The "Wei wu wei weird and wonderful" world of Brett Douglas Hunter is a folk art extravaganza. There are bizarre woodcut characters, enormous snakes, hand crafted ritual masks and eyes. Lots and lots of eyes.
He recently opened a sculpture show named Aminals that features some enormous versions of his characters. If you're lucky enough to be around the Elephant Gallery in Nashville, go see it. Otherwise, steer your browsers to his Instagram, his portfolio and directly to this image, aka your new favorite thing.
Thanks to a random post from my local record store, I went down a rabbit hole investigating the artwork of Manchester band The Chameleons. The music is worth a listen but the first few records, designed by Reg Smithies, are particularly on point with their psychedelic weirdness. Some of it feels like a kid's vision of an acid trip from the 70's but who's to say that's a bad aesthetic?
I caught the work of Nicole Irene over on her Instagram (which has an excellent stream of images) but I've really been enjoying her official portfolio site; a rarity these days given how much additional work it takes to update a website versus a social feed. It's organized into different categorical buckets focusing on Nashville, Music, Friends and Places - each with a slew of perfectly captured slice-of-life images. I pulled a handful out for this posting but it's not even the tip of the iceberg.
Spent a good bit of time playing Glitchskier, a generative top-down shooter that embraces that early 80's hacker teletype aesthetic mixed with glitched out code anamolies. It's like flying a Asteroids style ship through a hex editor. The music is a bit more modern but fits the entropy vibe quite well. It's always hard to commit to spending a few dollars on a game you've never played but this one is worth it for the distractions provided.
Nashville artist Hans Schmitt-Matzen has an eclectic body of work. I stare, somewhat perplexed, at his Neon creations and slack-jawed at his oil paintings. It's great to see an artist exploring all kinds of different mediums and succeeding at them. Long story short, it's an excellent variety.
Enormous thanks to everyone that came out on Friday night to see the big show. It was very well attended and we were able to raise $2k for TN Equality Project. Not too shabby!
Please steer yourself over here to see a handful of the wonderful photos that Miles Price took during the course of the night.
If you aren't familiar with the bands on the roster, now's a great time to get familiar.
Lots of great interviews to hear on the Design Matters with Debbie Millman podcast but I rather enjoyed this latest episode with Anil Dash. His history is interesting but his straightforward take on the influence that tech has on the world around us and our need for some ethic wrangling within that space is captivating. Maybe you already feel that way and agree but it's nice to hear it put some simply and eloquently. Definitely one to hear.
I've posted about the collaborative Speaking in Tongues album cover between Talking Heads and Robert Rauschenberg,previously but this Artsy feature does a nice job of providing even more insight into the undertaking. I think I could read about - and stare at - the project for days.
Fortunately, David Bryne recently posted a long piece about Rauschenberg and how he came to be Rauschenberg. A quality read.
