Your Wishes Come True with Friends With You!

Friends With You, the amazing design/art collective out of Miami, is throwing down some wonderful new toys that can actually be used by *GASP* children! But that doesn't mean you can't keep them on a high shelf away from the little ankle-biters. Your choice. But at this price ($7.50 each), why not give the little whipper-snappers a tiny token of your appreciation?

According to the Friends With You website, "These magical toys feature weighted bottoms and built-in bell chimes, giving them all a playful rocking motion and a subtle, soothing sound. The series features six primary characters - Coco, Fluffy Pop, Malfi, Buddy Chub, Popo and Mr. TTT - plus 3 bonus chase figures that have yet to be revealed." PopDrawer just bought the whole set! Be warned, Friends With you toys often sell out. (When you get to the website, click on "Wish Come True" in the middle of the page.)



Friends With You website

Who Needs Groceries Alert - New Gary Baseman Toy & Print!

The little devil is doing it again. Not Gary Baseman, but his devilish creation Hot Cha Cha Cha. According to Gary, Green Hot Cha Cha Cha "not only steals the halos from Angels but he sucks their pure, rich, red blood too. His lust for innocence and evil is unrivaled in Heaven and Hell and you'll find his angelic appearance beguiling, but don't let it fool you…and don't turn your back on him."

This new colorway is 6 1/2 inches tall and contained in an awesome gothic black coffin box. The total edition is 500 and will, we think, be available in may places, BUT Gary is offering a special limited limited edition of 50 signed by him and including a fantastic giclee of the little green guy ONLY ON HIS WEBSITE. It will be available on Tuesday, April 8th at 10 AM PDT for $185.

Don't let him get away. It's up to you to keep him locked up in your home where he can do no more damage to the outside world.



Green Hot Cha Cha Cha

Yumiko Kayukawa Opening - Extinction

The state of the environment seems to be becoming the prevalent theme in the modern art world. This weekend sees the opening of both Ryan McLennan's "From Fur to Bone", and PopDrawer favorite Yumiko Kayukawa's "Extinction." Using her trademark "candy-bright" colors to and images of "young women, animals, and traditional Japanese motifs," Kayukawa "blends fashion illustration, sharp iconic graphics, and meticulously rendered flora and fauna to create images that evoke a dreamy and enigmatically erotic tone." The artist describes her new show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Hollywood, CA this way: "I've been creating work in the theme of communion with animals and nature for long time. That feeling of connection inside me is growing and growing through the process of painting. Because of that I feel increasingly sad about the situation between humanity and wildlife. 'Extinction' is an extremely scary word. I put that fear into my consciousness to help myself face it."

The opening reception is from 8 to 11 PM on Friday night. Contact annieadj@gmail.com as soon as possible if you are interested in purchasing. They are available now. Some are already sold. Yumiko's work typically sells out every show. The pieces range from $2800 to $7000.



"Extinction" at La Luz de Jesus

Yumiko Kayukawa's official site

Recent Popdrawer article about Yumiko Kayukawa

North by Northwest remixed & London After the Rain

Okay, we at PopDrawer must admit that we are a little confused by this, but sometimes confusion can be a blissful state. And so it is when as we watched a number of videos put out by students and teachers at London's Bartlett School of Architecture. These videos were created by Unit 15, overseen by professor Nic Clear, and are as good an approximation of what the future of cinema might look like as any we've ever seen. We must admit that we don't quite understand how many of these films fit into the study of architecture, but in the well-chosen words of Dwell Magazine, "each film functions as an architectural proposal -- or as an avant-garde form of urban analysis."

Uh... Uh-huh.

All we know is that we could spend hours mesmerized by the surreal images of beauty. There are dozens on the website, but we have highlighted two of our faves, London After the Rain by Ben Olszyna-Marzys, and an untitled remix of North by Northwest by Mario Balducci, which at once reminds of us Alfred Hitchcock's brilliance and demonstrates what can happen when a talented artist gets hold of a perfect original (let's please leave Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho out of this).

Remember that these are videos, so please click on the links to see them in their full glory. (If you have trouble viewing the videos, try right-clicking and choosing "play in Real Player.")





Untitled (remix of North by Northwest)

London After the Rain

How To Be a Modern Art Insider and Get the Paintings You Want

Kirsten Ulve


Feeling left out and lonely? Admiring your buddy's beautiful (and valuable!) art collection and wondering how you can get one of your very own? Tired of imbibing catering truck-sized amounts of cheap wine and cheese and listening to pretentious art school students drone on and on about metaphors of distopia and current memes in modern art movements (what the hell is meme anyway? Really, are you sure?) with nothing on your wall to show for it? Well PopDrawer is here to change all that and teach you how to get the art that you want in five easy tips.

