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This week’s Feature Friday is all about the bi-monthly competition that we’re hosting for our featured artists! For those of you who are new, feature friday is a weekly article where we promote an artist we find in our blog. We’ll reach out, do a short interview, post 3-5 pieces depending on size or medium and promote all of your media outlets (website, instagram, etc.). These features are only for people posting in our blog, so post away, get your stuff on there and there’s a better chance we’ll see it. Also, the more you post, the more people can see and interact with your work and isn’t that what Pleb’s is all about? Onto the competition, every other month we will select one artist from the pool of featured artists over that two month span for a merchandise partnership. With this we will produce a limited run of merchandise using your imagery! Artists will get to select what type of merchandise we produce from an approved list, t-shirts, hats, and so on, as well as the imagery placed on them. This can be from one of the pieces we featured you with or you can create a totally new piece just for this! We will open a pre-order and then we’ll release it to the world! The overall breakdown of how this competition and production will work as follows: -One artist is selected from the pool of featured artists. -Artist submits imagery and merchandise type to us. -We produce the mockups and open preorder! -Following preorder, the rest of the stock goes to open sale and we print, market, and deliver everything for you! We do, however, hope that you’ll let people you know that you won and are having this merchandise made! -Artist gets a percentage of profit for each item sold. -Artist holds onto 100% of the licensing rights to their artwork and the merchandise we produce together! This competition is to help promote you all and have some fun! We want to give you an outlet to produce something that you may not regularly have the opportunity to produce and make some money in the process! It’s also crucial for us to make sure that you can produce something like this without any hassle of losing licensing rights to YOUR artwork, and we want to be very up front and let you know we’re not going to do that. It’s 100% yours, we just want to help. So, that being said, post away and show us your work. The competition is ON!

It is fitting that Daniel Giordano posted an essay today describing his practice as a machine chugging along. We as artists need to have this outlook. The goal being maximum production. During the semesters spent in academy artists tend to get in the habit of making work on typically a five weak schedule. Let's think about that rate in terms of a living wage; considering we all want to be full time artists. Take an average annual income of 40k per year. In order to achieve that making one piece every five weeks. This warrant a $4000.00 dollar purchase price. No disrespect but this seems a little too much for the common emerging artist to ask. The standard response from advisors is to just get a day job and work at night till you can make it. Don't fall into this ideology unless absolutely necessary. Dividing your time between a career and your art practice can have serious ramifications in your creativity and energy. You get out of college and you are young. Take some time to just go for it. In order to be sustain off just your creative practice you need to take some time and be realistic about the economics. Simply put you can build up all the demand you want for your work but you must have the supply of work to meet it in order to make money. An engaged costumer base is much easier achieved when your work can be available for a reasonable price. This means you must produce more, faster. Focus on how to turn your work into product. While I am not advising you dumb down your work, you must realize that the big payout for one groundbreaking conceptual piece will come in time for most of us. Figure out a way to replicate your work and mass produce. Turn a painting into a mass produced print. Put illustration on clothing. Take an aspect of your sculpture and make smaller decorative design pieces. Your work will then appeal to a much larger audience. People outside the art world need to be relieved of the common barriers to entry as a consumer. Tangible, affordable objects are much easier to market. Gain your audiences interest. Slowly educate them to the more upscale works you have and you are good. Stop relying on some gallery to give you that big break and take it for yourself. Be a MACHINE.

I am a machine, A dancing machine I reside in Vicki, on Vicki Island, A factory in upstate New York. I work all day long, And I work all night. I shall sleep when I expire.

