Top 10 Feb 26

Welcome back friends and family. Hope you got the time to slowly brows through my top 10 today, absolutely worth it.

Also got an inspirational speech by Saul Bass, check it out below:

Now think about that before you go back to work.

Enjoy.

/Mr. J

1. Swansea - A Love Story

A harrowing documentary about life and love (of sorts) on the bleak streets of the South Wales city.


Swansea Love Story is no Romeo & Juliet story transferred from the streets of Verona to those of South Wales, no matter what the name might suggest. Instead, filmmaking duo Andy Capper and Leo Leigh provide us with a staggering documentary that attempts to get under the skin of a small selection of the many drug addicts living in the city.

The Love Story of the title relates most obviously to Cornelius and Amy, a homeless, alcoholic, heroin addict couple at the heart of the film. When Amy remarks early on to her loved one that “we’ve had some hard times, haven’t we?”, she does so in a way that neatly summarises the hopeless destitution these people face. Her life story is one of numerous hardships that could be described in much stronger, harsher terms than ’some hard times,’ but that’s all they are to Amy.

The Love Story extends further, though. The devotion the subjects of the film have for their drugs of choice is, in most cases, unbreakable. They are in fact no longer drugs of choice but of necessity. Equally, the Love Story speaks of Swansea itself; a city no longer riding high on the waves of industrialisation, as the elder statesmen of the mines and working mens clubs talk us through the highs and lows of their beloved hometown.

As raw and unflinching as the film is, it is this pervading sense of affection that moves the film out of the realms of relentless bleakness. To sustain such a mood for the duration would turn the work into an unwatchable parable, but low crew numbers and uncomplicated vérité camerawork allow the humanity of the addicts to shine through. The subjects of the film are not characterised solely by their addictions: they are as fallible as any human beings, and they deserve our attention as such.

Whether it be the strange painting of a wizard hanging in the Special Brew can-filled front room of Cornelius’s sister, the deep and passionate love for Swansea City F.C that hopeful-reformer Dennis sings about in his blood-splattered new flat, or the incongruous box of Sugar Puffs that sits on the shelf behind ‘The Famous Clint,’ it is these tiny details that colour their world in and show us that, despite what statistics or tabloid coverage might sometimes tell us, these people should not be demonised.

The beauty of Leigh and Capper’s film lies in it’s simplicity, making it clear that to cast these people aside would be pure folly. Swansea Love Story is socially-aware filmmaking of a very high standard which deserves an audience not only because of its sensitive portrayal of a topic so often reduced to newspaper bylines, but because of the undeniable quality of craft and compassion shown by these relatively unknown filmmakers.

Watch all 6 episode of the documentary HERE

2. Jen Mann

Great work by Jen, Check out more work HERE

3. Art of the Title

Awesome site with a speciality in movie title, highly recommend you to check it out HERE

4. Christa Joo Hyun D'Angelo

Christa Joo Hyun D'Angelo is a Korean-Italian American artist who was born in 1983 Busan, South Korea and raised in NYC. She attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore Maryland majoring in painting and minoring in Anthropology before transferring to The Academy of Fine Arts, in Cracow Poland. Upon graduation Christa moved to Berlin where she currently lives and works while tackling her life long fear of the dentist. She is represented by The Kuma Galerie. See more Work by Christa HERE

5. Langdon Graves

Awesome drawings by Langdon Graves. See more work HERE

6. Charles Clary

charles clary is an emerging american artist who specializes in creating relief sculptures using layers of hand cut paper. clary's work is tactile and colourful and extremely intricate. each piece is composed of multiple layers of paper that are stacked on top of each other to pop out from the wall or move inwards. most of clary's pieces take the form of canvases mounted on the wall. these canvases are cut into revealing the layers beneath them. these layers are intricately cut and inspired by natural and organic forms like bacteria or topographic formations. here is collection of new work by clary, prepared for an upcoming show exhibit in march.

