The Electric Beef

This visual blog was created by St Francis Elevator Ride and Joseph Kendrick to challenge themselves by committing to an outlet devoted to showcasing their visual explorations. They hope to also use it as a promotion tool for other artists they respect and to create a graphic catalog that will offer aesthetic inspiration for all who seek it.

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Dear Electric Beef Followers,

Today the blog comes to an end, and we are parting ways.

The Electric Beef was launched in July of 2011 with the mission of highlighting our daily visual and artistic explorations, as well as being used as a vehicle for promoting other artists we respect. In almost two years, we've successfully connected with many artists, both locally and globally, to provide a catalog of aesthetic inspiration for all who seek it. In addition to connecting, we've also promoted the messages, projects, exhibits, new ideas and goals these artists have sought to achieve.

We do not view The Electric Beef closing as an end in itself - but, rather, the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. We are at a point where our focus is shifting, and we need to concentrate more on our professional lives. Joseph Kendrick is in the process of pursuing his Masters in Sculpture in Columbia, SC. St Francis Elevator Ride is continuing freelance design in Memphis, TN with the ERF Design collective and serving as Art Director for Trashy Creatures Records. He also has a couple of exhibits slated for the late summer/early fall months of this year.

Thanks to everyone who has counted themselves loyal followers of this site - we built it for you. Thanks to everyone who has contributed and submitted work - it could not have existed without you!

The Electric Beef will remain up as it is, and we hope the site will always serve as inspiration to those who seek it.

Sincerely,

Joseph Kendrick & St Francis Elevator Ride The Electric Beef (July 2011 - May 2013) THE END collage illustration by << St Francis Elevator RIde

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Bright-Eyed Jeweler

collage illustration 

by << St Francis Elevator RIde

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Paradise for the Living

collage illustration

by << St  Francis Elevator Ride

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Cloud Binge

American Grapefruit Illustration

by << St Francis Elevator Ride

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Passion Passage

collage illustration

by << St Francis Elevator Ride

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Joe Friday #69

Sugar and Spice: The Electric Beef

analog collage on board

10 5/8" x 16 5/8"

5/13

-JOE

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Bikesploitation 3 Bike/Art/Film Festival

May 24th - 26th, 2013 at Crosstown Arts - Memphis, TN

Bikesploition is a one-of-a-kind festival that brings together film, music, and art from around the world to celebrates our love for bikes.

Bike films, bike art, music via bike, family activities, live demos, food, beverages, and SO MUCH MORE. If you love bicycles, you are bound to have a great time at Bikesloitation!

As a bicycle-lover and artist myself, I’ve been making and collaborating on tricked out bikes for sometime now. As the bicycle has risen in popularity, so have the numbers of people expressing their love the bike through custom creations, original bikes designs, polo wheel covers, bike sculptures, t-shirts, and more. It seemed only natural to celebrate this fusion of bicycles and art!" - Christopher Reyes, Co-Founder, Bikesploitation

This year, Bikesploitation has expanded to include the Bike Art Gallery - A collection of bicycle inspired posters, photography, sculpture, and other art installation pieces.  The Bike Art Gallery opening is Friday, May 24th at 5pm (it will also be open Saturday and Sunday Noon-5).

Hand printed poster designed and printed by local artist. Artists include: Michael Andrews (Five In One), Josh Breeden (Erf), Anthoney Carter (Harvest), Jay Crum (TaroPop), Derrick Dent, Maggie Exner, Michael Hildebrand (Harvest), Lauren Rae Holtermann (Erf), Chuck Howard (Erf), Ronnie Lewis (Erf), Kong Wee Pang (TaroPop), Christopher Reyes, and Daniel Wildberger.

Wheel Cover Art by Christopher Reyes, Lauren Rae Holterman, Ronie Lewis, and Josh Breeden

"Bike Portraits" Photography exhibit by Nathan Berry

Performance Sculpture by Yvonne Bobo and Eli Gold.

Light and Sound Sculpture - “Spinners” by Christopher Reyes and Sarah Fleming

Animated Art Activities utilizing bicycle parts and video by Sallie Sabbatini

Paint Me Bike Car Audience Participation.

Custom Bikes by Sarah Fleming, Christopher Reyes, the Metal Museum, and Revolutions Bicycle co-op.