In a conversation about school with a friend last night the topic of versatility was brought up. More specifically altering your craft so that it can be used in a way that brings more demand and monetary value. I think that in today’s modern art world where there’s so many different and established styles a lot of people want to just skip steps and get right to the big work. The problem with that is that they don’t have the technical skill or understanding, they’re just making work for work’s sake and saying it means whatever but that doesn’t work outside of a scholastic environment. One of the things that bugged me most in critiques was when a piece would be terribly put together but the person would say that it means this or that and the whole crit was about concept. Ok, great, you’ve got your concept figured out but you can’t craft your piece well, and I don’t think a piece that’s crafted poorly can convey a concept without you standing there and saying what the concept is. These are the people we unfortunately see give up and no longer work as artist post college, they become one dimensional and that one dimension may not come with monetary compensation so they get stuck and a run in the mill job and the creativity just fades away. We as creators are unfortunately going to have to compensate a lot in our professional careers because being an artist in the modern sense unfortunately wasn’t design to be a “job.” So, if we think of our art and learning our craft as building a house, things like concept are like the shingles on the roof and technical applications like paint mixing, wood bending, and just all around craft are the foundation. People forget that the great abstract painters didn’t always work that way, they were classically trained but saw flaws in what everyone was doing in art so they created something different. But now people are coming into school and they just want to jump to the full, museum style pieces that they see their favorite artists doing and schools are letting that slide when they shouldn’t. If you want to make large scale installation sculpture that requires a massive space, awesome, schools give you a space to perfect that. But if you skip over learning the technical aspects like welding if you’re working with steel, or cutting, bending, and gluing/nailing with wood you’re going to struggle as a professional artist. In the professional world there’s very few spaces that can facilitate things like that and, as I said, sometimes we have to compensate as artists. Sculptors sometimes have to make trinquets, painters sometimes have to do landscapes, and ceramicists might have to make simple bowls to get by to fund their more creative work in hopes that the big artistic break comes. But the difference there is they’re still working on their craft, toning the basics so that the creative work becomes even better. If you’re waiting tables (which is an honest living, don’t think I’m hating) and just waiting for someone to discover you based on your college work, it likely won’t happen and you’re going to be super out of practice. It’s an unfortunate truth in the art world and it might be super boring but we have to hone the basics of our craft. I can’t just shatter a mug and say it means the economy or something because that isn’t going to translate. Schools need to stop letting silly stuff like that go and we as artists need to realize that it might suck but we’ve got to be good at our craft technically as well as creatively. Don’t forget to log the time on the boring stuff because one day if you have to make a career out of living room paintings, or trinquet sculpting while you wait for the creative stuff to take off, then at least you’re working in your craft. It sucks that we need to get paid to get by and we can’t just be creative but it’s the truth and it’s a hell of a lot better to just compromise and do something a little more boring but along the lines of your craft than it is to just find some other job and admit you wasted your time in school. A SOLID FOUNDATION IS THE KEY.

A common goal in my personal practice is finding the line that divides form and appearance. In the piece shown on the left you can see an attempt at mimicking the form of fabric through ceramics and then flooding the objects with a single color; drawing all the focus to the form. That is a discussion for another time and another post. Today is Technical Tuesday and we are here to talk techniques. This is the age old tale of Joe verses the kiln, a saga in which I have lost many battles. There's still hope for the war. Its a delicate system when firing pieces so let's leave that to the experts. We can however, examine the process of recreating fabric. Of course the first instant may be to throw a big hunk of clay on a roller, get it nice and thin, and just crease it up a bit. There are a few problems there. It is hard to replicate the intricate, random folds and creases of your fabric. Then there is the fragility of the piece as it dries that may not allow for handling. So what can you do. Try taking an actual sheet(that you don't mind incinerating) and coating it with slip. Slip is a mixture of clay and water often found at the bottom of communal studio sinks. Mix up some slip in a container. Stretch the sheet out flat. apply slip in layers with either a brush or just go for it and pour it on. As the layers dry and build up, you can then kink and manipulate the fabric however you please. Once in the desired position allow the clay to harden. Watch it closely. The blanket may suck the moisture out faster that expected. From here follow normal firing instructions. Bid farewell to the sheet because once it goes into the kiln its no more. Pretty quickly the sheet will burn out and you are left with an almost perfect replica. This a fairly simple process and anyone with a more gentle touch than I should have no issues. Think all the different applications that slip casting can make easier. * Also keep that gentle touch when working with the piece post firing. As you can see I was not.

