Artists Megan is excited about

Hi Danielle, hi everyone! Here are some artists I love, whose pieces I recently got to see in real life. I was in Portland a couple weeks ago and they have a pretty nice, if a little small, art museum. The modern art wing was really nicely laid out with a lot of really cool pieces in it.

Since I like cutting paper so much, I was really psyched to see a ton of Kara Walker's art. She seems to work a lot (or only?) in black and white, but also had a few pieces that were cut to stand up in a sort of scenic diorama. Her art has a lot of imagery about race, gender and sexuality, and I am totally fascinated by how fine her cuts and lines are. She tends to display the paper very very flattened, so her pieces often look like silkscreened black ink on white.


Another artist I really loved, was Mickalene Thomas. Her silkscreens are AMAZING! The picture below is so much more amazing and detailed and vibrant in real life. She also sometimes uses rhinestones or glitter, which sounds like a weird effect. Somehow it looks perfect, and not at all cheap or tacky. Or maybe the cheap and tacky quality of rhinestones is what makes it so perfect? Either way if you ever see or hear of an exhibit of hers around, and you like silkscreens, I would highly recommend going, they are so beautiful.

So there are 2 artists that made me feel really excited to work on my own stuff.