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The Photography of Shaun MacLean
Posted by abstractmall on April 23, 2008 12:38 AM
Recently the crew of ABSTRACTmall has been collaborating to update the gallery on its page. We have been looking for artistic work from a variety of different artists. One person whose photographs have found their way onto our site is Shaun Maclean of Vancouver, BC. He produced interesting photos, which incorporated the night settings of his home.
 Where are you from? Born and raised in Vancouver, BC. I saw that you had a lot of city and night photography, what can you say attracts you to that subject? Vancouver is a super inspirational place, constantly changing, and everything here is unique. A shutter and lens turn the night into whatever you want it to be.
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 You seem passionate about photography, what are your other creative outlets? I spend the better part of my life in a fine dining kitchen, there's such a huge creative potential with food.
How long you have been into taking photos? About 6 years. Picked up an old film slr in high school, spent as much time in the darkroom as I could, and moved into digital in the last few years, mostly due to lack of darkroom resources. Film is still where it's at... if you can afford it.
Check out more of Shaun's work in the aM gallery or at his personal collection.
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Loveworn
Posted by abstractmall on April 22, 2008 10:55 PM
New York artist and designer Mario Hugo has one of the most impressive and inspiring portfolios in the business. He mixes impressive typography work with a myriad of geometrical, animal and natural forms to create intricate yet balanced schemes.
 My favorite of Mario's applications are his distressed dark colors placed on water stain canvases. Much of his work on these backdrops are reminiscent of the works of influential surrealist artist Rene Magritte. They both are technicians of realistic representations of human forms often experimenting with hyperbolic exaggerations of one or two anatomical elements or playing with attaching unrelated objects that bring new life and character to the subjects.  Hugo's for hire freelance skills have been courted by some of the world's most prestigious companies. His clients include Dolce&Gabanna, MTV, Uniqlo and Gas as Interface. Visit Mario Hugo's website to view more of his works. |
Matt Yerman
Posted by abstractmall on April 22, 2008 7:23 PM
San Jose designer Matt Yerman is a young, dedicated artist who has been pushing himself and his work to new levels every month. With that has come a deep and prestigious client base along with editorial exposure and magazine collaborations.
 What's your name and where do you currently reside? Matt Yerman / San Jose, CA How many years have you been designing? 5 Personally, from following your work, I know you work with digital art tools like Photoshop and Illustrator alot. Lately, freehand sketch work has been finding its way into your finished products. What percentage of time would you say you spend freehand drawing vs.creating on the comp during your typical work sessions? It all really depends on the project. I'd have to say that sketching is about 30% of my work. What really consumes time is the nitty-gritty vector work. Taking a sketch and turning it into a digital illustration can take up plenty of time. You have gotten some great media coverage lately in magazines like Beautiful Decay and on a few blogs. What avenues do you believe has brought you to the attention of these editors? Has it been more from freelance client work or from personal pieces you have published on the internet? Both freelance and personal pieces are responsible for my coverage. I got my work into B/D through a designer friend I met on myspace. Myspace is a great social networking tool and it helped me meet and interact with designers before the creation of the Behance network. |
You currently attend San Jose state, what are you studying there? Graphic design! I haven't quite decided on a minor yet though. Maybe photography? How have you viewed your collegiate art education so far? Has it changed how you feel about working for school vs working for a client vs working on your personal projects? I started off college pretty bummed about all the prerequisite classes I had to take. But now that I am actually in design classes, its done nothing but help. I've learned how important conceptualism should be in your work. If your concept isn't strong, or doesn't make sense, then what you've put on the computer screen or t-shirt is visual masturbation. Have a message and relay that message strongly, so that everyone can understand.  I know from personal experience that grinding away at the computer on design work too frequently, burns me out. What influences, inspirations or motivational sources do you turn to when you feel this way? Sometimes I check out design and type blogs to see other design out there. But usually I just reach into the mini fridge and grab an energy drink. Its gotten to the point where I really don't have time to feel burnt out. Too much stuff to do all the time! You got any shout outs? To all the Jiberish homies! You guys are awesome and have taken my design to a whole new level. Also to my awesome designer girlfriend who gives me tasty input all the time. And I guess I'll through one out to the family. My parents fork out tons of groceries to keep me well fed while I'm away from the house. Gotta eat right! |
ABSTRACTmall Catches Up With Skiers in the Front Range
Posted by abstractmall on April 15, 2008 6:31 AM
In the early morning of a typical December Boulder night I got a call from Josh Bishop to go shoot some handrails. Intermingled into the Sun Microsystems buildings were a slew of both snowboarders and skiers throwing down on a down-flat-down.
