Got Wood?

It may or may not be a well known fact that I like wood.  A quick stroll through the house will reveal wood-grain patterned towels, faux bois (“fake wood”) sheets, and several rolls of wood patterned contact paper with which I hope to someday cover my ugly metal filing cabinets (one of those “someday” projects that never seems to happen).  So when we decided to do a series of print editions for my recent show at Varnish Fine Art, did we print them on mere paper?  NO WE DID NOT!

“Behold My Heart”. print on wood, 15 x 11 inches

We found a fabulous company that figured out how to print them directly onto wood, allowing a hint of the beautiful wood grain to peep through.  (Which is perfect in more ways than one since I do all my paintings on wood panels.)  There are different sizes and prices, from stocking stuffers

“Lucky 7″ & “Bitten”, prints on wood, 5 x 7 inches (each)

to “Oh honey you shouldn’t have (but I’m so glad you did!)”.

“Song of Birth (The Three Magi)”, print on wood, 18 x 24 inches

These are all signed and numbered, a very limited edition of 50 each.

“Besame Mucho”, print on wood, 8 x 10 inches

And if you order right now, you can still probably get them in your hot little hands in time for Christmas.  (Otherwise I think they’d make a smashing Chinese New Year present.)

“Golden Silence”, print on wood, 17 x 11 inches

The fab guys that make these prints run a solar powered shop, use FSC sustainably harvested birch, and for every purchase they donate a dollar to the Plant a Billion Trees charity.

“The Birth of Ginger”, print on wood, 16 x 20 inches

What are you waiting for?  Click right here to see ‘em all and snatch something up for yourself.

“Gone Native”, prints on wood, 10 x 8 inches (each)

This pair is sold separately or as a set, and you get to write their story in your mind — are they arriving at the tiny island in the background or escaping? Are they coming together or pulling apart? Is the storm brewing or passing?

“The Honey Dripper”, print on wood, 14 x 11 inches

What if the moment when Baby Bear and Goldilocks first saw each other, that instant when he cast his big brown bear eyes on her as she slept in his bed, was a “love at first sight” moment?  Maybe she would have stayed in the woods…

“Sew Much Love”, print on wood, 14 x 11 inches

And if things had gone a little differently for the Bride of Frankenstein and her Monster, perhaps they’d have decided to expand their family the best way they knew how.

Other goodies are also available at the Varnish Emporium, including Jennybird Alcantara’s new catalog “Creatures of Saintly Disguise”, prints by Jennybird, Mike Davis, and Attaboy, the Hi-Fructose Collector’s Edition boxed set, and gorgeous art books by and about all your fave artists.  One stop holiday shopping for everyone who’s been naughty or nice!

Happy Holidaze everyone, we made it another year around the sun!

“Step Into My Parlour…”

I absolutely love peeping into other artists’ studios because I’m endlessly curious about how everyone works and what they surround themselves with, so I’ve been enjoying the Warholian’s “Artist Profile Series” for a while.  Imagine my tickled pink reaction when they came to my studio!

A sliver of my Catwoman/Batman collection...

About one third of my brush hoard...

And a shelf holding loads of film soundtracks and "The Avengers Complete Emma Peel Megaset Collectors Edition" DVDs.

Now you can take a peep inside my art cave and listen to me ramble and laugh about what I do.  Just click this link right here.

If you’re unfamiliar with the apparently endless grooviness that is the Warholian, they provide “an in depth journey into what’s currently hot in the world of contemporary art.”  Featuring artist interviews, gallery openings, and video how-to’s, Warholian.com ladles out heaping spoonfuls of the current art scene, it’s posse, and it’s inspiring figures.  Editor in Chief Michael Cuffe cleverly puts it this way: “It’s a Warholian world. Welcome to the future.”

New Brow in the Northwest

If you’re up in the Seattle area, don’t miss this chance (several chances actually) to see the fab documentary “New Brow.”