1) Subscribe to your favorite artists' websites and check them often. You can't buy anything from an artist unless you know that she/he will soon have work for sale. You need to keep abreast of your faves' upcoming shows before you can do anything else. In addition, sometimes an artists sells a piece or two from their website.

2) Contact the galleries where your artists will be showing. Get on their mailing lists. Email the email contact and ask them to be put on the artist's waiting list. Let them know that you are a serious buyer, a fan of that artist's work, and you would like a chance to buy a piece.

3) Buy from your favorite galleries. Typically a gallery has a personality, an aesthetic. If you like the work of one artist they show, you are likely to like the work of other artists on their roster. So go to the openings, troll the websites, and look for an unsold piece that you like. Do not assume that the pieces that go first are always the best pieces. Trust your own taste. And know that often a buyer falls out after they have already committed, leaving the gallery with a piece it must resell. Those works are often found somewhere on the website. Once you purchase a piece from a gallery, you will be a VIP to that gallery, and your request to be on the waiting list of your favorite artists will be given much more weight.

4) Get to know your favorite artists!. They usually show up to their opening night soirees. They are often the ones standing in the corner, surrounded by groupies, uncomfortable at the attention. But who cares! They are counting on you, their fans, to support them. Approach them. Tell them how much you like their work. If everything has already been sold, ask them if they have any unsold pieces available or if they have a waiting list. Chances are that they will answer you! And then follow up with an email.

5) Go to the private preview, not the public opening. If there's a preview, that's when the remaining available pieces will be sold. You need to be there, right when it starts. But how, PopDrawer, can a regular Joe or Jenny like me get into the private preview, you may ask? Well, you need to be resourceful and clever and bold. Here's what you need to do. Ready? Ask. That's right. Ask. Call the gallery and try this out. "Um, hi, uh... is there a private preview for the new Gary Baseman show? Could I get an invite? Really, just show up? I'll be there!" Good thing you're resourceful, clever and bold. You just got yourself in line to buy a rare and hard to attain Gary Baseman original.

Good luck and good hunting!!

P.S. The images in this email are pieces PopDrawer acquired using some of these very methods!!


Miles Thompson

Ryan McLennan -- From Fur to Bone

Next Saturday, April 5, a dark and fascinating new show by Ryan McLennan opens at Kinsey/DesForges gallery in Culver City, CA. Titled From Fur to Bone, the show contains pieces that hearken back to the Naturalist paintings of the 19th century, but altered to depict slightly fantastical elements (a topiary bear, for instance) to draw attention to environmental issues.

From the press release: "...inspired by many hours spent in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains, this VCU grad and Virginia native has undertaken an in-depth inquiry into the evolution and displacement of North America wildlife, and his understanding of changing patterns in their behavior, incurred as a direct result of changes and destruction to their natural habitats..."

The show opens next Saturday, so if you want a piece, contact Kinsey/Desforges now to get on the waiting list.





From Fur to Bone

Ryan McLennan

Alert! New Cotton Monsters Available NOW!!!

A new batch of Jennifer Strunge's wonderful hand-made cotton monsters are available NOW and they won't last long. Typically they sell out within a few hours. Luckily, this time Ms. Strunge is going to be posting a few new ones periodically over a short period of time, so if they're gone currently, you can keep[ checking back and you may get luckily enough to adopt one of these jolie laid monstrosities.

(Jolie-Laid translation: French for beautiful-ugly. Refers to a person or thing that is not traditionally beautiful, even ugly, but somehow appeals to our aesthetic sense. Examples -- Sandra Bernhard, Sandra Oh, Sandra Tsing Loh -- do you see a pattern here?)

Anyway, she has temporarily moved the store to the Etsy store. Get 'em while you can!!!



New Cotton Monsters Etsy Store

Cotton Monsters Site

Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project

This from Dwell Magazine:

"Using model train figurines and miniature props, Slinkachu, an anonymous street artist, reappropriates banal elements of London's streetscapes to create humorous installations with biting social satire."

What more can we say, except that Slinkachu's fantastic photos are available for sale in limited editions on his/her (?) website. The price is about 150 British Pounds, or approximately $300.



Slinkachu

Who Needs Groceries Alert -- Jeff Soto Giclee!!

