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Marvin Manibusan is the part-owner and creative director of Crowns Guam, a streetwear fashion brand back home on the island of Guam. I had the pleasure of interning for him while I was on vacation back home, and ever since I’ve had a growing appreciation for his work and content. He beautifully bridges the island culture, military history, new-and-old fashion trends, sneaker knowledge, and sharp design in a way that can be called truly unique, and at least on Guam, the very best of the best.

Personally, his work pushes me in my personal practice to create an aesthetic all of my own and not to rely too much on other people’s works or already established motifs. If he does rely on them, he will always try to take a fresh new spin on them. An homage and an improvement at the same time.

Have all my ideas on paper, now just to formulate exactly what I want to put on the shirts and exactly how I want to put them on. I’m thinking text rendering-wise to just go Barbara Kruger/Supreme with the box text because it’s already a well established language for both art and fashion.

Because I need the lettering to be red dye, I’m thinking through what would be the easiest, cleanest, and cheapest way to do put the lettering on the shirts. Currently I’m debating hand painting with some form of stencil or guide, but I have to put in more research into what will be the cheapest.

I’m waiting for Eddie Moon to be done with the majority of his show pieces before I ask him to do some screen printing prep for me. I also need to research where to rent a store clothing rack

I found this work on a website called Instructables, an online community of creatives showcasing their work and accompanying it with a detail of their process. This is using, what they say is, porcelain paper clay. It creates an intensely interesting form, swinging back and forth between the line of delicate and solid. Although they function perfectly as this light, abstract style, it would be very interesting to see this style used to create something representational. I wonder if this is similar to paper mache.

These are a collection of customizable cast characters created by the Mingarro Brothers in collaboration with Studio Apparatu. The Mingarro Brothers are an illustrator duo who draw with a very round, cartoony style and it was awesome to see that aesthetic translate to these ceramic figures. These photographs are great because they show the process on how each of the pieces are formed and then put together. I really enjoy the personalizable aspect of each face and just how polished the body forms are.

Christian Dietkus (Christian Lord) is a contemporary sculptor. I really like how his work is kind of Pop Art; he knows his contemporary culture and uses sculpture to speak about it. These are his works dealing with ceramics (he uses porcelain). How Will We Change Today is a sculpture/audio installation. He builds a form based off of the Timberland 6-inch boot, and then plays a script using a speech engine, reciting a Timberland advertisement commercial. It sounds really fruity and existential; almost as if buying a shoe will somehow help better the world or something. I'm still trying to decipher all of the meaning within it. The second piece, Grip, is an ongoing project. While gripping is a similar action across the board, it basically always produces different results. He is trying to explore that

Daniel Chang is a graphic designer based in Los Angeles, California... Well, chances are that if you're reading this, you already know who he is, what he's done, what he is doing, the whole shebang.

When I sat down to conduct my artist interview with him, I came in sort of thinking that I would've already known the answers he would've given me. I already know about his current practice. I've heard about his time at Billabong, the main reason I would have wanted to interview him. All the advice I would've asked him for he's probably already told me in the numerous classes I've taken with him.

But this conversation was far from unproductive.

The large bulk of our conversation was one regarding the Christian's place as a visual artist. Knowing that the interview was for senior seminar, I had the privilege of sharing my senior show ideas with someone who has been directly a part of my growth as an artist for the last 3 years. After discussing its missional purpose and my evangelistic desire, we branched off into the topic of the Christian artist's practice that, strangely enough, wasn't discussed much at all in my years at Biola.

He came challenging my notions pretty strongly. I wanted to basically have a show of visual pieces that explicitly stated the Gospel, as I believed that the preaching of the Gospel is the ultimately mission of anyone who professes faith in Christ. I wanted the pieces to point those who would view it in the Biola art gallery to the cross, either to continually repent and believe, or create the mental category of living a cross-centered life; that every single physical/mental action of our lives ought to be informed and transformed by the Good News of Jesus Christ. He gave me a helpful reality check in two ways.

Although the Biola Art Gallery is tied to Biola, a Christian institution, Daniel reminded me that the gallery space is a space of critical thinking. He also told me that the notion of a completely Gospel-centered lifestyle was more aspirational than realistic/commonplace. Thankfully, Daniel is a seminary graduate, so he had many helpful insights on the Christian Artist. We talked a lot about how the Gospel preaching is primarily to be held at the church pulpit and in interpersonal relationships. "The burden of evangelism is not on you, the artist."

Admittedly, I was very shaken when he first told me. I felt as if he was discouraging evangelism, and that he was downplaying the great commission. But as I began to ponder it more, through prayer, I began to truly understand what he was getting at. The Gospel, by nature, cannot be visually presented because "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17) As much as I would want all to see my work and come to understand the Gospel, the Gospel must be auditory. THEN if that is the case, in what ways can our visual products be the stepping stones in which we as relational people, can have a Gospel conversation?

