Alexander T. Stanton

Chernobyl Collective Arts Presents: BAM-POW

2011-03-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

My Dear Readers,

Here is a very special project that is near and dear to my heart by the Chernobyl Collective Arts.

I would like to preface this post by noting a few things. Chernobyl Collective Arts consists of a small group of West Philly artists, musicians, and free thinking minds. A lot of these people were brought together by the late Chernobyl House that was in West Philadelphia. This house was an infamous and unofficial venue for bands from all over the country to come perform for the good people of West Philadelphia. I even had the pleasure of painting a mural in their stairwell. The house disbanded due to some problems with the landlord in 2009. Since then, the house was bought and completely renovated. Only my mural remained. Now, the legend of the Chernobyl House lives on through the newly regrouped Chernobyl Collective Art's and it's new Zine...

Poster By Kevin Wallace

This poster represents the release party for our new Zine Coming April 2nd. The culmination of three months of fundraising, hosting music shows, organizing, and back-breaking labor. My dearest readers, I cannot express to you how amazing this event is going to be. I can vouch for every single name and band on this poster as either my friends or my heroes! The delicious Dock Street Brewery is hosting this release party! We are repping West Philly SO HARD with this one, Folks! I am STOKED!

The Art will be on display at the Dock Street Brewery by...

Adam Fergurson, Alex Stanton, Beatrice Sadler, Brandon Lee Phillips, Chase Brown, Fletcher VanVliet, George Cosgrove, Kevin Wallace, Michael Wyman, Morgan Jamison, Steph Cisso, and Stephanie Ricci.

The Music will be performed by West Philly legends...

Mose Giganticus, Da Comrade!, TJ Kong and the Atomic Bomb, and No One and the Somebodies.

Here is my contribution to the Release party, a new painting I just finished today that will be featured at the release party...

"BOOM" by Alexander T. Stanton

Latex Paint and paint marker on plywood

48 1/2" x 24 1/2"

The Zine which will be titled Bam-Pow and will feature Art, comics, poetry, articles, stories, music and more by many, including a comic by yours truly. The first issue will be printed partly in black and white, and partly in color and will include a CD compilation starring many local bands.

For me Bam-Pow will be elementary in giving good exposure to the many unsung artists and musicians in the area who need to be in the public eye. The Zine will be a biannual release taking the West Philadelphia Art Scene out of the underground and into the world.

If you can't make the release party, I will be back with details on where you can get your own copy of Bam-Pow!

This is sure to be one for the books.

One Love,

The Stantonizer

Another Mural Completed by Liz Rattan and I

2011-03-09T09:12:00.000-08:00

Here's another Mural By Alexander T. Stanton and Liz Rattan. As you will see, the theme was based purely on animals on bicycles. I liked it because it was whimsical and fantastic. This was a pretty basic commission that helped me get through a long winter and is currently helping me get a new and much needed computer.

Here are the exam rooms.

We were also asked to do something for the waiting room and this is what we cam up with.

This is the Waiting Room.

We were also asked to do something for the exam rooms as well.

Check yall later!!!

1 Love.

Hungry Poster

2011-03-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

I have been getting my hands dirty with Sean Glass. He has commissioned me to be his set designer, props master for his upcoming gore-tastic musical HUNGRY. This is gonna be a good one folks. Alien-Plant-Zombies, good versus evil, true love, booze. Here is the poster he commissioned me to do before color.

Here it is AFTER color.Working been working on this in good old photoshop 7. Waiting for my new computer to arrive in the mail then its photoshop cs5!!! Woot! I finally feel welcome to the second decade of the second millennia of the common era. More Posts to come very soon.

Museum Visits 2010

2010-12-14T13:41:00.000-08:00

I could never express the importance of drawing has to my artwork. My sketchbook is my most important tool for everything I do. Drawing from life is the best way to keep my skills sharp, and get inspiration. Being a sculpture nerd, drawing sculptures helps me hone my skills and gain insight to how they are made. Here are some life drawings from this past year I've done that have inspired and influenced me.

