DANNY MANSMITH "SCRAP"

Scrap artist Danny Mansmith combines disparate elements in fabric, paper, photography, and thread into structural forms and tableaux. Danny Mansmith connects the unrelated

into a new conglomerate whole, building figures and structures with a visual syntax uniquely his own. Utilizing scrap papers and fabrics, Mansmith stitches pieces together into elaborate patchwork surfaces. The works are embellished with scrolling stitching in contrasting threads, which veer from frenzied embellishments into map tracery into loose landscapes into elongated-forms. Creating both recognizable shapes and obscured patterns, Mansmith constructs flat and three-dimensional forms both figurative and abstract. He also creates clothing and wearable art, unique accessories, and everyday objects that are anything but everyday. His looping gestural figures curl out of their silhouettes; while the pendulous abstract forms erupt in threaded exclamations. His sculptural objects subvert our expectations in their impossible materials and crazy patchwork surfaces. Mansmith brings exuberant joy to the everyday by rearranging the old into new and the common into the extraordinary. One of my personal artistic heroes.

Find his gallery on line at:
Danny Mansmith

and purchase work directly through his Etsy store at:
Danny Mansmith on Etsy

Julie Wishmeyer

Julie Wishmeyer follows individual pursuits in her expressive work while keeping a universal sense of beauty at her creative core. Wishmeyer melds the pop imagery of modern life with the traditions of ancient cultures into portraits of womanhood and beauty. Using beads, plastic doo-daws, and other seemingly 'cheap' materials, she creates tension between the viewer's expectations and the Barouqe beauty of each piece. Her sequin paintings combine the vernacular of feminine dress with themes of high-art history and emotional expression. Her tribal-like masks and sculptures encrust their forms with baubles of our time and her mirror series takes the female gaze into the idealized forms of childhood. Inspired by Pop art and consumer culture, Julie Wishmeyer shares a vision that is singular and inspired.

Find locations for her work at her website:
Julie Wishmeyer

ANNE LEUCK FELDHAUS

Anne Leuck Feldhaus paints vibrant scenes bursting with energetic colors and unrestrained exuberance. Dogs, cats, cars, flowers, kites, birds, planes, trees, homes, roads, and starry skies jump and dance with their own innate animation. Using crisp bold colors and a signature graphic style, Anne conjures a world of joy and whimsy with every subject she touches. She captures the contemporary urban world with a folk style of representation and an eye-popping sensibility.

While at first glance Anne's work appears almost cartoon-like, her art reveals a true sophistication in composition, color palettes, and narrative skill. Simple strokes and flat color applications stand in poised tension to her ability to create incredibly detailed spatial structures and indelibly immediate feelings of bliss. Viewers are universal in their acclaim for her ability to transform simple shapes into resonant emotions.

Her work can be see at her website: Annes Art

Or follow her Blog: Annes Art Blog

IZZO

Izzo paints fantastic images on printed-pattern fabric. The pre-existing patterns become the departure point for wild paintings that bridge foreground with background, abstraction with representation, and the flat plane with spatial depth. He alternately embellishes and obscures the existing patterns, pulling some elements forward, hiding others under his layered paint. Building up small dots and spirals of bright fabric paints against larger planes and shafts of twisting color, Izzo creates visual explosions of pattern and light. Izzo embraces the accidental and organic into his process. Energy - connections - transformation - emotion; these are the concerns that the artist expresses in joyful exuberance. In the same way that a child pulls pictures out of the clouds, artist Izzo pulls new images out of the matrix of pattern on found fabrics, and brings wonder into our eyes.

Izzo's art can be seen at Crazy 8 Art

JAMES KUHN

"Judas Kiss" by James Kuhn

James Kuhn is a multi-faceted artist who works in many mediums. While no longer living in Chicago, his work has long been seen and collected in this city. Currently he is creating a series of painted face portraits, where his head and face literally become the canvas for inventive and whimsical paintings. Reviewed here are the artist's "Paint Mosiacs". These works bridge the spiritual truths of the artist's faith with the physical reality of those same traditions. Using the stories from the Old and New Testament Bibles, Kuhn creates cunning narratives that transform the viewer with their ecstatic vision of the teaming energy and spirit infusing all life. The artist's method begins by making a richly painted scene on canvas. Then he covers sheets of thick watercolor paper with paint and cuts them into hundreds of pieces which are layered onto the original painting, glued down into a vision of vibrating colors and pulsating forces. These mosaic compositions evolve with organic abandon, and show a fierce intensity of passion and energetic expression. Kuhn renders immediate and visual what is ultimately eternal and immaterial.

James Kuhn's biblical works can be seen at Crazy 8 Art

EDWARD MASTER

Edward Master
paints and draws intricately ornamented designs and shapes with a wide variety of mediums on an array of differing papers, then cuts and assembles them into complex tapestries of pattern and structure. With embroidery thread stitched joints, and organically and complexly shaped edges, these very large-scaled two-dimensional pieces convey an astounding multidimensional surface. The work switches rapidly from seeming vast vistas and aerial views to depictions of the tiniest decorative fringe. Developing themes from his continuing series of oil paintings, these works reference architectural and natural motifs, along with the traditional and decorative arts of many cultures, and point to the pictorial graphic renditions of preliterate societies. Astounding in their complexity and extremely stimulating to the eye, Master's work is at once beautiful and rich, and is both vast and intimate.

Edward's work can be seen at Crazy 8 Art

ALAN EMERSON HICKS

Alan Emerson Hicks
uses found objects and plastic detritus to create compelling vignettes. In his hands the flotsam and jetsam of the modern world are woven into strange flowers and tribal emblems, iconic people and creative abstractions. Ephemeral materials are laced into tightly corseted structures of wild complexity. Lightboxes under sculptural works show the translucent glowing qualities of these transformed materials, creating an spiritual quality to the works. Heating and stretching plastic clothes hangers and bottles turns the most common items into new vibrant forms; a naked man, an army of soldiers, an emotive face. The artist voices his unique perspective with a fearless use of materials that transforms the modern world's everyday objects of dull invisibility into bright bouquets of startling singularity.

Alan's work can be seen at Crazy 8 Art

JOEY WOZNIAK

Joey Wozniak
unleashes spiritual energy, layering color and shape against compositional agitation and pulsating forces. Using thickly applied oil paints, Wozniak pulls, scrapes and layers vibrant colors to create densely rendered tapestries that expose an underlying energy bursting below the surface. Flowers strewn through his work evoke Dionysian rites of fecundity and fertility, while also serving as the purest signifiers of beauty. Forgotten gods, gigantic flowers, misty cities, and costumed characters misplaced in time populate his paintings. Rich with references to both classical art and tribal imagery from a wide sampling of cultures from ancient to modern, Wozniak constructs his own unique post-modern vernacular. Bridging a physical approach to the material of paint with a masterful understanding of the stimulus of color, Wozniak creates singular visions of beauty and emotion.

Joey's work can be seen at Crazy 8 Art