Here at PopDrawer (is there really a "here" in the online ether?), we have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to wax rhapsodic about one of our fave artists, the great and powerful Jeff Soto. From the minute we laid eyes on his work, we have been over the moon for his fantastical images of cacti, robots, flying words and other surreal subjects all done in an amazing classical, painterly style. In our opinion, he is one of the (deservedly) fastest rising stars in the art world today.

So here is what we were waiting for -- a new giclee! Titled "War Clouds," the image was recently part of "Storm Clouds" show in NYC last year (David Choe owns the original). The print is 18" x 12" (the size of the original) and available in a limited edition of 50, signed and numbered, for just $250. Get yours now, because it is sure to sell out.



Jeff Soto's website

"War Clouds"

We're back! In the Year of the Rat...

Dan-ah Kim


PopDrawer has been out of commission for a couple of weeks, but we're back, and want to blog about a show that opened in our absence. GR2 (an outlet of Giant Robot), is currently hosting a show entitled "The Year of the Rat" at their LA outpost, and there are still some affordable works available. The show runs through April 16th and is a group art show celebrating year 4706 on the lunar calendar. Pieces include oils, pencils, prints, sculpture, and other media all dedicated to the first sign on the Chinese zodiac cycle. Contributors include, among other, Gary Baseman, Deth P. Sun, Dan-ah Kim, Martin Cendreda, and a host of other great artists. Go down to Sawtelle to check it out, or to this link if you can't make it in person.



Andrew Holder




Stephanie Leung


The Year of the Rat

Ana Bagayan at BSFA

We at PopDrawer apologize for our lack of regular postings these past two weeks. We’ve been busy busy busy. And so has the art world we love to follow. This was a big big weekend for new openings, and we’ll try throughout this week to cover a few of them. Starting today with rising star Ana Bagayan. We’ve been to a few of her openings now, and her new work never ceases to thrill us. She has moved quickly from Art Center student to group show participant to showing solo. Her newest show, titled “Mother Nature” opened last night at the Billy Shire Fine Arts Gallery in Culver City, California.

According to the press release, “[Ana Bagayan] uses a less saturated palette filled with animals in natural habitats, attempting to recall feelings of brooding more so than morbidity. Ana Bagayan was born in the capital of Armenia; Yerevan, and moved to the United States when she was six years old. In Burbank, California, she frolicked amongst tall grasses and dancing bears until she entered Art Center of Design in Pasadena where she earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration. Ana's work has been received internationally and has been featured in such publications as Rolling Stone, Spin and GQ.”

The new works range in price from $750 to $7500, and there are still a few pieces available. Meanwhile, on a tighter budget you can purchase a limited edition giclee print of her work "Butterfly House" at the store at her site for only $150.



Ana Bagayan

"Mother Nature" at BSFA

Kristen Schiele - First Solo Show at Sloan Fine Art

Wednesday March 12th marks the opening of the first solo exhibition at the excellent Sloan Fine Art gallery in NYC. The show, entitled "My Dream is Yours" is described this way: The all-female cast of Kristen Schiele's new paintings and collages exist in a disjointed, cinematic dreamscape. Influenced by the highly stylized and macabre sensibility of the Italian filmmaker Dario Argento, these heroines confront the viewer directly as they define a new strategy of power in environments that traditionally serve only to circumscribe their identity."

See the Sloan Fine Art website for more!



Kristen Schiele
Sloan Fine Art

All the ladies in the house...

All-women group shows seem to be all the rage lately. It's a decent way to bring more notice to female artists, but we here at PopDrawer hope that we see fewer and fewer gender-based shows in the future and more and more shows that have nothing to do with gender and simply include these amazing artists who happen to be women. Having said that, the new show at Project:Gallery in Culver City, California is a great collection of five artists who happen to be women: Jen Corace, Katy Horan, Rebecca Artemisa Urias, Allison Cole, and Dan-Ah Kim. The show is called Kaleidoscope, and opened this weekend. According to the press release, "Each artist represents a whimsical and feminine style, that truly tells a greater story than at first glance." Go to the press release for more info on each artist. These very affordable pieces are going from below $100 to just above $1000. Head to the preview to take a look.



Kaleidoscope at Project:Gallery

Kaleidoscope Store

Alex Prager, Amazing Photographer

This weekend, funky streetwear company WeAretheSuperlativeConspiracy (WeSC) held its first art show in Santa Monica at the Robert Berman Gallery. WeSC chose photographer Alex Prager to curate the show, which included 10 artists such as Prager herself and Chad Robertson. As always, Prager's new work blew us away at PopDrawer.

