drawings – Cleveland State Art

Louise Despont (Hannah T)

Louise Despont is an artist who works and lives out of New York, where she was born in 1983; and Bali, Indonesia. She possesses a bohemian flair that bleeds into her artwork. Ms. Despont chooses to create very large drawings on seperate sheets pulled from antique accounting ledgers, draftsman paper, and other gridded papers. With the help of her assistant, Nicole Wong, Ms. Despont uses colored pencils, graphite, and a hefty collection of architect/artist stencils to make her ideas a reality.

She creates her intricate artwork with elements pulled from her infinite amount of inspiration images—old photographs, Buddhist medical charts, various textiles, patterns, beehives, architectural schematics, soundwaves, etc.
Many different elements may be chosen and woven into these designs, which are themselves very expressive and geometric, but also fluid and earthy.

More often than not, Ms. Despont finds herself working on her living room floor than at an artist’s table. She fully invests herself into every drawing, and into her work projects as a whole. According to Ms. Despont herself, her work is 90% research and 10% action. Oftentimes, she spends months just collecting images and making portfolios of every photo she finds. Because her pieces are so large, they have to be fitted into even larger frames; and because so much goes into their creation overall, it takes some time to get each drawing into a gallery, and at times she can do only one show a year.

But she never lets that stop her from brainstorming or innovating.
Oftentimes, the antique accounting ledger paper she draws abstract shapes, florals, or designs on contain old checks and balances from their past owners. By letting these numbers and words show through without bothering to change them or white them out, Ms. Despont makes the figures part of her work, which in itself looks antique.

Ms. Despont has also stated that while her work appears very calm and naturalistic, she actually calculates every mark she makes. By using stencils, she creates designs that are so beautifully designed, one would never think they were made with a stencil at all. Ms. Despont’s base of operations is in the comfort of her home, and she often finds herself streched out on her bedroom floor with her huge, sectioned layouts.

And she has said that she really prefers to work this way. “I find that being able to work at home—that I wake up in the morning, I have breakfast, and I start working—it’s a very smooth transition to a quieter, more centered place.”
Also, because Ms. Despont creates all of her drawings using relatively inexpensive materials, she does not have to wait until she has large amounts of money or has recieved donations to create the pictures, which she just likes to “just let happen.”

Louise Despont, colored pencil and graphite on antique ledger book pages, 18x23 inches — Heliconia Mask

All of her drawings started with simple marks that turned into something more.
“Those marks contain the seed of the drawing,” she commented in Louise Despont Draws Deep. This is something that is true of virtually any drawing, or any work of art.
And in Louise Despont’s case, it is the foundation of her media.

Joan Jonas – Julie

Joan Jonas (not Joe Jonas, the former member of the Jonas Brother) is an artist, born in 1936, New York. Whom in 1958 received her bachelors degree in Art History from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She later went on to study the art of sculpture and drawing at the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and worked the a couple of choreographers for 2 years.

Joan is an artist who explores in many different mediums of art including video art, installation art, but is most known for her collaboration with different artists and musicians to create improvisational pieces that are then performed on stage or in museums.

The type of work she produces is not typical, but it seems that she is fascinated how her drawings come out when she draws them as fast as she can. She typically uses different colors of ink to draw her pictures and follows up with blotting them with a normal paper towel to play around with color and different darknesses of the ink. She enjoys drawing pictures of her dogs. She says, “I did, for many years, make drawings of my dog, Zena. I drew her a lot because she interested me, she was very strange looking.”

While this dog looks absolutely horrifying, her dog does not actually look this grotesque.

Joan is also very partial to creating ink drawings of insects, including bees, which specifically drew me to her as an artist.

Joan has also experimented with video art pieces in the past that are very interesting, also confusing to watch. Joan wanted to explore how sound worked in different places using different objects to make the sounds (for example, her video SongDelay), and how she could almost develop a language with dance and movement. she wondered how she could use sound, movement, and three-dimensional space to her artistic advantage.