"Nataraja" by Late Chola 12th Century, Delhi Museum, New Delhi, India 2010

black and white charcoal pencil on poo paper

"Adam" by Auguste Rodin, Rodin Museum, Philadelphia, PA

Black and white charcoal pencil on poo paper

"Capuchin" by Franz Xavier Messerschmidt ca. 1780AD, Neue Gallery, New York, NY

black uniball pen on paper

"A Surly Old Soldier" "Childish Weeping," & "Quiet, Peaceful Sleep"

Franz Xavier Messersmidt ca. 1777-83AD, Neue Gallery, New York, NY

Thats all for now, Enjoy!

Stanton

Tiger's New Hoody and Nataraja Update

2010-12-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

Greetings, My Lovely Readers!

First I would like to give an internet shout out to Adam Fergurson for hooking up my dog Tiger with this original, one of a kind print on his doggy-hoody. I love this man! Check out his website because he is a long time friend of mine and an amazing artist who has been tearing through the galleries here in philly with mucho gusto. Get'em Ferg!

A lot of people ask me about how Tiger has been doing lately and I'm happy to report he's doing great. Just got back from the Vet with a clean bill of health, so I celebrated by hooking him up with something to keep him warm this winter. Thanks again, Ferg!

In other news I have continued to work on my Nataraja Sculpture. I did some research and made a "skreed" using tin, salvaged wood and some hardware to carve out a pattern for the ring section of the sculpture. I've been building it like it was molding, so I cut the blade of the skreed from tin bought at the hardware store. I used chisels and a Dremel tool to carve the wood negative out. Below is my first attempt: Skreed Blade Version 1.0 plus the pattern I'm going for.

Below is my first prototype, or first draft, just to see how well the skreed works.

Here is the sample I made. This isn't what I am looking for but I am proud that the skreed works and I like how the sample looks all on its own. There's no success like failure and I am very proud of this failure. In fact, here is a detail of it. It feels so smooth and perfectly semi-circular. I love it and the next one will be even better.

This is it with the figure but its nice to see them together and gives me an idea of what it might look like when it all comes together. The coming together part is the problem. How am I going to attach all the elements together? Stay tuned! Completion is a long way away, but its not the destination its the journey.

Tonight I have a show. HERE. Hope to see you there.

Until next time!

Stanton

Gonna Be in a show soon.

2010-11-18T08:45:00.001-08:00

http://fluxahedra.com/breaths/

Woot!

New Business Card.

2010-11-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

Now that I have a customer base I decided I need to network better so I went onto my trusty old photoshop 7 and made my own business card that I can just have my local copy center print out. You can do this on just about any version of photoshop yourself and it only took me a few hours to put together. Some might disagree with my use of the courier font, but as you can tell by my blog font I am a huge fan. Here it is.

Here is the Layout I used. I am a big fan of numbers and formulas and in terms of design I like to lay out some rules to follow, so the rules I chose to follow here are that of the Golden Ratio to squeeze all my information on my card 1 for nothing, 1 for my number, 2 for my blog, 3 for my e-mail, 5 for what I do, and 8 for my name. I really like the results.

If any of you people out there have any feedback about business cards in general I would love to hear from you, I am sure that there is much I can improve on this.

Until Next time!

Stanton

Muralists for Hire

2010-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

Here is a commission I have just finished with Liz Rattan. It took us about a month and a half to plan and execute and we just finished this past Friday. We were asked to create a skyline of Philadelphia involving some cartoon characters and this is what we came up with.

"Mural for Center City Pediatrics"

8' x 12 1/2'

Latex Paint

By Liz Rattan & Alexander T. Stanton

There you go! Hope everyone is doing well!

Stanton

Work in Progress

2010-11-09T11:42:00.001-08:00

Hiya, Folks!

Well its been quite an interesting year. I have accomplished much and also made many failures. I have had some really difficult times and really rewarding ones. I survived Hepatitis A and Malaria. I successfully returned to the states from my journey across India, recovered my old job at Ward Elicker and got laid off not long after. I enjoyed the longest, most loving relationship I ever had with a most beautiful woman in Philadelphia. I moved back to West Philly in a house with 8 other housemates, with a basement where I can continue my artwork, and lots of joy and work on the house and myself as we journey into the winter and further into our relationships with each other. I found my dream job at Laran Bronze, and got fired from that after only 3 weeks. I worked at an answering service for about a month. That was horrible, and was grateful for being fired from that. More recently one of my housemates, Liz, got us both a job painting a mural in a Pediatric Clinic on South street which we are only a few days from completing. I will have photos of that up as soon as its finished.