Alex Prager, who has an ongoing solo show at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London entitled Big Valley, is a Los Angeles native. According to the Big Valley press release, "Born in Los Angeles, Prager has received no formal education since 8th grade, spending time between Los Angeles, Florida and Lucerne, Switzerland. A self-taught photographer, Prager was originally inspired by stumbling upon a William Eggleston exhibition at the Getty Museum... Since taking up photography at the age of 20 her photographs have been included in 13 exhibitions including a recent solo show at Robert Berman Gallery and she has shot for numerous publications include i-D, Flaunt, Complex, Elle Japan, MOJO and Rolling Stone."

The release also states that "Prager photographs her female subjects in a style reminiscent of the great mid 20th Century film directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk." However, for some reason, we are more reminded of late 60s, early 70s Los Angeles, and think of glam housewives over movie stars. When we look at her photos, what comes to our minds is Joan Didion's amazing essay on housewife culture in Southern California circa 1970, "Lifestyles in the Golden Land" from her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We apologize for sounding pedantic, but if you haven't read it, YOU SHOULD. And if you haven't checked out Alex Prager, you MOST DEFINITELY should.





Alex Prager

Who Needs Groceries Alert - KidRobot Sale!

In case you have not heard, KidRobot is having a warehouse sale, offering 50%-80% off! We at PopDrawer LOVE sales, and this is one we won't miss. All the details in the image above. Enjoy!

UPDATE -- New Baseman Print

The new Gary Baseman print, "Celeste", is NOW AVAILABLE. And check out this beauty (the print, not the model). The print is a 24 layer serigraph created with The Decoder Ring over 6 days in Austin, Texas. Each print is on Coventry Rag heavyweight archival paper. Signed, numbered and embossed.

This is an edition of 100 with 80 available for purchase. The first 50 are $250 plus shipping. The next 15 will be $275 and the final 15 will be $300.

Gary told us "I am actually trying to do the print like a painting, in the sense, I am creating the next color right after the last color was laid done. There should be over 20 colors but I want it to look like there is only 2."

Get yours while you can!

"Celeste" print by Gary Baseman

Who Needs Groceries Alert -- New BASEMAN print!

Gary Baseman does not release enough prints! Thankfully, another one is on the way. Saturday!! At the Decoder Ring Design Collective website. Price? Edition size? Who knows? And who cares. We'll take it. All we know is that it is being offered at NOON, central time. Be there, or be... very sad you weren't.

(Above is just a tiny preview -- it is NOT the entire image.

New Gary Baseman Print

Stunning website - not to be missed

Last year PopDrawer was aimlessly floating around the net, and we found what must be one of the most beautifully designed websites EVER. It belongs to graphic designer Jonathan Yuen, based in Singapore. We don't know much about Mr. Yuen. But we do know is that he represents the future of the internet. So go take a look, click on the little red plusses all around the website, and be prepared to be wowed.

Jonathan Yuen

French Dunnies

First French fries take over America, next the French Dunny. The newest line of Dunnies (or is the plural of Dunny actually Dunnys?) arrived on our shores in KidRobot stores last Thursday. With 21 different designs by 19 different artists, there is a potpourri of choices from which to choose. But ah, mon dieu, you cannot choose! This is a blind assortment, which means you get whatever comes in the little 3-inch box. But $6.95 is a small price to pay for a little mystery in your banal life, n'est-ce pas? Or, if you must have them all, you can purchase the entire assortment (with no doubles) for less than $150. Just follow the instructions on the ordering page carefully.

Here's a brief description from KidRobot...

"The French are invading! Kidrobot takes a trip across the Atlantic to collect designs from France's hottest artists. The French art scene left a lasting impression on 2007 with an explosion of new and upcoming talent making their mark on contemporary culture.

A variety of artists rocked Dunny in this exciting new series. 123 Klan, SKWAK, Tilt, SUPERDEUX and MIST are just a few of the artists chosen to collaborate on this lovely new series."

Get 'em before they emigrate.



French Dunny

KidRobot

Snow Globes!!!

Who doesn't love a good snow globe? Well feast your eyes on these! Artists Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz, AKA Martin & Muñoz, have created some of the most intricate and stunning snow globes ever. Here is a nice article about them and their process in a recent New York Times article. If you are anywhere near Scottsdale, Arizona in March, they will be showing their work at Bentley Gallery starting the 4th of March. If you are, just visit their website. You are sure to be transported to a winter wonderland in no time at all.



Martin & Munoz