Finding the special in the ordinary comes naturally to photographer, Kim Kauffman. She has found her own unique way to translate her dual passions of photography and gardening into stunning imagery that simply begs to be noticed. We are thrilled to introduce Kim's striking artistic vision to Tustin!
Kim continues the tradition of botanical discovery that blossomed in the 1600 and 1700's with artistic documentation of horticultural treasures found by European travelers. Her photographic series,
Florilegium, pays homage to those explorers and travelers with its name, meaning "a gathering of flowers." These images evolved along with her growth as a curious artist and an avid gardener. Kim is drawn to her garden for the lessons nature affords if one simply slows down and looks. Flowers, leaves, seed pods and other objects collected from the environment provide her with the building blocks of her cameraless and filmless photographs.
How can a photograph be both cameraless and filmless, you might wonder? Kim has developed a special technique that utilizes both a flatbed scanner and digital process that she's been working with since the late 1990's. You might be surprised to consider that cameraless photographic techniques have been around since the birth of photography! Kim has taken inspiration from techniques of the 1830's and 40's developed by William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins. Anna is considered by some to be the world's first female photographer.
Images from the
Florilegium series are composed of multiple layers that present a specimen straight from Kim's imagination. New environments emerge from these layers over time, much like a garden that is continually renewing itself. Each building block of the final image is carefully considered for its texture, color and pattern, and assembled into a photo collage that invites us to appraise with the eyes of a gardener and wonder with the eyes of an explorer.
Come in and discover these beautiful photographs for yourself, or preview on our
website!
#CameralessPhotography #FilmlessPhotography #AnnaAtkins #WilliamHenryFoxTalbot #Botanical
You know I’m busy at work when instead of going through art samples with my morning coffee, they pile up on my desk. Today, I finally took lunch to sort through a few. Check out some exciting new finds that came in lately!
Casey Uhelski / For pet lovers (like me!), this SCAD grad has mastered the expressions of adorable dogs, cats and bunnies.
Victoria Jamieson / Victoria’s anthropomorphic characters have landed her a two-book gig with Dial (part of the Penguin family) in 2012/2013. In the meantime, I think her revisiting of Ramona Quimby is spot-on.
David C. Gardiner / This image might suggest that David and I are cut from the same cloth, stylistically, but his Flying Dog Studio also produces everything from fairly realistic older characters to animations.
Caitlin B. Alexander / This Austin-based illustrator’s folksy-yet-modern style looks mostly editorial, for now… but wouldn’t it make a charming children’s book?
Veronica Chen / I was intrigued by her intricate black-and-white patternwork, but her color piece Chameleon City just begs for a story to be told.
Jillian Nickell / This quirky, vintage-inspired vignette was fascinating enough to lead me to her website, where there’s a great series of pieces based on The Borrowers, and more. I can picture her style being perfect in the right book for older readers!
Filed under:
from the slush pile,
illustration sensations Tagged:
illustration,
new artists,
postcards,
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May means graduation time, and New York City is filled with student exhibitions and senior work on display for the world to hire. So for the next few weeks, I’ll be snooping several art schools’ openings for new and inspiring illustrators, and bringing the best of the best right here to the blog.
I started with the School of Visual Arts’ MFA Thesis exhibition last night! I’d highly recommend trekking to Chelsea for both design and illustration. Details below:
Visual Arts Gallery / 601 W 26th Street, 15th floor
April 29-May 14, 2011 / Mon-Sat, 10 am – 6 pm
All the student work was of exceptional quality (they ARE MFAs, after all), but here were my Top 5:
1. Hye Su / Looking at Hye Su’s body of work is like stepping into a completely different universe. Her mastery of a range of mediums (from embroidery, to zines/books, to 3-dimensional objects) remain entirely consistent – everything is shown through her very unique lens. I couldn’t get enough of her wild and wonderful characters!
2. Lisa Anchin / Of anyone else at the show, it was Lisa who was made for children’s books. I was impressed how prolific and professional her work was – at least 4 or 5 book dummies ready to go, and full of adorable characters and dynamic compositions to boot. Lucky for me, guess which Penguin imprint she’ll be interning at this summer? That’s right… we’re very excited to have her!