We discussed fashion and the philosophy of fashion/consumerism, we discussed backgrounds and culture, we discussed community (as we talked over a bowl of Vietnamese pho), we discussed Los Angeles, but certainly the fruit of this interview came from discussing the role of the Christian artist who does not necessarily have to make Christian Art... but most certainly, the Christian aspects will flow into their work as an inevitable part of who they are. But our primary calling is to LIVE as Christians, and in what way are we doing so?

Jonty Hurwitz is a contemporary artist who primarily works with sculpture. He has very recently endeavored in a new field of art-making he calls "nano-sculptures." These are under 100 cubic microns in size, so the scale of these are almost undefinable to us. These sculptures are actually too small to see without the aid of a microscope. These sculptures point to MANY very contemporary issues; technology and the height of human achievement, sort of redefining the definition of visual arts (as it is something that cannot really be physically seen or sensed), even asking questions about art and its permanence, and recording (as these were lost when they presumably got stuck to someone's finger).

On the process:

The structure is created using a ground-breaking new 3D printing technology and a technique called Multiphoton Lithography. Ultimately these works are created using the physical phenomenon of two photon absorption. Art, literally created with Quantum Physics.

If you illuminate a light-sensitive polymer with Ultra Violet wavelengths, it solidifies wherever it was irradiated in a kind of crude lump. Some of you may have experienced a polymer like this first hand at the dentist when your filling is glued in with a UV light.

If however you use longer wavelength intense light, and focus it tightly through a microscope, something wonderful happens: at the focus point, the polymer absorbs TWO PHOTONS and responds as if it had been illuminated by UV light, namely it will solidify. This two photon absorption occurs only at the tiny focal point - basically a tiny 3D pixel (called a Voxel). The sculpture is then moved along fractionally by a computer controlled process and the next pixel is created. Slowly, over hours and hours the entire sculpture is assembled pixel by pixel and layer by layer.

"Livia Marin is a London-based Chilean artist whose work has been characterized throughout by large-scale installations and the appropriation of mass-produced and mass-consumed objects. Her work was initially informed by the immediate social and political context of Chile in the 1990s that amounted to a transition from a profoundly overt disciplinary regime (given by seventeen years of dictatorship) to an economically disciplinary regime with a strongly developed neo-liberal economic agenda. She employs everyday objects to enquire into the nature of how we relate to material objects in an era dominated by standardization and global circulation. In this, the work seeks to offer a reflection on the relationship we develop with those often unseen objects that meet our daily needs. Central to the work is a trope of estrangement that works to reverse an excess of familiarity that commands the life of the everyday and the dictates of the marketplace. Marin has exhibited widely both in her native Chile and internationally."

The Object and its Manifestation I

Approximately 1600 plaster objects made from the inside of disposable cups

KAWS, or Brian Donnelly, is a New York based artist who jumped from Graffiti to Fine Arts in the past 20 years. His earliest work was simply graffiti on top of bus stop advertisements as a way of "tagging;" a practice most graffiti artists use to assert their dominance and rule over a certain area. His current practice involves wild, vivid paintings constructed in Adobe Illustrator and realized on huge canvases and often incorporating "KAWSified" versions of popular American characters such as Charlie Brown, Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man, and Spongebob. I really appreciate how he pushes the boundaries and muddies the boundaries of fine art and commercial art. I also appreciate him for his unique aesthetic that got him noticed on the streets.

Hiroshi Fujiwara is a Japanese designer working as the head of a design firm called Fragment Design. He's also dubbed the "Streetwear Godfather of Harajuku" for his involvement with fashion in sportswear in Japan. He often mashes together modern technologies with classic shoe design to create a timeless, essential shoe model that can be enjoyed by everyone. It especially showcases his passion and deep understanding of the culture; his newest endeavor with Nike mashes up the Nike Cortez, essentially Nike's first shoe model, and the Nike Roshe Run Natural Motion, a shoe that has carved an entirely new functional category for shoes.

Ronnie Fieg is a New York based designer who runs a clothing brand named Kith. He has recently gained an enormous following and appreciation for his shoe designs/collaborations, and it's not hard to see why. He is a master of color blocking, being able to subtly shift the values and hues of colors to create a varied, unified, yet vibrant shoe. He also incorporates super premium materials such as lamb leather or pig skin suede that just makes one want to walk around in them. He also incorporates a lot of story telling in his products; the New Balance 1600 "Daytona" is a personal shoe that mimics the colorway of a sign that meant a lot to him as a child. The Adidas EQT Support collaboration is in commemoration of the NYPD and their valiant efforts in the 9/11 relief.

