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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Indie Artists

16:55 / 12.04.04

I'm sure some of you have stumbled across some artists who's work you find amazing, but who no one seems to know about. I sure have, and I'll list some here so you can check em' out. Why doesn't everyone else do the same?

Joe Sorren
Mark Ryden
Sam Brown
William Schaff

11:55 / 21.04.04

Ryden's stuff is interesting but reeks a little of "creepy and weird for creepy-and-weird's sake."

15:04 / 21.04.04

Trevor Brown

RK Sloane

for those who find ryden to be weird and creepy for the sake of being weird and creepy, these will prolly be filed under the same category.

The Timaximus, The!

21:21 / 24.04.04

One of my favorites is Camille Rose Garcia who's done some work for BLAB!

Juxtapoz is a cool indie/lowbrow/outsider/commercial/etc magazine.

Gary Baseman and Tim Biskup are both good, and fairly popular.

Merry Karnowski Gallery, La Luz De Jesus, and Roq La Rue are all galleries with that kind of art.

14:21 / 25.04.04

Wow, thanks for all the great artists! Tim Biskup's work looks very Samurai Jack-ish... does he have anything to do with that show?

The Timaximus, The!

18:52 / 25.04.04

I think he has, but I'm not sure. I do know that he has a cartoon on Nick or Cartoon Network, but I don't know the name of it.

20:42 / 25.04.04

The show is called "Teacher's Pet".

Here are some more really cool artists:
Taylor McKimens
Martha Rich
Kevin Christy
Sam Flores

As far as publications go, there's The Broken Wrist Project, which is really, really cool.

And although it takes some searching, I've found alot of really great artists at DeviantArt.com.

Tryphena Absent

21:07 / 25.04.04

So, in a wild attempt to get some discussion going, why do you like these artists?

I really like Sam Flores, I love the weird little details like hands that are proportionally just a little too large and the consistent reference to 19th century Japanese art but I really don't know much about these artists so anything I can say is pure observation.

16:18 / 27.04.04

He's increasingly less under the radar, but Cory Arcangel (currently guest-reBlogging at Eyebeam) has been doing great stuff, like hacking Nintendo cartridges and making privacy-invading art with Carnivore.

16:19 / 28.04.04

Well, I'm not sure I know who's on the radar or what the radar is, but I really like the not-well-known Danica Phelps. She's made the business aspect of art into art, which I think is a rather unique way of grappling with the ugly (to many) commercial side of being an artist.

An excerpt from above link explains her unusual artmaking and selling scheme:
Danica's drawings document every financial transaction in her life. When a drawing is sold, a new financial transaction is made, and a new drawing must be created to document the sale. Danica documents the sales by creating different generations of drawings. When the original drawing is sold, it is traced and information is added about the purchaser and the amount of money made on the sale. A small hole is drilled through the drawing at it is stamped "2nd Generation". When a "2nd Generation" drawing is sold, the process repeats. Some of the drawings on this page have already been sold - but they can always be purchased again in a later generation.

In addition to what I think is a fascinating idea, I like her drawings and I also found her to be a very alluring person when I saw her speak which went a good way toward making me like her work. Honest and unpretentious, excited but also subdued, curious, humble, fascinated and fascinating.

10:39 / 29.04.04

Your link is broken, Ibis. Brought me back to this thread.

12:46 / 29.04.04

Well, that was weird, sorry.
Maybe this'll work.

14:13 / 29.04.04

Anna, I'm also in the world of 'me too' here -but I really love Sam Brown's work. I always think that the huge shapes and bright colours should make all his stuff look more otherwordly, or frivolous, but in fact they always seem really gentle and melancholy. To me, at least.

I can't get through to the Sam Flores site just now, not sure if there's anything up with that - there's a folio here, though.

My contribution to the cause - don't know how indie it is at all, but Mathew Borrett's work rocks my world. (Found the link on Paleface's site, to give credit where it's due...)

15:09 / 29.04.04

Boy, that Tim Biskup really reminds me of J. Otto Seibold. Who is definitely not indie, but his website sure is fun to play with!

