Alex Pardee

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of cutesy art, especially paintings. I feel like the art medium of splashy watercolor backdrops behind over-rendered, graffiti knock-off line art is over and done, and any issue of High Fructose can attest to that. But, I happened to break this trend in my oh so refined tastes with the art of Alex Pardee. While he subscribes to the aforementioned painting trend, his subject matter is gruesome and creepy enough to keep the eye interested. Some of his pieces, especially the ones with creepy critters riding each other, keep the viewer pleasantly uncomfortable about each seemingly innocuous image, which is more than I can say for most modern painting. That being said, while I was impressed with the scope of Pardee's monster factory, he seems to lean on making art as marketing rather than craft, but then again, even artists have to eat.

All of these works belong to Alex Pardee, and can be found with much of his other work at

http://www.eyessuckink.com/

Abelardo Morell

Photography can seem like one of those mediums that has been explored to its limit. With the dawn of digital technology and phones that can take better photos than most cameras I've ever owned, now everyone's an artist...and a critic. It's harder and harder to impress the world with that perfect composition, and if you want notoriety, it seems like every worthwhile piece has to capture that infinitely deep emotion caught only in the perfect context. The art of Abelardo Morell, a Cuban native, pleasantly turns this idea on its head. Rather than photograph the world directly, he implements the age-old process of camera-obscura into his photography. By creating a pin-hole in the wall of a room, the inverse image of the world outside is projected magically onto the wall inside. If this is confusing, check out his piece below, entitled "Light bulb," which explains the process visually. The juxtaposition of each of the outdoor landscapes with the simple room assemblies he creates are beautiful, understated, and whimsical; and they force the viewer to reevaluate the colors, shapes, and visual quality of the outside world in ways that you'd never imagine. As a side note, currently, Morell's work is on display in National Geographic magazine this month, so if you want some impromptu posters of Morell's work on the cheap, you know where to find them.

The magic of camera obscura: A small slit in the box allows the inverted image of the light bulb to filter in, projecting an image onto the back wall of the box.

All of these works belong to Abelardo Morell, and can be found with more of his work at http://www.abelardomorell.net/

Ron Mueck

Some of my favorite art is that which causes the viewer to give a double take--art whose illusion of reality nearly overwhelms the act of its creation. Ron Mueck's work is an example of such art. While Mueck began his artistic career working on scenery and lending voices to characters on an Australian children's show, he found a higher calling, producing the fantastic, hyper-realistist human forms. This alone isn't that exciting. Special effects people have been recreating the human form for decades. The factor that make's Mueck's work different is not readily aparent in photographs--but when you notice the size of the viewers present, it's jarringly obvious. Scale. Each of Mueck's figures has been exanpded to 2 or 3 times their normal size, or inversely, has been shrunken to fit in your pocket. One of the beauties of this work is that these changes in size do not come at the expense of detail, or proportion. Each figure exists alone in its own surreal world of enormity or insignificance, and each has something to say about those factors in every human being.

Ernst Haekel

If you ever want to feel like an under achiever, look no further than the works of Ernst Haekel, actually, just look at his life. Haekel lived from 1834 to 1919, and was notable for simultaneously being a biologist, artist, physician, professor, and naturalist. He catalogued over a thousand new species, often meticulously depicting them in his fine art. He tirelessly promoted Charles Darwin's work and the theory of evolution. He did slip up however, in his uninformed assumption that different races of people comprised different species. Oops. I guess we'll have to let that one slide in the light of how fantastic his depictions of his biological escapades turned out. I'm especially fond of the multi-colored sea creatures, which I wish were printed on my shower curtain instead of the map of the world.

Biography courtesy of Wikipedia

Frank Frazetta

We've probably all seen some of Frank Frazetta's work. Back when quality still counted when it came to book covers, movie posters, and pin ups of Arnold Swarzinegger, Frank Frazetta's paintings were everywhere. He's done a huge amount of work for the Conan the Barbarian franchise, as well as the "Vacation" series, and Tarzan. While most of his work follows a pretty firm theme of monsters, tits, swords, and sweat, they're all fabulous and very well rendered, despite the metal bikinis. If you're thinking this may just be art for meathead fantasy jerk offs, I have to give Franzetta some credit for his love of powerful weapon-wielding women who definitely make up for the damsels in distress. Anyway, these are some of the best fantasy paintings I've found, and I've yet to see anyone match him in painting sweaty muscles. Enjoy.

Frazetta died a few years ago, but his work lives on through his estate, which runs his website with literally hundreds of photos in a dozen galleries:

http://www.frankfrazetta.net/



Sarina Brewer

When we think about sculpture, there are always a few mediums that come to mind: wood, stone, metal, paper mache. These are all versatile, and many great things have been made out of them. However, it is the deviation from the norm that I find most well-stuck in my memory- the oddities and strange charismatic formations that people make on the fringe. The work of Sarina Brewer falls into this latter category. Rather than typical media, she uses dead animals in the lost traditions of sideshow taxidermy.  her creations are amazingly lifelike, even compared to other fine art taxidermists I've seen. Her mythical creatures leap and snarl from their wooden plaques and stands with a vitality that only an expert could breathe into them. Sarina is also unique in the fact that she is a female taxidermist, and beside her craft, she has developed a macabre, eccentric persona as an artist that is as intriguing as her work. I wish I could have found more examples of her work, but since they are for sale, many are snatched up with the utmost quickness.

This piece, entitled "Franken-pussy" is made entirely of a single cat-skin, fur, skin and all. It's amazing.

 Because Brewer believes in using all of the animal, she also preserves the skinned forms of some animals in an alternate process she calls "esodermy", using parts other taxidermists would throw out.

Check out Sarina's work, which also includes jewelry and traditional-type taxidermy, at her website:

http://www.customcreaturetaxidermy.com/