Joan Jonas is very passionate about her work and is passionate towards others who love art. Her advice to young artists is, quote, “My advice to young artists is always to love what you do, because its not easy. It’s not easy to make art and you never know if you’re going to be recognized or what people will think of your work and the most important thing is to have pleasure with making the work. Although sometimes its very hard, and sometimes you get discouraged. I think that for me, when I go to look at a work of art, I’m interested in the way it affects me and how it changes my way of seeing things. How does it affect me? I could look at a painting or a film, hear a piece of music and how when I leave that space, what do I bring with me? And I hope that my work can somehow perhaps give people a different way of seeing things or experiencing things. I think the most important thing for them is to be with it and experience it, its very important for people to be turning experiences into something else; transforming them, alchemy, making magic that gives them some other meaning to their lives. It’s also important to have a circle of friend you can show your work to. Art is about communication, and also art is about a dialogue with art, a dialogue with other artists, a dialogue with the past, with the future, and its an important dialogue to have.”

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey was an American author and illustrator known for his nonsensical and macabre drawings. He was born in Chicago in 1925. His grandmother was a successful greeting card artist, and Gorey claims to have gotten his artistic abilities from her. He graduated from Harvard in 1950. He studied art for a short time at the Art Institute of Chicago.

After graduating, Gorey moved to New York City, where he got a job illustrating books such as Dracula and War of the Worlds.

His first personal piece that he wrote and illustrated himself was called “The Unstrung Harp.”

A friend of Gorey’s who owned a bookstore saw the potential of his works. He started selling his books and displaying his art in his gallery, and takes credit for helping Gorey to gain popularity.

Edward Gorey was an eccentric man. He enjoyed cats, sweaters, and ballet. He liked to watch TV commercials and considered them an art form. He was never interested in romance, and when questioned whether he was gay, he replied that if anything, he was asexual. Many of his works were considered children’s stories, though he did not intend them to be. He disliked children. He had many friends however and was quite social.

Gorey considered his pieces to be surrealist and nonsensical. He was known for his crosshatching ink illustrations, with characters and settings similar to Victorian, Edwardian, and jazz age styles. Many of his pieces were very macabre and dark, often dealing with death.

He published over 100 illustrated books. Some of the most popular were “The Gashlycrumb Tinines” which pokes fun at parental paranoia.

And “The Doubtful Guest.”

Gorey was a man of many talents. He loved the stage and designed stage props and costumes for his own plays and those of others. He won a Tony for best costume design for his production of Dracula. He created macrame puppets and would perform evening-length puppet shows. He experimented with books, making popups, miniature books, and stories that were entirely wordless.

Gorey also created the timeless opening for the PBS series Mystery!

Edward Gorey died in 2000. His house in Cape Cod is now a museum. There is a documentary being made about him that has been in process for over a decade. Here is a short clip of an interview with Gorey that was done for the documentary.

Some of his other works:

Sources:

http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/

http://www.brainpickings.org/tag/edward-gorey/

http://www.biography.com/people/edward-gorey-40616

Andrew Schoultz

Andrew Schoultz was born in 1975 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but he has lived and worked in San Francisco, CA since 1997.

Andrew works about 80 hours a week as a full time artist, and has for a little over ten years.

“I’d describe my work as art that’s attempting to create experiences and visuals that in some way record contemporary history.” -Andrew Schoultz.

He works with many medias such as mixing drawings , paintings, collages, print making , and large scale wall paintings and sculpture , sometimes he uses gold leaf as well to create art.

He is inspired by The Nuremberg Chronicles, a book that was written in 1493 in which some of the very first cities and countries were illustrated, basically the start of map-making. Another work that inspired him was the dance movie “Breakin” it was what got him started with graffiti art.

“I’d say that my work has a lot to do with history and how it repeats itself over and over again. I’d also say that there’s definitely been an influence of underground comics as well as graffiti, which may or may not be obvious at this point in time. .”- Andrew Schoultz.

