Art – Recent Work

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Words of Carrion Comfort

(sold)

December 16, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, Exhibitions & Events, Japan | 9 comments

Words of Carrion Comfort cut paper art by Patrick Gannonsize: 17.2 x 29 cm ( about 6 3/4 x 11 1/2″ )
medium: cut paper on wood
click here or the image to crow louder

If there ever was an argument for spontaneous generation, it is the carrion-craving crow. The park near my home is infested with the big-beaked birds and they are eternally carrying out raids on the neighborhood garbage bags. But for all their ever-present…um, presence, I have yet to see a baby crow. As a boy I collected discarded robin’s eggs, without ever finding the slightest evidence that crows hatch. Instead, they seem to come into the world fully formed and filthy.

My theory is that dark and ominous thoughts float out of our heads and congeal in the upper atmosphere. There they take on feathery form before plummeting back down to earth to caw annoyingly and take part time jobs as evil omens.

I’ve been combining cut paper and wood for awhile now, and I really dig the way the natural textures and colors work together. Lately I’ve been thinking about using different shapes and kinds of wood. This is one of the first experiments in that vein. Something about the rounded shape of the wood felt feminine to me so I’ve been exploring ways to get a softer effect from the hard-edged paper, mostly by way of color combinations.

Carrion Comfort is part of The Way of Flow running from December 4, 2009 – January 2, 2010 at C.A.V.E. Gallery, Venice, CA.

From the Bamboo Forests of the Night

(sold)

December 2, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, Exhibitions & Events, Japan | 13 comments

From the Bamboo Forests of the Night cut paper art by Patrick Gannonsize: 8 x 10 inches
medium: cut paper on board

Good old William Blake knew what he was talking about. Entangled in the vines and bamboo of the shadowy forest, no other animal has quite the same combination of feline grace and stealthy, coiled threat as the tiger.

虎視眈々 (koshitantan) is a yojijukugo, a Japanese idiom made up of four kanji. In this case, 虎 (ko)=tiger; 視 (shi)=eye or gaze, and 眈々 (tantan; the second character repeats the sound of the first) = to aim with ambition. Together, they mean to wait patiently while ambitiously keeping your eyes peeled for the opportunity to strike. That sure sounds like a tiger to me.

The tiger is the third animal in the Chinese (and Japanese) zodiac. I’m not sure why s/he didn’t just eat the mouse and the cow and grab first place. This particular tiger is also the second preview from The Way of Flow running from December 4, 2009 – January 2, 2010 at C.A.V.E. Gallery, Venice, CA.

The Flow That Will Not Be Stemmed

November 25, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, Japan, ` | 3 comments

The Flow That Will Not Be Stemmed cut paper art by Patrick Gannonsize: 16 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches ( 42 x 29.7 cm )
medium: cut paper on wood
click here to go with a bigger flow!

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living.

~Bruce Barton

Art, music, violence, fear, words, confusion; all things flow into and out of us. Thought is a neverending stream, sometimes cold and deep and logical, sometimes ragged white water. We are the source and we are the mouth and we are an anonymous bend along the way. We may try to dam the path and stem the flow but in time the flow wears all things down. The rhythm continues; the flow will go on.

Catch this flow and more from December 4, 2009 – January 2, 2010 at C.A.V.E. Gallery, Venice, CA

The Flow That Will Not Be Stemmed cut paper art by Patrick Gannon Read the rest of this entry »

A Hero Must Know How to Accessorize

October 11, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, W.I.P.s, ` | 11 comments

A Hero Must Know How to Accessorize cut paper art by Patrick Gannon
size: 11 3/4 x 8 5/16″
medium: cut and torn paper on wood
click here to Super-size her!

A superhero uniform has only a minimum of necessary features. Gloves and boots are always a good idea for those whose skin is not made of stone or steel. Capes are optional; not everyone can carry them off. Certain nocturnal avengers may favor utility belts and pouches, while those with metahuman powers would find them superfluous.

The only absolute necessity, the one thing a hero or heroine cannot do without, is an insignia. Their logo. Preferably prominently displayed. After all, what’s a hero without marketing?

It’s fascinating to watch the evolution of the superhero costume over the decades. The dudes’ costumes have become less colorful and more practical with body armor, a plethora of pockets and pouches, and most happily, less spandex. The girls’ uniforms… well, they didn’t exactly toss on a pair of overalls to tussle back in the 30′s. These days, it’s gotta be a challenge for the artists to pinpoint which scrap of cloth they can erase without the whole thing disintegrating into separate atoms.