See more work by Charles HERE

7. Vee Speers

Imagine you are 8 or 9 or 10 years old. You are invited to a birthday party, a costume party, and encouraged to dress up as a creature of your own wild imagination. How would you imagine your alter ego at age 10?

Some of the innocent ones dress as princesses, dancers, spacemen, or angels — sublime and stunning. Some boys choose the macho images of soldiers or gladiators. Other young party-goers seem more in touch with their dark sides, and arrive as gleefully-mean rodent exterminators or scowling torturers of baby dolls. The scared ones seem as if they were dressed bizarrely by Mommy Dearest and forced to participate against their wills in this nightmare freak show.

All together, the party takes on the tone of a twilight zone of dark dreams, hidden desires, innocent beauty, and sinister revelations of twisted inner realities. An unsettling mixture, to say the least. Not much fun, unless you crave the bizarre and surreal. A little bit like real life sometimes, no?

This is the most recent photo series created by Australian-born, Paris-based photographer Vee Speers. People who remember her Bordello series will recognize Speers' continuing fascination with the trickery of appearance, and the power of masks, costumes and outward signals from inner worlds.

These new photos seem suspended in time, much as the Bordello series did. Speers achieves this through brilliant casting, simple backgrounds, costumes and hair-styles that cannot be easily placed in modern times, and subtle hand-tinted color effects added to the original black-and-white Polaroid prints. The life-size images hover, large and luscious, on the wall — and can stop you in your tracks. — Jim Casper

See more work by Vee Speers HERE

8. Beth Emily

Nice Illustrations by Beth Emily check out her blog HERE and her portfolio HERE

9. Adobe Photoshop Cook

A video made in stopmotion for competition AdobeYouGC. The simulation of a tutorial which shows how to make the lovely butter cookies with the new Adobe Photoshop Cook! Whole set was made with cardboard and with kitchen utensils.

Simple and very cute.

10. Colin Christian

Colin Christian was born in London on March 30, 1964 to a loving and outgoing mother. He disliked school, and apart from art classes, found the whole thing rather frustrating and useless. At the age of 15 he left school and lived for a year in Morocco with his mother, brother and sister. He found the cultural differences to be very liberating. Upon his return to England at the age of 16 he worked at a record store, and in 1982 became a DJ and stage manager for a large nightclub in the south of England. This is where he met his wife, Sas, in 1989.

In 1992 Colin moved to the U.S. where he and his wife started a small business, called "Hotbox, Inc.," making latex clothing for fetish stores around the country. Their work was featured in Penthouse and Skin Two magazines. Taking what he had learned from clothing manufacturing and combining it with his interest in movie special effects, Colin started to produce fiberglass figures and displays. In 1998 he produced his first figure, an anime girl called "Suki," towering at 7 feet tall and anatomically correct.

Colin decided to put his career on hold for a few years to take up commercial sculpture. Sas was developing as a painter and if this was to be encouraged she had to be able to devote herself full time to her work. The commercial work paid the bills and would support them both until Sas was ready to support herself. During this time, Colin produced pieces for stores, museums and various businesses. A robot he made for the American Heart Association was interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today show. He also constructed the worlds largest mousetrap for pest control company Truly Nolen, which is now featured in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Colin now works full time on his original sculptures, finding inspiration in old sci-fi movies, pinup girl/supermodels, Anime, ambient electronic music and H.P. Lovecraft. In 2004 he started using silicone in his sculptures, a difficult material to use but one that helps him achieve his goal of true cartoon realism: a line drawing made flesh. He is not looking to create every imperfection and flaw, but to take the exaggerations and perfections of cartoons and turn them into a realistic 3D form.

Colin combines eroticism with references to science fiction. He customizes his pin-ups in futuristic fashion, rendering them semi-cosmonaut, semi-robot. Colin creates their fashion according to a flashy neo-punk dress code, always suggesting their dominatrix spirit.

See more work by Colin HERE