*ta da!*
So, after a long wait, with much suspense, I present to you the islands. They are supposed to be mini art museums, thus the walkways and little doors. My friend and fellow artist Krista Peel has challenged me and a two handfuls of other artists to come up with mini art museums for her latest calendar project. She will harness her mad skills to photograph these little buildings with railroad people milling about them and assign them to a particular month in a glossy, glorious calendar. My particular take on the challenge was obviously influenced by my recent work drawing and painting the islands. 
So though I always have fun making work for KP’s calendar projects (wow! since 2004 now), they always reaffirm for me how much I love painting and drawing as opposed to working with 3D-oriented media, as in this case with pink insulation foam and plaster. I had much more fun painting the surface of the islands than I did doing all of that sanding. Still, it’s nice to be able to expand into whatever realm is presented and I am pretty happy with the final result which isn’t too far off than what I has envisioned in my drawing. Plus, as I mentioned before, this was my first foray into model railroad land. It’s quite a place!
There are a lot of artists out there doing this model railroad thing, and other work with miniatures. I must say, in the following cases (and with Krista Peel’s work, which is, of course, a given), I am quite taken with it:
Thomas Doyle makes strange little events happen in snow globes.
Courier, mixed media, 12.5 x 14, inches diameter, 2007
Acceptable losses, mixed media, 16 x 13.5 inches, diameter 2008
Though these following images by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz are c-prints, they are clearly taken using diorama-like sets. Is it any coincidence that the title of this series is “Islands”?
A Winter Walk, 2006 C-Print 39 x 65 inches
Low Tide, 2008 C-Print 50 x 40 inches
Thanks to my friend Abigail for alerting me to these artists in her blog. Let me know if you come across others…
Love the new sculptures…. The painting you did is lovely on that surface. I would love to see the calendar when it is done.
September 9th, 2009 at 12:43 pmAnd……. ANOTHER Abigail in Ann Arbor Michigan that is in artist? How did I miss that? You have to connect us! Although, so sad I am no longer there. Still I feel a kinship.
BTW I love those artists working in miniature. breathtaking.
your pieces look great! I understand what you mean about feeling more comfortable painting or drawing, because I feel more comfortable making sculpture!
oh how I love Martin/Munoz’s and Thomas Doyle’s work. Even though Martin and Munoz work is nothing like anything I would ever make, I still wish I’d made it.
your friend Abbigail wrote me earlier today, so we’ve now met via blogging 🙂 I wish she was in town to come to brunch!
September 9th, 2009 at 8:53 pm[…] When I recently asked people for suggestions of artists using model train sets in their work, for a post, Joe suggested Mike’s work. Coincidentally, two of my colleagues at EMU recently curated […]
October 21st, 2009 at 10:41 pm[…] Speaking of using train and other miniature model materials in artwork, I am very struck by the photographs of Brooklyn-based artist Lori Nix. I was fortunate to get to see her lecture about her work at EMU on Tuesday. She makes painstakingly intricate models and photographs them. The finished piece of artwork takes the form of a photograph back-mounted to Plexiglas. She works entirely in film with studio lighting (aka- no digital effects or manipulation). Though I love her work in general, I am particularly drawn to the series The City, Insecta Magnifica, and Some Other Place. There’s also a series of small prints in black and white that she showed us that I especially like, but they’re not on her website. I am posting an image from each of the series I mentioned, in the order that I mentioned them. All images are from her website. Also, I like how much she loves her cats. Tagged with: art • cats • influences • large-scale • photography […]
March 18th, 2010 at 8:14 pm