This past Saturday I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the first time since I got out of school. After taking the hit of $20 to get in, R.I.P. to my student discounts, I actually had a pretty great trip. The difference between a gallery and a museum is always so striking to me, even the big galleries seem like a totally different world compared to museums. Moving through a curated history of art from period to period and region to region is always a fun experience, especially when there’s some big time master work mixed in. I’d have to say that this was definitely my most fulfilling trip to the PMA in recent memory and I took a lot of notes along the way. So, while I was racking my brain on what to write for you all on this monday I decided that I’d share my notes with you. Now this isn’t some detailed listing and critiquing of the same masters that you’ve heard about a million times, we like to have fun here at Pleb’s, this is a list of observations as I moved through the gallery. That isn’t limited to the art either, I want to give you cool shit you might not have heard of, observations on the art making process, people watching notes, all types of shit. I’m not trying to give you all some scholarly editorial about a museum that bores you to tears, I want to give you a little insight as to what’s going on at the PMA but also give you a fun read with some goofy observations. So without rambling on too much, let’s get into this! -The ratio of people on the steps/at the Rocky statue to people actually in the museum is an easy 4:1, maybe 5:1 and that’s sad. -(I had this thought later but it’s relevant to a lot of stuff so I’ll move it up) The difference in ability to create detail and paint thickness between oil paintings on panel and on canvas is crazy. Panel is much flatter, smoother so works tend to be much more detailed and canvas tends to require thicker paint to add depth where small detail is harder to achieve. The glare caused by the thicker paint on canvas pieces is infuriating, I like to get close, examine process and details and some of this stuff seems to be lit without glare in mind. -Antonio Mancini’s Il Saltimbanco. Beautiful piece (glare on it is brutal though, it’s super tall so it’s hard to light_ -Cezanne and Renoir’s flower paintings right next to each other… They both suck. -A couple gorgeous and HILARIOUS Picasso pieces tucked in a corner.. -(later on than the portraits) Amazing Cubism display of Picasso and Braque’s work. I was truly in awe looking at some of these famous pieces. -Modigliani’s “Blue Eyes’ is here. Didn’t know that, amazingly terrifying piece. (Andy Muschietti sites this and other Modigliani’s as the inspiration for images in the movies IT and Mama) -Always amazing to step into the Jasper Johns room, According to What obviously being the standout piece. I could stare at these for hours. -Bruce Nauman’s work with neon excites the hipsters because the art is modern enough for them to feel safe and away from the mainstream in a group of mid 1900’s master works. -Are we ever going to collectively agree that Piet Mondrian’s work is fucking stupid? -Saw a dude with wallet chains in a room full of Joan Miro paintings and I thought that, in and of itself, was art. -“The Duchamp Family” exhibit further proves that Marcel is and should be the only one that anyone gives a fuck about. You’re doing a disservice to yourself if you visit and don’t spend time in Etant Donnes. -The way art museum security moves around as you do constantly feels like they’re catching on to me as I’m Nicolas Cage National Treasuring this museum. Speaking of art museum security, what are they writing down all the time? I’m genuinely curious. -Caspar Bernhard Hardy’s Dying Philosopher is LIT. -Why did marble sculpting die? Where can I get a good bust made these days? Bad, or noticable, art restoration should be a felony. (or at least not in a massive museum) -Romanesque painting is amazing considering everyone was just kind of bad for a while, then they just made a style out of it. -Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would Freeze by Hendrick Goltzious is gorgeous. -I stared at Prometheus Bound by Peter Paul Reubens and Frans Snyder for a good 30 minutes and had the people I was with not wanted to move on I would have stayed there for much, MUCH longer. That painting is unbelievable. -Speaking of Reubens, one of the most common portraits of him is there and it’s like 3x3 in. Isn’t that crazy? -If you don’t think the arms and armor collection is awesome, you’re a fucking loser. -Antony Gormley’s installation on the steps might top the whole museum. (it doesn’t, but Gormley is one of my favorite sculptors ever and seeing his work is incredible, even though I could do without the tourists climbing on it.) Well I hope that was as fun for you to read as it was for me to write. There’s not a whole lot to take away from this except for how fun and fulfilling experiences like this can be for us. Also, the artworks that I mentioned by name are definitely worth checking out because they were ones I’d never heard of but I found and stared at for long periods. I strongly encourage everyone to visit their local art museum once every few years, you never know what you’ll run into. Perfect example, I was not expecting to see those cubist pieces and it was amazing. Also, while you’re there, people watch hard because people watching at museums is some of the best people watching you can find (refer to Founder’s previous article). Overall, I had a great few hours at this place and I think academia can sour our concept of museums a little bit so I wanted to remind people that these are fascinating and inspiring places, go on your own time and I think you’ll find a much more rewarding experience for yourself.

