Brainstorm

This entry is to talk about and analyze the artists that I'm currently interested in. One particular artist that I have been raving about is Glenn Jones. I came across his works when I signed up an account on Coroflot.com where artists can post their portfolios online for the public to view. Glenn Jones is definitely a hit on Coroflot, his works get a lot of views and a lot comments and it's no surprise that he has this much views on his portfolio because he is that good. Glenn Jones is a graphic designer and illustrator based in New Zealand. He draws everything on screen, meaning he does all his illustrations with his mouse on Illustrator. I really admire his ability to do that because I know most illustrations are done on paper first and then scanned in so edits and renderings can be done. Most of the works he does has something to do with pop culture. He takes iconic characters from pop culture but puts an original spin to it. I guess in a sense, he reminds me of Andy Warhol and the concept of pop art but instead of portraying mass produced commodities, he protrays things from mass media enterntainment.

"Marching Penguins", Glenn Jones Illustration, 2009

As you can see in the illustration above, Jones has a very clean and simple style which is the result of using Illustrator where his shapes are created in vector forms. I think his concepts for his works are very clever. Like the one shown above, if you've seen the movie "The March of the Penguins", you would understand the idea of this illustration. The penguin is literally dressed in a marching band outfit which I think it's a clever, yet funny way to combine the two idea.

"Forever Plowing", Glenn Jones Illustration, 2011

Obviously not all of his works have to deal with pop culture, the illustration above is shows that. Again, I think his idea is of putting a snow truck in a snow globe is quite humorous. I think I am really interested in the way he comes up with his concepts, the way he looks at things, like a snow globe and questions what if a snow truck was in there. The snow truck would be plowing the snow forever because there's no where for the fake snow to go. And he takes this concept and make a piece of art out of it. I feel that there is no abstraction in his work, it's very literal and anyone can get it just by looking at it. Glenn Jones is also a kind of artist that likes to share his design process, he posted lots of videos on Vimeo.com in which he shows the process of making one of these illustration.

"Dental Care" Glenn Jones Illustration, 2011

"Counselling" Glenn Jones Illustration, 2011

Seeing his works makes me think of a series of prints that I did when I took Print IA during the fall of my Junior year. I call this series of prints as "Mickey in Disguise" where I silkscreened silhouettes of Mickey Mouse's head and have him put on different outfits. In another words, take Minnie Mouse's iconic red bow tie and place it on Mickey's head or take Donald Duck's signature sailor hat and place that on Mickey's head. The reason why this reminded me of Glenn Jones is that I took something simple yet iconic and put a spin on it so that viewers have to think twice about. I also like the way how clean the work came out to be because it was silkscreen. When I showed this series of prints at the critique, I had several comments about the size of the work. I silkscreened these on a relatively small scale, perhaps a little bit larger than postcard size. I agree with my peers and my teacher in trying to make a new set in a much larger scale. I think it would give off a different feel to it, perhaps more of an impact to the piece.

I would like to pursue more in this direction and try to write down what I see every day and to think of ways to put a spin on it. Most recently, I was thinking about the commercials on television where a nonprofit organization tells the viewers to donate to foundation to help children in a Third World Country and other organizations that helps impoverished countries resolve some of the issues that they are facing such as dirty water, civil wars, malaria, etc. Of course, us living in America should feel thankful that we're living in a country like this yet we take that for granted every day. And so many of us, including me, complain about the problems that we have which is probably not comparable to what others have to face. I was thinking about working with this idea, and how I can illustrate this idea in a different way...perhaps incorporating some of Glenn Jones ideas into illustrating my ideas about 'First World Problems'.