Another post not strictly dedicated to a specific artist or a specific technique. This post just focuses on pieces that are containers that have only existed for the past couple of decades thanks to the industrial revolution but have been remade through ceramics. Most of these are probably made from plaster casts, but just doing this image search has helped me a lot in my upcoming project. What would it be like to throw an aluminum can? Could the top be something like a lid? What technique could be used to get all those beveled lines in the side of the larger can? I'm really interested in this idea of reappropriating containers in the timeless, ancient art of ceramics

Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz isn't some crazy famous international artist. He's just a ceramics enthusiast who runs a blog (artbyfuzzy.com). In my recently discovered liking of glazing, I've been looking for some experimental glazing techniques to inspire me and push me to try new things. I not only enjoy his work because he actually gives recipes and steps to get the finishes he gets, but he has one recent post about "directional" glazing. He lays the pots on their sides or upside down and uses something called "runny" glazes, which I just assume are more watery glazes. They employ gravity to create interesting textures and also pieces that have a "lift" to them, such as that cup upside down. Imagine it right side up with the glaze travelling upward.

I conducted an interview with Dave Hill who visited the class earlier this year. He graciously answered questions for almost 2 hours, and besides the things that he already discussed talking about during his seminar visit, I got to press a lot deeper into the philosophy of his work as well as how working in the field actually is/how to get to be working with the people he's working with.

Work wise, it's a very "be-your-own-man" kind of job as far as work hours go, only given that you'll be presenting excellent work by the due date. For those starting off in the field of apparel design, Dave encourages us that it's slow initially but requires putting yourself out there a lot through various means (crowd sourcing, creative agencies, but primarily internships). Although its very varied and at times a bit worrisome to work freelance, he said that it's been a fairly rewarding job because of his great work keeping customers coming back, but he also encourages us to establish "retainers" whenever you can (basically a contract that sets an amount of pay for an amount of time and an amount of work). He laid out the positives and negatives for both doing freelance and working at a hired position in a very practical and helpful manner and basically just said to get whatever jobs we could get.

Inspiration doesn't get to play too much of a role in his work just due to the fact that the clients ultimately dictate what kind of work is produced, but when he does get the chance to flex his creative muscles, he gets inspiration from almost anywhere. From contemporary art to designers who are flourishing in the design world, to even ancient paintings and even performance pieces and installations, he encourages to look for the things that are timeless. "Trends are fleeting, style is forever."

His line of work is almost exactly in what I'm interested in, so I benefited greatly from this interview. From all the practical advice and warnings to even chit chatting about his thoughts on the current trends of urban fashion, it was delightfully informative and loaded. He was gracious enough to send us information on internships in the future and even offered services such as critiquing portfolios and even inviting us to hang out and watch him work. I'm looking forward to taking him up on all his offers, but also ruminating on the things he said in regards to the hard work necessary to get yourself out there and start networking for future jobs but especially what he said about the working life. He warned that sometimes working freelance and working in solitary leads some people to depression. He encouraged being tight knit with a community and to spend a good chunk of your day NOT simply glued to your computer screen. He personally does his days work in two shifts during the weekdays. Not something usually talked about. Super helpful interview.

Ask me for a link to the videos we shot. It's almost an hour and forty five minutes worth of good stuff.

Grayson Perry is a very interesting artist. His work deals with a lot with cultural criticism and themes of sexuality; he is a cross-dresser who occasionally appears in public as his female alter-ego, "Claire." Amidst the paintings, quilts, and the sculptures, his pots are incredibly fascinating. They differ incredibly in terms of style, they all employ meticulous, changing, and very varied forms of treatment and glazing ranging from gold leaf to painting to even photo transfer.

Roy Lichtenstein is a very large influence to me as an artist. This New York based artist is largely tied with the Pop Art movement in the 1960s, being one of the greatest pioneers of the style. He is most popularly remembered for recreating comic book panels and painting them with oil on large canvases. These images were taken from popular smut comics and valiant war comics at the time that were produced and consumed en masse by the public. Lichtenstein reappropriated these comic book panels as a means to criticize contemporary culture at the time. The depictions of intensely emotionally driven women and macho action war men were to show the futile and aimless wishes and ways of thinking of the people at the time; the paintings were a mirror in a sense. The iconic painting style of the thick, even brush work and the half-tone benday dots were to poke fun at the industrial revolution at the time by taking a process that was meant for mass, mass production and doing it by hand. The reason he affects me so much is for two main reasons. Number one, Lichtenstein created an aesthetic that is entirely his own. Any style of art that has that posterized feeling with the simple, bold color blocking, the thick linework, and the benday dot pattern is undoubtedly Lichtenstein-influenced. But not only did the aesthetic serve a purpose in relating to the content, it’s also incredibly visually appealing. It’s simple while been intricate and detailed. The tiny dots that comprise these color fields invite viewers to come in and stare deeper and longer. In today’s visual culture, creating a signature aesthetic is extremely difficult, but it’s also very desired. Advertisements by larger corporations are often instantly recognizable because of an overall color scheme or composition or font. Popular branding is often used as a source for parody work because it’s so easily recognized. I hope to one day be able to create an aesthetic that is not just my own, but its own identity. I also greatly appreciate Lichtenstein because he’s a master of intelligently twisting culture and putting it in his artwork. He’s very, very culturally aware; he doesn’t just do paintings of comic books, he’s also made Chinese-style landscape paintings with his signature style and he’s also “parodied” important modernist painters showing that he knows his history. But I’m also thinking there’s interpretive meaning in his paintings that isn’t intended to stay within itself. I think there’s something in his paintings that is a sort of call to action. I think some of his pieces, much like Warhol’s, show just how ridiculous American idolatry was at the time. I also want to be able to create art that in its form and meaning call people to change and live richer, more meaningful lives.