Sarah Muldoon is one of our first forum posters who really showed multiple sides to her work. I’ve known of Sarah’s work for a little while now but I hadn’t truly gotten into it until she started posting on the Plebeian forum and I saw two sides of a dynamic artist. On one side you have an excellent designer who brings a simple but elegant style to her brand work and on the other you have an illustrator who’s soft touch with line and watercolor creates engaging, beautiful imagery. Her work has an all around soft touch to it but that doesn’t stop it from strongly displaying her message or narrative. One of the things I appreciate most about Sarah’s design work is the hand done element that she often brings in that I think is often lost in an increasingly digital age. I got to chat a little bit with Sarah about her background in art, her style, and future plans. It was a great talk and I think she gave some excellent answers and insight to her work. Check it out! 1. First Thing, give us some background on your work! What makes you the artist that you are? (inspirations, mediums, etc.) I've been making art since my childhood, and although I played sports and tried all kinds of extracurriculars, it has sort of always been my main thing. I could not imagine pursuing a career that wasn't creative at the heart- I'd simply be unhappy. I practiced mostly drawing and painting before college, working with chalk pastels, charcoal, pencil, pen & ink, oils, watercolors, and acrylics. I'm thankful for the exposure to other media in my first two years in UD Art, trying things like ceramics, sculpture and printmaking for the first time. I believe those tactile learning processes have made me a stronger creative overall. But I've always had a design-driven mind, and mostly knew that was what I wanted to study since high school. As a kid, I was hooked on HGTV, and when I was probably 10, I made this menu on Microsoft Publisher for the pretend restaurant my younger cousin and I would play. I remember being more concerned with the thoroughness, beauty, and perfection of the menu than playing the actual game. I would then make random shit on Microsoft Publisher, which is now such an irrelevant program. It's funny I would even get frustrated in middle school when other kids' PowerPoint presentations had things that wouldn't line up, or if we were doing a group project and no one would care about those stupid details like I did. In design, I've found a place for some of these overly-organized tendencies. Still, the Visual Communications major has re-trained the way I approach a project and convinced me of the importance of concepting, process, and imperfections. Having purpose to my design decisions, communicating an original thought, or presenting something in a way that would make somebody stop and give a fuck, that obviously goes a lot further than being able to make something look pretty. Now I do mostly branding, illustration, and animation. I believe TV shows and movies are forms of modern art, even though there are a lot of bad ones, and so I think Christopher Nolan and Jordan Peele are some admirable artists and masterminds. Illustrator and designer Christoph Neimann is a genius as well. 2. You work primarily in design, especially as a student, but you've got some awesome illustration work as well. Did you start as an illustrator and it led into design? Or do they work Parallel to one another? Since college I have found illustration to be like the bridge between fine art and design for me. I am very much a visual learner and while I can note-take and chicken-scratch until my hand falls off, it feels pretty easy to draw out what I'm thinking. I find illustration a natural, enjoyable, more fun means to design and I like to incorporate it in my work wherever applicable. I am experimenting more with digital illustration, but illustrating with watercolor is relaxing to me. 3. Siting your Miu brand design there's some collage in there that looks hand done. Do you find hands on work important to your design or are you all digital? Working with my hands feels fulfilling and and almost always makes the end result so much better. Even if the final product isn't itself analog, I do believe it is important to work with physical materials wherever possible, but especially in collage. 4. Siting your Baskin Robins mock-up, which is super badass they should buy it, do you have future hopes in branding? If not what does your design future look like? Branding would be my top choice- starting as a junior designer and working my way up through that would hopefully give me the opportunity to work on a variety of brands, using a variety of media. I am considering taking another internship in a cool place, to focus on and strengthen a skill I felt I couldn't devote enough time to in school such as animation. I want to travel, try a couple things, and see where it might lead me, before I settle into a long-term position. 5. Do you plan on keeping solo illustration or other fine art work going in the future? Or do you think you'll strictly go the design route? At this point, I don't think I could ever give up illustration, so if not for clients, I plan to make time to illustrate and paint for myself and for family. I hope to always be learning a new artistic skill. 6. Personal Plugs! Tell us what you've got going on, future projects, and where to find you! I'm in my last semester at UD, currently perfecting my portfolio, and preparing for my senior exhibition (May 22nd-31st in Recitation). For my next project, I'm researching the concept of dreaming, and I've learned some pretty interesting things so far. I almost always remember my dreams and I've been sketching and recording them every morning to identify patterns and bigger themes. I might take a summer off and take a breather, but after that, you can find me somewhere south of the Mason Dixon line because I hate the winter. sarahmuldooncreative.com insta @sarahdullmoon vimeo.com/sarmuldoon Remember Folks! Feature Friday is an awesome way to get your work seen and promoted, as well as make you eligible for other prizes! But, you’ve got to post on that forum so we can see your work and promote it! So post, comment and post some more! Let’s see and talk about all of your work!

Going live April 30th here on our site! Proud to announce that we are hosting our first digital exhibition here on the site. It will be the first of a monthly show series. Each will showcase work posted onto the forum in the month prior. This means any work posted in any category of the forum is submitted to our curators and is eligible for choosing. In order to submit your work you must be at least a first tier member, a subscription which can be purchased in our store. All actively enrolled students at our partner schools will receive tier 2 subscriptions free of charge. That means current University of Delaware students, you guys get first dibs! Anything posted now till months end is up for inclusion. We can't wait to see all great work you have to submit. Have at it, the forum is OPEN!

