September 2009

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Gallery Show – 風雷暴 / Fujin Raijin Exhibition @ Gallery G2

September 29, 2009 in Exhibitions & Events, News | Add your comment

風雷暴 / Fujin Raijin Exhibition @ Gallery G2, Ginza, Tokyo opens Thursday October 1 - October 6, 2009

Like the ebony and ivory keys on a piano; like checks and balances; like peanut butter and jelly, Fujin and Raijin complete each other. The Japanese Gods of Wind and Thunder (respectively), they are nearly always pictured together, riding on the darkening clouds of an oncoming storm. Raijin bangs his thunder-drums and hurls lightning at humans and their defenseless bellybuttons. Fujin, like his breezy Greek coworker Aeolus, hauls the raging winds around in a sac and sends them screaming down to earth. They’ve spent uncountable eons together, ravaging the world with storms and typhoons.

One has to wonder, though, about their relationship. After all, it can’t be easy spending so much time together. Particularly when they are both such strong, distinct personalities. I don’t think it’s an accident that artists often depict them in the midst of a spat.

Modern artists’ stormy relationship with these two demonic looking gods is the theme of Gallery G2′s 風雷暴 / Fujin Raijin Exhibition starting this Thursday in Ginza. I’ll be showing a piece or two myself…which is why I’m gonna cut this short so I can get back to work.

I plan on being in the gallery on the opening day (Oct. 1st), at least until the lack of sleep catches up to me, and on a few hours on Sunday Oct. 4th. And I’ll be at the American Comics show at Gallery Kopis in Kiyosumi Shirakawa on Saturday Oct. 3rd from around 3pm until it closes at 5pm. Drop me a line to get times closer to the dates!

Here are the details:

Name: 風雷暴 / Fujin Raijin Exhibition

dates: Oct. 1 (Thurs) to Oct 6th (Tue) 2009

Times: 12pm to 7pm (Last Day: Closes at 4pm)

place: Gallery G2; located in Ginza, just around the corner from Melsa (メルサ）.
Tel: 03-3567-1555
gallery website: right here.
MAP

日付: ２００９年10月1日（木）〜１０月6日（火）
時間: １２時〜１９時 / 最終日は１6時まで
住所: Gallery G2 東京都中央区銀座２丁目８−２　日紫１F
電話: 03-3567-1555

Heaven Is for Virgins

September 23, 2009 in Art - Recent Work | 8 comments

Heaven Is for Virgins cut paper art by Patrick Gannonsize: 7 7/8 x 7 7/8″ (20 x 20cm)
medium: dimensional cut paper

Compared to the mayfly-like lifespans of us puny humans, the stars are infinite. So too is their power to captivate our minds and imaginations. We dream of visiting them and, when we can’t do that, we sit back with a bottle of wine and try to pick out familiar shapes and stories among those uncountable pinpricks of light.

Like the forever chaste Virgo. Except that oops, she’s not that innocent. Turns out that for about a billion years (just a loose estimate), from the ancient Babylonians through the Greeks and Romans, the big V was a fertility goddess. Now, I’m a little rusty on this sort of thing but I’ve never heard of a virginal fertility goddess before. It kind of flies in the face of the job description. It wasn’t until medieval times that she reclaimed her maidenhood (is that even possible?) and became associated with the Virgin Mary.

Heaven Is for Virgins cut paper art by Patrick Gannon
Much like A Great Ol’ Bear I experimented some with dimensionality here, suspending Virgo in front of the sparkly background paper. The patterns and positive/negative cuts make some interesting shadows in the right light. While I was making this piece, I held it up in front of my desk lamp to examine some of the cuts, and was surprised by how beautiful it was illuminated from behind. Sometime in the future, I’ll have to play around with illumination (kind of like Tim Budden is doing with his work right now). Sometime when I have more resources available to me than one cheap desklamp.

Heaven Is for Virgins cut paper art by Patrick Gannon

Gallery Show – American Comics Exhibition 2009 ~Superheroes~

September 21, 2009 in Exhibitions & Events, News | 3 comments

American Comics Exhibition 2009 ~Superheroes~ @ Gallery Kopis, Kiyosumishirakawa, Tokyo opens Sunday September 27 - October 3, 2009

Guess who’s back?! (hint: it’s me!)

