The idea is to recreate religious imagery of the plethora of Gods in the Hindu religion and perhaps some of the saints from Catholicism. I’m thinking in particular of the kitschy imagery on candles to be used on altars of the Hispanic flavor of the Catholic tradition.

I’m also using “India Bazaar” as reference, which has a great vintage look.

I’m not going to try to be ironic and clever as some sort of statement about religion, but rather to try and create vivid & enchanting imagery with current technology in this rich tradition. I won’t replicate the look of the pastel and airbrushed colors but try to make some really photo-realistic representations of the Gods and Goddesses.

I’ll be using the green screen I have set up in my studio space at tockwotten so I can make the backgrounds in post-production.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jay.gidwitz/PinUpsProjects#

I would shoot the photographs in front of green screen and then create the (usually sparse) environment in photoshop and then import the image into Painter X to make it look more like an organically painted image.

I would not just be recreating the look of pin-up illustrations, though; I want the models to have the “look” of belonging to various sub-cultures: hipsters, goth, with tattoos or mohawks etc. (Which I can do in photoshop afterwards if necessary).

The images would still be relatively tame to modern standards; the “oh golly!” look on the model’s face as for some reason a little bit of thigh or bum was being revealed, as was that style of illustration.

Or feel free to comment on the concept below.

But also when Richard Fishman, my teacher & mentor and friend looked around the room, and said: “You’re ready for a show. I mean this is a show, but you’re ready for a show.”

Wow! A real show not a student show. It’s been a long time coming… and the best part about it was I really respect Richard’s opinion. He really knows his stuff and doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.

There’s some people who when they tell you things is means a lot more, because they don’t give compliments lightly and only do when you’ve really earned it.

One of my pieces got in!

The Winners’ Exhibition opens Sunday, May 4th at 7:00pm (Rome time) on artromgallery.com.

The picture was an unpublished image from the Erich Zann posters.

After acquiring a room full of stuff the next stage was to decide what to do with it, and then to compose the work, and create more work from that.

The chance operations component in a sense was a use of surrealist techniques where random actions are performed and then the artist produces work using that with the potential of creating “happy accidents,”
or “synchronicity,” or “resonance,” (or insert analogous word from the philosophy of your choice here.)

And by using chance operations the artist can incorporate elements into the work that s/he would have never consciously chosen or come up with–in the hopes of creating truly unique combinations.

See “cut-up technique,” and”aleatory.”

Click one of the images to see the gallery.

“Dark River” and “Dream Logic” are going to be in it.

Below: “Dream Logic”

Below: “Dark River”

Big thanks to Caroline Washington.