wanderwoman > NYC photo
wanderwoman > This picture won me 1st place in an undergraduate competition in 2006.
wanderwoman > This is what's currently hanging in the IMA's entrance hall :o)

Friends With You is a commercial art collective based in Miami, Florida, founded by Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval in 2002, that creates designer toys, particularly plush, and modular wood toys, as well as motion graphics, stop motion animation, and art installations that incorporate music. The Friends With You website states that they "make magical toys" that "help the every day person cope with the daily routines of their every day lives."

The work of Friends With You is distinguished by an aesthetic that is at once cute and bizarre, use of non-traditional materials, and a hand-made quality. Pieces are produced in small numbers, and are usually not re-released.

Friends With You toys feature entirely unique character designs, which departs from the plush design tradition of anthropomorphized animals, most notably the Malfi character and its variations. In addition to their names, dolls are given fantastic personas, and their distinctive personalities are described in booklet-style tags included with the dolls.

To date, Friends With You have produced 28 plush dolls, six wooden toys, and a small assortment of miniature figures. Additionally, they have exhibited work at the Hanna Gallery in Tokyo, 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco, and the MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art Miami in Florida, and have been commissioned to create motion graphics for companies such as Sony, MTV, Nike, and Columbia Records.

In October 2006, the German art press Die Gestalten Verlag published a Friends With You monograph titled Friends With You Have Powers!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_with_you
http://www.friendswithyou.com
wanderwoman > NYC photo
wanderwoman > NYC photo
wanderwoman > Our group was taken to the edge of the Wadi where everyone climbed to the top and then slid down to the bottom. Beats sledding with a stick - These were Mike's boots and kaffieyah that he left at the bottom.
wanderwoman > NYC photo
wanderwoman > Alphones Mucha - By the time of his death, Mucha's style was considered outdated. However, his son, author Jiří Mucha, devoted much of his life to writing about him and bringing attention to his art. Interest in Mucha's distinctive style experienced a strong revival in the 1960s (with a general interest in Art Nouveau)[4] and is particularly evident in the psychedelic posters of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, the collective name for two British artists, Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, who designed posters for groups such as Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

In his own country, the new authorities were not interested in Mucha. His Slav Epic was rolled and stored for twenty-five years before being shown in Moravsky Krumlov and only recently has a Mucha museum appeared in Prague, run by his grandson[2].

It has continued to experience periodic revivals of interest for illustrators and artists. It is a strong acknowledged influence for Stuckist painter Paul Harvey whose subjects have included Madonna and whose work was used to promote The Stuckists Punk Victorian show at the Walker Art Gallery during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.[5] Comic book artist and current Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Joe Quesada also borrowed heavily from Mucha's techniques for a series of covers, posters, and prints. Deathgrind band Soilent Green used a picture by Mucha for the cover of their album Sewn Mouth Secrets.[6]

One of Mucha's paintings, Quo Vadis or alternately Petronius and Eunice, was the subject of a legal dispute in 1986. The judgment handed down by Richard Posner describes parts of Mucha's life and work biographically.[7]

Among his many other accomplishments, Mucha was also the founder of Czech Freemasonry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphones_Mucha#Legacy
wanderwoman > NYC photo
NYC photo
See photo in gallery

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