The themes that tend to pop up in most of his works are war, global warming, natural disasters and economic crisis. One way Andrew describes his work is “chaotic, multi-layering and political.”

He tells stories about everyday issues and life through his art work, by sticking political remarks in the form of graffiti and underground comics , mixed with some medieval grip mapping out man and nature’s history.

Andrew Schoultz’s big break was in the Clarion Alley Mural Project, with his “Coffee Machine” mural, supported by Aaron Noble. Aaron Noble is a well know muralist in San Fransisco, he was was the one to push Andrew in to the scene of public art.

He has spent a lot of time on the streets doing wall paintings and murals but he has also spent time doing galleries as well. He has a great passion for doing large paintings on public areas so he can inform the people of the current social and political issues.

In high school he soared through the art program and had one of his own pieces in the Milwaukee Art Museum where he won a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin, but he ended up leaving after the first semester because he was much more interested in street art and skateboarding.

(Meditations Under Stress)

(Destroyer)

(What Burns Never Returns)

The I of the Storm

(Meltdown)

(In Process)

(Monument to a Whirlwind)

(10,000 Leaves in Darkness)

Work Cited

http://www.andrewschoultz.com/

http://www.morganlehmangallery.com/artists/andrew-schoultz/

http://www.artnet.com/artists/andrew-schoultz/biography-links

Andrew Schoultz

http://inthemake.com/andrew-schoultz/

Ernie Barnes

Ernest “Ernie” Barnes was born on July 15, 1938, during the Jim Crowe era in Durham, North Carolina. Through out his long life Ernest wore many hats. He was a painter, professional football player, actor and author.

Ernest learned the value of hard work from his father Ernest E. Barnes Sr. who was a shipping clerk. His mother, Fannie Mae Geer oversaw the household staff for prominent Durham attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr.

When Ernest had the opportunity to accompany his mother to work, he used the time to study a collection of art books and listen to classical music in Fuller’s study. Ernest was inspired by the works of the master artist such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Rubens, and Michelangelo.

When it came to school, Ernest had problems most of us suffer today. He was a self-described chubby and non-athletic child. He was taunted and bullied by classmates. But he found refuge in his sketchbooks which he would take to his hiding place away from the other students.

Maybe it was fate on one of those unusual days when Ernest was hidden away in a quite place, that a teacher, Tommy Tucker, found him drawing in a notebook. Tucker was also the weightlifting coach and a former athlete.

Tucker was impressed with Ernest’s drawings so he asked the aspiring artist about his grades and goals. Tucker told Ernest about his own experiences of how weight training improved his strength and outlook on life. That one meeting began Ernest’s dedication which would change his life.

Ernest’s discipline paid off during his senior year at Hillside High School when he became the captain of the football team and state champion in the shot put and discus throw.

In 1956 Ernest graduated from Hillside with 26 athletic scholarship offers. However, because of segregation, he was not able to consider nearby Duke or the University of Carolina.

He chose the all-black North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) which was then located across the street from his high school. At NCC, he majored in art on a full athletic scholarship. On the football team he played Tackle and Center and was selected to the All-Conference Team.

At the age of 18, on a college art class field trip to the newly desegregated North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, Ernest asked where he could find “paintings by Negro artists.” The tour guide responded, “your people don’t express themselves that way.”

Twenty-two years later, in 1978, justice prevailed when Barnes returned to the same museum for a solo exhibition, hosted by North Carolina Governor James Hunt.

Sometime after his final football game, Ernest went to the 1965 NFL owners meeting in Houston in hopes of becoming the leagues official artist. There he was introduced to New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who was impressed with Barnes and his art. He paid for Barnes to bring his paintings to New York.

When they met at the gallery some days later, , Ernest was surprised to find three art critics there to evaluate his paintings. They told Werblin that Barnes was “the most expressive painter of sports since George Bellows.”