Basically my adult life in Philadelphia has been unrelenting, and at each goal I succeed in I find I am rewarded with barely enough to continue, day by day, bill by bill, season by season. These rewards have been delivered to me in many forms; friends, family, love, neighbors, odd jobs, trust, lucky finds, governmental support, rieki, injury, failure, discouragement, pets, and everything else. All horrible and wonderful, I still remain optimistic taking each event as it comes and working on keeping anger and worry at bay while embracing the pride I feel for how far I have gotten despite all I have been through.

Anyway...

Here is a long term project I am working on that I started in September.

I am still intrigued by the image of Nataraja and its storytelling ability. The figure is recycled from a sculpture I made at UArts. The board behind it, which I found while walking tiger, represents my progress thus far on the ring element. That will be sculpted by building a lathe on the board to make a plaster pattern in two halves and sandwich them together and sculpt on the casting. The sketch for that is clipped to the top left corner of the board. I have yet to start on the base, I am still not sure what the base will look like yet, but I will get there. The ultimate goal here is to cast it in bronze like the original I saw at the New Delhi Museum (My original sketch of it is propped up in the bottom right corner) during my travels in India, which is has continued to inspire me. I have overcome many of the challenges of building it by recycling old stuff, thrifting found stuff. I no longer have the access to a metal shop so that is a challenge I need to overcome. I will continue to work on this through the winter and probably into the spring so add me to your web reader so you don't miss the updates as the pieces start to fit together.

Time for me to go!

Love,

Stanton

India Sketchbook Part 3

2010-09-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Hello all and welcome to another Episode of India Sketchbook! While staying in Goa I got a commisioned to do some mural work. Here's how it came to head.
This is the second sketch that I started, the first is somewhere back in Goa on a piece of tracing paper. I was working to fully realize my idea by drawing many sketches of it, imagining it in multiple instances in different styles helps make to make important decisions.

Here's another sketch at a different anglethis time, below the water line.

Here is the Final Product. It took me quite a while I didn't finish it until I healed from getting Hep A in late February. Worth the wait.

Right before I got sick I went on a the longest train trip of my life from Miramar, Goa to Kolkata. I had the pleasure of staying in Cantagar, a small village outside of Howrah/Kolkata. Here are some Clouds that I drew on the roof of the Bungalow I was a guest at. Simple, but there it is.

The Main thing about Cantagar is that there are just rice paddies for as far as the eye can see. Here is an attempt to convey the vast space covered in rice patties. Real rough, but thats how I did it at the time.

Thats all for now! More to come sooner than later!

Album Cover & NEW PRINT FOR SALE!

2010-09-22T09:02:00.001-07:00

Times are tough for this artist these days. Money and materials are harder to come by. I got this free linoleum block for doing some side work for my friends' amazing rock band The Cranes Are Flying. They have a new LP for sale and they asked me to do a block cut for their album cover.

They will be performing at the Tritone TONIGHT if you would like to hear them perform and/or buy said album. The Album is Called the Somnambulist. I did a back side too, but the image I had of it is lost to me.

For all that work I did, Robin gave me a free Linolium Block and I got started carving it as soon as I was done with the other and printed a whole Edition of 40 of THIS:

I call it "Nataragurson". It's hand printed on 10 1/4" x 14 1/2" Rives BFK on sale for an affordable $25.00 each. If you would like to own a copy just e-mail me and we will work out shipping and the like, if you live close enough I could deliver it to IN PERSON! Woot! Also, I have donated a copy to the In Liquid Benefit Auction that I will be attending on September 30th. Woot! I currently have zero source of income and navigating Philadelphia's job market has been less than fruitful. My poor dog, Tiger, has a urinary tract infection so selling these is my attempt to raise some money to take him to the vet. So please open up your wallets if not for me, for this adorable coach potato of whom I love so much.

