Tori Gutierrez

At first look, it appears to be a river forming into a waterfall. But what you're actually seeing is an amazing sidewalk chalk art piece. Edgar Mueller is the world-famous street painter behind this, titled "The Riverstreet River." It's nearly 1000 square feet; almost an entire city block! This really stood out to me because of how realistic it is, and I always love seeing child's artist tools used to create a master piece. This is just flowing with creativity, pun intended.

Tori Gutierrez

This is a piece by Andrew Mar, a digital artist in San Francisco. I really like this piece because it reminds me of an epic end to an action love story. The man clutches his lover in a last embrace before imminent destruction by a terrifying monster that rises from the sea. It represents to me the last moments of bliss before something awful happens, like kissing before getting eaten by a giant ocean monster. The entire world is collapsing around you, but all that matters is the person standing in front of you.

BEN BAILEY (Wow, the art blog actually let me log in this time.)
Banksy

Banksy is a renowned graffiti artist who lives in Brittain. There is no other name for him but "Banksy". This is because his work is by law, illegal. However, the people of Brittain appreciate his pieces. His works are mainly characterized by their elements of rebellion, and revolt against violence. Many of his graffiti works are seemingly violent at first look, but actually invoke peace. Banksy also uses already existant objects like drains or signs, and adds onto them with spray paint to make a unique picture. This artist inspires me because he uses his creativity to spread his beliefs. 

BEN BAILEY
Charlie Russel
Wow, the art blog actually let me log in this time...

The first artist I've chosen is Charlie Russel. Russel creates Wild Western paintings. These paintings really appeal to me because it is a blend of peace and primitivity. This particular piece, "The Wagon Boss", is as stunning as it is because of the background. The view seems to stretch out into the horizon forever, and impels a sense of serenity. 

Catherine Lewanski - Aardman Animations

Who hasn't heard of Wallace and Gromit? The geniuses behind the award-winning animations, as well as numerous others, started in 1972. Peter Lord and David Sproxton began their animating partnership in school, and soon registered the name of Aardman Animations. After graduaing in 1976, they created Morph for the children's program "Take Hart".

However, both Peter and David were both interested in developing animation to appeal to adult as well as child audiences. With their Conversation Pieces and Early Bird, they demonstrated the ability to show insight, humor and sensitivity with clamation people.

Nick Park joined Aardman full time in 1985, discovered by Peter and David when he was working on his student film A Grand Day Out.

Since, they have continued to create intriguing movies, shorts, and TV shows with the stylistic banana-mouthed clay figurines.

Link to website:
http://www.aardman.com/

This is pretty amazing to me. At first I thought they were bones but then I realized it was wolves. Then I realized that it goes all the way to the door, and then into an arch into the room. That must've taken a lot of work and effort. It kind of reminds me of a war, except with wolves. Haha. Its interesting and I admire that it makes you look at it and think about it.

Mark English by Chris Laskowski

Mark English was an illustration artist who art caught my eye, and i thought it was very interesting. His art is very good at describing what moment it is in without using any words to help explain because it has great detail. At the start of English's life he was a cotton picker on a farm getting paid 1.50$ a day, he was able to escape this life through teaching himself how to paint, and later he got drafted into the army, after his time there he became well known for his illustration paintings.

Underwater Sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor by Chris Laskowski

Taylor is more than an artist he is a conservationist, underwater photographer, and an scuba diver instructor, and with all of these other skills he makes his underwater sculptors. His installations are more that just art because over time they develop to an artificial coral reef which encourages the growth of marine life in that habitat. Most of Taylors works are in the form of a human in the ocean, and at the moment he is working on making the worlds largest under water sculpture museum off of the coast of Cancun.

Tunnel

This is a really interesting installation to me because when you first see it, in the first picture you think its in a gallery or something, but then by the second picture you see that its in a neighborhood. They used old ready to be demolished houses and built into a huge tunnel through this home. The message I got from it, not knowing it was made from old homes was just a black hole. After knowing it was made from old homes going into a house, I got the message that when you lose your home, your life goes into a "black hole", and its a bad time for everyone.