15:43 / 29.04.04

Wow, the Matthew Borrett stuff is gorgeous, thanks for the link, Vincennes. Reminds me a little bit of some of Paul Noble's stuff, particularly the Nobsville (or is it Nobsontown?) drawings, of which I think this is one:

Acumulus Noblitatus

20:58 / 29.04.04

for all of those woried that you're not thinking "indie" enough:
now that I think of it, most current artists are "indie" because fine art doesn't really get out to the public very much. so post whatever you want, regardless of how well known they are... I'm sure some of us haven't discovered them yet.

13:40 / 01.05.04

I knew Tim Biskup had something to do with Samurai Jack!
Link here.

21:28 / 08.05.04

Hey, I was enjoying this thread! Keep posting the pretty pictures!

19:55 / 17.05.04

Everybody needs to check out SIA FURLER, the charismatic Australian vocalist for Zero 7.
Her own album COLOUR THE SMALL ONE is out.

at the scarwash

22:32 / 17.05.04

My friend Yelena has been doing a lot of great work in the past couple of years. Her LJ site has some of her most recent work, with links to more: Puppet designs and a series of Superboringist Microsoft Paint pieces are the most recent. The site is linked to the image below.

16:38 / 18.05.04

some of you might like the Royal Art Lodge as much as i do. i think they're swell.

16:51 / 18.05.04

Scott Radke makes some really amazingly fucked up puppets. www.scottradke.com

16:55 / 07.06.04

I love Juxtapoz (second highest selling arts mag in the USA, though, apparently) but it's really hard to find in London. Once Gosh! has sold out I can never get it anywhere. I've never seen it in Borders (even though they have a lot of obscure stuff) or in Magma (ditto) or the Tate Modern and I can't think of anywhere else likely that I would find it... Sigh.

Tim Biskup's wife Seonna Hong's stuff is nice in a cutesy sort of way. I see both of them as being quite commercial though (their t-shirt line, Gamma-Go, is totally the new Paul Frank).

18:27 / 07.06.04

Juxtapoz are online here, but it doesn't look as if there's much of the print content online. You can subscribe from there, though, if you don't want to miss an issue!

I do like Seonna Hong's stuff -some of it is overly cute, as you mention, but I like the style of it. Especially the house which I would link to, but it's in six separate paintings, and each is a room.

11:08 / 08.06.04

Jen Gagne makes Dangerous Sculpture of insects and things made out of razor blades and scissors and stuff. Thank god she doesn't put motors in them- it'd be like Survival Research Labs meets The Mummy.
BEWARE of ART

12:33 / 14.06.04

Beth Moore-Love, from Albuquerque does these really great paintings of festivals in Children of the Corn country, as if the residents of Summerisle, realizing the apple harvest really is permanently fucked, immigrated to Nebraska or Kansas. Some paintings are in the style of Victorian America (Beth used a character from Wisconsin Death Trip in one painting). Another, whose name I forget, shows the interior of a psychologist's office (POV from behind the doctor's desk) dominated by a seated Madonna and Child who are the Carpet Mother (as opposed to the Wire Mother) and chimp, from a famous animal behavior experiment of the 1950s. On the far wall is that painting of the Victorian vacuum pump experiment, in which a kindly scientist suffocates a dove for the benefit of a family.

I'd buy one or two if I had a spare $10,000 (her paintings go for at least $5,000). Surprisingly low on the Malthusiasm, given the company she keeps.

13:19 / 14.06.04

There's also Matthew Ritchie whose paintings are probably a good representation of the Supercontext. He comes out of the same era and works the same side of the street as Matthew Barney.

Delicatesseract

05:19 / 01.10.05

I get my freakshow diorama fix from Elizabeth McGrath. She makes these Joseph-Cornell-falls-in-Geek-Love box constructions.

Keith, like a scientist

17:11 / 20.10.05

Lance Sells is one of my favorite current artists. I own a few of his originals, and love his line quality and the way that he incorporates some almost Dada qualities to his composition.

Matthew Curry is another popular artist with me. I recently bought one of his original paintings. The energy and the different ways in which he combines materials really excites me.

18:36 / 02.11.05

A lot of unique multidisciplinary approaches to art can be found on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations's experimental "open source" television project, ZeD.

It's open globally for submissions, not just subject to Canadians.