martin creed

Martin Creed is a British artist who currently splits his time between London and Alicudi, Italy.  I am in love with his work and found it thanks to a terrific blog called My Adventure is Your Advantage (MAiYA).  It certainly is in this case!  Below, is a selection of my favourite pieces from Martin- ultimate favourites are #2 and #3. Happy Thursday.  Next week I will fill you in on my second trip to Amsterdam.  There has been a lot of exploring going on this past week. Excited to share.

All images via Martin Creed’s website.

artist: oli goldsimth

I find I am getting to the stage in my life where I am starting to pay more attention to art.  As kids, art appreciation is something part of growing up either via arts & crafts lessons, school trips to the art gallery or art history classes in school.  During university art appreciation, for me, when dormant.  I was no longer drawing and painting, I could count on one hand how many times I set foot in an art gallery and the last class I formally took on about art in school was my third year aesthetics class for my philosophy major.

Now that I own four walls and a roof, my interest in art has been rekindled and I make more of an effort when out and about in Toronto or traveling abroad to visit galleries and shops with art.  I scribble down names of artists so I can research and blog about their work and have started to build my repertoire of what I would like to fill my walls with when I have the budget.  One of my new favourite artists is Toronto based Oli Goldsmith.  His art is chaotic, bust, colourful, graphic, involves the repetition of patterns and is sometimes referred to the genre of pop-surrealism.  I saw his work in a great furniture store, Michael Thomas, in Port Hope.  If you would like to read more about the artist, I found two good bios here and here.

via flickr

via flickr

via flickr

 

via flickr

via torontoist.com

 

 

 

 

Love Heart: Alexandre Girard

As you know, I have been collecting ideas to decorate the walls of my “art gallery” condo.  I found this piece today and fell in love.  This has to go on my wall somewhere too! 

The piece is called Love Heart and was designed by American textile designer, Alexandre Girard.  Alexandre was born in NYC in 1907 and was known for his work for Herman Miller as head of fabric and textile design for the company.  This piece in particular was created on Columbia Forest Products and can be found on Design Public.

via design public

entrepreneurial art

I have been noticing more and more talk on the integration of art, design and business;  the marriage of right and left brain, yin and yang, arts degrees and business degrees, together to produce more value out of the sum of the parts.  The increasing support, awareness and talk over integration of design and business makes me happy because I subscribe to this way of thinking whole heartedly.  I am the arts degree and the business degree in one.  I grew up performing on stage, playing musical instruments, taking art lessons and doing other crafty things but I also have an interest in business and work in real estate.  Are the two things so at odds with each other?  I don’t think so.  

To learn more about my own philosophy,  I started reading up on these two unlikely opposites and ended up studying a business case on the design firm, IDEO and their practice of ethnographic research in solving business problems.  I think IDEO is a great example of a company that “gets it.”  IDEO created an entire company (very successful- that was later purchased by office furniture company, Steelcase) on the marriage of design and business and countless products have been born out of this integration.  Fast forward to this year, the Dean of Rotman Business School in Toronto, Roger Martin published a book that I read called the Design of Business which discussed the value of attacking problems through an integration of design and business philosophies.  Finally, the other day while reading the blog, Out of the Way, I saw a piece of art that caught my attention. Artist/entrepreneur/blogger/cartoonist, Hugh MacLeod, produces great pieces of work that I find are representative of the marriage of design + business.  For an interview and to learn more about Hugh MacLeod click here.  Hugh also published a book called “Ignore Everybody”  on how to unlock your own creativity and brilliance and unleash it on the world. For the events/entertaining industry where the pressure to be innovative, new and relevant is ever more pressing, Hugh is a great source of wisdom and inspiration for us all.  His book is already on my library list and look forward to reading more about his opinions and experience.  But for now- you can appreciate his art! 

via gaping void

 

via gaping void

 

via gaping void

Cheerful Art: Beatriz Milhazes

It’s raining in Toronto today and when I’m feeling blah from the weather, I look for things to cheer me up.   I decided a quick glance at the work of my favourite artist, Beatriz Milhazes, is always a perk up.

For those of you unfamiliar with Brazillian artist, Beatriz Milhazes, she is known for her extremely colourful, layered paintings that truly embody the energy in Brazil.  I had the pleasure of taking a quick trip to Sao Paulo, and during the four days I spent there I was able to get a taste of why Brazil is often described as so colourful and lively.   Sao Paulo was as colourful and robust as Beatriz’s paintings. 

photo from hypercreations.blogspot.com

So where did I discover Beatriz’ art?  I first fell in love with her paintings when I discovered them prominently displayed at the 2006  Shanghai Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum (上海美术馆) while I was living in China.  The two paintings I saw in Shanghai were there large decoupages where she used retail plastic bags and packaging that were cut up in geometric shapes and made into flowers, lines and other configurations of colour.  I love making decoupages on my own and I am known in my house to tear apart magazines and then glue them together into colour boards, mood boards and other works of “art.”  However, when I saw what Beatriz produced from retail bags, I was blown away.  I wanted to see more of her work and from then on have been researching and revelling in the stunning paintings she creates.   While I have not seen her work in Toronto I found out that sometimes here work is on exhibit at the James Cohan gallery in New York.  

There is a good article about Beatriz and her style written on the Tate Etc (the art magazine).

Beatriz Milhazes Palmolive 2004 (via Tate Etc.)

Beatriz Milhaze Panamerican 2004 (via tate etc)

Beatriz With Her Art

Liberty 2007 photo via ruby red life