Art Hound

How much would I like to see this show in person? A lot. Realms opened April 16th at Giant Robot’s LA location and features the work of three fantastic West Coast female artists: Yellena James, Ako Castuera, Elsa Mora.  While these three artists might not appear to have that much in common, there is an interesting, if unexpected, visual dialogue that I tried to capture here.

(clockwise from top left: Yellena James: Lola, Ako Castuera: Floating Temblor, Yellena James: Particle)

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(clockwise from top: Ako Castuera, Elsa Mora: Without Face, Elsa Mora: The Wound)

(clockwise from left: Elsa Mora: A Forest In Her Mind, Elsa Mora: La Espalda, Ako Castuera: The Foundry)

Source: All photos from Giant Robot 2 (where artwork is also available for purchase).

Photo: Betsy Walton

This is crazy cool! Five of Portland’s biggest indie art stars collaborated on over 50 paintings for Elemental at Together Gallery. Yup. Betsy Walton, Jill Bliss, Aaron and Ayumi Piland of APAK and Yellena James. I’m having a blast piecing together the different influences of the five artists in each painting. Here are some of my favs that highlight the different collaborations…

Here I see Betsy Walton + APAK…

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…and Jill Bliss + Yellena James + APAK.

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Here I see Yellena James + Betsy Walton…

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… and APAK + Yellena James…

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… and Jill Bliss + Yellena James.

SAY you’re not super knowledgeable about art, but you do know you love _______ (enter famous artist here). You may have observed that your love of Picasso or Klimt won’t do you much good in the pursuit of living with art; the truth is you probably aren’t going to fork over millions to park these artists’ paintings in your den. However, with a bit of guidance, you can draw on these preferences as a means to develop your taste on current (and affordable) art.

This series will help you do just that: each week I’ll match a major artist of the 19th or 20th c. (e.g. Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko, Keith Haring) with current independent artists who share the artist’s style, subject, color palette, etc. Although there’s nothing wrong with enjoying print reproductions of famous artists, now you’ll have other enticing options to consider.

Please feel free to leave suggestions for future artists. Thanks!

If you like O’Keeffe’s flowers…

…then you might just like the work of Faith Evans-Sills, Rachel Ann Austin or Yellena James.

If you like O’Keeffe’s abstracts…

…then you might like the work of Julie Evans, Sophia Brueckner or Serena Mitnik-Miller.

And if you like O’Keeffe’s architectural work…

…you might like work by Laura Marie Walker, Ryan Kapp or Kari Maxwell.

The Los Angeles-based GR2, part of the greater Giant Robot family, is currently running it’s fourth Post-It Show through Jan. 13th.

A diverse group of artists drew, colored, painted, cut up and glued Post-its, resulting in a colorful and chaotic sea of paper squares. GR2 is selling each Post-it for $20- how’s that for an entry price?

If you’re interested in purchasing a piece from the show, you can select up to four artists on the website. At the end of the show, GR2 will send you a randomly-selected Post-it by one of your preferred artists. The roster includes the very talented: APAK, Marc Bell, Jill Bliss, Jen Corace, Evah Fan, Daria Tessler, Yellena James, Saelee Oh, Luke Ramsey, and dozens more!