjoy and try to create, and I’m not really interested in trying to answer those questions. The process of art making just clicks with me.”