3. Philip Cheaney / How excited was I to see someone who created a fully-formed eBook app?! I was really impressed with (read: jealous of) its smooth, polished look on the i
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – just like Ian Falconer’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris.
Phew, what an exciting week we had on the blog for the 1st annual Illustration Week! To be honest, when I first put out the idea, I completely underestimated what an amazing response I’d receive from my talented fellow illustrators, and what a positive reception the entire idea would get on the internet. Thanks to everyone for tuning in!
I’d like to thank everyone who got the word out last week about our New Artist Showcase, starting with kids-lit blog gurus Betsy Bird at School Library Journal’s Fuse #8 blog, and Jules over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for their fantastic write-ups! Also a big thanks to featured artists Chris Harrington, Heather Sisson, and Daniel K. Harlow for the nice words on their own blogs.
I also can’t forget to mention that numerous people gave this blog event a shout-out on Twitter… so if you have Twitter, go on over and follow them, please! Thanks to my publisher Nancy Paulsen @nancyrosep, advisor for emerging illustrators Jon Woodward of Zero2Illo @jonwoodward, top-notch illustration blog A Journey Round My Skull @roundmyskull, starchitect/roommate Adrielle Emilia @adrielleemilia, alma mater Pratt Career Services @PrattCareer, too-hilarious writer/blogger/badger Merit Badger @meritblog, and one of the best children’s book news bloggers in the biz, Travis at 100 Scope Notes @100scopenotes.
Did I miss anyone . . .? Let me know!
While I don’t think I could ever keep up with posting daily, I will continue to feature up-and-coming illustrators. I personally learned a lot from the artists who were interviewed, and I can’t wait to expand it more. So if you are/know someone who would be great for the New Artist Showcase, do let me know!
In the meantime, here’s a round-up of all the artists of this week (in case you missed any), and don’t forget to check out today’s finale illustrator, Chris Harrington!
Danny Quirk: website / blog
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This is a post in a series of interviews featuring up-and-coming illustrators, in a celebration of the first annual Illustration Week. Enjoy!
Danny Quirk
Website: http://www.behance.net/dannyquirk
Blog: http://danquirk.blogspot.com
Your work is incredibly realistic. What is your process of completing a painting?
Everything is a staged photograph, collaged/comped in Photoshop, and that finished ‘comp’ is my sketch. From there, if I have time I’ll draw it out, or else graphite transfer the image onto paper. From there, just start painting away. ha. For the Marines series, bought uniforms/guns/props (all current to date/location) and used that as reference. If there’s one thing I can’t stress more ESP for realistic artists, it’s DO YOUR RESEARCH/ HAVE SOLID REFERENCE.
It just makes a world of difference in the final.
The anatomical ones are actually lots of fun to do. Generally speaking will ‘dissect’ a region of the body and photograph it. How I go about this is I’ll draw the anatomy ON the body, exactly where it would fall under the skin in permanent marker. From there, paint flesh tone latex over the anatomy, and have the subject cut it/peel it open, so when photographed, there will be the exposed anatomy in slight perspective as it would move with the body.
What gallery shows has your work been in lately? How did you pursue those opportunities?
They started off a lot with restaurant gallery places, and kind of worked their way up from there, a really awesome place everyone should check out is G2 Ave A, it’s free to show in, and the artist keeps 100% of the sales (shown there 3 times so far). From there showed in the 320 studios, and then did a showing of the military pieces in the 69th Fighting Regiment’s Armory. There were others in-between, but I won’t bore y’all with that. haha. But one MAJOR thing learned from these is network your asses off. Go to shows, be proud of your work, and talk to people, form alliances with those who are similarly different to you. It’s easy for galleries to turn down 1 artist at a time, but the more you have coming in, with strong work of similar themes/different styles (or vice versa) they’re less apt to turn you down, giving yourself another opportunity to be seen, and fact of the matter is, you just never know who could come through and see it.
How did you get into drawing Celtic knotwork?
Haha, it’s kind of embarrassing, but I was always fascinated by it, but never knew how to do it… My freshman year at Pratt, there was this girl I was totally head over hee
Whoa. I love Jillian Nickell’s illustration there. So cool!