Yes, I am again at one with the world electronical. Like just about every superhero ever (with the current exception of Bruce Wayne, who is still extremely deceased-ish… today) my computer has slapped away the grasping fingers of death to return triumphant to the realm of the animated. And boy, have I got some catching up to do.

First on my list, I am proud to announce my participation in the American Comics Exhibition 2009 ~Superheroes~ / アメリカン・コミックス展２００９〜スーパーヒーローズ〜 .

Organized by my good friend Patrick Washburn, 14 American and Japanese artists have created original work based on a “Superhero” theme. The artists range from those who work in the field of comics to painters to some guy who makes art out of nothing but paper. I expect some very cool, original takes on the theme.

the details:
Name: American Comics Exhibition 2009 ~Superheroes~
           アメリカン・コミックス展２００９〜スーパーヒーローズ〜

Official Website: All the Information You Need is Here!

dates: Sept. 27 (Sun) to Oct 3rd (Sat) 2009 (closed Tuesday the 29th)

Times: 11am to 7pm (First Day: Opens at 1pm; Last Day: Closes at 5pm)

place: Gallery Kopis; located less than a minute from Kiyosumi-Shirakawa St. exit            A3.
Tel: 03-5639-2381
gallery website: right here.

日付: ２００９年９月２７日（日）〜１０月３日（土）
時間: １１時〜１９時 / 火曜日休み / 初日開場は１３時〜 / 最終日は１７時まで
場所: 清澄白川駅から４５秒にあるギャラリー・コピス。
住所: ギャラリー コピス 〒１３５−００２１東京都江東区白河１−２−１２　１F
電話: 03-5639-2381

The Perils of Digital Dependence

September 15, 2009 in News | 2 comments

Electric Narwhal Original cut paper Art by Patrick GannonCatastrophic hard drive failure is exactly as fun as it sounds. Which is to say, no fun at all. Especially when it hits two times in under a year.

Yes, it’s been a little quiet around these parts lately. A deceased computer will do that to a blog. A year ago, when my iMac’s hard drive shuffled off this mortal coil the first time, it had the decency to make horrible electronic gasping sounds, ticks, and shivers for over a month before it gave up it’s digital ghost. This time around, it was a sneakier process. A video I was watching started to stutter without warning. Then, that curs-ed spinning beachball popped up everytime I tried to do something. Everything still worked, just really, really slowly.

So, I went through the usual routine of cleaning things up and running repair programs. They all said everything was okay. Except it obviously wasn’t. Just to make sure, I decided to perform a long-overdue backup of the whole machine. And that’s when everything went to pieces. See, to do a complete backup, one must first erase one’s old backup.

See where this is going? A word to the wise: When you’re machine starts being weird, don’t erase your old backup. Luckily, I was able to copy almost all my important files. One by one. Took me three days. And I still lost one scan of a piece of art. And my whole iTunes collection (thank goodness I burned that to disk a little while back).

Anyway, two important announcements come from this techno-tragedy.

1. My computer is in the shop, and should be back in my (somewhat more impoverished) hands by the end of the week. It’ll take a little while to get things up and running. And probably a long while to get everything back the way it was. Until then, my computer-related activities will remain cramped.

2. Please backup your computers, especially those of you with weak hearts. Since it’s almost impossible to end our dependence on our silicon masters, we might as well make it harder for them to dangle us at their mercy. For my Mac-toting friends, I recommend a little app called SuperDuper. Being able to make a bootable carbon copy of your computer is a blessing, and it saved my bacon last time this happened. Actually, if I hadn’t been such a cheapskate and just shelled out the thirty bucks to get the full software, it would have saved me this time too. Guess what I’m doing the day I get my machine back?