“New Brow presents interviews from artists, galleries and collectors who initiated and gave momentum to the New American Art Movement. The revealing footage captures the makeshift studios and gallery spaces where the movement began, and the intensity and passion required to birth a new genre. The film also sheds light on non-traditional influences that are often overlooked and under appreciated. These “low brow” references encompass everything from underground comix, Kustum Kulture, graffiti and tattoo to skate and surf culture, punk art and others amidst Californian sub-cultures.”

I’m in it for a few minutes too, but don’t blink or you’ll miss me!

Check the schedule right here for showtimes and info:  “New Brow” @ the Northwest Film Forum.

New Brow

A couples weeks ago we were visiting a community garden (I was visiting; Marcos and Nico were trailing behind me as somewhat unwilling companions, one saying what I’m sure the other was also thinking:  ”This is borrrring!”).  As we rounded a long planting bed I saw a particularly brazen hoard of snails, a brawny pack of brown shells wilding all over a lovely fava bean plant.  Of course I plucked them all off and crushed them under my sneaker, because this is what anyone who has ever grown anything and found snails gobbling up the tender results of their labor does — we deal out instant snail death.  I turned around all pleased with myself, my good deed done for the day, to find Nico and Marcos standing with their jaws hanging open.  They were staring at me like I’d just dumped a nest of baby sparrows onto the dirt and ground them underfoot.  ”They’re SNAILS!” I said — because as far as I was concerned that pretty much explained everything.  But I’m not sure either of them has looked at me the same way since.

If you’re looking to see something in a new way yourself, head on over to the Roxie Theater this Saturday, June 13th at 4:30pm for the San Francisco premiere screening of “New Brow: Contemporary Underground Art.”  This fab documentary is being show as part of the San Francisco United film festival, and you can snag some tickets right here.

What’s it all about?  The populist art movement that’s been called Pop Surrealism and/or Low Brow, all the stuff that burbled up out of underground comix, punk music, hotrod street culture, Kustum culture, Street Art, Graffiti, Graphic Design, Tattoo, Surf Culture, Tiki Culture and other California sub-cultures.  The film is filled with first hand accounts from the artists, galleries and collectors who started and continue this “new american art movement.”

The film has all the usual suspects in it, including me (though I may have to go get popcorn when that part comes up because watching myself on film is 10,000 times worse than hearing my voice on the answering machine).

Into the Woodz

What other brand would Goldy buy but "Just Right"?

So a couple people have pointed out to me that I’ve neglected to post any real concrete info about my upcoming show — d’oh!  Blame it on the paint fumes, I’ve been so ding dang busy doing the paintings I forgot to crow about it a bit.

Before I digress (as is inevitable), mark your calendars, gentle readers! The big opening which is also the launch party for my book is Saturday, May 9th, at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco.

When I started working on the paintings for this show I was thinking about the Princess culture being sold to little girls – how your highest aspiration is to be rescued, married off and whisked away to a far off castle.  But what happened to the girl who didn’t hook up with a Prince, who stayed in the woods?  I wanted to explore that story so for this show I picked Goldilocks, and as I so often do I created my own version of a happier ending — that the moment when she and Baby Bear lay eyes on each other it was love at first sight.  (Goldy has definitely gone to the bears.) In my imagination the girl who stayed in the woods got to find herself after she got lost — she didn’t trade her identity in for a tiara, and she found true love (because love conquers all, even inter-species romance).

But then *I* didn’t come out of the woods either — I found myself there too.  The forest that is seen in the distant background of the earlier pieces became the setting for the rest of the paintings — I wanted to know who else lived in there.  And it turns out it’s very Woodland Fabulous, inhabited by blinged-out critters with gold dookie ropes, boomin’ boom boxes and shiny afro pics.

You’ll have to come to the show to see the whole gang, but here are a few detail shots as a sneak peek.

Details of a few of the new paintings...

These pieces continue in the vein of exploring fairy tales that I tapped into a few years ago when I started wondering what happened to Red Riding Hood (another girl who never left the woods.)  There are foggy distant blurry trees and tiny hairs and claws and lots of lush, lush color in sexy “smells so good it must be bad for you” oil paint on wood panels.

