January 2013

Chris Ryniak and Amanda Spayd : MIGRATION

Does anyone still not know that Chris Ryniak and Amanda Louise Spayd will be opening their amazing two person show, MIGRATION, at Stranger Factory on March 1st? Well, have a press release anyway!

As we announced earlier, both artists will be present at the reception, and Stranger Factory is also offering two workshops in conjunction with the exhibits!

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(BY STEVE BROWN.)

Stranger Factory is excited to play host to MIGRATION, the latest collaborative exhibit by Chris Ryniak and Amanda Louise Spayd. The opening reception is at Stranger Factory on Friday, March 1st from 6 PM – 9 PM.

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Chris Ryniak’s contributions to Migration include drawings, sculpture, paintings, and very small runs of editioned resin statues of his unique and immediately recognizable creatures. Occupying the world just out of our peripheral vision, Ryniak’s creatures travel through the underbrush in Migration and happily search for the shared meanings in their lives and ours. Covered in lumps, bumps, and smiles, Ryniak’s creatures exemplify singular bits of human personality as they giggle, stumble, stroll, and sometimes just eat their way through life.

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Amanda Louise Spayd’s portion of Migration includes plush sculptures, drawings, small runs of editioned resin statues, and mixed media paintings. Packing their belongings and moving on at the turn of the season, Spayd’s hapless bunnies highlight the natural transition of life, and the shedding of detritus as we move from one phase to another. Forever in transition, yet frozen in a sort of adolescent wonder, Spayd’s sack rabbits are themselves scraps and leftovers, wrapped delicately in the cast-offs of others and trudging endlessly from one season to the next in search of their place in the world.

Both artists are close friends, and each has gone through major life transitions in the past few years including leaving their long-time homes for new dwellings. As they helped each other through their own migrations, they abandoned their old lives and learned to create themselves anew. This collaborative show is the culmination of several years of tears and triumphs between two friends who make beautiful monsters.

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About Chris Ryniak: Chris was born as a baby in 1976 in the suburbs of Detroit. He spent his childhood basking in the warm glow of Saturday morning cartoons and flipping over rocks in search of insects, reptiles and ghosts. A graduate and former instructor of the Ringling School of Art and Design, he is now a painter and sculptor of all manner of critters. Chris’ work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia. His paintings have also been published in numerous books and periodicals in multiple countries, and he is part of the Circus Posterus collective of artists. Chris resides in Ohio with his two children, one very old cat, and a collection of skulls that rivals many museums.

About Amanda Louise Spayd: Amanda is a maker of the highest order. An accomplished artist, sculptor, musician, soap maker, and student of perfumery, Amanda spends a lot of time in the woods, watching birds, collecting feathers, dead insects, bones, and other artifacts. She can often be found poking through antique stores looking for beat-up treasures for inspiration, which she finds in historical fashion and textiles, the excess and ridiculousness of high-societies past, natural materials and their inevitable decay, the raw and instinctual behaviors of animals, and in artists such as Jan Svankmajer, Odd Nerdrum, Joseph Cornell, and Hieronymous Bosch, among others. Amanda is also part of the Circus Posterus collective of artists.

A 4-legged Masao Skelve for the Cardboard Spaceship Mini Series

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Popping up this past week on the Circus Posterus Tumblr is another sketch from the Brandt Peters and Kathie Olivas Blind Box Miniseries from Cardboard Spaceship. This time, it is the fan favorite 4-legged Masao Skelve that holds a place in all our hearts because the nomenclature is from our dear friend Charity’s moniker!

The mini series is right around the corner – as Kathie recently stated on the CP Forum “We are about to output the digital sculpts which are all finished– so excited for this series! Then it’s off to the factory!”

We can’t wait!

DrilOne, Leecifer, and Limon opening this Friday

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By now, we all know that Stranger Factory is beyond excited for the three solo exhibitions by Jason Limon, DrilOne, and Leecifer opening this Friday, February 1st. While the walls and floors are being adorned with all the amazing work, how about we show you one last glimpse?

Above we have the original painting Hindsight for Jason Limon’s “Foretell”.

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Ready to march into Albuquerque, Dril has created a run of 4 custom Drones which are part of his “Empty World” exhibit. Also shown is a gorgeous, incredibly customized DrilOne version of Jason Limon’s figures!

