The affable Mario Martinez AKA MARS -1 talks here with the folks from Vimby and shows off some of the new works he'll be showcasing in his upcoming solo show at Jonathan LeVine gallery next month in New York. As you can see by some of the things he's working on, MARS's show is going to approximately rock the shit out of New York. Look out!
Seriously though, Mario is truly one of the nicest dudes you're ever going to meet, not to mention one real heavyweight in the paint slinging department. We were lucky enough to get a tour of his studio while in San Fran a few weeks back. Check some of the photos...
The always breathtaking Stella IM Hultberg has got a brand new blog so you can keep up to scratch on all things in her wonderful world. You can check it out over at stellaimhultberg.blogspot.com and here for all things skin related for Stella.
We've got some great new stuff dropping this week that I think you folks are going to be quite excited about. Kukula ( I know, so awesome, right?) are very very sweet and a couple new skins from GelaSkins alumnus Joe Ledbetter. Peep the previews below!
We're well into 2009 and with all the hub-bub of the holiday season and madness that goes on around here finally in recession (insert economic joke here) What's the Skinny will be getting it's well deserved attention back.
First things first - our recent return to MacWorld was a huge success, so thank you to the legion of rabid fans and newly made fans for making it such a great time in San Francisco once again. Special thanks goes our the Leight's for totally rocking the booth with us (we couldn't have done it without you!) and to Mr.'s Yang and MARS-1 for being generally awesome and our San Fran art aficionados. Also big thanks to B. Wypich for representing Palo Alto so thoroughly and Tom and Ann for once again proving that it doesn't matter where you live, the nearest bed is always the most convenient.
Our newest fan, as you can see is none other than Sinbad, who, despite all requests from the photographer, would not hold the laptop on his shoulder and claimed loudly that it was "waaaay too old school" and that we should "let it go". I was laughing about that for hours, he's still got it I guess...
We're going to be making some changes to this blog by revamping the look and hosting it directly on our site very soon so standby for that info - don't worry, I'll give you ample warning so you can change your homepage to our new address.
In addition to the aesthetic changes made around here, we're going to have some fresh blood entertain you folks with, namely some guest surprise bloggers ( ok, it's not really a surprise if I tell you, but it sounds more fun, doesn't it?) for your occular pleasure. So stay tuned for all those good things to come in the next coming week or two...
All that being said, I will leave you with an absolutley gorgeoous short film that I witnessed some years ago but was reminded of it again today (thanks Les!). "Delivery" is the brain child of Till Nowak and it really is some kind of genius.
Dig it - and I'll see you soon.
B.C.D XXIV Esq Jr
So it's been a while since What's the Skinny has been updating y'all with the mad flavour that happens in our little realm, so I'm going to hit you up with a bunch of stuff...
First of all, thanks to everyone for making out first trip to Art Basel so much fun! It was a fantastic trip, and it's really great to meet so many of the galleries that rep the GelaSkins family of artists! :) Big shout outs going to Ron English, Travis Louie and Dolla Lama whom we finally got to meet, and of course a special thanks to MARS-1 for being our unofficial guide to all things Basel!
Speaking of the MARS-1, he dropped a few new prints recently with the Jonathan LeVine gallery called Unlock and Fuzzy Logic, seriously dope stuff as usual. Check it...
Mark Murphy, a well known publisher/promoter in the lowbrow art community, has a great interview with the biggest animal lover in our cannon, Jen Lobo. We met Mark down in Miami at the Gen Art Vanguard show and he had a whole whack load of stellar peices in his exhibit, including some of Jen's works you see in the interview post. Nice guy taboot!
Florida based GelaSkins artists Brandt Peters and Kathie Olivas had a show opening the past Friday called NOCTURNAL @ Cardboard Spaceship in Santa Cruz. The show looks like it's got some great new works, both collaborative and solo, painting and toy. These are going to make someone very happy this holiday season, that's for sure!
This world continues to get weirder and smaller all at the same time. I guess you'd call that Weirdller...
Perfect example - here's a 22 year old American girl (calling herself Magibon) that has some crazy you tube viewership in Japan for her Manga-like physical attributes ( I know what you're thinking there pervs, I'm talking about her large EYES). Thing is, she just sits there and stares at the camera, occasionally eating some pizza and sometimes drinking some soda, occasionally speaking or singing in broken Japanese. She's a small celebrity in Japan currently based on this. WTF? Weirdller.
Here's something that looks a little strange, but is a wonderful invention. This project was started by Michael Rakowitz and is called paraSITE - a project dedicated to making shelters for the homeless, but with an interesting twist. The shelters are inflatable and meant to be hooked to an building HVAC exhaust system.
Brilliant!