May 9^th, come and see ‘em all, pick up a copy of the brand new book and get it signed!

“Into The Woodz”

New paintings by Isabel Samaras

Opening and book launch party

Saturday, May 9^th, 7-9pm

The Shooting Gallery

839 Larkin Street

San Francisco, CA

It’s Here!

I’ve touched it.  The book.  It’s here!  Chronicle sent an advance copy and boy howdy is it purty.  (The note they tucked into it says “TA DA!”)

I can't quite believe it's real

One of my favorite features is the “dissected painting” — based on old medical books where you’d lift the paper “skin” flap to see the muscles, then lift that to see the organs, etc.  This one shows the sketch of the painting, the underpainting and the final finished piece.  (If you’re paying attention you’ll see the wolf prince was originally going to be sitting in/leaning on some kind of chair/throne which I’d originally thought would have a carved wolfy-gargoyle on it, but it kinda shifted as I was painting to be a live wolf and moved outdoors.)

In production we called this "the flappy thing".

Aaaaand the postcard book, which is just gorgeously packaged (I can compliment that part freely since I had nothing to do with it, it’s all the delicious design work of Catherine Head).

The outsides...

... and the insides!

Much much much glossy goodness all around.

“Blog?”

Still sick.  So terribly sick of being sick.  You know what “blog” sounds like to me?  It sounds like a really good descriptive word for the stuff coming out of my nose today.  ”Wow, that is some major gooey blog you got there!”  

So that would be the bad kind of blog. Here’s the good kind!  Chronicle blogged a bit about the Limited Edition version of my upcoming book, and you can read all about it right here.  You can even pre-order a copy (and save $100).

The wrap-around artwork for the LE box

A few extra tidbits of info, if anybody’s interested.  The print is being produced by Urban Digital Color, who’ve earned a reputation as one of the country’s foremost printing presses (they were one of the first companies to produce digital prints for artists and photographers).  The paper for this particular print will be super gorgeous 100% cotton rag Hahnemühle paper.  Founded in 1584, Hahnemühle is the oldest German paper mill still producing papers for traditional and digital art.  Hot diggity!  Should be maximally fabulous.  (Not that I’m biased or anything.)

You can also pre-order the de-lovely and delightful regular edition of the book right here, (and when I say “regular,” you should know it is quite keen and includes some very special things like a “lift the flap” reveal of a painting in progress among other goodies) and the accompanying postcard book stuffed with 30 full color images right here!  That’s a lot of excitement for one email.  And now I’ve got a hot date with a big pot of tea and a box of Kleenex….

Where the Hell Did You Get That Banana At?!

“On a traffic light green means go and yellow means yield, but on a banana it’s just the opposite.  Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead and red means where the hell did you get that banana at?!?” — Mitch Hedberg, R.I.P.

I meant to post this on Valentine’s Day but got taken down by some evil germs and forgot.  So slightly belatedly, here’s RED!

I love red.  People who’ve seen my house or my plants (or me most days) might also notice I’m quite fond of orange.  Oh hell I really like to indulge in color, period.  But let’s focus on red today.  (We’ve already talked about black and maybe we’ll do the whole spectrum eventually.)

Red is a wildly energizing color.  It symbolizes strong emotions like love and war:  red is Cupid and the Devil.  People who study the effects of color on we humans have shown that red is literally stimulating:  it raises your blood pressure and heart rate, it’s gets your appetites up, which is supposedly why a lot of restaurants and bordellos are red. (And as you might imagine, blue is very calming.)  This is true even for color blind people — the rods and cones in your eyes process the colors the same way, send the same signals to your brain, even if you’re only seeing shades of grey or brown.  Red is the color of emergencies (police lights and flares) and the color of sex (lipstick and “red light districts”).  You can “see red” or have a “red letter day” or “paint the town red.”

