Chris Dowgin: An Illustrator from a quirky little town called Salem.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Cosmic Play: New Album by Chris Dowgin

Incense and Peppermints...?

Have a listen. My first album of flute and piano was released this week. It is music to ease the soul in a hectic world. It is entrancing. Music from simpler times. Cosmic. Pulling traditions from traditional Japanese music and Native American. A blending of jazz sentimentalities of Jaco Pastorius and Classical tastes of John Cage. Throw a little Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, and Peter Gabriel and you will have my ice cream Sunday of inspirations.

Available at Open Mics around Salem and at Salem House Press.
Only $5

Limited Time Preview:

On Soundcloud

James Bama: Illustrator of the Week

Cowboy, Indians, and a Savage...

James Bama is another artist I had admired throughout the years within the Greenwich Workshop catalogs my mother got over the years in the 80's and early 90's. I am always surprised to find one of their artist in another venue. Sometimes their work was starring me in the face on books or movie posters I owned, never knowing they were the same people from the catalog. Speaking of which I do have the Turn Me On Book below...

Bama’s activities during this period were highlighted by artwork for the New York Giants football team, the Baseball and Football Halls of Fame, the U.S. Air Force and The Saturday Evening Post. Fans of pop culture may know him best as the artist who portrayed Doc Savage on sixty-two memorable book covers. Then Bama decided it was finally time to do what he most wanted to do. He moved west to Wyoming, where an artist “can trace the beginnings of Western history; see the oldest weapons, saddles and guns and be close to Indian culture.” He sold his first Western fine art painting soon after the move. The distinctive work of James Bama combines tradition with modern realities. In his much-acclaimed studies, Bama shows the contemporary West preserving its traditional culture. His portraits of inhabitants of the plains and mountains capture the true character of the West. Today the paintings of James Bama are part of many prestigious collections. Bama has been represented in major exhibitions throughout the West and has been presented in one-man shows in New York City. Bantam Books published The Western Art of James Bama in 1975 and The Art of James Bama in 1993. Jim was inducted into the Illustrator’s Hall of Fame June 28, 2000. Through his portraits of real people of the new West re-creating their history and heritage, Bama pays homage to the Old West and is renowned in yet another realm of the art world.

For More Info:

Gallery of Prints for Sale

Profile on Greenwich Workshop

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Early Musician

Can You Play Jethro Tull...

No. My flute style is influenced by Native American flute, John Cage, and the Japanese styles of Noh and Shakuhachi. I have been playing for 24 years. I started when I was admiring a collection of Herman Hesse books and moved a flute off the shelf. My friend gave me that flute and her Herman Hesse collection.

I started out when I was tiny with the guitar, but I think somehow my parents made it disappear. The drums my uncle gave me vanished even quicker...

My parents did buy me a Casio PT80, I only learned Greensleeves (which sneeks out on the flute at times). Though the only one that stuck was the flute. Well the piano snuck in last year.

Cheers,
Chris

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Joe Petagno: Illustrator of the Week

Iron Horse We Ride...

To honor the passing of "Lemmy" Ian Kilminster we look at the art of Joe Petagno who created Snaggletooth. He also helped design several Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd covers.

Petagno was born in Portland, Maine and left the United States in 1972. He worked with Hipgnosis before meeting Lemmy in 1975. He designed "War-Pig" (aka Snaggletooth, The Iron Boar, The Bastard, or Little Bastard) for the band's Motorhead album and has continued to design the majority of the album and single sleeve covers for the band. Petagno refers to Motorhead's mascot as The Bastard (or Little Bastard). Joe Petagno came up with the concept after studying skulls of wild boars, gorillas, and dogs.

For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Petagno

Aubrey Beardsley: Illustrator of the Week

Such a Gaunt Guy...

Aubrey Beardsley (21 August 1872- 16 March 1898)

Aubrey was an English illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.e was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis.

For more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley

Biggest Collection of Illustrated Fairy Tales

Grim, Eat Your Heart Out...

Surlane Fairy Tales

Here is a treat for you. This website is filled with fairy tales from around the world with several illustrators works exhibited. You can read the European version of Cinderella and then the Japanese next. Many of the tales are annotated and come with a comprehensive list of illustrators who illuminated them. It is a gorgeous site.

So Now Go Check Them Out:
http://www.surlanefairytales.com

Henry J. Ford: Ilustrator of the Week

All Those Tails...

Henry J. Ford

Henry Justice Ford (1860–1941) was a prolific and successful English artist and illustrator, active from 1886 through to the late 1920s. Sometimes known as H. J. Ford or Henry J. Ford, he came to public attention when he provided the numerous beautiful illustrations for Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, which captured the imagination of a generation of British children and were sold worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s.

I always loved his work in the colored fairy tales books of Andrew Lang. I hope you will too!