2018 is coming to a close but lucky for you there are still plenty of talented artists to follow in the new year.
This month, our Top Ten Artists to Watch range from musicians, photographers, street artists, sculptors, painters, you name it! We’ve gathered some of our favorite contributors to highlight people following their passions. We’re celebrating art in every form!
1Teodora Pogonat
Austin artist Teodora Pogonat pays homage to women in her recent work entitled The Pink Parachute Project.
Teodora uses a 30lb pink parachute as the main prop in this series of photographs. The parachute represents resistance, safety and reassurance as the photos explore the dichotomy of challenges and expectations of women. It is a unique experience of nurturing and independence that every woman must balance.
“Like a parachute, we take charge of our direction, steering it to land where we choose. The parachute can be thought of as an anchor, or as a tool to help reach a destination. The destination I am aiming for is full-on equality.”
There’s still time to view Teodora’s work in person! Her photographs are on display at Art for the People gallery until January 6th.
2Marcie Dodd
We featured Austin artist Marcie Dodd in Issue 11+12, since her work complimented the theme of Juxtaposition perfectly.
Each piece by Marcie is entirely different, since she carefully chooses the material based on her concept.
“Speak or Be Spoken For” explores a journey of self-reflection. The torn photograph of a woman represents both Marcie herself and women that she knows personally.
This journey is “a constant push and pull between self realization/self love/power and self doubt.” It is one ultimately of growth, as the blooming flowers symbolize endurance and the strength to overcome.
3Fertility House
Austin indie garage pop band Fertility House released their self-titled album in October of this year. It’s an album filled with upbeat tracks blended with surf-rock vibes that will make it feel like summer again.
While working on the album, the band considered the title, Every Woman I’ve Ever Met, since many of the songs were conceptualized from “moments in which women had a powerful impact, positively or negatively.”
However, before completing the album, Fertility House added a few tracks that broadened the theme, including songs inspired by other meaningful experiences.
The catchy melodies of each song make them easy to listen to, though if you pay attention to the vocals you will begin to notice that every track tells a unique story. They are little glimpses of memories and relationships encased in feel good sounds.
4Amy Guidry
Amy Guidry has exhibited her work in galleries around the country and abroad. Her recent series In Our Veins, explores the connection between humans and nature as a cycle of life.
Amy plays on contradicting themes such as: life/death, survival/exploitation and the interdependence of living and nonliving organisms.
Her artwork delves into the surreal as she intricately paints each brushstroke. Through her work, she hopes to promote ecological conservation.
5Mario Loprete
Mario Loprete shapes his own reality through a combination of virtual, pictorial and sculptural movement. He describes painting as “his first love,” though he delves in to other artistic mediums.
His new series celebrates an unlikely material: concrete. As he was creating, Mario explored the impressive and extensive history of concrete, from the ancient to the modern world, in the end deciding to bring it in to fine art realm.
“The successive passage was obvious for me. If man brought art on the streets in order to make it accessible to everyone, why not bring the urban in galleries and museums?”
In some of his pieces, he encased his own clothing as a way to keep them “concreted inside” the sculpture, as if they were artifacts.
6Spencer Robinson & The Wolf Spiders
After spending years in the garage band The Lords of Altamont, Spencer Robinson ventured out, combining forces with fellow musicians to form Spencer Robinson and The Wolf Spiders two years ago.
Their new singles “Poisonous Berry” and “Seeing You in the Dark” were released this past October by Komakino Records.
Listeners familiar with Lords of Altamont can expect to hear slightly grittier and darker songs accentuated by the rough vocals narrating each beat. Although the songs start slow, they build with each second, allowing raw musicality to shine through the sound. As the band describes it, their music is perfect for “drinking, crying, driving and dying,” but perhaps, not all at the same time.
7Wenlin Tan
Wenlin Tan, an interdisciplinary artist from Singapore, explores the topics of identity, mobility and migration in her recent project Gift-A-Passport.
Wenlin’s project questions the power of a passport, both as an object and as an experience. “Beyond a travel document, today it is a highly-prized and widely discussed commodity that possesses the power to shape one’s experience of the world by conferring and withholding, obstructing and facilitating.”
Gift-A-Passport comments on the commodification of passports, as Wenlin set up an imaginary website for participants to shop for the passport of their choosing. This type of casual shopping and the accompanying sweepstakes she invented to “win a passport,” reflect on the power of technology and social media. Both determine our consumption practices, while also exploiting the duality of what a passport could and should mean.
8Katie Paglialunga
Katie Paglialunga, an artist from Montreal, Canada, combines surreal, fantastical and magical concepts to create her detailed artwork.
“My inspiration for starting a piece often arises from a desire for pretending and story telling. The stories I create are based on my personal journeys on Earth but the imagery and colours are out of this world.”
Katie’s art is a delicate balance of real and almost real as she juxtaposes concepts of youth/adulthood and what it means to travel “in between.”
9Metallic Forrest
Producer and artist Metallic Forrest has big plans for the hip-hop scene in Austin.
His recent project “The Loners Party” combines his desire to be experimental with heavy bass lines while still retaining a pop feel. It’s self-described as “black with a dot of yellow.”
When producing, he focuses on every aspect of the song, hoping that this thorough process will remind listeners of the talent residing in Austin.
10Jessica Moritz
Jessica Moritz explores almost every kind of medium throughout her colorful artwork: painting, drawing, printing, wheat pasting and graffiti. Her work often involves the relationships between people, patterns and their relations to environments.
One particular project that caught my attention is titled The Kids Next Door.
This project was born out of Jessica’s own experience at her studio. While working, she noticed the vibrant surroundings of her community: kids laughing, families playing and artists all perfecting their craft. However, the building itself didn’t reflect this.
To remedy this, Jessica “decided to make the environment look more like them.” She wheat pasted colorful posters of children on swings all throughout the building. Knowing that they would eventually fade, she also encapsulated the idea in separate paintings to highlight the power of community connections.
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[…] December edition of Austin art mag Almost Real Things features Hays art teacher Marcie Dodd, ranking her #2 in their the top ten artists to watch in […]