Catherine Lewanski - Starkid

What do you get with a bunch of college kids in The University of Michigan's School of Music, Theater, and Dance? Totally Awesome musicals, that's what!

In the April of 2009, on a budget less than $150, the students of Starkid created an original script and score for the you-tube hit A Very Potter Musical. Ever since, their work has become more and more detailed in their sets and scores, as well as becoming funnier and funnier in their artfully done parodies of genres in pieces such as Starship, and of particular popular icons, as in A Very Potter Musical, A Very Potter Sequel, and the recent Holy Musical B@man!

Link to their musicals provided. Go watch. Their hysterical:

http://www.teamstarkid.com/shows.html

Sam Calvert- Spray Paint Artist

Sam Calvert

Sam Clavert is a local Spray Paint artist that mainly makes stunning landscape pictures of mountains, water, and planets in the background using innovative techniques to make these landscapes. He can usually be found near the center of the city near the Torch of Friendship (the big red structure down town). He makes amazing pictures each day he can and sells them for about $6 each.

-Collins

Peter Saul by Sean Pierce

Peter Saul was an pop art artists that used his very weird and crazy painting to express a deeper meaning in something. His painting where known to be provocative and use popular cartoon reference in a surreal ways.

George Segal by Sean Pierce

George Segal is an artist that made painting and sculptures. He wasn't that well known for paintings but for his sculptures, which usually took life like shape and life six,

OK Go by Anastazia

Ok Go is an alternative rock band from Chicago. While their music is catchy, they are probably most known for their music videos that are famous for being done completely in one take. The most famous and complicated is the video for "This too shall pass". They wanted to create a machine that they could sing and dance with so they created a Rube Goldberg machine that takes up the space of a two story warehouse. They wanted to make it seem like junk so they used over 700 household items.The music video is really impressive and they definitely show their personalities through their work, which is both entertaining and mind boggling.

Watch the video!

Crash by Anastazia

Crash (John Matos) is a graffiti artist in New York city. At 13 he starts spray painting the trains with full images rather than just tagging them. He is often called a pioneer of the Graffiti art movement. His work establishes "a visual link between street life and established society". He later moved to canvas but retained his graffiti roots. In the 1980s he had exhibits all over the world. Later in the nineties he did a series of painted guitars, the most famous were they ones for Eric Clapton that he used on his 2001 tour. As the time continues on he has continued to stay relevant to the pop culture around him. He does pop art in every decades' time.

Tiki & Skull Gallery

Rain

Eric Clapton and his guitar by Clash

Lee Krasner by Jarrod Ponce
Lee Krasner was an american painter born in october 1908. She was an abstract painter known to cut apart her own works to make collages reducing the amount of her works that were preserved. Her work features bright colors combined in interesting combinations of shapes. This is one of her works

Jackson Pollock by Jarrod Ponce

Jackson Pollock was an american painter most famous for his method of drip painting in which he would secure a canvas to the floor and sling paint all over it using everything from sticks to knives except paint brushes. He painted without concern to the size of the canvas being known to cut of parts of the canvas to fit the painitng. He helped ussher in a new style of painting with his uniqe methods.
This piece of his is called Cathedral

HA Schult- Hannah Musser

HA Schult was born on June 24, 1939 in Parchim, Mecklenbur (Germany). He is an awesome artist and takes any garbage like tin cans or computers stuff. He creates these installation pieces and performance pieces that centers around these heaps of trash at first glance, but when light is cast upon them there shadows create human figures. Being able to take garbage and make it into such an innovative and interesting pieces to me is the essence of art.

Dusty Mitchell- Hannah Musser

Dusty Mitchell was a contestant on the show Work of Art- The Next Greatest Artist. Dusty earned a BFA in sculpture and a degree in Art Education from Arkansas State University in 2001. He is an art teacher at an elementary public school and teachers some university classes in the evening. HE mainly focuses on crafty and innovative pieces. He inspired me to do my Stop Kony project made out of candy. He did a portrait of a little girl from candy during his time on the show. Dusty was one of my favorite contestants because he didnt use common art tools, he used different non conventional mediums.

