TeXt Marks The Spot

I’ve recently been contracted to work in a marketing/promotions capacity for a developing brand. More on this to come!

To date, more than 15 emerging artists have participated in ToyCyte’s custoMONDAYs.

Click here to read more about The custoMONDAY Project.

Click here to view the entire archive of all custoMONDAY artists.

Click here to view the website of graphic artist Jason Babler, designer of the custoMONDAY logo.

Every other Monday  on ToyCyte, I spotlight an emerging artist. Each profile includes an interview, comprehensive photos, links to the artists’ online imprints and a contest where the artist gives away a customized art toy or original creation to a lucky fan. The figures are all exclusively created for the custoMONDAY Project, and not to be immodest, but some of them are worth several hundred dollars.

I work to promote each artist during their two-week “residence” by reaching out to other blogs and fan forums. The artists who have been a part of custoMONDAY are truly tomorrow’s art stars. Some have been tapped to make production figures for Chinese and Japanese toy companies, one saw his figure auctioned in London, one caught the attention of Kanye West, and others regularly sell out in stores and shows.

Click here to read more about The custoMONDAY Project.

Click here to view the entire archive of all custoMONDAY artists.

Click here to view the website of graphic artist Jason Babler, designer of the custoMONDAY logo.

The custoMONDAY project brings significant attention to artists. A couple examples of custoMONDAY creations below are followed by the viral re-blogging of one of our biggest success stories.

custoMONDAY creation by Mike Slobot

custoMONDAY creation by OsirisOrion

custoMONDAY creation by MONSTREHERO

ABOVE: custoMONDAY creation by Dustin Cantrell

BELOW: Dustin’s custoMONDAY goes viral.

This weekend saw the opening of a custom toy show based around the imagery of Japanese toys. It Came From Skullbrain profiled the talent (much of it local) from the Skullbrain forum, an off-shoot of San Francisco’s Super7, which hosted the event. ICFSB brought out a mix of folks: from kids in strollers to old-schoolers, and of course, lots of Japanese toy fans. I’m reminded of Mark Nagata’s commentary about the Kaiju Comrades show in Tokyo where Mark writes: “They are not used to seeing one artist customizing another person’s figures, and for some the prices were ‘crazy’.”  Or as Steve Agin put it: “This is really one of the most interesting art modes of the present. I know of no precedent for it…It can be tough representing the repainting of another artist’s figure as your original work, especially in a potential ‘mine field’ of egos.”

Read the rest and see all the pieces from the show.

Never before has there been an all-resin art toy group show of this proportion and significance. Over the course of the evening, people chatted about how it is the “right time” for resin. The recession slowed down factory (vinyl) production and simultaneously gave collectors pause to rethink buying pricier products. Meanwhile, a handful of art stars rose to fame with the aid of companies and stores, leaving many artists on the periphery. Is resin the solution? Well, anyone with artistic intent can learn the process and pass on the cost savings to their collectors. This results in a vibrant art toy community, the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. I really feel like we are on the edge of a movement.

Read the rest and see all the pieces in the show.

A San Francisco art toy show like no other!

Last night, a variety of homegrown Insurgents Wilderness Gruppo mutations hit San Francisco’s Rocket World for the first I.W.G. custom show. If you’ve never been to Rocket World (aka T.A.D. Gear), you owe it to yourself to visit Patrick Ma’s haven for high end adventure gear and designer toys. Enter the garage doors to one of the most untraditional spaces for an art show, and you’ll mix it up with cops, military personnel, artists, fanboys, fangirls and families checking out customized toys, stealth jackets and titanium sporks. As Patrick says, this kind of diversity is precisely what San Francisco is all about.

Read the rest and see all the pictures.

Wondercon isn’t about toys; it’s about comics: superheroes, Star Wars, cosplayers and comics. Semantics aside, Comic-Con has more toys. That said, we scoured Wondercon in San Francisco’s Moscone Center for several hours seeking out the toys. We were happily surprised by who and what we found. Read on for vinyl, plush, plastic and resin–from prototypes without websites all the way to finished convention exclusives. Like the VTN 08 convention coverage, this was another event I wrote up with quick, yet thorough, individual posts and then a linkable round-up.

When I look back on my writing from the past year, it’s clear I wrote a lot about Bay Area rising art star Alex Pardee. Whether the prolific artist was doing shirts, books, film, prints or group and solo shows, I was there. On that last note, everything lead up to Letters From Digested Children. And Alex is a nice, generous, intelligent, talented and quirky guy: truly the best combination.

Last night, Alex Pardee opened his Letters From Digested Children solo show at San Francisco’s FIFTY24SF. The central theme of the exhibition is missing children who have been eaten by monsters. Since monsters have slow digestive systems, many of the children are still alive inside their stomachs. While the children wait for salvation, they scrawl S.O.S. letters. Alex collected these missives, along with police reports and portraits of some of the “more popular” monsters, transforming the gallery into a walk-in milk carton. This is concept art and is best experienced to be appreciated. For our readers around the globe, I’ll try to explain.

Take Veronica Pickles, for example. She was last seen by a neighbor with an overactive bladder heading toward a Castle Greyskull-like structure known as The Mouth. When the ground “shook like Michael J. Fox,” the neighbor called the Cardboard City police. Here, Alex Pardee uses his entire arsenal: signature monster art with great storytelling and a generous peppering of pop culture.

Read about and see the show here.

Jeremy Fish’s latest solo show recreates a San Francisco saloon from the 1850s at FIFTY24SF.  The exhibit includes a repurposed 100 year old redwood fence, 500 pounds of solid wood from Indonesia and enough saw dust to take a little piece of the show with you via your sneakers when you leave. It’s been a decade of Bay Area living for me. What began with a dot com bubble now closes with an economic recession. But California has a really unique way of rising from the ashes–and that’s what The Ghosts of Barbary Coast is all about.

Read and see the rest here.

The Vivisect Playset has become one of the signature group art shows for our community. For five years now, Luke Chueh and Gallery1988 have curated and hosted The Vivisect Playset, an art show that features artists who regularly employed animal characters in their work to illustrate the human condition. The show has illuminated the talents of several artists, helped set the foundation and direction for Gallery 1988, and spawned a series of toys, produced by STRANGECo.

Read the rest and see all of the art.