Below you can see a couple pose studies. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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.

No Such Things As Too Much Spandex

August 24, 2009 in Art - Recent Work | 8 comments

Avoid the Roid! (The Blistering Lava-Roid) cut and torn paper art by Patrick Gannon, photosize: 7 7/8 x 11 7/8″ (and more than 1/2″ thick)
medium: cut and torn paper on wood

I usually don’t think to snap photos of anything I make, so I’m awful glad that Kevin Conn made a special request to see more of Lava-Roid.

When I can, I like to continue the art around the edges of the “canvas” (y’know, the chunk o’ wood). I was having so much fun drawing the flame, it goes all the way around onto the back where it morphs into the kind of design you’d see on a 80′s Firebird Trans Am. I wanted to keep it sticking straight up, but there’s no way it would have survived more than 5 minutes in my studio. Read the rest of this entry »

Avoid the Roid! (The Blistering Lava-Roid)

August 21, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, ` | 9 comments

Avoid the Roid! (The Blistering Lava-Roid) cut and torn paper art by Patrick Gannon
size: 7 7/8 x 11 7/8″ (and more than 1/2″ thick)
medium: cut and torn paper on wood
click here or the image for more girth!

Today I have discovered that I am not a comedy writer. For hours I’ve been trying to come up with a bad… nay, a mind numbingly awful and cringe-worthy pun. The kind of joke that is mythical in its horrendousness; horrifying in its banality. That leaves a flaming path of devastation and wailing in its wake. A joke about superheroes. It goes like this:

superhero1: Metahuman?
superhero2: … (insert punchline here).

See? It’s got the potential to be truly, memorably bad. And, in some dark, perverse corner of my brain I love a good bad pun. But nothing I can come up with elicits more than a quiet groan. Maybe you can do better.

Happily, Kevin Conn doesn’t have this problem. Aside from rocking the world as Unemployed Skeletor he has created The Smoldering, Torrid Lava-Roid.

LAVA-ROID Phillip Manchester was just a normal cop until his big twin brother was murdered in cold blood …

Really, what more do you need to know than that? Kevin asked me to do a pinup for the preview comic coming out soon. I threw caution to the wind and jumped at the chance. You can check out the molten metahuman, the sweltering superman on Myspace or Facebook. And take a gander at the costume below. Read the rest of this entry »

Your Touch, It Does Something to Me

(sold)

July 13, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, Exhibitions & Events, W.I.P.s | 10 comments

Your Touch, It Does Something to Me cut paper art by Patrick Gannon
size: 8 x 10 inches
medium: cut paper on wood
click here or the image for a bigger caress

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
-Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism

Substitute the word “touch” for “word” and you begin to see the starting point for this piece.

Actually… while there is a lengthy and, I think, beautiful story behind “Your Touch” I would like to be a little selfish and keep it for myself. At least for a little while longer. Which leaves you, dear reader, with the chance to pour your own meaning or story into the piece, filling up that hollowness. If the mood strikes you, leave your interpretation in the comments below. It’s always cool to see my work through other people’s eyes.

I’ll be huddling in the corner over here, whispering, “My precioussssssssss”.

“Your Touch, It Does Something to Me”, can be seen right now in San Francisco’s Gallery 1988 “Battle Royal” group show, until July 18, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, The Things You Say On a Winter’s Day

(sold)

July 5, 2009 in Art - Recent Work, Exhibitions & Events | 12 comments

Oh, The Things You Say On a Winter's Day cut paper art by Patrick Gannon
size: 8 x 10 inches
medium: cut and torn paper on wood
click here or the image for bigger whisperings

Shaky and trembling. Icy winds bite deep, freezing to the core, to the very center. Until a whisper of a word or a trill comes on the bitter wind, caresses and sinks in through the skin. Cracks the frigid rime and the blood flows once more.

Or, lacking a warm word or a caring cardinal, doctors have found hot cocoa to have incredible healing qualities. Properly made, hot chocolate has been known not only to cure cases of the shivers, but also to help with hypothermia and reverse the ravages of frostbite. In one documented case, a massive batch of the sweet concoction was witnessed to completely revive a woolly mammoth that had been encased in a glacier for centuries.* Plus, it’s yummy.

“Oh, The Things You Say On a Winter’s Day”, can be seen right now in San Francisco’s Gallery 1988′s “Battle Royal” group show, until July 18, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

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