 After just arriving the crew decided to move onto another jib that they had already set up in the area. Brothers Alex and Nick Martini drove their minivan followed by a train of cars to an urban wall drop. Of course Superior’s Finest showed up before we even left the cars. With the security alerted to what we were up to they had that car fallow us around before we gave up on the spot and decided to move on. |
 Across the highway we spotted a down-flat with an upper parking lot for tow-ins. Cam Riley, Nick Martini, Josh Bishop, and Alex Martini set up the jib while we were joined with a few other friends including Jeff Kiesel. The rail proved to be harder than it looked but after a few cold hours Cam killed it with a 270 out. Cam Riley is one of the better urban rail riders I’ve seen and he was the last one out still hiking the stairs to claim the rail. With some frostbitten toes and fingers we packed it in before sunlight and returned to Boulder.  |
Treasure Fingers Request
Posted by abstractmall on April 4, 2008 8:16 AM
| Here at abMall we enjoy music almost as much as our commenters and fans do and sometimes we struggle just as much as they do trying to figure out who exactly produced what song, when, and how and where to download it from! Ever since we launched the Spotl!ght Project Trailer in 2007 we've had a steady stream of people wanting to know who made the song we used. Commenters in both the aM Cinema section of ABSTRACTmall and on YouTube independently confirmed the songs "catchiness" with their comments and feedback. The interest was so great in fact, that requests continued pouring in even after we had provided the song info several times! Anti Anti Remix by Treasure Fingers That's when we knew it was time to draw a little more attention to mister Ashley Jones aka Treasure Fingers. Hailing from Atlanta Georgia and touring in a town near you no doubt, Treasure Fingers has several great high profile remixes available for your listening pleasure at MySpace.com/TreasureFingers. He's even got it set up so you can download the Anti Anti Remix for free! So check it out... |
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aM Salutes Technology
Posted by abstractmall on February 25, 2008 7:01 AM
| As ABSTRACTmall stumbles down the path to technological enlightenment we're taking a moment to pause and give thanks for what's been accomplished in the last year and eleven months. Despite the occasional hiccup:
Customer Service Baby... As the network has expanded, our commitment to fostering growth in independent art has remained strong and we continue to source undiscovered talent. On the geekier side of things, our tech team has managed to upgrade servers and launch several new aM widgets all without the use of local development servers - just some good old fashioned late night deployments (sorry for the downtime Europe). For all of our hard work we've had great success with search engines and social networking sites, Google even upgraded our search result listing and now provides a handy link unit to each of our major sections! Our global visitor use has sky rocketed as we've begun shipping international - thanks again to Piotr from Poland and Farquar from Scotland! and one of our sponsored projects, Happy Holidays, is now in post production due to the great efforts of Sassy Mohen. Much Thanks to StumbleUpon, NewSchoolers, Freeskier Magazine, Jiberish, Blake Kimmel's Spotl!ght Project, and San Francisco based Thrillist for promoting our site over the past few months as shown in the graphic to the right. |
 Stay tuned as the ABSTRACTmall team prepares to launch several new additions to the site including more digital media including video and mp3 downloads and an independent Reality TV podcast series set in and around Los Angeles called On The Verge starring four aspiring female entertainment artists. forwarding the creative agenda » |
Obey Obama Poster
Posted by abstractmall on February 22, 2008 5:10 PM
Influential urban artist, Shepard Fairey, creator of Obey has created a political poster for Barack Obama. Shepard has always been one to take opinionated and public stands on many political issues through his heavily travelled website, public speaking arrangements and to the greatest extent, his artwork. |
 He juxtaposes commentaries on modern social issues with a style that heavily resembles communist propaganda from the middle of last century. This poster though, has probably received as much, or more publicity and attention than any of his other social stances. The 360 posters sold out in less than hour and since, the Obey team and Shepard have had to take legal action for people attempting to resell his prints on EBAY, even after they read a disclaimer explicitly stating that personal profiteering off the poster is prohibited. The New York Times has profiled the poster and no doubt continued to add significance to what Shepard's poster project means. Some believe that his poster will increase Barack's appeal to young people, the demographic most influenced by Shepard's work. One woman on the NY times comment board expressed her dislike for the poster because it was, "Too reminiscent of the old Communist posters." She continues, "All that’s missing is a hammer and sickle or “Workers of the World, Unite!” Obama deserves something fresher than this." |