Sketchbook Friday: Steampunk Casino Suit

First of all, I love steam punk. Secondly, I love steampunk cosplay. I have not ventured into this world myself, partially due to the time it takes to actually design and make costumes, and the cost of attending con festivals. But, my mind seems to go there often. This sketch sheet was drawn during work, as I guard the art. I thought of a steam punk outfit that would actually be constructed with a vintage steam powered slot machine, which could be pulled to spin the reels. The gas mask just follows the post apocalyptic theme that comes with this genre. The other random circle sketches on this page was me trying to figure out a logo concept for a separate project which involves 7 levels of existence or realms. On the top right corner is a sideways drawing of a room at the Walker Art Center which was used in a Merce Cunningham dance performance, where these globular sacks were hanging down from the ceiling in a very dark lit moody room.
Each Friday at noon I scan in one new sketch or drawing from one of my many sketchbooks. Many times my sketches are ideas for larger projects that you might find on my fine art website William Hessian dot com, or as projects right here on my Bearded Bunny art blog. If you enjoy these sketches make sure to also see my Favorite 20 sketches from 2011 or go back and check out all of the sketchbook friday posts.

If you want to own some of my work, you can always find great deals on my artwork and stickers at my Etsy shop.  Do not forget to subscribe to my blog and never miss another post.

Tina Barney and Julianna Barwick

Thursday is Museum day in Minneapolis. Lecture talks at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center (my old work place) is free from 5pm-9pm. I could make a long blog of all great things I saw today including the dramatic Sports Show, the Frank Gaard show, and the bizarre and fascinating Lifelike exhibition at the Walker. However, the most potent artist's I ran across today was photographer Tina Barney and musician Julianna Barwick.

Today, I met my Grandma and her friend at the lecture and slideshow of photographer Tina Barney. I honestly had not heard of her or her work prior to this lecture. Here is a good Tina Barney link to see some of her incredible photographs.



Tina Barney's photographs are incredibly complex and brilliantly composed. I found myself drooling over the narratives, textures and colors. She talked a lot about repetition and negative space and how different parts of her photos played off other elements in the same photo. When I got to my parents house after the lecture I decided to take two photos of my parents trying to use some of the ideas that Barney was speaking about. Here is what I came up with:



If you happen to be reading this, I would love your impression of the two photos. Which one is more compelling, visually interesting and what narratives do they suggest?

Later that night I sped off to the Walker Art Center to visit old friends and the new shows. Little did I know that Julianna Barwick was performing some impressive surreal looping vocals in one of the galleries.


Juliana Barwick, who I also had not heard of before being pleasantly surprised by her mid-gallery performance, was incredible. The gallery sound shot her vocals right through your soul, and by the end of each 10 minute song it sounded like gangs of singing angels flying over your heard. If you are not familiar with her music, I highly suggest looking her up.

If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy my other posts about photography. You might also enjoy learning about all of my art hunts across the country. Remember also to check back every Friday to see Sketchbook Fridays.

Todd Balthazor and the Walker Art Center comic

On three separate occasions I have been employed at the Walker Art Center, the famous modern art gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The best part about working at the Walker Art Center was meeting and interacting with my co-workers. A large majority of these people are creative people, and many are visual artists. It seems you have to have a certain appreciation for modern art if you are going to spend 40 a week staring at it. So it makes sense that many people that work at the Art Museum are artists.

I could spend weeks writing blogs about all the talented people I have met at the Walker and talk about their works. And maybe I should. Today I wanted to start with and highlight the work of friend and co-worker Todd Balthazor. The timing is also relevant because he has just started a weekly web comic called It is what it is to be posted about being a guard at the Walker Art Center on mnartists.org:


It is what it is web comic by Todd Balthazor available on mnartists.org

My first experience working with Todd, was seeing him turn the break room into an art studio. Using his 30 minute breaks to paint, sketch or draw. I knew right then that this guy was good company. I spent many of my breaks doing the same thing, and it was encouraging to have another artist frantically working on projects during their break besides just myself.

Another reason his comic strip struck a cord with me, is that, basically the comic strip is about me. Since we have the same job I understand many of the inside jokes or double meaning of the work. It is all too true and funny.

Even beyond that, I have a strong connection to Todd's web comic because I spent a year making 100 of my own autobiographical web comic in 2009-2010 which often had content about my job as a security guard at the Walker Art Center.

Here is one of the comics I made about the Walker:

You can find all 100 of my web comics on my website

You can see why Todd's web comic project is especially exciting for me. Meanwhile, Todd Balthazor's illustration work is also something people should not miss:


Find lots more at www.toddbalthazor.com

Check out his work, and read the web comic. It will be a lot of fun.

relevant links:
If you enjoy web comics you should also see King of the Pill a web comic adventure about Jasper and his Face of Many Hands.