Learn more about Bikesploitation Artists. Get the full Schedule of Events.

Bikesploitation.com

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Featured Artist Of The Week - Dominic Davies pt. 2

Continuing our "double feature" of Dominic's work we find ourselves exploring works from his Constructed Spaces series. To help us do that we've allowed for the inclusion of an article about the photos from Eyemazing magazine by Siobhan Wall. Dig deeper.

CONSTRUCTED SPACES works of DOMINIC DAVIES

By Siobhan Wall from EYEMAZING MAGAZINE

The first impression we get when we see Dominic Davies’s photographs is that his images are as engrossing as a detective novel full of clues. Each photograph is like a short film condensed into a single image. But meanwhile what has taken place in these strange environments is left deliberately unclear. His images are tempting because they give the illusion that it might be possible to pick up, examine and rearrange the items in front of us. His interiors are ultimately more than just glimpses into a different time and place.  For example, his image of a pair of red glittery high heels also includes various items from the past. Glamorous footwear like this is often seen as the ultimate object of desire for young women who hope these shoes will have magical qualities that will allow the wearer to go “else where” like Dorothy’s shoes in The Wizard of Oz. In his fascinating photograph we see not only Davies’ version of the Marilyn Monroe’s shoes and the diminutive figures of John F Kennedy and Jackie Onassis, but also tiny numbered labels attached to objects and wires which criss cross this “crime scene”. Davies makes it seem as if the photograph could come to life at any moment and that invisible strings could be pulled to create an automated peep show. This Alice-in –Wonderland distortion of scale suggest that this is a fantasy world, but hints that the past can be investigated and some kind of truth unearthed.

Davies’ images seduce us into believing we could solve a troubling unsolved mystery some forty years later (because, for instance, we are still learning new facts about particular assassinations, a possible love affair and a suicide). Perhaps these red shoes are the illusionary but longed for objects which “make things happen." Reminiscent of Cinderella’s glass slippers that fit perfectly- they seem to belong to you already… they were “meant to be." These shoes will take their owner to a place where she will be forever safe and loved with one click of her heels.

Davies photographs are replete with meaning. There are so many stories to tell about each of these unusual scenarios. They include references to iconic images taken from 1940s films, hard-boiled crime novels, real life political drama, as well as cult of celebrity, all the while hinting at some underlying obsessive behaviour. In this particular shot the various threads serve as straight lines of thought which emphasise the illusion of three-dimensional space. They imply that in looking there is no confusion and offer the illusion that rational, unperturbed analysis can maintain a hold on what is ultimately knowable. Perhaps unresolved dramas from the past are unsettling because, despite sophisticated technology, both artificial and human intelligence, and even DNA analysis, most crimes remain unsolved. In a reassuring way, the visible lines in this photograph also seem to pin down the troubling inconsistencies of historical fact. However despite the fact that we know this, we remain aware that we can only ever unravel our own motives and desires and not the dramatic events surrounding the public figures in the past.

Although Davies states that he is mainly inspired by locations, he is fascinated by accounts of psychological aberrations and seeks to explore what he describes as “ the slightly neurotic need for control.” He was quite inspired by the Oliver sacks book The man who mistook his wife for a hat  “There’s a true story of a Japanese man who only stole red things and these pictures drop into my head. They sit there until they aggravate me enough to make a picture.” Davies has installed various red items into an ugly 1980s brown tiled bathroom to suggest the empty life of the kleptomaniac, and the notion that perhaps the neurologists are the detectives of our emotional lives. Davies is skilled at making serendipitous connections between quiet, distinct disciplines. He is often attached to strange places, and notes, “I’ve been looking at crime scenes images and their function wasn’t aesthetic. Things were marked out.“ Although he sees his photograph of a car interior as more serious than his other photographs and possibly a bit morbid, the appearance of red plastic balls suggests something quite bizarre has taken place. This carefully arranged image suggests that this is how police arriving at the scene first saw it but the viewer comes upon these imaginary scenes totally unprepared for their compelling oddity.

Although Davies claims that he wants to be in total control of the image, he also paradoxically “likes the chaotic“ and is fascinated by the unexpected. “In the Sack’s book a man touches textures all the time. I can relate to that because everything I see is a potential picture; from the texture of a rug, to the cinema. I don’t know why the stories appeal, but the more work you do the more you see.”

