my inevitable Dubai post...

I don't know if any of you guys are aware, but Dubai's been stirring up some attention in the news lately. A government owned company in Dubai, my humble little abode, is offering to buy over six US ports. Some of you guys are probably gonna react by going, "who gives a rat's ass" or "there she goes talking about Dubai again"..but this really cracks me up. The idea of the UAE (United Arab Emirates), a small country in the Middle East where Dubai is located, trying to buy out six major US ports (including Miami, Baltimore and Newark) is pretty ambitious. Mind you, currently most of them are owned by the Brits, so some Americans won't mind seeing them owned by a different country. I just think this is the first step to Dubai's attempt to future world domination. Roll your eyes now, but don't say I didn't warn you. Read more here.

Something cool to just check out, see what's building in Dubai right now...its pretty ground breaking. Ah the wonders of money.

illustrations que j'aime..

Kozyndan

This site has some pretty interesting illustrations, mainly done on photoshop. I love the panoramic illustrations they have of city views..and their quirkyness. (if thats a word)






Audrey Kawasaki

Her paintings are really beautiful...I just love the way they're painted.




The Mushroom Girls Virus Book

These are some illustrations done by Deanne Y. Cheuk.

John Copeland

A new-york based artist that works with gouache.

V-day

Since today's Valentine's Day and everyone's in the spirit...I thought I'd post this link just for fun. I'm not one of those thats against the day or hate it and call it a 'capitalist propaganda day' or whatever but I thought this site had some funny cards. I just can't stand the overly sappy and mushy cards...they freak me out and just come off plain creepy at times.

Anyways check it outtt.

Greeting cards, anyone?

This is for anyone who's interested :

I have a friend who's running a charitable organization for kids, where they sell greeting cards online. They want to launch their own line of unique artwork on cards this year and they're looking for work. Unfortunately you don't get paid for work you submit and they use, but they give you credit and they will post the artist's bio on their site.

This is part of the email :

As you probably know, I started a non-profit last year and we basically sell greeting cards to raise funds for smaller, but very worthy, children's charities. We started off with other vendors'/suppliers' greeting cards, but will be creating our own line this year.

We want to create a unique line of cards that cannot be produced elsewhere. The cards will be available on our website: www.justcausecards.org and we will also be trying to sell to small card shops, smaller museums and gift shops. The process from art creation to card printing will take a few months. First, we will collect artwork, then we'll conduct focus groups to determine the popularity of prints for cards and finally by the end of April, we will probably select a batch to be printed. In the meantime, I have a whole new group of website developers working to improve the existing website, a new group of business advisors and we are working very hard to make this a successful project for our children's charities.

I would really love it if you could submit any artwork to me. With the development of the new website, we will be featuring artist bios when people come to visit or choose a specific card. It would be a great opportunity for student artists to showcase their work, while also contributing to a worthy cause.

For the time being, we are mainly interested in blank, thank you and graduation cards. The art prints should probably the size of a 4x6 picture, or something that can be shrunk to that size, without becoming distorted. There requirements are not too specific--you can create any type of art from water colors to charcoal prints (as long as it is 2-D), on durable paper (like card stock), and you should probably think about the audience that will purchase the cards (mainly women purchase/write cards).

If anyone's up for it, let me know..I know we're all incredibly busy with work but if you got some work you've already done and want to submit or do something new...its a good opportunity.

M.F. Hussain

M.F. Hussain is a famous Indian contemporary painter that has roused a bit of controversy over the years by his work. I actually ran into him last year when I was in Bombay at a restaurant. The strangest thing about him is that he doesn't wear any shoes, anywhere. Apparently for the last 40 years he's given up shoes and believes its healtheir not to wear shoes because walking barefoot has some sort of accupunctural healing effect. I guess all artists have their quirks.

Whats interesting about his work is that he's muslim yet paints contemporary pictures of Hindu deities. Many have accused him of 'butchering' Indian culture by painting the gods as if they were normal people and in a very sensuous way. He even introduced the idea of public performance art into his work, by in the 80s painting images of godesses in public areas and in the end covering them with white paint to conceal them on the canvasses. His paintings have a very primitive style, by their simple use of line and bold, solid colors.

This painting is meant to depict one of the Indian godesses, Saraswati, and it was highly controversial and tried to get rid of as it painted her as a 'sensuous nymph' unlike how she is normally depicted.

He has a sort of interesting cubist, abstract style that I really like.
This painting is meant to show the British reign on India.

Mother Teresa

Ganesh

art being sacred??

Have you ever had one of those nights where you're hanging out with a bunch of friends at a party or some sort of social gathering...and find it ironic that sometimes alcohol can lead to really philosophical and interesting discussions with some of the people you'd least expect it from?

At a party last year, one of my friends, who I always thought was a bit dim (for lack of a better way of saying it)..mentioned the notion of sacred geometry and what it was. I was fascinated with all the facts and how fast he was spitting out all these ideas and research he had come across. Unfortunately, I haven't learned as much as I would like about it, but I somehow suddenly remembered our conversation when I came across a website.

This idea of 'sacred geometry' is taken from the beliefs of ancient cultures, such as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Indian. Basically they have a belief that all forms of life, or creation, in nature has seen to have certain shapes in it - to say it in the most simplest way.

"Sacred Geometry is the blueprint of Creation and the genesis of all form. It is an ancient science that explores and explains the energy patterns that create and unify all things and reveals the precide way that the creation organizes itself. On every scale, every natural pattern of growth or movement conforms inevitably to one or more geometric shapes."

Sacred geometry has tons of information on it but one of the things i thought was cool was the idea of the fibonacci spiral. I know theres a lot of mathematics involved in this stuff (yeah i was one of those weird art kids who loved math and science as well), but basically theres this theory that says that this ratio of a spiral is found in many things, and many art is based on it


thats the basic ratio of the spiral...

just two examples I could find a picture of...its found in the Vitruvian man as well in Orion's constellation...and the pyramids in Egypt were built based on the fibonacci spiral.















I still have to find out more on this but i'm just throwing this out there to think about..

Ambigrams are sweeeeet.

I just got back from Wicked, which was awesome..if you guys get a chance, you have to check it out!

Anyways for this post I thought I'd share something thats kinda graphic designy. I'm pretty sure some of you have read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (the guy who also wrote The Da Vinci Code). I think his books are a pretty interesting and entertaining read, although I know he's questioned by many about the validity of facts in his books. So I read Angels and Demons, which I thought was cool because I've always been fascinated with the relationship of Art and Science and the whole Illuminati concept, and I saw the ambigrams in the book. Ambigrams are words or phrases that can be rotated 180 degrees, and remain the same word.

The artist who did the ambigrams in the book is John Langdon. Besides the ambigrams, which have also been used as logos, he also paints. Some of his work is interesting as its inspired by, or even pays tribute to, Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol. In fact he does Rorschach-style (inkblot) paintings, which was inspired by an exhibition Warhol had done in the sixties. I love the idea of ambiguity that is shown in his work.

These are some of the ambigrams he's done (so if you turn your head sideways, and read it upside down, its the same word! oooh aaah):