Feeling Social 2: Radical Social Stationery

September 7, 2009 in News | 1 comment

Giant RSS button cut paper art by Patrick GannonThe Facebook button was looking so lonely and forlorn and whining like a lost little puppy, I just had to make him some friends. ‘Cuz, y’know, he just wants to be social. yeah…

Anyway, the salmon-colored button with the Katakana “Pa” (パ) on it leads to the Japanese pseudo-version of this blog. It’s not a direct translation. In fact, it’s not a translation at all. My indefatigable wife uses it to write about life with an American cut-paper artist in Japan (that’s me). I have the sneaking suspicion she spends most of her time writing about the many silly things I do, but that’s okay. I certainly give her ample subject matter, so as long as she occasionally talks about my work it’s all good.

You probably won’t have much use for that icon, but you might be able to use the cut paper RSS button. If you like it, feel free to grab it and use it on your own blog or website. Many sizes are posted below.

Please don’t link directly to these buttons. To save them for your own use, right click on the item, then choose Save Picture/Image As… or just drag to your desktop if you’re using a mac.
rss button 60px    rss button 48px    rss button24px    rss button 16px

A Great Ol’ Bear

September 3, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, ` | 12 comments

A Great Ol' Bear cut paper art by Patrick Gannonsize: 5 7/8 x 5 7/8″
medium: dimensional cut paper

The power of myths and fables lies in their ability to magnify human traits, feats and frailties. The gods and men and monsters who inhabit these stories are larger than life, and so too are their flaws. Zeus may have been a god among gods on Mt. Olympus, but the guy had the libido of 200 teenage boys and the moral code of a brain damaged weasel. Match that up with his supernatural fertility and he seems to have been solely responsible for 90% of the demigods and heros tromping around Athens and Sparta.

Poor Callisto, tomboy nymph that she was happened to catch his wandering eye one day. Things just went downhill from there. Nine months later she gave birth to Arcas. Which ticked off Zeus’ wife Hera who, as far as I can tell, was the goddess of misaimed jealous rages. She turns Callisto into a bear. A decade or so passes, and Arcas, now a precocious hunter like his mom, draws back a bow and takes aim at… do I have to say it?

Zeus had the decency to feel guilty and he stops the matricide. He grabs momma bear by the tail, swings her around a coupla times, and plants her up among the stars. Because, I suppose, that’s better than being human again. Arcas is turned into Ursa minor. This is how gods fix their mistakes, I suppose. So what’s the moral of this story? Always have deity-strength pepper spray on hand, maybe?

A Great Ol' Bear cut paper art by Patrick Gannon, photo

Aside from just loving mythology, this piece was an attempt at some new techniques with cut paper. For one thing, this is all about pattern and positive-negative space, instead of color and texture. For another, this is the first piece I’ve done where the front layer is suspended above the back. In the right lighting, there are some pretty cool shadows at play… although not in these photos. Every once in a while, it’s nice to stretch my brain and do something different. And I’ve gotta admit, some of those wacky celestial patterns were a ton of fun to draw.

Guest Shots: Blogs of Rarified Beauty

September 1, 2009 in Guest Shots | 1 comment

Rather than picking out one specific artist for this episode of Guest Shots, I thought it would be nice to show a little appreciation for a couple people who are spreading a nice, thick coat of beauty on the world wide web. Certainly, each of the next three blogs is dedicated to art. More than that though, they are broadening the definition of what art encompasses. Thanks goes out to all three for their support, and for introducing me to work I hadn’t even dreamed of.

Art Thursday

For the most part, Tabatha A. Yeats is a writer of fiction for young adults. Every Thursday, she sets aside her pen and seeks out some new, wildly eclectic form of gorgeous for her ever growing collection. There’s alot to love here, and as usual I’m drawn to the kind of things that are as far from what I do as possible. Like the amazing costumes halfway down the page. I mean, just check out those boots for reading William Blake. Brilliant.

feet to fathoms mixed media artwork by LethaColleen on Papercuts

…Pursuit of Happiness

Nearly every day, LethaColleen posts whatever new painting, photography, ceramic or collage catches her discerning eye. It’s a steady stream of inspiration that’s hard to match. As a mixed media artist, I’m fascinated by the way she combines charts and maps and three-dimensional elements into rich, modern compositions. Check out her Flickr photos.




Gasbit

Gasbit was created “in order that people may come and see what other creative people are up to and in turn be inspired to do something creative themselves.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. A vivid mix of visual art, design, graffiti, music and video, there’s something here to get anyone feeling creative.