Davies works on both commercial projects and his own pieces. However, he doesn’t feel confined by his commissioned work. The cover for Frozen Beauties, a book about Japanese film stills, illustrates how he can turn a domestic space into what looks like a theatre stage. In one photo, the wooden kitchen appears to have been transformed into a shrine to film stars by an imaginary inhabitant, creating a “home made environment” that is dense in longing. Here photographs of cinematic heroes and heroines are not only glued to the table and walls but are also balanced on wires. Fandom appears both obsessional and compulsive; a two dimensional portrait of the interior of someone's mind.

In the Golf Widow, which Davies describes as an “a bit more comical,” the golf clubs standing on a pink carpet are reminiscent of the kitchen implements in Disney’s Fantasia. We can imagine these gadgets coming to life like Disney’s animated broomstick dancing to increasingly wild music. Such Anthropomorphic tendencies are prevalent throughout Davies' work and reveal his rare ability to visualize what may be happening inside people’s heads. What Davies does is help us imagine characters that don’t really exist so that we temporarily become detectives or psychoanalysts concerned with uncovering strange truths. There is no definitive answer about what can be discovered in these images but they lead us in so many different directions that the experience of looking at (and thinking about) Davies’ extraordinary work remains intensely pleasurable.

© Siobhan Wall

You can find more of Dominic's work and his contact information on his website: www.dominicdavies.com/

Posted by Joseph Kendrick.

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Motion Picture Monday

Hans Hofmann's ideas of visual push and pull and his influence on modern creation.

"Creation is more fun than serious process."

He was the godfather of modern painting and art education. Know him.

Hans Hofmann

Posted by Joseph Kendrick

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We We're Primavera 

collage illustration by << St Francis Elevator Ride

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Featured Artist Of The Week - Dominic Davies

This is what Dominic had to say about Voisin, a self-motivated series of work that explores food in still life photography.

Voisin

During the Prussians' siege of Paris in 1870 the Restaurant Voisin on Rue Saint-Honoré faced with dwindling food reserves and bourgeois clientele that demanded more from one of the cities de luxe restaurants improvised and along with two other restaurants purchased the contents of the ‘Jardin d’acclimatation’ (one of Paris' zoos)

On Christmas day 1870 Voisin’s chef de cuisine Alexandre Choron served a menu composed entirely of meats resourced from the menagerie, dishes such as Elephant consommé and Wolf in Deer sauce, served along side Antelope in truffle sauce and Kangaroo stew. This macabre and theatrical act of culinary defiance is the inspiration for this on going series of images.

This project is a work in progress but the story gives me the context to explore ideas for still life photography while corrupting the still life cliche of 'food photography.' I had published a book called To Cage. It was about European zoo cages which always led me to think of zoo cages as sets.

You can find more of Dominic's work and contact information on his website: www.dominicdavies.com/

Posted by Joseph Kendrick

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Motion Picture Monday

Marina Abramovic interview at the Lisson Gallery

"I like this moments of exciting when things are not there and magically things happen again."

-Marina Abramovic

Posted by Joseph Kendrick

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Coat of Arms

collage Illustration by << St Francis Elevator RIde

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Featured Artist of the Week - Laura Collins

Laura Collins is a Chicago based artist originally coming from a background in painting. Laura creates eccentric paper collages often from various subjects that deviate from one another, but unifies them harmoniously in order to create alluring relationships and provocative imagery.

For more of her work please visit:

lauracollinsart.com

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Typography Tuesday

Bikesploitation 3 poster design.

Limited edition 2 color screen print on kraft paper.

typography & illustration by << St Francis Elevator Ride for ERF Design

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Motion Picture Monday

Leave Your Body Behind

my gifs to the world #54

gif animation by << St Francis Elevator Ride

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The Electric Beef was interviewed some months back by Collage artist Cory Peeke about what we do here. You can see part of it here in the new issue of Montreal art quarterly publication Kolaj. This article also features a couple other Electric Beef Featured Artist Alumni, such as Zach Collins, and Justin Angelos.

Get your issue here!

kolajmagazine.com