I went to the LACMA this past weekend with my Global Art Paradigms class to visit some of the Asian art exhibitions. To my surprise and absolute delight, there is a Japanese art pavilion at the furthest end of the LCMA that I had absolutely no idea about. I’m a total sucker for the Japanese aesthetic; it’s simple yet boldly intentional, careful yet very vibrant. The architecture of the pavilion itself was intentionally designed in line with Japanese aesthetic principles; It’s natural, unobtrusive against the garden behind it. Like ancient Japanese temples before it, it’s meant to pay respects to the natural spirits in the area around it by blending in. The lighting is diffused by paper windows to allow a natural, gentle spread throughout the pavilion. Inside the exhibit, there are all kinds of objects that show incredible craftsmanship. There was an entire exhibit dedicated to Netsuke, which were tiny ornamental craft objects that were meant to be accessorized with kimonos and kimonos didn’t have any pockets. They were all less than 2 inches tall, most of them being less than one inch tall. But the detail done on them were unbelievable; many of them were figures engaging in some folklore tale such as an intricate sculpture of a spirit to even a battle between two warriors. There were also one of my favorite forms of art, Japanese woodblock prints. The color blocking, the gentle application of those colors, the variations of lines from thick, expressive ones to unbelievably light, airy ones, the expressive characters, the woodblock prints were absolutely amazing. But in all honesty, the part of the exhibition I enjoyed the most was a temporary exhibit that was displayed throughout the winding ramps in the center of the building; it was called “Kimono for a Modern Age.” There were a bunch of kimono robes that were made during the 1930s and on after European fabric production methods were brought over. These patterns are vibrant, calming, dazzling, serene, intricate, simple; the entire possible spectrum of design was showcased but it was all visually exciting. But it wasn’t just visually appealing; the thing I love about Japanese art in general is their intense love and desire to preserve and uphold their culture. Tons of the kimonos had patterns related to Japanese cultural icons; waves, dragonflies, temples, rising sun motifs. But they also had reappropriated important worldwide cultural phenomenon as well; many of them had patterns very visually similar to artists in abstract expressionist exhibits; eerily similar to the likes of Frank Stella, Jackon Pollock, Morris Louis. One even had a print of penguins and an icebreaker boat trekking through icy waters in honor of an important arctic expedition. I really was dazzle but not just making garments of cultural significance, but also making them extremely visually stimulating.

These sample/custom "China" Foamposite 1s hit the internet not too long ago, and being in Ceramics 1, I was really turned onto these. When the Lebron 11 Low "China Vase" actually released to the public, I wondered what a google image search of "ceramic shoes" would return back. I was actually thoroughly surprised. I not only found interesting sculptures, but also sculptures that spoke to sneaker culture in a meaningful way as well.

Kang Seung Lee and Jon Lawrence both plaster cast their own sneakers to create these sculptures. Ceramic materials can be treated in a myriad of ways to resemble textures such as leather, mesh, and when glazed can have an uncanny resemblance to patent leather. The materials are carefully considered too; Jon Lawrence's New Balance 577 are actually made from clay mined very close by to the official New Balance factory. Not only do these shoes have an eternal "fresh" look, they also say something about the permanence and craft of sneaker culture in general. They become something beyond icons and even beyond clothing.

From his own artist statement:

"Paul Scott, from the UK, is a conceptual artist, noted porcelain upcycler and known for his research into ceramics and print. He creates individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft and design. With a penchant for rescuing cast offs, he fondly gives them new life, even highlighting their worn edges, chips, cracks and flaws, by using them as a canvas for biting social commentary."

What I appreciate is his use of the materials. Mixing in nature themes with these created ceramic pieces. Even using bone china to make cows & grass fields. His touch and mark making is incredible and I love how he takes this very traditional blue on white ceramics approach and makes it modern and contemplative.

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