The poor guy. Here he is checking up on me while I was working in my basement studio at the house, which we have now named "Val-Hollah". Note the Dumpy Dolores sticker on the stairwell.

Speaking of which the Housemates and I have an art/music/performance/potluck/rager in the works, so stay tuned for more on that.

My goal at the end of the week is to have an Etsie (sp?) account so maybe soon I can get some more income up in this piece and expand my modest internet empire. I'll post the link once I get that.

Currently working on a new sculpture that is recycled from an old sculpture that I had no more use for. Very exciting. I haven't really sculpted anything in almost a year so this is gonna be a great outlet for me.

At that note, I'm going back to work!

thanks for reading!

Stanton

India Sketchbook Part 2

2010-05-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Boy oh boy! I'm gettin all nostalgic going through these sketches. Going through all of these I realize how much I miss Carol, Komal, Akash, Neptune, and Fawad to Name a few.

Nothing too interesting for me here. Just some sketch I did in a cafe to pass time. When I first got into Goa I wasn't too sure of myself yet. The beaches weren't open yet, so out for the sake of adventure I went out by myself to see what kind of trouble I could stir up. I came accross a Cafe Coffee Day and sat down for a cup of joe and started drawing. This is what I came up with.

In one of the meditation workshops I was taking at the time I was started thinking about taking apart objects in my mind by bisecting them. Here is what I would think that orange slices of an a sphere filled with cylanders would look like. Nothing too fancy but there you go.
Continuing to take apart objects, I decided to do some life studies of this onion on a plate. Here it is!

More bisections of some stuff. Thinking about intersecting forms and such.

Here is a form inspired by watching the feet of an elephant asit walked past me.

Thats all for now.

India Sketchbook Part 1

2010-05-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

If any of you readers have been paying attention to my blog over the past year you may have noticed that there was a long hiatus between August and May. Well in case you didn't know I was meandering through The Incredible India for eight months. Here is a collection of sketches that I did during my journey throughout the beautiful Mother India.

This was the first drawing I did in this sketchbook. A first drawing in any sketchbook is usually the hardest. You have to break the seal, so to speak. Nothing is more difficult than that first line on a virgin sketchy, so I chose a subject that I was familiar with and did a micro version of a mural I had already made in West Philadelphia. I was in Kasauli at the time of this one and Carol was playing the oldies on her acoustic guitar while the clouds were coming in through the windows of her beautiful mountain getaway home. I started to look at the forms that I draw out of habit and taking them apart here and there to see what they are really made of and this was the result. I like it.This one I did in Patna, Bihar. There's no date on it, but it was in July and I'll never forget it. Carol took me along on a consultation job she had for a public health company there. I decided to tag along the first day to see a bit of what business and life was like in Bihar. We mostly just were driven around in a giant Scorpio (its like the Indian version of a Range Rover SUV) through highways, dirt roads, tight alleys, crowded markets going from health clinic to health clinic to assess the problems they are having at each spot. Bihar right now is a place where many kidnappings, and various other forms of violence are pretty common so rolling deep in the back seat of a big car was the ideal mode of exploration for a noob like me. I saw so much out of the window of that Scorpio. Lots of beauty, the Ganges running brown, spralling flower markets, piles of trash on the side of the road, lots of child labor, beautiful women in saris leaning out of a bus to throw up, banana salesmen . I'll never forget seeing this nine year old kid, stick welding steel window bars on the side of the road in nothing but a loin clothe, no mask, with the leads running through a puddle.

Anyway I did this drawing that same day while waiting for Carol to finish up a meeting. I wanted to stay out of the business so I stepped out to do some drawing. She was in there for hours, so I had all the time in the world to fill up this page with as much information as I wanted. After a while I was gathering a crowd people asking for portrait or just wondering who is this white kid and what is he doing in that book? They would come by and wobble their heads in approval and move on. The driver stepped in when the people seemed to get too pushy for his tastes. It was like I had my own body guard for a day. I felt very safe for how uneasy it was for me to be in that strange environment. Unfortunately we couldn't share two words between each other due to the language barrier, but I really liked the him for how cool he was with me and the other people at the clinic. I got to speak a little bit with the guard at the clinic works 36 hour shifts sometimes more when he has to fill in for the other guards. He spoke just enough English for me to learn that fact about him and translate some tidbits that the Driver would say for me to understand. This composition is of the Thyroid/Pathology Lab accross the street from the Health clinic I was at. A bustling town on the outskirts of the main city with lots of people coming and going. I feel like I captured a lot of good portraits in this composition and am extremely happy with how it came out.

