Emily Barletta

Emily Barletta's artwork explores ideas of emotional and physical memory and survival. For most of her life, she has been in physical pain due to a spinal deformity. Making art started out as a way to express this and filter the pain’s affects out, but it has evolved into much more than just that. Each object is a physical container that counts and records the passage of time in her life while it was being made. The thoughts, emotions, and experiences she had during this time are funneled through her preoccupation with inventing imaginary forms of flesh, blood, muscles, cells, organs, molds, diseases, plants, and topography.

Laura Laine

Laura Laine is a 24-year-old illustrator based in Helsinki. Her work reminds me of art nouveau artists Gustav Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley. Recent clients include Zara, The New York Times T magazine, Tommy Hilfiger, Elle Girl, the Guardian, I.T Post magazine, Iben Hoej, Wunder and Daniel Palillo.

Jim Coverley

Jim Coverley makes extraordinary works out of pillowcases and nails, which, like the work of a careful surgeon, are transformed with stitches, cuts and folds into sculptures which have both an emotional and symbolic resonance. The body is central to Coverley's art as he abstracts manages to extract the essence of pain or emotional states of being, and recreate them in troubling, three-dimensional forms. His work initially looks extremely delicate and decorative but on closer inspection it becomes increasingly disturbing, deliberately putting the viewer in an uncomfortable position. In previous works he has rendered a child's pillowcase the site of trauma and nightmares by modifying it with strange, disconcerting forms. Coverley hangs the sculptures directly onto the walls using nails, pinning the works as if the artist were performing some kind of 'rudimentary surgery'. These works play on the dualities between pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion.

Stephanie Metz

Stephanie Metz sculpts wool using a felting needle to create some pretty crazy things. My favorite of hers are these teddy bear fetuses:



From her site:
"To make wool into felt I begin with cleaned, brushed wool that has been prepared to be spun into yarn. Instead, I interlock the fibers densely together by stabbing the mass repeatedly with a felting needle (approximately four inches long, very sharp, and studded with barbs). In order to shape a piece I stab the wool all over or in particular directions, compressing the surface and making the felt increasingly dense. The process is extremely time- and labor-intensive, as every centimeter of the piece is stabbed to fasten down parts, add mass, and tighten the surface.
I choose my subject matter in response to the wool itself, in a way. Working with wool has led me to explore concepts of hard and soft, starting within the confines of traditional sculpture subjects."