Stan Lee by Tristan Monsisvais

Stan Lee is a comic book writer who basically founded the Marvel universe. Writing and drawing comics such as the Amazing Spider Man and Thor, he originally started drawing small cartoons while serving in WWII in Europe.

M. C. Escher by Tristan Monsisvais

M.C. Escher is one of the most important and studied artists in art history. Specializing in mind-bending mathematically inspired woodsprints and lithographs, his work explores topics like infinity, parallelism, and architecture. His most famous work, "Relativity," shows a world that does not have gravity, and is an incredibly famous work.

Chris Kutcha - Brandi Berger

Chris Kutcha is not very known, but some of his art pieces include themes that we had in our horror installation piece this quarter. Some of his portraits include Michael Myers, Freddy Kreuger, and Jason, all of which we used in our art piece at school. Chris opened the Kuchta Academy of Fine Art and Illustration in 2004 and has been teaching Academic Drawing and Painting as well as Digital Art and Graphic Design.
Here is a link to his website:
http://www.horrorartist.com/horror-art/

Unkown Street Artist by Aline Blasizzo

This unknown artist performs on the streets, painting on glass. But not get his work confused with stained glass painting. Instead what this man does is he takes a hand sized piece of glass and rapidly uses uses his fingers, covered in paint, to dab and smear the glass. Thus creating beautiful landscapes out of finger painting. 

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

Andy Warhol - Brandi Berger

Andy Warhol's (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) contributions to the pop art world are unfathomable. This Campbell's soup can is one of his most famous and recognized pieces. I chose Andy and this piece because it is was I modeled my pop art project after. I made the word YOLO out of fast food labels, bags, and other items, similar to the label of this soup can. Warhol's impact is recognized and shown by the fact that he has the largest museum dedicated to a single artist dedicated to him in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Tim Fort

Timothy L. Fort is an artist in the kinetic field. He specializes in making a reactive structure out of tounge depressors and or popsicle sticks, dubbed "stick bombs" He scored 13th in America's Got talent for his stick bombs, one of which was faulty. On October 18th, 2011 he set the world record for detonating a 6,818 stick bomb.  Earlier he was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for a 2009 achievement of 2,250 stick bomb detonation. He has since been making tutorial videos for this very art form. He also wrote a "history' of stick bombs on his website, lunatim.com.

Alexandre Deschaumes by Aline Blasizzo

Alexander Deschaumes is a professional professional photographer who resides in France. I really enjoy this man's work because he takes pictures of breath-taking landscapes and adds dashes of color to the picture. This method makes these normal (yet still beautiful) pictures into realistic pieces of abstract and surreal art. (Yes, I did mean that contradiction to be in there).

http://www.alexandredeschaumes.com/

Frida Kahlo: by Daniel Martinez

Frida Kahlo is a mexican painter born in 1907. She began art early on in her life, which was largely uneventful up until a car crash at age 14. She suffered from many crippling health deficiencies, which left he bedridden for the next few years until age 19-20. During that time she painted many self portraits of herself. She depicted herself as she saw herself throughout her life and how she interpreted these events. At age 22 she married Diego Rivera, another famous mexican painter, who was 20 years older than her. She had a very up and down relationship with Rivera, leading to their ultimate separation. She made 200 paintings during her life, the subject usually being herself. Her portraits were later made world famous and are still recognized today.

Bert Monroy - jordan gross

all the work that Bert Monroy does is created on adobe illustrator and photoshop, his work involves no scanning. this guy is really creative and brings in alot of color and lines into his work that really stand out to me, his piece of work that i really like the most is called roman chill, http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/roman.html
             jordan

joshua hagler - jordan gross

i found this artist, Joshua Hagler, i really enjoy a lot of his work and the way he brings his piece's together is just very inspirational to me. my favorite piece of art that he has is his three-dimensional piece, the way it comes out of the wall is amazing. http://www.joshuahagler.com/index2.php?v=v1
                         -jordan

Tony Moore By: Lindsay Mechtel

Tony Moore is the artist that draws The Walking Dead comic books. His art is mostly in the horror and the science fiction genre.