Back in Kasauli a couple weeks later I started drawing these sketches. Exploring an idea for a future sculpture. At its core its a Toroid, pretty much a donut, a form I have been fascinated with for a while. My idea was to start break it down, bisecting my forms into segments thinking about it inside and out and showing its structure. These particular sketches are pretty much the base of a lot of drawings I was doing before and have been doing ever since. Something about having inside and outside forms all in one form happening at the same time made out of a bunch of circles. Good stuff. I really like how these little sketches turned out.

This little Diddy here was done when I decided to venture out of Carol's Getaway home in Kasauli. The Mountains (or foothills as they call them) were breathtaking and too good to stay indoors. I found a quiet spot above the mountain road and began sketching. There were a bunch of monkeys lurking about and I was trying to capture little snippets of them, but they did not like staying still. To the left is the monkeys and to the right is the beginning of a sketch I was going to do of the mountain road. I forget why I didn't finish it, its a shame I didn't. Kasauli life was slow, easy going, unpopulated , spacious with deadly mountain roads that twisted and turned among the foothills. The houses were concrete structures nestled cozily into the side of the mountains. I got really self conscious while I was there due to the dreads I was rocking at the time. I would literally stop traffic so people could take pictures of my hair with their camera phones, get flipped off by some speeding teenagers, offered hash, but overall the people were generally kind and the level of hospitality I was shown there, like in many parts of I visited India was unparalleled.

Thats all for now, Stay tuned for the India Sketchbook Part 2! Woot!

Love,

Alexander T. Stanton

Drawings at the Metropolitan Bakery!

2010-05-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

My new drawings at the Metropolitan Bakery are up with Paintings by Fatima Adamu! These drawings to me represent a very transitional phase in my life. Returning from India with all I've learned about myself and life in general I found myself in Philly again at my old job at the foundry, in a sublet at 11th and green working hard to get settled again. All my tools and art supplies in New Jersey at my Mom's house for the time being, I was really inspired with none of my usual materials or tools at hand. I started drawing on this paper that I got at an art store in Panaji, Goa, India, without much to work with except the pens I usually use for my sketchbook in my book bag and a cup of coffee and some brushes I started creating these drawings. Thanks to Fatima Adamu who hooked me up with the wall space at the Metropolitan Bakery to show them off to the public. For all of you who don't frequent the Metropolitan Bakery on 40th and Walnut in West Philly, here ya go!

Coming Together/Falling Apart #3 and #4 2010
20" x 14" pencil, ink, and coffee on paper
ComingTogether/Falling Apart #5 and #7 2010
pencil, ink, and coffee on paper
Coming Together/Falling Apart #6 and #8 2010
pencil, ink, and coffee on paper

I wanna give a shout out to Phillipe in Goa for the sharing his art secrets with me. I also want apologize to my readers about the long hiatus in between posts. I haven't stopped making work, life just carried me away. I have lots to post including the much awaited "India Sketchbook" which will be coming very soon, maybe even today and more posts after that.

As always, much love to all my readers!

Alexander T. Stanton

For those of you who will Be In NYC

2009-08-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

I have one More Medallic Arts Show for you all. Thank you Ellen for your help.

Cheers,

Alex

Forgot One

2009-05-27T19:06:00.001-07:00

Toroid 3 1/2" diameter

Completed Some Medals Today

2009-05-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

Moth and Splash Second Edition Front
Moth medallion Second Edition Back
"Dr. Katie Todd's Fox Skull"
"Antony"
"Untitled"

These were all cast for the show coming up on the 6th in New York. Its gonna be great. They are all 3 1/2" in diameter. Awesome!

