Artist Post #2

Drew Rios is an apparel designer for Nike, a graphic designer at Toho Water Authority, and a graphic designer also at Fahrenheit Ultra Lounge & Restaurant. In the past he has worked with graphic design in the music industry. He received training in digital art at Ringling School of Art and Design. His specialties in digital art include music branding, print design, and type design. I discovered this artist on a site called Society 6. Society 6 sells prints of different artists' works and each artist has their own profile where they can post their different works and give brief descriptions of their works or descriptions of the inspiration for the work. This is a link to Drew Rios' profile. I was immediately drawn to this work of Rios because of spacey elements he used in it.

Earthrise

Drew calls this work a "tribute poster to the first image of earth from the moon." I find the mysterious mood created by the color pallet and haziness to be very relevant to the mystery surrounding space when the first picture of the earth was taken from the moon. This is the picture of earth which Drew is referencing in his work: Earth  

I interpret the texture Drew has created in the Earthrise to be some sort of replication of the texture of the moon in the original photograph. One thing I take issue with in Earthrise is Rios' way of showing the magnificence of earth. He takes a very obvious approach to showing magnificence by placing the beams of sparkling white light in a frame around earth. In the original photograph there is this natural and subtle magnificence that I wish Rios could have captured in Earthrise. I believe he was on the right track with his color pallet and texture but the added beams of light don't sit well with me in their artificial framing. However, I should explain that much of Drew's works have a 1980's vibe to them which he discusses briefly under some works. This could be why he incorporated the striking beams of light. Also, with his background in graphic design for products, it was natural for him to frame the main object of the work so that the eye is immediately drawn to what he wishes you to view first. 

Astroknot

Seeds of Mars

These are just two more of his works. Astroknot is an example of another 80's/space inspired work. Seeds of Mars is much like an early botanical drawing which he incorporated comets into to humorously suggest that the earth was "seeded with the DNA of martians."

project 1

One More

Photo Editing

Jordan Tate

This particular artist is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Cincinnati. He has a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Indiana University. His artwork can be found in the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In addition to digital art, he is a writer and published “The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms.” As well, he founded the contemporary art blog http://ilikethisart.net. It is not uncommon for Jordan to collaborate with artist Adam Tindale to create joint works. Tindale is "an electronic drummer and digital instrument designer." "Adam performs on his EDrumset: a new electronic instrument that utilizes physical modeling and machine learning with an intuitive physical interface." Tindale is a Permanent Instructor of Interaction Design in the Media Arts and Digital Technologies area at the Alberta College of Art and Design. 

This video is one of Jordan and Adam's works. It is called Lossless_23. This type of video is called a 3D stereographic, which is the result of is the result of the "sorting process where pixels were sorted by hue." I am not quite sure what exactly the artists are trying to say, or if they are trying to say anything at all. The only thing I could possibly see the work meaning would be something along the lines of how beauty is fleeting and that eventually it will start to sort of be eaten away. I think the work is interesting but it seems a bit too simplistic for me. 

This work is called New Work #90. It is a video of a bust floating above the ocean. This is Tate's statement about New Work: 

New Work is an exploration of visual language and process. In a sense it is an examination of how we see, what we see, what merits being seen, and how images function in contemporary visual culture. The photographic image is still often viewed as a mechanical reproduction of reality. In this paradigm, the photograph functions not as an object, but as a conceptually transparent representation of a reproduced reality rather than an object loaded with historical and functional contexts. New Work represents a shift away from the context of photograph as mechanical reproduction and is an acknowledgement of the image-maker as the mediator of sight, as well as an exploration of process and practice in contemporary image viewing and production. These images are a continuation of ongoing research / meta-photographic critique concerning the visual and conceptual processes of image comprehension.

After reading this I found the work much more intriguing. When I first watched the video I thought to myself, ok this is neat but I really don't understand the significance of it. It is interesting that these works are in a way an experiment or a test to see how we comprehend what we see. 

New Work #50

This is another New Work project that also is a bit visually confusing.

All of my information was found by navigating through Jordan Tate's profile found at this address rhizome