Check out other blog posts about the Walker Art Center

snowing in september

i wonder if anyone call tell how late I am in posting this. it was meant to be posted months ago.

meanwhile, im working on the flakes. trying to become flakeless.

one of my jobs

pretending i own millions of dollars worth of art. and pretending i love staring at it for 8 hours a day.

thanks Walker Art Center.

i found a new appreciation for many artists like Lucio Fontana, Ad Reinhardt, Noguchi, and a number of other modern artists. I could list those newer artists, but the list is far too long and incomplete.

tour de farm (walker art center webcomic)

i had the lucky chance to work at the walker art center during the tour de farm event, featuring great chefs from around the metro area who use all organic and farm raised ingredients in their cooking. the hill next to the art center had a long table that held 180 people who paid a hefty sum to come enjoy the food. they even served surley's beer on tap, one of my favorites.

once the rain rolled in and the umbrilla's started appearing it really felt like alice in wonderland out there.

crispa sketches

i wanted to make sure to post a non-web comic blog this week; this is still an art blog. here are three crispa sketches for future ceramic/plaster wall hangings I want to create. the drawings are partially inspired by 'dirt on delight' show at the walker art center, and also derivative of works i created in college.

i have build two mock designs out of air dry clay, which i painted and photographed for you to see. See and read about the real ceramic wall hangings: ceramic wall hanging and two crispas.

Security Guard (webcomic)

Next update on monday.

Back to the Walker and a turtle sketch

I have returned to work at the great Walker Art Center. The best part of returning to employment there, is walking into new galleries (since I last worked in 2008) and spending hours getting to take in the art. Tonight I was lucky enough to see the brand new show 'Dirt on Delight' and was able to stand guard as the artists' private reception was taking place. I listened to many of the artists chat about their works, and even had to tell a few of them not to touch their own work.

I am glad to be back.

I also want to make a brief recommendation for the 'Quick and the Dead' exhibition, which features a great collection of very surreal works, including a frozen bike tire (which actually melts and falls over each day in the gallery), a live model sitting in the corner, a tire being stripped (which smells terrible) and a number of other truly unique experiences. My favorite thing in the Quick in the Dead are two Egyptian-like lion sculptures with lights for their faces. The artist chose to not have her name included with the work, which makes it all the more mysterious.

Here is a sketch I have done for a commissioned painting:

Neon Cage, Phallic forms and multi colored String

A review of the Garden of Metamorphosis
exhibit on display at the Walker Art Center
by artist Tetsumi Kudo

The Walker is featuring three galleries full of unique and powerful works by an incredibly, virtually unknown (in the main stream) Japanese artist named Tetsumi Kudo. Kudo's unusual work blew me away with alien like sculptures of varied textures, a completely unique set of colors all his own, which included neon orange, neon pink and other unusually bright colors. The forms he uses are equally as outrageous, phallic symbols, bird cages, spools, baby carriages, and sprouts.

The Garden of Metamorphosis is an exhibit that is quickly dismissed and even found disgusting by many; especially those that are not open to a new and challenging ideas. Kudo's work is definitely not for everyone, especially not uptight grandmas (no offense to grandmas). I do want to express my true thanks to the Walker for once again having the fortitude and confidence to bring in yet another display of controversial art to Minneapolis.

I should probably mention here that I am employed by the Walker Art Center, not as a writer, but as a gallery monitor (security guard). I am lucky enough to be able to spend some of my days inside a gallery of Kudo's artworks and getting paid for it (although not paid very much). Part of my excitement in being employed by the Walker, is getting to spend ample time in the galleries, and having the opportunity to take in the work on much more intense level than as a common visitor.

During my ample time with Kudo, here is what I have learned. The show at the Walker gives you insight into Kudo as a young artist, a middle aged artist and an artist at the end of his life. Exploring the work you find that Kudo, the artist, goes through a vivid metamorphosis during his life; and that his artwork also goes through a similar metamorphosis, and that we also, as a viewer, get to go through a visual metamorphosis with him. I will admit right now, if you put me in front of one of his neon pink caged phallic pieces, seeing the work on its own I would consider its validity and meaning as art; but when confronted with a room full of twelve cages I begin to understand the overwhelming them of entrapment and sexual frustration and confusion, which also symbolizes a scary control of the freedom of mankind. Many of these cages with mysterious puddles of goo and dried fluids were used in his action performances, that one can experience in the hour long film also on display.