2009-05-21T04:30:00.000-07:00

Four Dragons over Chinatown Completed!

2009-04-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

This one time I worked for this sculptor, Ward T. Elicker, and helped weld these bronze casts together. Among other things.

My Newest Sculpture and a Show In N.J.

2009-03-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

Haven't titled this bronze piece yet. This is made out of four bronze casts and some slag found in the slag hopper at the foundry. I think that its one of my most successful uses of bronze slag yet. To me its reminiscent of some kind of mold at the microscopic level.

You can see this sculpture and two drawings this Saturday at the Green Room Art Show in Harrison, NJ March 28 from 9:00pm-2:00am. So if you're in the area this Saturday come check it out.

Also, I am aiming to curate an Art show at my House, here in West Philly for my Birthday. It will be my Birthday Present to myself. That will be scheduled for April 25, I'm still trying to iron out the details, but it will contain a bunch of work from my dearest object making friends, and maybe some of my brilliant co-workers. I will post more details around April 10th-ish, when I finalize the list of artists. If you have any interest in joining the fun you can e-mail me. Its gonna be free and for fun. I want to call it the F.F.Art Show.

Thats all for now.

Much Love to my Readers,

Alexander T. Stanton

Medallion Show!

2009-02-26T18:29:00.000-08:00

I have been doing work in medals (as in medallions or coin-like sculptures). I have a the pleasure of being in a show with many other medalists from around the world. I am not sure what to expect, except that there will be an award ceremony and the usual wine and cheese. I was a sent a book of all the Medalists in "Medailles" and "The Medal" which are annual magazines in associating with FIDEM, so I've gotten a real flavor of whats going to be in the show, and I am excited. Anyway some bronze medals that I've been doing for Summer and Fall will be in it. This is a big day for me and will be worth it for all my readers to check out this intriguing and under-appreciated art of medal making.

The actual opening is March 7th @ 3:30, so be there!

Stanton

Mural Finished!

2009-02-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

South facing wall

West Facing wall

Finished the mural at around 1:30am last night. I feel very accomplished. I've been working on it since a little after new years and finally its done. The pictures I've taken are an attempt at "stitching" together a bunch of photos together in photoshop. I've seen graf writers do this to document their work. I think my efforts were less successfull, but I have always had trouble properly documenting my wall based pieces. All the more reason for all you folks to come to 4529 Locust St. @ 9:30pm Saturday for the Da Comrad album release party to check it out for yourselves. Anyway, here it is. Thank you photoshop! Thank You again Chernobyl for letting me deface your lovely staircase!

Hope you all like it.

Stanton

DaDa Is Coming!

2009-02-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

DaDa! The new album From Da Comrade. The album release party is this weekend (February 28) at Chernobyl (4529 Locust St. Phila, PA)! Amazing musical performances including, The Lesser Known Neutrinos, Suckerpunch, and Da Comrade. Come see my immense Mural! Doors open at 9:00pm, bands start around 10:00pm, admission is free, but donations will be gratefully accepted.

Hope to see you all there!

Next post will be pictures of the mural and other works in progress.

love,

Stanton

Welcome to my Blog

2009-02-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hello All!

This is my new Blog. Created specifically as an outlet of the kind of work I create. I've never done this before so I am going to figure out how to post some pictures. I'm trying to figure out how to be more professional about my work. I'll also be posting events and stuff that I will be involved in.

Here are couple of dates that are important if you want to check out my work.

February 28. Da comrad Album release party @ Chernobyl (4529 Locust, Philadelphia, PA). This is going to be an excellent show, musically and visually, because several amazing bands playing and an unveiling of a mural I've been working on in their stairwell that I've been working on since the beginning of the year.

March 7. I have some bronze medals and other small bronze sculptures to be displayed at Medelia Gallery. The Address is 335 W. 38th St. New York, NY. Here's their website www.medeliagallery.com

In the meantime I have a lot of work to do. I'm going to try and get some pictures up here soon to show off my stuff.

April 9. Look out for four bronze dragon sculptures guarding a parking lot. This is a project that has been 3 years in the making. This is some major public artwork installation that I have been seriously involved in for the past year.

Wish Me Luck!

Stanton