Alex Pardee by Lindsay Mechtel

Alex Pardee is one of my favorite artists. I really appreciate how he has that twisted look to his art work. He is really known for doing the album art work for The Used.

Scott Wade by Jacob Sorgi

Scott Wade is a very nontraditional artist that literally uses dirty cars as his canvas. Post people will see a really dirty car and write "wash me" with their finger in the dirt. Scott Wade has taken that to a new level by creating great works of art in dirty cars. Scott Wade draws on cars better than most people draw on paper, which i think is pretty awesome.

Dalton Ghetti by Jacob Sorgi

Dalton Ghetti was originally a carpenter who has started an awesome miniature art collection. His art consists of sculpting pencils into different shapes, and more specifically the pencil led. I thought it was pretty amazing how he can make such a cool looking sculpture with something so small like the tip of a pencil. 

Alex Ross by Benjamin Pico

Alex Ross is an American comic book artist who changed comic book art forever. What he did was give realistic depictions of comic book heroes. His attention to detail and realism draws the attention of even non comic book fans. His method is too unique. He starts by taking a photograph of a person dressed up as a hero and posing in the way he wants. He then makes it into a realistic depiction of the comic book character. His style of art is used in many story titles and he brings a real, unworldly sense to comic books.

Ginger LaVoie by Benjamin Pico

Originally from Central Florida, Ginger moved to the Hawaiian island of Molokai and took up the art of Hawaiian quilt making. Quilt making has always been part of the Hawaiian culture and the methods and techniques are unique to Hawaii because it is a combination of techniques from the different peoples of Japan and other island countries. These quilts are both intricate and beautiful and can range from all different styles and complexities. The history behind it is that during the overthrowing of the Hawaiian monarchy, traitors trapped the princess in her room for months where she created an intricate and detailed quilting. Ginger is know for recreating master quilting patterns and creating some herself. Her spirituality is the most important to her and uses her Christian values as the root of her work.

David Mach is one unique artist. He mainly does installation art. He uses all kind of supplies like coat hangers, magazines, and match sticks. Personally i enjoy when he uses the coathangers because they arnt just little sculptures they are giant. The Coathangers add an effect that makes the art look tottaly unreal yet real.Like die harder, it looks real but has a crazy effect. That piece has to be my favorite of his. He also does animals that look pretty epic.

By Joe Knotts

Die harder

Sliver King

I picked Nathan Sawaya. He does all of his art out of legos. Its mostly 3-D and looks awesome. He reminds me of me because building art out of legos shows a kid side and he isnt afraid to show that which makes me like his work even more. When i was little i always played and made things with lego but not the extreme of what he does. My favorite piece from him is Heartfelt. It really depicts a man giving his heart and opening his chest to show you his heart.It reminds of someone who woiuld rip out his own heart for someone. But He does alot of other models that will blow your mind. I never knew one can do so much. It just shows the creative side that everyone has to them


By Joe Knotts

think

Adam Niklewicz by Mary Glatt

Adam Niklewicz emigrated to the United States in 1983 to escape from Polish martial law. He currently lives in Connecticut, where he lectures at Central Connecticut State University. Niklewicz's art focusses on a sense of nostalgia for his homeland, but also brings to light the absurdity of that nostalgia. He likes to take ordinary items, such as a bowl of soup or a pair of earplugs, and turn them into art pieces bursting with meaning. However, all of the meaning in his work depends on how much the viewer wants to read into it. Each piece can be either an interesting display or a heartfelt expression of emotion and symbolism.

http://www.adamniklewicz.com/works

Holton Rower by Mary Glatt

Holton Rower was born in 1962 in New York City, where he grew up. He currently lives in Brooklyn Heights, and works in a studio located in Lower Manhattan. He is most well-known for his "pour paintings." These are exactly what they sound like. The mind-blowing three-dimensional images are created by pouring layers of paint at carefully timed intervals onto differently sized wood blocks and allowing gravity to shape the paint.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/13246/holton-rower-pour.html