Not only is he providing a service to the homeless, but he's recycling the wasted, heated exhaust from the building. Read more about it here on Michael's site.
Here's something that isn't quite weird, just great. Cristina Clausen has made a film called The Universe of Keith Haring featuring one of NYC's most revered and beloved street artists. I love his stuff and would love to see some on a GelaSkin someday...
Man - what is this world coming to? I feel like I'm living in a weird present-tense sci-fi novel. We've got the resurgence of Pirates, the possibility of cloaking devices and Robocop riding a unicorn!
Awesome, I'll admit, but everything else just seems to have a hint of crazy about it - or maybe I'm just getting old?
Bah - humbug!
Ok, enough about me... As I menitoned on Friday, we've got a sweet new wallpaper app in the iTunes store (search: GelaSkins) and it's been doing very well. Mostly. There was a small hiccup this weekend with the 2.2 firmware update and the images being blurry when you downloaded them, but our wizards have fixed all known issues and it's rocking once again. If you're too lazy to search for it in the App store, you can download it right here.
Also, there's still free skins left from Friday's free skin giveaway... 2 more spots... get 'em while they're hot!
It's been a couple weeks since we gave anything away here at "What's the Skinny?" So in the name of skinning your stuff with goodness we're going to give away a skin of your choice, for the device of your choice, to the first 5 lucky folks to answer the following questions. They've been a little easy of late so I've made the questions a little harder.
You know the rules - post your answers in a comment and if you're correct, we'll let you know.
Here we go:
1) Which GelaSkins artist numbers his characters?
2) Which GelaSkin shares it's name with a Radiohead lyric?
3) What is David Bowie's greatest album? Hint: Contains this song.
In other news, we've got a new wallpaper app available in the iTunes store! We've had an absolutely PHENOMENAL response so far with almost 2000 downloads of the app in just two days! Thanks everyone! :) For those of you who aren't familiar - all you have you to do is follow the link to the Wallpapers by GelaSkins and you'll soon be rolling in as many amazing, FREE, wallpapers as you can handle.
A big Happy Birthday goes out to 1/2 of the two headed beast that fathered GelaSkins. I won't tell you which half but I will tell you this - he can nap the hell out of anything, and has been known to chug a bowl of cereal in less time than it takes to pour it.
Let the TVR's flow from the rafters!
Word.
bd
The Bay Bridged, Vol. 2 was released this past week featuring the soothing sounds of such current indie favs like Rogue Wave, Birds and Batteries and Two Sheds. "So what?" you say. "But how does that affect me, the average GelaSkins fanatic?" Well my friends, the limited edition 10" picture disc vinyl featuring on one side, the art of the one and only Lawrence Yang. Pretty sick eh?
Dig it!
Oh yes.
It's on and it's awesome.
Upper Playground, purveyors of fine flavour and artistic urbanity, have agreed to join forces with the juggernaut of the skin world known simply as GelaSkins and guess what? It's gonna be wicked! The first in our series of artists from the UP family, we unleashed the nightmarish paintsmanship of one Mr. Alex Pardee unto the world of skins. Are Holy Matimony and The Backpack Grusome? Maybe. Terrifying? Yes. Mind-bendingly awesome? Definitely.
Look for more Bamboo Giclee prints to be added to the site in the next week or so!!
There's a couple of shows going on this weekend featuring GS family that you kids should know about. Firstly, Audrey Kawasaki is curating a massive show in L.A. at Thinkspace gallery that has a ridiculous amount of talent. Brandi Milne, Amy Sol, Stella Im Hultberg, Kukula and Travis Louie are just a few (that's a lot of heavyweights!) of the peeps involved in "The Drawing Room" opening tonight.
The other great show kicking off this weekend is called Dreamscapes and it features a ton of GelaSkinners as well. It's being hosted at Definition Gallery in Baltimore and it contains the work of Jason Limon, Colin Johnson, Dan May as well as a host of others. I'll try and post some pics from the show when I get them...
Please be sure and show your love if you're in the area, I know that both of these shows are going to be just amazing!
Peace and have a great weekend everyone!
B
I know it's a few days late, but I just wanted to say how nice it was to meet all the cats at the APE show last weekend in San Fran. Putting faces to names that we've been working with for a long time now and meeting those that we'll be releasing in the up coming months was a real treat.
Big thanks goes out to Lawrence Yang for doing a live painting at the booth and to MARS-1 for stopping by and showing some love! Check out what the next L Yang piece is going to look like... dooooope!
Here Mr. Yang is creating 'Depths"...
We're looking forward to seeing everyone again when we're back out there in January for MacWorld!
In other news, GS alumnus Greg 'Craola' Simkins has got an absolutely dynamite looking solo show opening tonight at Gallery 1988 in San Fran called "It wanders west..." Here's peek at some of the goodness to expect...
