Sally Finch

"Dryland Farming 3 Moro"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  18" x 18"  2012

"Dryland Farming 4 Pullman"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  18" x 18"  2012

"Dryland Farming 6 Moscow"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  18" x 18"  2013

"Weather Study 19 New Delhi"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  9" x 9"  2011

"Weather Study 9 Juba"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  9" x 9"  2011

I'm typically attracted to art that has an immediate draw, a visceral impact that sucks you right in and either forces you to linger over the details or to simply stand back and try to imagine how it managed to grab you in the first place. This is why I'm attracted narrative art. The story telling instinct in human beings is a powerful one and narrative images compel us to expand upon them. Sally Finch's abstract work couldn't be more different. It's more analogous to science and mathematics than to any form of representational art. In science there is a truism that a subject cannot be studied if it cannot be measured. For this reason data, raw empirical numbers, measurements of events, objects and durations, form the raw material of all research. Just so, the artist begins her work with data sets that attract or interest her for various reasons, "through beauty, utility... curiosity, or the work it has taken to accumulate." Then she develops a transcription method unique to each piece so that the data is interpreted through color, shape, etc., bit by hand drawn bit. The resulting images are strangely compelling, delicate abstractions that still evoke the technical and computational nature of their source material. Without understanding the key the meaning is completely opaque, even with the context clues provided in their titles. And yet... and yet they so clearly represent something real, information is so clearly imbedded within them that their subtle beauty becomes almost secondary to the mystery of their interpretation. If her work is akin to science it is also akin to music which, like science, is also deeply inter-dependent upon mathematics. I could imagine a composer working in some similar way, creating abstract sound-scapes out of data-sets the same way Sally Finch produces her color grids. I can also imagine listening to such "music" while observing this work in a museum or gallery setting. Hm. Just a thought.  If I could have one nitpick with the artist it would be only this: I wish there were some close-ups shots of the images on her website. Because I've seen some of her work in person, and there's something deeply compelling about the minute detail of the pieces, the hand-drawn aspect to them, and the intimacy of each little tick-mark or circle of color that piles up with others to create the whole. In a data set, individual numbers are rarely interesting. That's part of the magic here. Once translated into visual form every number becomes a thing of beauty.
You can see more work on the artist's website: sallyfinch.com
or in person if you happen to be in Portland, Oregon, at Froelick Gallery

Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg

"Wind Map" on Oct. 30, 2012 - Sandy

Wind Map is one of my favorite things to look at lately. A friend referred to it as pixie stix for the eyes. With the storm back east it has been pretty dramatic too. This is just a screen shot. You have to load the real thing and watch it move. I should have posted this yesterday. Oh well. Better late than never. "Wind Map" is the product of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg at hint.fm where they explore the crossroads of informational data and artistic expression. In most cases there is some aspect of interactivity so you can't always tell too much from these static images. So I urge you to go to their website and spend a little time exploring their work. And bookmark that windmap. You'll want to return again and again. I promise you.

"The Art of Reproduction" 2011 - reclining nude - Modigliani

The art of reproduction explores the wild divergences in color reproductions of art. You never really know how different the image you're looking at is from the original.

"Web Seer"  2009

Web Seer explores human curiosity by using "google suggest" to see what others are thinking

Luke Jerram

Avian Flu - H5N1

Entovrus 71 (EV71) - Hand Foot and Mouth Disease

Smallpox

SARS corona Virus

E. Coli

Lately I've posted quite a few more successful artists. Sometimes it is difficult to tell just how successful an artist is even if I knew what constituted success for an artist. The point of an artist's website is to promote the artist, and that means highlighting successes. But when an artist can feature a photo of themselves shaking hands with the queen, I'm ready to concede that they are probably doing pretty well for themselves. Having pieces in the permanent collections of museums around the world is another good sign. Anyhow...

Luke Jerram does a lot of different kinds of work: installations, live art, sculpture. It's the sculpture that caught my attention. Actually just a single series of work; these giant glass microbes. I love it when science and art sidle up to each other and get cozy and occasionally share some koodies. I think art generally benefits more from these trysts than science and I'd say that's the case here as well. But Mr. Jerram does make some excellent scientific points concerning the work. Images of microorganisms are derived from electron microscopy and are usually enhanced with color. The color is generally arbitrary and used primarily to help distinguish the various elements of the image. But in fact most viruses are smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so they can't really have a color. His glass sculptures of these viruses, made in consultation with virologists using a variety of images and models, thus have a lot of merit as scientific illustrations and have been used as such. Beyond that, they're just really really cool.

Luke Jerram is an idea guy. It needs to be pointed ou tthat he did not make these sculptures himself. They were in fact produced in collaboration with glass blowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch.

