Japanese artist, Naoshi, first joined us for our Sweet Streets II exhibition last year and we're so pleased that she joins us again for The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Me - Jim Henson Tribute Exhibition. Her pieces were a favorite in the last Sweet Streets and are bound to stir equal attention for our Jim Henson Tribute. As her medium, Naoshi chooses finely colored sand crystals she describes as "sunae." She strategically combines vivid colors with happy messages and the end result is always fun and and inviting. In a chance meeting with the lovely artist, she chuckled at her work saying that adding a little humor is something she always tries to incorporate, an approach we know Jim Henson could relate to!

For the Jim Henson Tribute she contributes a Sesame Street piece with all the right ingredients - color, imagination, and playfulness. She recalls, creating the piece "put a smile on my face," as we're sure should have the same effect on everyone else!

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Today's Jim Henson Tribute Art Show Spotlight features Olivier Tossan, a French artist and illustrator known for his character designs, concept art, and visual development.  His show submission,"How It All Began," is a playful and imaginative piece, illustrating Kermit and Miss Piggy's first encounter. Tossan, however, has completely subverted our conceptions of the Muppet universe, his interpretation depicting Miss Piggy as a mermaid and Kermit as an actual frog, leaving us to wonder, how really, did this all begin?





Stay tuned for more updates as the Jim-Henson Tribute Show draws nearer!

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The next featured artists from our Jim Henson Tribute series are MaricorMaricar, a "twin sister creative tag team" from Sydney, Australia. The pair make up just half of the talent we've invited from Australia - the rest, you'll have to sit tight to hear about in another post! But back to MaricorMaricar - they are a duo that adds to the number of dynamic artists skilled in a range of creative mediums. Their specialty is hand embroidery, and their subject is the familiar and fond Sesame Street.

MaricorMaricar share that they were "inspired by the fun and playfulness of Jim Henson's Sesame St." and it surely shows in their interpretation of Bert and Ernie. The sisters playfully transform the lovable Bert and Ernie into "Sweater Letters," cleverly using Bert and Ernie's recognizable sweater patterns to personify their initials. MaricorMaricar kindly let us in on some visual details of their creative process:







And if that wasn't enough cute to wow you, MaricorMaricar handstitched another piece of the beloved Cookie Monster titled, "The Letter C"



There you have yet another look into the hard work and thought put forth for the brilliant Jim Henson, but the effort doesn't stop there for MaricorMaricar, check out their other neat, detailed pieces of stitchery at their blog and site.

Still more fun to come!

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It's almost that time! Yesterday marked an exact month from the opening of our Jim Henson Tribute exhibition - The Lovers, The Dreamers and Me. Opening on December 10th in the main gallery space, over thirty unbelievable artists will be exhibiting their interpretations of Jim Henson favorites. Here at Gallery Nucleus we've been working diligently for close to a year now to put this show together and it couldn't have been timed better - to coincide with the upcoming release of The Muppets movie. Our admiration for the brilliant, artistic Jim Henson is finally materializing with the the shared enthusiasm of every artist involved. Follow our blog as we introduce you to new and returning talent and as we document the journey leading up to the very opening of the show.

A handful of our artists have been so generous to give us a more detailed peek into their creative processes, so to kick off the first of many artist introductions, let us introduce you to Mark Facey, better known by some as Mister Fungi. The friendly UK artist tells us he loves "creature design, world building, working in game design and other interesting projects with friends too." If you browse on over to his Tumblr where he chronicles every piece he makes, you'll see it's no joke that he's a true craftsman of magical, mystical, and some strange creatures. And so it was absolutely fitting that he submitted a piece inspired by Henson's fantasy film, Dark Crystal.

"The Dark Crystal has always been a huge inspiration to me, the rich world which they built has stuck with me over the years and has continued to effect most aspects of my work. With this piece I wanted to try and capture that feeling of a world bursting with life and colour with the crystal itself dominating the image, much like it dominates the fate of the world of Thra."

Mark, err.. Mister Fungi, confesses his work is mostly digital, but took the opportunity to master the traditional medium for the sake of the subject matter. And boy did he deliver! See for yourself:









Mark admits this was his first traditional piece, and that it was both a feat he conquered and an adventure that has inspired him to do many more! Thanks Mark and we can't wait to see what you come up with!

To get acquainted with more of the participating artists stay tuned for updates with more process shots and words from our artists!

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Here’s your first preview of what awaits in The JP Show! This one’s part of the series “His Jurassic Past” by photographer Robyn Von Swank, which she made with the help of a model (I’m pretty sure this makes this the only Goldblum-endorsed humans-only Jurassic Park art show). 

And this (hopefully) represents only the mid-range of amazing. Artists such as Lisa Hanawalt, Dyna Moe, Kirk Demarais, Jeff Ramirez, and Nathan Stapley are all hard at work populating the park. See you December 3rd at Nucleus!

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