SPECK: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things

For those of you that like to leave something interesting for your guests to read on the coffee table, this book will start conversation very quickly. It's called SPECK and is a compilation of creative projects that were intended to among other things answer questions, serve as creative experiments, or bring to light seldom seen details in our surroundings. If you'd like to read more you can check out Amazon's review as well as thoughts on the book from others. I'll leave you with the first sentence of the book..."Notes: On the dusk of August 14, 2000 one red helium balloon was released into the hazy Brooklyn sky."!

(moved from 02/2006 archive)

from washington dc to miami, fl to cancun, mexico to washington dc!

I just returned from a trip to Mexico and am finishing up some journal artwork from that trip. It was a lot of fun to take the journal international; I've also found that one of my favorite places to draw at is airports due to the vast diversity in people, clothes, objects, etc. Luckily, I had the opportunity to experiment with a slightly new medium and I'm very excited to see how it will fit in with my journal work.

I'll post the finished pieces within the next couple of weeks!

my new focus and a new transition!

After a lot of reflection on what I wanted to accomplish with my body of artwork, I realized that I had solid work across a variety of media but all of the categories and individual pieces seemed disjointed; I felt as if my work didn't have enough conceptual substance or utility and function. It was at that point that all of my experience, education, and exposure to the fine arts and graphic design came together to create a single epiphany...I wanted to document life through art using a journal approach, along with artwork using individual media.

Over the years, I've become increasingly interested in sketchbooks and journals as well as documentaries that focused on nature. From travel logs and handwritten notes in sketchbooks to the Planet Earth dvd series, I found the documentary aspects, and how they integrated with art and creativity, to be fascinating. I wanted something more for myself than creating a piece of artwork for a wall or website; the idea that my work might only receive a passing glance truly bothered me. For the record there are many great artists, illustrators, and designers that generate an idea and translate it to paper or the web and do it in such a way that is amazing. For myself, I needed to merge my fine art and graphic design skills with an appreciation of what's around me in order to generate a fresh, unique, and highly functional body of artwork.

As for moving my entire portfolio and web prescence to my blog...I decided that a blog is the perfect communication tool to display my body of work and convey myself as an artist that uses a journal/documentary approach. I'll post new work as it's created but will also upload it to the portfolio section. As usual, I'll post new articles so check back regularly for consistent updates.

featured artist 10.07: Danny Gregory

Normally, an artist will post his/her portfolio online and most (if not all) of us sit there in awe of their amazing talent. Well, with this month's featured artist, I not only sat there in amazement but found numerous articles that both inspired me and helped me figure out a few things about myself as an artist. His website is entertaining, helpful, inspirational, funny, focused, and an overall wealth of knowledge about creativity and life.

www.dannygregory.com/toc.php

sketches...a preview

To pick up where my last post left off, I have a preview of what's to come in terms of my new body of work.

The piece that I'm displaying here isn't a result of sketching on-location and/or during travel but rather a visual study that will be a part of my still life work. I chose the subjects not only for their "non-traditional fine art subject" qualities but also for the conceptual contrast. All of my sketches are free hand; no pencil outlines were created prior to the use of the chosen medium. I'll post more to my blog and website as they're created.

title: "garter and garlic, study#1"
medium: pen



© 2007 joe blend. All rights reserved.

life, travel, and sketching...

Several months ago, I developed a renewed interest in the fine arts; it started with an unannounced desire to paint and is currently a strong desire to sketch/draw/illustrate. Along with this new direction for my work came a strong interest in handmade elements and mixed media. Over the course of developing new work that "worked" and new work that "didn't work", I realized that I wanted my work to have a strong purpose...and that purpose was to document as well as re-interpret. But it didn't end there. I couldn't just sit down in front of a still life for all my work; I needed to document places, people, interesting attributes of life, etc and I needed to create these sketches on-location and not from a photograph or entirely from memory.

Drawing and painting is something I never thought I'd get back into but I guess some things take time before they're fully understood and realized. Although I just finished several sketches from a recent trip to Atlanta GA, I still need to work on refinements and color (for some of the sketches anyway) so for now I don't have any completed travel pieces. I'll post those soon on both my blog and website.

featured artist 08.07: Thievery Corporation

These guys create some of the most amazing music by blirring the lines between genres and ultimately creating a new, very engaging experience. I've been listening to them for years and they're usually in my cd player when I'm working...www.thieverycorporation.com

featured creatives and new directions

For quite a while I've been posting articles about featured artists, designers, photographers, etc; until now the selected individuals or studios had been within the realm of the visual arts. In order to broaden the base of inspiration within my blog, I've decided to include creatives from other disciplines and industries such as musicians or individuals that have started creative endeavors (profit or non-profit).

I hope you enjoy the new additions to this group of articles!

caffeinated update...

It's funny how much you can accomplish when you nearly cut yourself off from the rest of the world! Ok, so I didn't cut myself off completely but sometimes you have to step back and focus in order to make progress.

I've been hard at work on some mixed media and illustration work, I'm gettting ready to start on a new graphic design project, and the additional photography that I am installing in Capitol Eyes is almost ready for matting/framing so things are moving along! I've started on a new "journal" along the lines of my journal that I wrote about a while back...it's a different direction, more idea-based, but it's proving to be very interesting and useful.

I've decided to post a new article every week to keep things fresh; if there are any topics you would like to read articles about in my blog, feel free to contact me at "info at joe blend dot com". Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that all ideas will be accepted (for various reasons) but I'll do my best to tailor some articles around specific interests of my readers. Thanks again for all your support and check back soon for new stuff!

Joe Blend and Capitol Eyes: a gallery experience

A couple of months ago, the owner of an eyeglass boutique in Washington DC commissioned six of my photographs for display/sale in his store. After a couple of stressful months of shooting/editing/matting/framing, the work is finally installed (the sixth photograph will be installed on Tuesday May 22nd). Both myself and the store owner are very happy with the results; upon installation, he commissioned another four pieces so it's back to work for another exciting round of art production!

Anyway, here are four of the photographs that I selected for display/sale...

Flamingos:



Empire State Building:



Cherry Blossoms and random zoo plant (respectively)



I'll post a preview of the additions after they're installed. For those of you in and around the DC Metro area that are interested in checking the work out in person, here's the address of the store:

Capitol Eyes
1201 F Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004

I'd like to say thanks to all of you that have supported me and my work in one way or another over the years and thanks to Dr. Allouche of Capitol Eyes for this incredible experience!