Jannick Deslauriers by Mary Glatt

Jannick Deslauriers was born in Quebec in 1983. She currently lives in Montreal, where she teaches visual arts at Marie-Victorin College. Deslauriers uses sheer fabric and thread to create large, deeply symbolic pieces that serve to help express the conflicts found in our human condition.

http://www.emptykingdom.com/main/featured/jannick-deslauriers/

The New Level of Recycling Kate Jurek

For the last few years, green has become the new black. Many people have made crafts in order to reuse trash. But Cliff Maynard takes this idea to the next level by using used the remains of used blunts and joints to make striking mosaics of famous or influential people in history. Gathering these otherwise useless bits of paper, Maynard creates facial tones and shading with the many different shade of brown rolls that he has found. Each portrait usually takes 20 to 50 hours to complete. He has been published in many magazines and participated in art festivals.

This is official website: http://www.chronic-art.com

Barbara Nechis Watercolor Artist By Sym

Nechis work is mostly nature, she likes to water color nature because it brings out color, and because she can capture the feelings and color that photography can not catch. She has developed a style known for its masterful balance of spontaneity and control of the watercolor brush.

Painting with Sand Kate Jurek

While most would use a brush, paint, and a canvas to make flowing lines that later form recognizable shapes and people Kseniya Simonova brings new perspective with her sand paintings. This famous Ukrainian artist uses sand and her fingers to create detailed faces, hands, and landscapes that flash across a lit table. Her art is not still, rather it flashes across the table as she skillfully moves her fingers to transform one image to the next, narating a story never told quite the same way. She was awarded $110,000 in the popular show Ukraine's Got Talent in 2009. Since then, she has been honored by many political figures including the Supreme Council of Crimea and the mayor of her own town. But most importantly she has honored the world with her inspirational talent and love of history.

Her winning performance on Ukraine's Got Talent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

Barbara Nechis Watercolor Artist By Sym

Barbara's art is something she does that photography can not take. The essence of nature comes out with  every brush stroke she makes each showing feeling. I like her art because of the many colors she has in her nature pictures and the different tones in the art, it gives it a 3D look at the picture.

Simon Tofield by Catherine Lewanski

If you have spent any amount of time surfing the internet, chances are you have come across a histerical series of short films called "Simon's Cat". These quaint anecdotes of the mischief cats somehow seem to get themselves into started a craze quite by accident. The first film (avaliable for viewing below), titled "Cat Man Do" was "...just a personal film I made while trying to teach myself Flash...it was never meant to be seen by other people. But I put it on my animation showreel, and next thiing I knew, someone had taken the video without asking me and put it on YouTube. By the time I found out, Cat Man do had been viewed millions of times." (from an interview, found on http://lovemeow.com/2009/12/special-interview-with-simons-cat-simon-tofield/)

Now a full out career, Simon Tofield has created a small army of these films and has published several books with more of the nameless cat's various adventures. His website can be found at http://www.simonscat.com/

Now for the film. It'll be just this one this time, I promise:

Cris Ortega by Catherine Lewanski

One artist I greatly admire I found during another, very similar art project for an online digital arts class. Cris Ortega, born in Valladolid, Spain, is a published comic book author, whose ditigal art pieces are entrancing to look at with their almost blurry dreamlike quality to them.

She began her writing/drawing career at 19, when she drew a comic for one of the short stories she had written. Realizing this was the profession she wanted (not the aeronautics or astronomy career she had been persuing at the time) she began seriously working on her art.

Cris Ortega has had a wide variety of experience, ranging from graphic design to advertising to game figure design to comics and even photography. But her strong suit will always remain her digital pictures, two examples of which are provided below.

Gate of Destinies

Ice Maiden

Ex Machina

Lady of the Rhine

Queen of Shame

Till death do us part

Wheel of Time

Oops. That's a lot more than two. Sorry. Got carried away. And in case anyone is interested, the first work I found while doing the aforementioned project was the one at the bottom of the list, titled "Wheel of Time".

If you are interested in seeing more of her artwork, her website is: http://crisortega.com/index.html . I highly recomend it.