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For Leecifer’s “Long Dogs“, a custom Honoo Skelve will be showing off a devilish grin to warm your hearts.

DrilOne’s “Empty World”, Leecifer’s “Long Dogs”, and Jason Limon’s “Foretell”  open at Stranger Factory on Friday, February 1st with a reception from 6 PM – 9 PM.

March Workshops with Amanda Louise Spayd and Chris Ryniak!

Oh boy, you’re in for a treat.

In March, Stranger Factory will be hosting TWO workshops, with exhibiting artists Chris Ryniak and Amanda Louise Spayd.

First, on Saturday, March 2, we are happy to present, The Patina of Time, an Antiquing and Distressing workshop with Amanda Louise Spayd.

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Turn new into old and create instant antiques in this interactive workshop. Learn distressing and antiquing tricks and techniques on paper, wood, and fabric, and get your hands dirty making an “antique” rag doll to take home. Great for artists, dollmakers, toy customizers, or anyone who wants to create a rustic, vintage aesthetic.

The Patina of Time, an Antiquing and Distressing workshop with Amanda Louise Spayd.
Date: March 2, 2013(Saturday)
Price: $65
Time: 3-5pm

To reserve your spot, please contact strangerfactorysales@gmail.com as soon as possible.

Then, on Sunday, March 3, we’ll have Creating Expressive Characters: a drawing workshop with Chris Ryniak!

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Explore the possibilities of emotion and expression to breathe new life into your character drawings. Chris shares techniques and strategies for enhancing the depth and range of emotion and feelings on paper. Learn new ways of capturing emotion using shape, posture, line, as well as your own internal library of feelings and experiences.

Creating Expressive Characters: a drawing workshop with Chris Ryniak!
Date: March 3, 2013(Sunday)
Price: $60
Time: 3-5pm

To reserve your spot, please contact strangerfactorysales@gmail.com as soon as possible. All workshops are located at Stranger Factory, at 109 Carlisle Blvd NE.

If you can’t wait a whole month for Stranger Factory workshop action, there are still a few spaces left in our Magic Sculpt Workshop with Valency Genis, Kathie Olivas, DrilOne and Leecifer this weekend!

Greetings and Glowing Salutations

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Earlier this month, we spotted the 5-inch resin mini Greeter haunting around Stranger Factory, and now there seems to be a herd of them everywhere! They are multiplying faster than gremlins in a bubble bath I think. For those wanting to see what these guys look like in the dark, we are lucky enough to have a picture of them in their natural glowing habitat below. Early reports say these will be coming out in about a month, but we will most definitely let you know soon.

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Three Questions with Jason Limon!

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A regular at Stranger Factory group shows, Jason Limon is one of my favourite discoveries of the last couple years(yes, everyone else discovered him first. STILL.). He’s a really wonderful person, so I was happy that he could take some time to chat about his show opening at Stranger Factory next Friday. Jason is one of the shining stars of this scene – he’s super friendly and engaging, massively talented, and Brad and I also agree that he’s good looking.

1. You’ve been collaborating with DrilOne on some 3-D pieces lately, and we’re totally delighted at how well your styles mesh together. How did the start of the collaborations come about? Can we expect to see more of those fantastic rusty Limon-ey pieces for this show? 

LIMON: I met Dril at Gallery 1988 in San Francisco late 2009. I had a group show there which he came out to and we were able to hang out a bit. We had communicated on and off since then, but last year he asked me if I wanted to work with him and the guys at Dragatomi at their SDCC booth. So we started to plan out some collaborative dimensional pieces. I had collaborated on a few (two-dimensional) paintings with other artists but never in 3D form. So I was a bit nervous but excited about it at the same time.

Together we decided that I’d send him one of my “Ollie’s” to work on. I shipped off a blank and a few weeks later he sent some progress shots of what he was doing with it. Once I received the piece back and saw it in person I was blown away and eager to finish it off with a little more sculpting and painting. We were both real happy with the end result on that one figure and talked about doing more.

For this show I really felt the urge to paint on panels so I didn’t get to do much in the ways of 3D with him. I did mail Dril a box of my blank resin figures a few months back. He has shared some teaser pics of what he’s done with them and they are looking amazing!

