It’s hard remembering people’s names, unless I associate them with another person who has the same name. I may be familiar with, and know many details about, a person before I am able to remember their name, but faces I remember immediately. To name an inanimate object such as a painting, I want it to give the impression it will move of its own volition, or respond to a question if asked. To put a name to a thing is a big commitment. They don’t always stick and sometimes have to be changed. I named these paintings like naming storms. In the past, I have chosen names for things based on people from my life, characters from books or TV shows, but sometimes I just choose them for the way they sound. These visceral paintings are obviously made of paint, but they have an uncanny resemblance to miniature embodiments of nature’s extreme weather events. http://www.laurenywatrous.com

My work is strongly feminist, examining and highlighting undercurrents of misogyny in our culture. Humour, toys and iconography are used to examine, ridicule, and expose how concepts of ‘other’ have been used to pigeonhole and isolate over the centuries. I use sex store vaginas as media, which in itself is a discussion on the reductionist tendencies of our culture. http://www.kotzig.com

I find that my artwork is a definite extension of my inner feelings about a lot of things. It represents how I view events and people that are circulating around me, things that I see that are ridiculous or inane, social trends and societal warped values, getting older, media hyperbole, and a whole host of other things irking or wonderful. So, when I look at the body of work that I’ve produced thus far, I see a mix of satirical pieces, pieces of individuals not communicating with each other, or other scenes of solitude or beauty. It’s schizoid, but it represents the feelings of this artist.  I like the satirical pieces the best because it gets out the inner feelings I have in a humorous or whimsical way. The scenes are sometimes bizarre, but (I hope) that viewers will appreciate the humor and the message. I believe that there should be no phoniness in my art. It would be nice for everyone to like my works but that’s not going to happen. So, if an individual does not happen to like my work that’s okay. It’s expected. I have a great time producing the work. http://alanrichardsart.com

My most recent series of paintings consists of large scale watercolors depicting various wreath-like arrangements made of bacon. Most of them are symmetrical and somewhat reminiscent of the Rorschach ink blot test. I enjoy combining the formal elegance of design with the recognizable banality of bacon, along with the surreal and absurd accompaniment of other decorative elements such as flowers, butterflies, and fruits. The arrangements are playful and whimsical in a rococo fashion but also grotesque. In my not-so-still still-lifes, I am hoping to draw subtle parallels between the decadence and frivolity evident in certain historical genres and our contemporary culture. My works employ the conventions of the historical still-life genre in relation to contemporary consumer culture in America. My use of meat, dolls, toys, and corporate icons bridges notions of kitsch and high art by alluding to the theme of Vanitas in seventeenth-century Dutch still-life paintings. http://monikamalewska.com/

I am a visual artist working between the boundaries of collage and mixed-media. Hybridity is an important distinction of these two genres. In the cross pollination of assembling from different images, the processes of appropriation and manipulation present hybridity as radical change, questioning the traditional realm of aesthetics. This radical hybrid functioning of mixed-media and collage is conducive to the contemporary situation; we are all hybrid peoples dwelling in hybrid spaces, studying hybrid disciplines, utilizing hybrid technologies to make hybrid objects. Appropriately, collage and mixed-media question the historical narrative of hybridity. Subverting a straightforward logic of representation, collage and mixed-media contain the possibility of enunciating a certain idea -that history is not one rational narrative, but a dispersal of many chaotic and contingent narratives. Related to this notion of subversion, the artist utilizing collage and mixed-media says “there is something irrational at the heart of my society.” http://www.nicholasballesteros.com

The Nude at Home. I use the extreme wide angle distortions of the round oatmeal box pinhole camera and the digital colorization to create a series of visceral images. Through successive pulling of curves in Photoshop, B&W values are replaced with color. The “Nude at Home” is a subset of a larger pinhole camera project begun in 1998. In this series, begun about three years ago, I photograph the model nude in her home, apartment or studio. With the model in her space, all the objects in the image are a part of the life of the model. Then the pose, the furniture and the long, two minute exposures reveal an intimate portrait of the subject. http://www.danmccormack.net

My art lives and breathes in technology. I use computers, 3D animation, motion capture, TV’s, cassette tapes, installation, and speakers to explore failure, stupidity, improvisation, and the infinity that exists between zero and one. My artistic practice is rooted in the traditions minimalist music, video art, noise, sampling, free jazz, and techno music. I am not limited in the way I present my work nor do I favor one mode of artistic display.
My work often begins as an absurd or ridiculous thought, like the giant beeping cube. In that seemingly useless idea I am able to establish a new way of viewing how we interact with technology. In my ongoing project, The Mouth Breathers, I created a group of blank, 3D replicas of humans who imitate our use of technology. This project explores the role of failure and stupidity in a technological world that focuses on innovation and success. The Mouth Breathers are animated through the use of motion capture and are presented in stark displays of technology. They play with their iPhones, watch movies on VHS, friend you on Facebook, and dance to minimal techno. The Mouth Breathers show themselves as the perfect failure in technology and reveal the stupidity of those who view them. I am endlessly fascinated by our continuing struggle to relate to the technology that we have created. http://ryanwurst.com