CKN handmade website

I have a new website: CKNhandmade.com
Please check it out!
Thanks!

Art on Paper Fair

I went to the Art On Paper Fair on Saturday.
The fair focuses on works by artists who use paper as a major influence in their sculpture, drawing, painting and photography. 
Pier 36, 299 South Street, Lower Manhattan
Link to work shown:

http://thomascampbell-art.com
www.facebook.com/artistkirkmaxson
http://www.kathbradford.com
http://www.bastny.com
https://sfelectricworks.com/artists/eggers
http://standcoffeenyc.com

http://thepaperfair.com

new tumblr photo blog

Check out my new tumblr photo blog: http://cknhandmade.tumblr.com/

Life before Death

Amazing video.


This is Water - Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace

UPPERCASE magazine

I am thrilled to be included in the current issue of UPPERCASE; a magazine all about creativity, design and art. My 'Grandad's Sweater' is featured in a a special section called Scavenger Hunt - creations made from recycled materials. My piece features a refashioned foot stool using granddad's sweaters and clothing.

Issue 24 is all about textiles. It features sections on modern weavers; visible mending; quilt design; the cultural history of vintage feed sacks; tattooed artists and discovering flea market treasures. Each cover has a swatch of vintage feed sack fabric hand-applied to the cover.

UPPERCASE publishes books and magazines for the creative and curious: products that spark the imagination and inspire creativity. Our eponymous magazine, now in its sixth year, is loved by readers around the world and has been recognized for its design excellence. Our books profile up-and-coming artists or explore emerging trends in design and creativity.

We view everything we publish as an opportunity to create something special, so each product has high production values and attention to detail. A playful exploration of creativity, an affinity for vintage ephemera, and a love of typography are some elements common to many of our publications. -publisher / editor / designer Janine Vangool

For a preview: http://issuu.com/uppercaseyyc/docs/uppercase24-issuu?e=0/10878770   (I'm on page 64!)

http://uppercasemagazine.com

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of vintage photographs. I stumbled across Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs recently and I'm still thinking about it. The fact that the author based the story around found photos from his collection fascinated me. As a collector myself I have often wondered about the stories behind anonymous photos. Part fantasy, part adventure, part eccentric photo collection, I think it is a story that will surprise and enchant many.

irkbooks.com/book/miss-peregrines-home-peculiar-children
http://www.ransomriggs.com

William Christenberry photographs

"I like it when people ask, “What is Christenberry? Is he a photographer, a painter, or a sculptor?”
I see it all as one piece. There is no separateness. It is about the interaction, the intermingling or the coming together of these various means of expression. I am not just one thing."

"This is and always will be where my heart is. It is what I care about. Everything I want to say through my work comes out of my feelings about that place–its positive aspects and its negative aspects. It’s one of the poorest counties in the state, but it is also a county with great lore and legend. In the nineteenth century it must have been like Gone With the Wind, a place with great southern plantations. It became clear to me during my graduate studies [1958-59, at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa] that I wanted to express my feelings about this place. To paraphrase William Faulkner, “There is enough to write about on this little stamp-sized state called Mississippi to occupy me all of my life.”

"I don’t want my work thought about in terms of nostalgia. It is about place and sense of place. I only make pictures when I go home. I am not looking back longing for the past, but at the beauty of time and the passage of time."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwmZZZoU_gs

Gerhard Richter tapestries

I wish I could take the next flight out to see these amazing new works in person! I love it when an artist uses a new medium. The Gagosian Gallery in London is showing a group of four tapestries based on a single abstract painting by Gerhard Richter. 

Going from paint to wool, Richter’s abstraction gives a traditional medium new excitement. Based on Abstract Painting (724-4) (1990), they are an example of his distinctive approach to non-representational painting. The visual effect of the tapestries is Rorschach-like, multiplying the forms and colors of the original canvas. Woven on a mechanical loom, each tapestry repeats four times the image of one area of the painting. Since the tapestries are all derived from the same painting, they are similar yet different. This exhibition is a must-see for all creative types. The way Richter takes his style of painting and transfers it to a new medium is amazing and may inspire you to experiment with surface, texture and materials in your own work.

http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/gerhard-richter--may-30-2013
http://www.gerhard-richter.com

The Open Road

'London In 1927' from John Maher on Vimeo.

In 1924 pioneering filmmaker Claude Friese-Greene set out on an 840-mile road trip across Britain. He recorded his journey on film, using an experimental colour process: the result was a travelog called The Open Road. Restored by the British Film Institute, the BFI National Archive holds one of the largest film and television collections in the world. Dating from the earliest days of film to the 21st century, it contains nearly a million titles. The Open Road is important both as a landmark in the development of colour on film but also as a fascinating social record of interwar Britain.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections
http://vimeo.com/66115782

artist Sarah Burwash

"Delicate yet strong, charming but also intense."

These are some of the words that have been used to describe artist Sarah Burwash's art.

"My work is largely inspired by women's stories which I most often gather through books. I read a lot of journals, memoirs and biographies by women who were brazen and persistent in forging for a new social order. I am interested in investigating the changes in gender roles and our relationships to home, landscape and tradition.

Most recently I have been diving into Anais Nin's journals, the book Women Who Run With Wolves and also the book Women of the Goldrush, which tells stories of women who hiked the Chilkoot trail up to the Yukon during the Goldrush. Stories of women challenging the norm and not excepting the limits set before them.

I have more recently become interested in digging up my family history, more specifically my Norwegian history, very much intrigued by the rural lifestyles, the folklore and the landscape. I am very interested in storytelling with ambiguity. "

http://sarahburwash.com

June Instagram photos

artist David Cass

Currently on exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh is the solo exhibition by artist David Cass titled Years of Dust and Dry.

"I document what I see, I never thought I’d paint, I always thought I’d be a photographer, a film-maker even. These aren’t really paintings, they’re hybrids, snap-shots of a journey. And they don’t stand alone, they speak to each other, tell a story."

"I only paint subjects I have an emotional connection with – though in actual fact some of the time I document places which have negative memories of some sort. Sometimes I work with photographs to relive the experience, so painting itself becomes a process of re-earthing." 

"I’ve always been a collector. Since I remember my family laughed at me – first it was simply scrap wood, then wooden drawers, matchboxes, postcards and most recently tabletops. I collected all the way through art school. In fact, it was at college that I started to collect wood. I got so much of the stuff that I didn’t know what to do with it. I began using the wood to create sculptural work, almost to use it up really. When this ran its course, I started using wooden off-cuts in place of canvas. Now the objects have become as important as the painting. I put them in as part of ‘me’; it’s intensely personal."

http://www.davidcass.co.uk