There's plenty more viruses to look at and a lot of other cool stuff on his website: www.lukejerram.com

Seana Reilly

"PeñaFlamenca"  Graphite on paper  20” x 20”

"TippingPoint"  Graphite on Dibond  36” x 48”

"MassWasting"  Graphite on drafting vellum  18” x 18”

"TorrentialConstant"  Graphite on Dibond  48” x 24”

"Schematic 128 (Juliet Is The Sun)"  Graphite on Dibond  30” x 18”

It is not exactly original to say that the arts and the sciences have more in common than most people imagine. But it is unusual to find an artist who incorporates scientific ideas so directly and forcefully into their work. Seana Reilly's art (I'm not sure whether I should even call them paintings or drawings) makes use of and references natural mechanical processes; gravity, fluid dynamics, sedimentation, erosion. Her material is powdered graphite that flows through a liquid medium on a non-porous surface. I love that graphite is simply a basic form of carbon, that basic building material for all of life, a perfect vehicle with which to "draw" the forces of nature. One could easily spin out gleefully on the layers of possible readings into all of this, but in the end what matters is that the images themselves are undeniably mesmerizing. Like electron microscopy or Hubble telescope images, they reveal the workings of nature in new and eye-opening ways. An earlier series of "Schematic" images was more grounded in representation, directly referencing human technologies. These are delicately corroded by the processes that would eventually become the very corps of her work. Go to her website to see many more images and don't pass up the video to get a better idea of how it's all done: www.sreilly.com
Seana Reilly's work was recently featured in New American Paintings #100

Adam Friedman

"The Elemental and Fundamental"

Acylic, Screen Print, Gel Transfers, and Collage on Panel  18"x14"  2010

"Endurance of the Farallons"

Screen Print, Acrylic, Gel Transfers, and Collage on Panel  14"x20"  2009

"An Icelandic Orogeny"

Acrylic, Screen Print, Gel Transfers, and Collage on Panel  17"x31"  2010

"No Vestige of a Beginning, No Prospect of and End"

Screen Print, Acrylic, Gel Transfers, and Collage on Panel  16"x16"  2010

"Reclaiming Everest

Acrylic, Screen Print, Gel Transfers, and Collage on Panel  26"x15"  2010

The artist in my previous post (Robert Minervini) wrote me to recommend another artist in my own town of Portland, Oregon, Adam Friedman. So here's his work. He employs an interesting combination of media but as is typical with me, I tend to hone in on content. One notices very quickly repeated references to landscape, environment and especially geology. One of the most fascinating and difficult aspects of geology is it's dilated time scale. In geologic time, the human presence on earth is a barely perceivable blip and in geologic terms our impact upon the earth is negligible. The gradual processes of the earth's crust, it's formation, it's folding and unfolding, it's slow parade of eons has gone on long before we existed and will continue long after. This is his central theme. His occasional forays into anthrocentric environmental concerns is almost a shrug. Will we destroy ourselves? Possibly. Are we bringing about a mass extinction of unique lifeforms? Almost certainly. Ultimately the earth, and life as a whole, will barely notice we were ever here. For some, including Adam Friedman, this thought is a source of deep and abiding comfort. We are not the center of creation. We are merely witnesses to it's vast scale and scope.
To see more, go to his website: artbyadamfriedman.com

Matthew Troy Mullins

 "VHS Tape Collection, South Pole"  watercolor and gouache on paper  30" x 96"  2010

 "VHS Tape Collection, South Pole" detail left






































"Northern Regional Library Facility"  watercolor on paper  24" x 32"  2010

 
"Entymology Archive"  watercolor and gouache on paper  48" x 36"  2010

"Book Stitching Machine"  watercolor and gouache on paper  48" x 36"  2010

"Construct"  acrylic on canvas  4' x 6'  2007

Matthew Troy Mullins is as much a journalist as he is an artist. He reports from the worlds of science and technology, with an artist's eye for mundane detail, to report back on environments and working spaces that most of us would otherwise never witness. His conscious decision not to depict the people who normally occupy these spaces allows us to view the scene as if we were those people. He is particularly fascinated with places that collect knowledge, that gather and store information, spaces that form a collective attic space/workshop for the human race. Being something of a science nerd myself, I find these images remarkably evocative. The flat lighting and the complete lack of intentionally aesthetic decor do not evoke the sort of soullessness that is seen in so much artistic interpretation of technology. Rather it reminds us that the tremendous knowledge and impact of the human species consists of a vast accumulation of simple tasks and bits of information in innumerable obscure places. It is, in its own peculiar way, quite wondrous.

Check out his website: matthewtroymullins.com

And congratulations to Mr. Mullins on having his work featured in the 91st issue of New American Paintings