Ya'll get a double dose of color poems this week as I will be sipping beers and eating schnitzel in Berlin next Wednesday <3 See you in two weeks.

I'm excited to read my new issue of Primo that just came in the mail, a magazine for and about Italian Americans. I source a lot of inspiration from this subscription. It feeds my overall being and compels me to act accordingly and go full throttle.

On a recent Friday in Philadelphia, on the kind of night where the weather straddles winter and spring, four University of Delaware MFA candidates descended on the Vox Populi Black Box for an evening of performance and video screenings that explored ritual, transformation, and identity. Curated by Vox Populi member Aaron Terry, Phase IV transported me to another world on that rainy night. I existed somewhere in the past but simultaneously in the future, a grey space in between my distant memories and memories I have not yet created. Through the eyes of Camilo Cárdenas, Natalie Hutchings, Moon Rodríguez-Decker, and Mafe Valero, I explored this ambiguous place and emerged on the other side feeling as if I was now on the cusp of the vernal equinox. My evening began with a stop at Outpost 3, a mixed media performance by multi-disciplinary artist Natalie Hutchings. The sign read “PSYCHIC SURGERY” and I approached the ramshackle structure with a sense of skepticism but curious as I enjoy playing with my own psychic abilities. Inside that roadside shanty I found what I can only describe as a dystopian future vagrant, who perhaps had the answers to the universe but may only be selling me snake oil for the low, low price of a cherished memory or a first love. I obliged, paid my fee, and watched eagerly as the ritual unfolded and the surgeon began sewing blue thread into the flesh of her hand. At first repulsed I soon couldn’t look away as I watched the thread move slowly through her skin eventually being tied off in a small knot. The surgeon signaled the ceremony was over and handed me a small plastic bottle of hydrating and lightly filtered “Dihydrogen Monoxide” and I walked away not quite knowing how I felt but electrified as to what the rest of the evening had to provide. I needed air post-surgery and searched for it in the dreamy video performance Pesadilla by Mafe Valero. What at first seemed like an endless loop subtly revealed itself as a syncopated montage showing Valero swimming through the air atop an artificial cloud made of fiber fill. I became caught in her loop, sucked in by a recurring beat which I later learned was a recording of Valero’s grandfather using a cheese grater to mimic the sound of a güiro, but as the video preceded the humor receded and I found myself stumbling through Valero’s nightmare. Her strokes became irrational, flailing, and almost panicked as the cheese grater güiro sounded in an increasingly mocking tone. It wasn’t until I peeled the headphones away from my ears I awoke. Luckily, I was soon able to turn my attention to Camilo Cárdenas’ mutedly colorful rotoscope animation Transformación Colibrí (primel intento). This style of animation is made through a process in which Cárdenas applies various paint and pencil mediums to printouts of each frame of an earlier shot video. As the piece progressed, I saw the artists hand manipulating the frames as he wove his story of ritualistic transformation from man to hummingbird. A golden egg, the sun, rain, and apparitions appeared and dissolved in a staccato rhythm that led me through his evolution. Cárdenas says of working in this style, “It’s a performative action, a performance for the camera, not only an animation”, but I saw it as even more; through his process the ritual was completed, and the animation served as a record of his actual transformation. The room then grew silent as Moon Rodríguez-Decker began walking back and forth across the Black Box, moving individual sheets of porcelain from one side of the room to the other. His slow and deliberate actions at first existed as a singular practice but as the performance unveiled itself viewers became participants and helped shoulder some of the burden Rodríguez-Decker had taken on. There was a tipping point, and his tedious and at one point insurmountable task was quickly completed as we came together as a group to aid a fellow human being. These simple actions reminded me of our need for community in our usually self-driven and increasingly divisive society. I had finally caught my breath and drew in the positive and airy energy that had filled the room. My witchy soul had been gearing up for the dawn of spring and this evening of cooperatively transportive art is just what my body needed. I walked out of the building and stepped back from the future with a refreshed energy and a better sense of my present tense. Armed with my umbrella, I instead allowed the last rains of winter to fall on my shoulders, slowly soaking into my denim, cleansing me as I walked towards Chinatown and into the equinox. Left, Mafe Valero's video "Nubes", center, Natalie Hutchings performing in "Outpost 3" and right, Moon Rodríguez-Decker performing in "Most Fragile Things". Photo credit, Valentine Smith Photography Kate Testa, 2019