Mint

Amanda Hughen‘s work is beautiful, but I bet it’s even more striking in person. Here’s a bit about her process:

“She begins by drawing a geometric pattern using architectural and engineering templates collected from yard sales. She then silkscreens this image onto both sides of a sheet of translucent Mylar, which is the support for the painting. Next, by hand, she spontaneously works by hand both sides of the Mylar with ink, paint and pencil. Gradually, one side emerges as the front, and, as she puts it, “a picture happens.” Her imagery suggests landscapes, cellular forms, strange plant life and oceanic islands seen from high above. They are simultaneously scientific, synthetic and organic. But their essence is their ethereal beauty, brought about by a delicate linearity as well as gossamer-thin layers of pigment.”

- Joseph Jacobs, Excerpt from Strange Forces: Four Painters Create, Emerging Artist, Art & Antiques, June 2007

Today my “Wedding Graduate” post went up on A Practical Wedding. I think it’s pretty good, except if I could do it all over again I’d maybe include a few sentences about how much I love APW and how it brought me back to earth when I was up to my ears in out of season flowers and chandeliers in oak trees. And, maybe, I’d say how honored I am that Meg found my wedding “creative, thrifty, and sane” even though it occasionally felt like none of the above : )

If you want to know my two cents on wedding planning, you can check it out here. And really, Meg, thank you for the gobs of practicality over the last year.

After The Cotton Room party, we headed downstairs in Golden Belt to check out LabourLove, Durham’s newest gallery and retail space. John Pelphrey, one of LabourLove’s owners, gave us the low-down and it sounds pretty exciting. Not only do they show original works by contemporary artists, but they pick a few pieces from each artist to sell as affordable giclee prints. They have a fancy heat-setting machine so that they can put the prints on t-shirts or pillows, too.

John and his partner, Kelly Dew, have been also experimenting with re-upholstery, and plan to add lots more home decor kind of items in the future. In addition, LabourLove will be available to rent for children’s art classes and other events. As John says, “Kelly and I are excited to open LabourLove and begin dispelling the myth that understanding and appreciating art is reserved only for those with formal art training or elite social status.”

Brendan and I especially liked Luke Miller Buchanan’s photo-based work, and the painting of Obama eating ice cream (see the pillow above) by Kevin McGoff.

You can see a few more of my photos on Mint’s flickr page.

Yesterday I got to attend a preview party at The Cotton Room! But before I tell you about The Cotton Room, a bit of Durham history might be in order…

In the 1880s Durham, NC became home to many tobacco companies and textile mills. What’s now called Golden Belt was originally The Golden Belt Manufacturing Company, a textile factory that made thread and produced pouches for Bull Durham tobacco. Operations stopped in 1996, but it has been renovated and turned into an “urban arts campus” with beautiful lofts, commercial space, artist studios, and event venues like The Cotton Room.

Triangle Catering is going to be operating The Cotton Room, and starting in October ’09 (after renovations) you can rent the space for weddings & other events. They plan to keep all the textile mill character, like exposed brick walls, archways, mechanical pulleys, and huge, beautiful windows, but will update it with contemporary decor.

The food at The Cotton Room will be southern-inspired, and if it’s anything like what was served yesterday, it will be fantastic. Check out what we ate:

YUM. You can see more of my photos from The Cotton Room on Mint’s flickr!

Thanks for the invite, Golden Belt!

San-Francisco based artist Misako Inaoka is interested in the relationship between man and nature. Astroturf and those cell phone towers that mimic pine trees? Right up her alley. Some of her creations make little robotic movements (visit her website to see videos), reinforcing the awkwardness of people’s imitations of nature.

But in an SFBG article, Inaoka says, “I try not to think too much. I just make and make like I was five years old again.”

From Leah Ollman’s LA Times review of artist Kim McCarty:

“Mixed up, messed up, high-spending and sexually precocious — the public image of teenagers these days is not a pretty sight. But it’s a sight the media can’t seem to get enough of. Now that 12- to 18-year-olds have been tagged as a marketer’s dream demographic, both the screen and the page are full of them and products aimed at them. The navel of the pop culture world is tanned, pierced and 15.

….Kim McCarty’s [watercolors] hint at what lies beneath the brash and sassy veneers: tenderness, tenuousness, vulnerability.” (read more)

Kim McCarty is an LA based artist who works quickly with wet watercolors on wet paper. She can make hundreds or thousands of paintings before hand selecting the few that “make the cut.”

If you happen to live in Detroit, you can check out her work at the David Klein gallery until June 20th.

Lately I like anything on cardboard or kraft paper. But here, I especially like the pop of the red & black, and that mark underneath the title is beautiful. Work by Matt Seccafien of Maeker.

Have a great weekend! It’s Jenny Lewis, Deer Tick, and the gocco for me. Yeah!