Art of Bruce Whistlecraft

Last month we made the trip to Bristol to visit the “Art from the New World” show at the Bristol City art gallery (The same place that held the big Banksy show not long ago..)

It was well worth the trip.

Curated by the Corey Helford gallery it collects together a whole gaggle of cutting edge American (and English living in America) artists together and shows there work to the general public in a big show away from the usual “scene” type venues. This is a great entry level show for anyone who hasnt ever heard of the phrases “Low Brow” or “Pop Surrealism”.
As you can see on the flier above there is a top line-up of artists with some amazing pieces many new for this show.

You are greeted in the main hall before entering the show gallery by a huge inflateable Buff Monster Ice cream. Buff has also painted a large mural on the walls in three alcoves in the same room.

To the left of the ice cream was a huge Todd Schorr piece.

Inside, the show hall is a large open space with a lot of room to breath and weave between the many people wandering around the show. This wasnt an opening or anything special just a regular week day and it was still very busy.
ok so the place looks empty in the photos but I was waiting for people to move before snapping.

And here are a load of closeups of some of the pieces.
Not really a dud in the show and a great variety of styles too.

This was the first time I had seen actual works from a lot of these artists. Its odd to have known and followed some artists for years and yet never had the chance to actually see an original work before. One of the problems of being in the UK with practically all the shows being in the USA.

Brandi Milne

Travis Louie

Silvia Li

Stoupakis

Greg Simkins

Todd Schorr

Sas Christian

Mark Ryden

Mellisa Forman

Liz McGrath

Liz McGrath

Mia

Camilla Rose Garcia and below Joshua Petker

Outside the show gallery it’s easy to miss Colin Christian’s piece. Although it’s huge at around four feet tall, it’s hung in the room behind the one with the icecream. Take a moment to wander in there and check it out. Its a cracker.

The show runs till the 22nd of August 10am to 5pm daily.

Do go and check it out if you can.
Also it’s worth noting most of the pieces are available to be purchased, though many had sold when I visited.

…Museum site link…

The next step on the process is for the toy company to make the tooling prototype sculpture. This is either created by a craftsman in wax or as in this case and more and more these days, created in a computer 3D model and then outputted to a “rapid prototyping” machine which creates the form in resin.
Either way at some point photos or renders come back to the artist to oversee the process and just check everything is tying in to the original idea and design. Also at this stage things can be altered a little or tweeked in a slightly different direction if the 3D version of the figure just doesnt look quite right. I mean by this that something drawn in 2D can look balanced and fine but when it’s translated into 3D it can look unbalanced and need adjusting to look good again. This is of course all subjective to the eye of the artist but as they are the art director on the project it’s up to them to speak up at this point or else let the toy go ahead with possible oddities.
For example the screw on the drill on the GNOME’s head was rendered as drawn but to me looked off. Suggestings for a different way of doing it were made, the model adjusted, a better shape arrived at.
Also alterations were made to the hat rim to allow the hat to lock snugly into place without the need for any other fixing mechanisms.

Here are a couple more examples of how details can be altered at this stage to get everything looking bang on.