Lu Cong
Lu Cong’s portraits are absolutely beautiful. His porcelain-like figures possess a slightly unsettling and very slightly distorted realism, all the while managing to completely draw the viewer in. A couple more examples after the jump.
Posts Tagged with portrait
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Meet Roberto Ainslie
Say howdy to our friend Roberto Ainslie. He’s one of Casey’s childhood friends, and someone we’ve all spent a lot of time with in the last couple of years. A little known fact is that before our old studio was transformed in to PUBLIC SCHOOL, it was a gallery called Gallery 1906, which Roberto curated. He hosted many great shows including Matt Rainwater’s Untitled Bat Study and the work of Christa Palazzolo. Though he shut the gallery down to focus on teaching, he has come full circle and is going back to grad school for curatorial studies.
Recently along with Jessica Olsen, we enlisted his curating help on the PUBLIC SCHOOL blog. Additionally, to satisfy his art habit, Roberto started the Tokyo Blues blog which you should check out.
Though this is the side of Roberto that most of you will encounter through the blog, its his overall personality that we dig. He’s sort of an unofficial PSchooler as you can generally find him upstairs at our studio throughout the week. He comes up to hang in the lounge and dole out advice on the random happenings of the studio or discussing why Tim Tebow should have gone higher lower in the NFL draft. He’s one of our favorite visitors and all around favorite dudes. We’re proud to consider him part of the extended family and proud to have him call PUBLIC SCHOOL his home away from home.
What Sculptures In The Future Will Look Like
In the future, we’ll all have hoverboards (that apparently won’t work on water), iPads that can stream Family Guy on Hulu and all sculptures will be made out of CAT-5 cables. Kasey McMahon may be ahead of her time (or visiting us from the future) as she has already gotten started on that trend and created this self portrait.
A Face With The Name: Randal Ford
Sitting for this week’s edition of A Face With The Name is our fellow photographer buddy Randal Ford. When I was interning at the Butler Bros I asked them who had photographed the massive can of Schlitz hanging on the wall and they said it was him. I met him shortly thereafter and have followed his work ever since.
Randal’s portraiture is incredible. If you live in Texas you’ve undoubtedly seen his work on the cover of Texas Monthly many times, including this coming month’s issue. Recently in the thick of political and religious division in this country he collaborated with Roy Spence of Idea City on the well known Amazing Faith of Texas in which they highlighted the common interests us Texans have despite our diversity. Though his human portraiture is amazing, he’s also garnering a lot of attention for his animal portraits. After being commissioned to shoot portraits of cows by DJ Stout of Pentagram (who will be featured on here in the coming weeks) he has become quite the animal photographer as well.
Randal’s got a lot of professional accomplishments to be proud of but he’s a down to earth guy without the ego that normally comes along with success. He and his wife live here in Austin and recently welcomed a new baby girl to their family. He’s just a regular guy. A regular guy who happens to take badass pictures.
See his portfolio here. Stay tuned for more to come in our Face With The Name spotlight. We’ve got the aforementioned DJ Stout of Pentagram and Ron Pippen of Shiny Object coming soon.
Note: If you’ve got someone who you’d like to see featured here, send us the idea.
A Face With The Name: Adam Voorhes
Gracing this week’s edition of A Face With A Name is my good friend (and friend of PUBLIC SCHOOL) Adam Voorhes. Seated in his lap is his trusty bulldog Catfish. Voorhes and I met while I was an intern at The Butler Bros. He had just moved to Austin and had come by to show his work to Adam and Marty Butler. In the years since then he has been a great mentor in my career as well as a great friend.
Adam is best known for his product and still life work, though he is a great photographer overall. His work has been featured in every place imaginable. His client list includes BMW, M&M’s, AT&T and a slew of other companies you know and love. He’s even managed to snag a few nice awards for himself as well. He also happens to be a mighty fine cook as has been proven in many a Iron Chef competition that we have had amongst our friends in the past. My personal favorite is the rosemary chicken he whipped together once.
All in all, Adam is a hard working and fun loving guy. I’d recommend working with him even if only to stop by his studio and challenge him at his Soul Calibur arcade machine. Soul Calibur challenges aside, over the years he has helped me immensely as well as continually impressed me with his work. You’ll be seeing much more of him (and his work) in the future.
Next week we’ve got Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit of UnderConsideration. Stay tuned.
Acts of Love
Jay B recently shot a series of portraits for San Antonio Magazine’s feature on Acts of Love. One such act of love was that of Paul Rusesabagina, who the movie Hotel Rwanda was based on. Paul recently moved from Brussels to San Antonio where Jay B photographed him. Pick up a copy of this month’s issue to see the feature and other photographs.
A Face With The Name: The Decoder Ring Design Concern
For the second in my series on creatives we dig and what they look like, I wanted to showcase those The Decoder Ring folks. Pictured are Christian Helms on the left and Paul Fucik on the right. Paul felt the need to dress it up a little so added a homemade tie while I was photographing Christian.
We joke about getting “photo envy” when looking at certain photographer’s work, but The Decoder Ring consistently gives everyone up here at PUBLIC SCHOOL “design envy”. From their BBQ flavored poster that Cody picked up at Flat Stock to the slew of classic Modest Mouse posters, this little shop of designers is amazing.
Did I mention hot dogs? Oh yeah, Christian happens to be the Creative Director of a fancy little hotdog shop in downtown Austin called Frank. While you’re enjoying a cold Pearl and feasting on some artisan sausage, you can feast your eyes on the beautiful sausage related posters and hand painted signs on the wall.
There are folks you like working with and folks you like having beers with. These dudes fall in to both categories. Their office has a great vibe and their work shows it. They were a pleasure to photograph last week and have been a great addition to the series. Cheers to Christian and Paul.
See the big ole’ photos and the making of Paul’s classy neck tie after the jump…
A Face With The Name: Matt Rainwaters
I (Jay B) recently started work on a series of portraits for our blog, this being the first one in the series. We spend a lot of time talking about the artists whose work we enjoy and spend little time showing the artists themselves. I’ve got a slew of them lined up in the coming weeks. Some of those that have either been photographed or are scheduled to be included are the folks over at The Decoder Ring, Adam Voorhes, and Armin and Bryony of UnderConsideration. Of course I’m always up for suggestions as well.
The stately gentleman pictured above is our dear old pal Matt Rainwaters, who is a fantastic photographer and purveyor of some of the finest tamales in town. His work has been featured in magazines such as Texas Monthly and Esquire UK as well as being featured on our blog several times before. His best known project is the aptly named Beardfolio.
Most importantly though, Matt is a great guy. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with me on that.