* from G1988 Blog.
Jeremiah Ketner, another long time GelaSkinner, is opening a show this weekend in Chicago called "Morning Showers" and boy howdy is it looking fresh as well. Peep the samples!
Lord of the 8-bit throw up, France's own Invader tells about his wicked new style of street art. It involves using an application for the iPhone called iMatrix that is able to translate a photograph of his art into a message hidden from the cleverly encoded binary in the image. A very slick marriage of art and technology if you ask me! Check out the video...
Ron English has a show starting this weekend at Shooting Gallery in San Francisco featuring his latest series entitled "The Secret History of Kiss". This show features Ron's usual style of messing with the norm to bring you surreality at it's finest. Here's a few selections from the show:
Low brow alumnus and long time GelaSkins artist Joe Ledbetter has a solo show kicking off this weekend at M Modern Gallery in Palm Springs. This one is entitled Hunters and Gatherers and looks like it's going to be awesome. Here's a sneak peak of some of the peices:
Nathan Ota has got some brand spanking new vinyl toy kicking real soon. It features all the greatness of a Nate Ota piece, but now in fabulous 3D!
check it.
The people over at Meal Exchange have an ingenious plan to actually make a difference in their community. This was something devised by Rahul Raj in 1993, then a 17 year old Wilfred Laurier student, who'd then had a huge balance on his university meal card at the end of the semester. Instead of letting the balance go to waste he devised a way to put extra money to good use. Thus was the beginning of Meal Exchange and now almost 10 years after its incorporation it's a nationally recognized program that's dedicated to helping people get three squares a day. Awesome!
There's three amazing core campaigns they run that you can read about in their pdf here, but this time of year it's the Trick or Eat program that's in the forefront. This great notion is based on the idea that people give out candy to dressed up little urchins to rot their teeth, so why not ask for canned foods for a good cause instead?
Of course they also accept good old fashioned cash and you can donate that right here. Please check them out if you have a minute or two - they're good folks doing good things!
While we're on the Halloween tip, I stumbled across this amazing artist who's medium is that delicious gourd so ubiquitous this time of year. Check out Ray Villafane - This spooky ass shit is sure to freak the hell out of even most seasoned trick or treat'r.
I wonder how much candy Amy Winehouse is going to get this year? She's been culitvating on her stinky, nearly dead hobo 'costume' to perfection - I hope it pays off for her...
It's sunny, it's Friday and currently Tenacious D is rawking the system at work so everything seems just right. In hope of spreading some of the raw and fresh happiness that is going on here at GelaSkins HQ, we're going to give away a Bamboo print of the winners choice to the first 5 lucky folks that can answer the following questions correctly. This are going to require a little research, but it's worth it, these prints are pretty frickin' sweet!
Allllllright here's the questions...
1) Which GelaSkins artist has designed for film director Ridley Scott?
2) What is Dr. Steve Brule's favorite type of wine?
3) What is Bender from Futurama's middle name?
4) Who is a better band: AC/DC or Aerosmith? ( you must answer this correctly to win and there is only one correct answer)
Usual rules apply - post your answers in the comments section and if you win, you'll recieve an email from us. Don't dally, these suckas gonna be gone real quick...
Speaking of awesome (yes, that is a chocloate brownie filled with bacon - and no I don't have a weight problem), we just unleashed Si Scott unto the masses (available for skins and prints - yay!) and this guy is just amazing. Check it... Until next week.
Peas,
B
While we in the Great White North decided yesterday who was to govern our asses for the next little while, the battle rages on south of the 49th. The 3rd and final Presidential debate takes place tonight with Mr.'s Obama and McCain but piping in with his opinion on the Vice Presidential Candidate and her abilities is everyone's favorite Python, John Cleese.
In other news, Duct Tape bandages are finally here. Finally. Wait, I already said that. Well, that just goes to show you how long they SHOULD have been around for. Awesome.
Our boy Jason Freeny has an awesome new piece featuring the anatomy of a LEGO mini-fig... poor little guy, having his mini-fig on display like that - no shame I tells ya!
Wow - this is the sweeeeeeetest show I've seen in a long time. I'm a pretty big music geek and well, for me it really just doesn't get any better than this. Gallery 1988, who consistently keeps cranking out killer shows loaded with today's hottest artists, has laid it down with Cover Band. This show that opens tonight dedicated to artists re-imagining cover art to some of the most recognized and influential albums from the past 40+ years. Some of these are just incredible and I really wish I was there in person to see these bad boys.
More after the jump...
Pixies - Surferrosa
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust and Spiders From Mars
Nirvana - Nevermind
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
Radiohead - OK Computer
The Ramones - Rocket To Russia