The god Thor had red hair (not in the comics where he’s inexplicably blond, but you know, in real life) and all the red animals were sacred to him:  foxes, robins and squirrels.  (Sorry Thor but squirrels are currently on my shit list because they eat all my figs. I used to hand-feed them peanuts but I’m about ready to sit out back with a shotgun like some crazy hillbilly.) Oh and get this — researchers at the University of Rochester did experiments on the way color affected how attractive men found women.  Pictures of women framed in a red border were deemed “more attractive,” and the same woman in a red dress was more likely to score higher as well.  My favorite part is where they figured out that men would spend more money on women wearing red.  (Take note, ladies.) Red didn’t change how women viewed other women, nor how the men judged the women in terms of likability and intelligence.  Does this somehow connect back to our primate days and bright red baboon butts?

A Flock of Cardinals

In medieval times there were strict clothing regulations — gorgeous pure colors of cloth were only to be worn by the rich nobility (hence the peasants and surfs were always scrabbling about in their drab brown rags).  Wearing a red cloak or coat was only an option for the wealthy or higher ups in the church — a way of broadcasting their power over life and death.

For me, there’s something really classic and gorgeous about huge folds of red fabric, whether it’s drapery or clothing.  And I really slave over those reds, layering them up with different colors and tinkering around until they’re very glowy and bright.  Which is terrific in a painting, but not so easy in the printing world.

Red bits from some of my paintings

When we got the first color proofs of the book we all noticed that the reds had a not-so-wonderful, dead-ish quality to them.  Like old luncheon meat.  It was red, but it wasn’t my red.  I think of my red as a screaming-Corvette, blood-spurting, cardinal-on-fire blazing red.  The good news is that the fab folks at Chronicle agreed that the reds in the color proofs weren’t up to snuff, so they’ve gone back to the drawing board to see what can be done.

The ever-terrific Beth Steiner explained it to me this way:  ”Basically, the red color in the transparencies is unachievable in regular four color process printing. It’s “out of gamut” meaning out of the color spectrum we can capture. So, in order to make the reds more vibrant, less dull, and closer to the originals, we are exploring using a special magenta ink.

The test sheets we currently have use a Rubine Red, which is a special ink made by IPI inks. In talking with the prepress house yesterday, they felt that they might get an even better result going a different route – printing four color process, but then adding a PMS ink “kicker” in the reds, essentially printing the book 5 color. “

So we’re messing around with that and I hope everyone enjoys oggling the blazing inks they’re working so hard on.  Fingers crossed they print really RED!

Walls

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”

I’m not sure who said that, but in my case sometimes you drop a hint about walls and see who’s paying attention and it was Jonathon K. — so now we get to see a gorgeous blood red wall of his house where he has “The Tiger’s Bride” sharing space with some really interesting images.

Jonathon's Extremely Cool Wall O' Goodies

Keep ‘em coming, folks!

Take Me Higher, Baby

I love a good assumption scene.  The glowing heavenly lights, the chubby cherubs lofting someone worthy upwards, the puffy clouds and beaming beatific faces. Most assumption paintings are of the Virgin Mary (and they’re meant to depict a “living assumption” — someone who’s super extra special gets to go straight to heaven, no more muss and fuss, without even dying).  I’m  partial to Mary Magdelene assumption paintings.  As you probably know, one of the things she’s known for was bathing Jesus’ feet with her tears so she’s often depicted crying or with red eyes.  (Fun fact:  the word “maudlin,” which means effusively or tearfully sentimental, comes from her name.)  Here’s a great one, much less static and stately than usual, with some real movement and action (and check out the creepy putti that are just flying heads.)

The Assumption of Mary Magdalene Into Heaven by Domenichino

My first TV tray painting was an assumption scene (sadly you can see in this little pic that the cherubs are straining and popping hernias — Elvis was a corpulent corpse):

The Assumption of Elvis

And today Michael Nordstrom blogged about my latest assumption scene on his Garamania blog.

Zip right on over and gaze at all things Garamon and Pygmon — the depth and breadth of stuff here is stunning and delightful.

Don't even try to read this tiny version, just go there!

This painting is currently on display in Miami as part of the Kaiju Monster Invasion show at Harold Golen gallery.