The film's highlight is a very creepy baby carriage work, which Kudo pushes down a well populated residential street in what I assume to be Japan. I unattached brain scurries down beside him as he pushes this carriage which is crying out. If a passer by happened to peak into the carriage they would find a very disturbing image of neon sexuality. The carriage itself is on display.

A room full of growing spouts and a grafted garden featuring dismembered body parts (life size) growing out of some sort of enormous chemistry like ecosystem. You can step into a number of black rooms that are covered in neon phallic shapes and hanging strings. There are also a few series of drawings, prints and embossings that go along with the sculptures and installations. The early sculptures that appear in the first room are some of my very favorite, as the textures are very diverse and the forms are very ambiguous. I have a hard time trying to describe these sculpture, I can only say that they look like gigantic rotten bell peppers that have developed some sort of computer virus as little metallic beads are seeming to grow from the rotting and yet colorful flesh.

I find his room full of dangling phallic forms to be quite surreal and disorienting. The subject matter seems almost rude at one point, and yet invites you to question the meaning behind such a bold use of the male body part, which is sometimes spewing fluids. In the end, the colors and composition are appealing and the meaning seems to dangle over me just as the neon phallic shapes do.

The very end of the experience, you are almost relieved to find a very minimalistic finale to his body of work. A series of impressive sculptures flowing with vein like multi colored string wrapping around a geometric form or spilling out a skull with dettached fingers in front playing the string game, cats cradle. A colorless, and transparent kite hangs above with tiny gooey eggs of various sizes, from the eggs is different relationships of string. I find Tetsumi Kudo's use of string in these final works, to give the best representation of colors attributed to his body of work. They are so thin and concentrated and at times wound together in a very organic way to combine colors in a very unusual way. The string seems to be more visually stark than the very same colors on the bars of the bird cages in the previous room. The skulls seem to pay respect to his upcoming and eventual death, and highlight his struggle and acceptance of his own looming death. Kudo surely did not shy away from his mortality, and he makes sure to present it to us as in his works.

If you enjoy modern art, unique visions, and strange and fantastical things, you must see this exhibit. Tetsumi Kudo challenges any viewer to accept a new visual language and experience the oppressions and feelings of a man constantly struggling with the world around himself. If you are ready for something new, get yourself to this exhibit!

First Day working at the Walker Art Center

Today was my very first day as a Gallery Monitor at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Luckily for me the museum is only a few blocks from my house, and the Walker was hiring. I was pretty confident in getting the job with my experience as an artist, running a gallery in Minnetonka, and working a few years part time as a security guard at an elderly resident (which is a nice way to say 'old folks home').

I was slightly nervous to walk up to the shiny robot like building for my first day (see picture below). The nervousness came from the simple act of knowing I was about to take in a lot of new information. I spent the first four hours of the special free first Saturday, standing in gallery one, surrounded by artworks by Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, Alberto Giacometti, and Mark Rothko.

I made two very interesting realizations in those first four hours. The first, was that upon researching the title cards it appeared that 14 out of 16 works created in that room were done by the artist after the age of 50. Most died within ten years of completing those particular works. This gave me a sense of hope, as youth is seemingly running away from me at light speed, I can a least have solace in the fact that it would not be abnormal to create monumental works of art at 50.

The second realization was that I am a very competitive person, which I actually already knew, but I did not know works in which the artist has passed, still fires up my competitive spirit. I spent that first four hours drooling for a pen and paper, which is frowned upon during gallery monitoring, since my attention should be on the visitors.

Here is a list of things I must be on the watch for working for the Walker Art Center:
1.Pens (only pencils are allowed)
2.Clunky Backpacks
3.Beverages (unless fastened and put away)
4.Touching of the Artwork

80 gallery monitors are employed at one time at the Walker Art Center. The gallery monitor employees are a huge group of varied people, many with beards, many with art backgrounds and all with a gray shirt, gray pants, black shoes and a black belt. I also learned that many also have gel in soles in their shoes, of which, I need to purchase. My feet hurt.

My feet began hurting right before I began in my second room, which is the featured exhibit on display at the Walker on Eero Saarinen the architect. Half of the show is on display at the Walker and the other half is on display at the nearby Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I admit, that after four hours in the gallery my appreciation for the work actually grew on me. There are some funky chairs, and some neat conceptual drawings, but architecture just does not boil my soup. Upon seeing the images 70 times as I paced back and fourth in the gallery, I decided there was some qualities to them that I did enjoy. I appreciate the functionality of the work, and the fact that his work made a legitimate different in the world.

I return again tomorrow, hoping to find more inspirations and use the time to learn more about the artists that I've admired from the history books or slides in art history class. I hope to learn the mysteries of the Walker Art Center and more fully understand what is modern art.

Because right now, I have no idea what modern art truly is.



the walker museum


a mark rothko painting