Susan Kare

This is a little off the norm, but it's total worth a gander. Susan Kare was the artist charged with creating the icons for Apple early on. Her sketchbook was recently scanned and publicized for all to gaze upon. It gives you a new appreciation for graph paper.

Check it out here.

Richard Sargent

Richard Sargent shoots billboards. Not in the redneck with a rifle and a pickup sense, but with a camera sense. He stalks decaying billboards in the East Bay area and frames them up square so they take on a really abstract quality. To take something from ugly to gorgeous in 1/250th of a second is a real talent.

Check them out here.

Max De Esteban

Max takes technique to the max on this project. He meticulously deconstructs the technology of yesteryear and photographs it layer by layer. He then reassembles the objects in Photoshop. I'm still trying to figure out how he got the color he did. It's amazing stuff.
He's currently showing the work at Klompching Gallery in NYC. So get up there before it comes down at the end of December.

Check it out here.

And here.

John Paul Thurlow

John is a master of graphite. His pencil drawings are the most insanely detailed works I've seen in a while. One of his series caught my eye recently. It's not his newest work, but its subject is certainly unique. Magazine covers. He does precisely detailed reproductions of magazine and record covers in pencil.

Check them out here.

Alexandra Bellissimo

I don't often feature photographers on here even though I have my degree in it. Chalk it up to over saturation, but there are exceptions. Alex is one of those. Her photo collages caught my eye because they're so extraordinarily simple. She combines things that you wouldn't normally see together, but in a really amazing way. She calls her work 'making pictures' instead of 'taking pictures'.

Check them out here.

Brian Hart

Brian is a painter from Massachusetts and a graduate of RISD. His work has a great textural quality to it and uses imagery from skeletons to Alice in Wonderland. One of his series caught my eye recently, his Alphabet Series. Each of the 26 paintings uses his standard catalog of images, but he hides an individual letter in each one. They're pretty rad.

Check them out here.

He's also got a really cool series of light paintings here.

TrustoCorp

TrustoCorp is a collective that takes parody seriously. They source out locations and augment them with their spoofs of advertising, signage and pop culture references. Their most recent stunt planted altered issues of popular celebrity magazines with headlines like 'Donald Trump Pregnant' along with graphic novel type illustrations in great monochrome color palettes. Their ad spoof stuff has a similar graphic language to that of ESPO aka Steve Powers in that it has a 50s graphic simplicity to it, though most of it is black and white.

Check it out here.

Prefab77

Prefab77 is a collective of artists from Northeast England. They take imagery from popular culture like fashion, fame, politics and history and collage it together in inspired and contrasting ways. Most of their work is about breaking down British culture and doing away with the old ways. They just did a great installation for Dublin Contemporary 2011 that uses type contrasted with fashion imagery in a really beautiful yet stark way.

Check it out here.

Alexandre Farto aka Vhils

Besides having an awesome name, Alexandre aka Vhils has an awesome style too. He has pioneered deconstructive stenciling. He covers a wall with plaster, or maybe it was already there. Then stencils on his design and goes to town on it with a hammer drill. Removing layers of plaster rather than adding layers of paint. He draws the figures out of the wall in a truly ghostly way.

Check it out here.

Noma Bar

Noma Bar is an Israeli illustrator who focuses on using negative space as a positive thing. He develops images that create a play between the negative and positive space that are both insightful and humorous.
His latest project is a giant plastic dye cutting dog sculpture that allows the user to create their own neg/pos images and artworks.

Check it out here.