In what was probably the strangest move in the history of the NFL, Werblin retained Barnes as a salaried player, but put him in front of the canvas, rather than on the football field. Werblin informed Ernest, “You have more value to the country as an artist than as a football player.”

Ernest’s November 1966 debut solo exhibition hosted by Werblin at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York was critically acclaimed and all the paintings sold.

Several of Ernest’s paintings were seen by a different crowd from 1974-1978 during the “Good Times” television series. It was here that most of the paintings “created” by the character JJ Walker were actually painted by Ernest.

Ernest credits his college art instructor Ed Wilson for laying the foundation for his development as an artist. Wilson was a sculptor who instructed Ernest to paint from his own life experiences. “He made me conscious of the fact that the artist who is useful to America is one who studies his own life and records it through the medium of art, manners and customs of his own experiences.”

Ernie Barnes died April 27, 2009 from a rare blood disorder.

Wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Barnes
erniebarnes.com

David Filer’s Realistic Art

Amanda Hinson

David Filer is an artist who was born in 1986, in Zimbabwe. Filer always loved animals and began drawing them at only eight years old. He took art in high school and focused on his passion for wildlife. Filer started photographing animals to allow him to observe their every detail up close. He also began falconry, again this helped Filer get closer to the animals and observe them. He continued his education and went on to receive a Information Design honours degree, from the University of Pretoria.

David Filer is currently continuing his career in what he loves, being a wildlife artist (he focuses on African wildlife). He draws in a style considered super-realistic. Filer presently chooses to use graphite in his artwork. He feels that basic black and white and the shades that fall in between can make a piece strong and intense. The intense feel is good fit when depicting wild animals. Filer cares for his work and wants to make sure that it shows even the smallest details. For this reason he uses high quality Fabriano paper.

Filer considers his work to be original. He continues using his skills in photography to help in his work. He takes photographs and then draws from them; however, Filer makes slight alterations so that his drawings are one of a kind. When looking at Filer’s art collection it is easy to see his work is solely his own. He has a unique way of depicting animals that makes a person feel a connection with the animal.

One of David Filer’s great accomplishments was receiving the David Shepherd – Wildlife Artist of the Year award, in 2008. He was the youngest artist to compete and still won against 5000 others. In 2010, he received a “Highly Commended” for “Pangolins Prayer” (image below), in the same competition he had previously won Wildlife Artist of the Year. Another considerable accomplishment is when Filer went on to hold his first exhibit, within hours all of his work sold.

Again in 2011, Filer won the award for David Shepherd – Wildlife Artist of the Year. This award was based on his artwork “Forever and Ever, Amen.” The image is below. When commenting about receiving the award Filer said, “Winning this award is a real validation of my work. It means so much to me to be recognised and to win this title, especially against such fantastic competition. It is very special.” When looking at the artwork it is not hard to see that Filer’s award was well deserved.

It is most likely the love and care that Filer has for animals, that allows him to portray so much of their beauty in his work. Filer says that an animal’s eyes are what draws him to the animal. He believes this is because you can see an animal’s soul through their eyes. In fact, when it comes to trying to portray an animal he has said, “The most difficult part of the drawing are the eyes, when you get those right, the rest of the piece falls into place.” The eyes of the animal in Filer’s artwork seem to be what connects the viewer to the animal. Filer’s time and effort put into depicting an animal’s eyes does not go wasted; they draw the viewer in and give them an emotional connection with the work.

Since the awards Filer has won, he can now choose what to work on and mainly does specific orders for individuals and commissioned works. He has artwork in Zimbabwe at several embassies, as well as all over the world. Filer is a well known wildlife artist and he has reached the goal most artists strive for, to make their audience have a connection with their work. As Filer continues to focus on the animals in Zimbabwe, the art community can assume they will see more great pieces come from him in the future.

http://www.ecoinfo.tv/asp/template.asp?p=WildlifeArtists&Blog=Yes

http://www.davidfilerart.com/index.php

http://www.johnstevenssafaris.com/community_art.php