CP: Look at these gorgeous Dril customs of Limon’s resins! Aaaaa…I can’t wait until next Friday.

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2. These giant(and gorgeous!) eyes you’ve been painting and sculpting have been becoming more prominent in your work over the past year, and they seem to be out in full force for this show. Tell us more about them!

LIMON: Yes, I’ve been making lots of eyeballs for this batch of paintings. For the past few years I’ve been telling a story with my images about how plant life overwhelms the planet and makes a shift within all other living beings. The vegetation starts to infect and change the population in order to balance things out. For this show, I was thinking of an end to the story. At the end, human life no longer exists yet there are so many new species and creatures that have grown from us and all other living things. Since there are no longer people around to see these things I imagined a way where all these eyes could be there in this time to show us.

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LIMON: One of the pieces will consist of twenty four panels with eyeballs showing us a glimpse into a time that we are unable to see. I wanted to create these paintings to draw some sort of conclusion to this story that I’ve been creating so that I might be able to explore other ideas and stories.

3. What are you most excited about in your body of work for this show?

LIMON: I’d have to say that it would be the multi-panel piece I just mentioned. I normally keep a painting contained to one panel or canvas. I enjoyed developing the pattern of this one and figuring out how to make it one cohesive piece, but yet could be taken apart and make sense individually as well.

Thanks for chatting, Jason!

Hope you enjoyed that small glimpse into Jason’s marvelously creative brain! And – here is one more picture of Jason and his cat Linky, who he adamantly insists that he is not sitting on.

And if you absolutely cannot wait for the show preview to get a hold of some amazing Limon work, we’ve got his Candy Corn Ollie from the Bewitching II show up in the store right now!

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Circus Folk: Michael Manikus

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It is time for another edition of Circus Folk! This time around, we are showcasing a portion of Circus Posterus Sideshow member Michael Manikus’ collection. Michael took the time to snap some images for us in his Virginia home, and we asked him a few questions about his beloved pieces.

CIMG2364“Product of Nowhere” from Camilla d’Errico

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More of the collection after the jump!

Read More »Circus Folk: Michael Manikus

DrilOne goes Micro for “Empty World”

Micro2For his upcoming exhibit “Empty World“, our resident patina expert DrilOne is shrinking down his Drones to micro size. The Drones made their first full sized appearance at the Circus Posterus booth during Designer Con, but now Dril is bringing a blindbagged micro series into the mix.

Each of these much smaller versions of the well armored-gas masked bad boys will come in their own litho printed bags, ready to stand guard next to their bigger cousins . Besides this, there aren’t too many specifics yet, but by next week, we will all be in the know as the show opens.
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Micro1DrilOne’s “Empty World” along with Leecifer’s “Long Dogs” and Jason Limon’s “Foretell”  open at Stranger Factory on Friday, February 1st from 6 PM – 9 PM.

 

Nonesuch Garden x Circus Posterus Skelve

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This weekend, we were hit with a left hook on the Circus Posterus Instagram.

The details are slim for now, but there seems to be a Nonesuch Garden and Circus Posterus collab Skelve on the horizon. We talked about Megan Baehr aka Nonesuch Garden last October before Designer Con about her amazing plush work, and now it looks as if there will be a crossover of epic proportions!

The images are of a plush Skelve adorned with a proper top hat in the same fashion as Megan’s Nonesuch Dolls. This Skelve has posable legs – for a sitting or standing position, or just getting ready for some good yoga.

We are beyond excited for this release. More details soon folks!

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Leecifer lets loose with “Long Dogs”

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Last week, we gave you a gander into Leecifer’s workshop and his progress on “Long Dogs”  this February at Stranger Factorybut now we can show you even more! That Boston Terrier Skelve is developing awesomely, and there is an arsenal of revamped Big Sals getting the Leecifer magic touch. It looks like there is some Limon and Olivas work as well, ready to be painted up in Lee’s signature drybrush style.  Lee isn’t holding back at all, and we can’t wait to see more!

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Boston Skelve

 Leecifer’s “Long Dogs” along with Jason Limon’s “Foretell” and DrilOne’s “Empty World” open at Stranger Factory on Friday, February 1st from 6 PM – 9 PM.