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THE UNLIMITED Magazine is a theme-based iPad quarterly that examines contemporary culture through a techie lens. Designed with features that encourage readers to swipe, push, tilt, listen, watch, and participate in,The UNLIMITED is a complete interactive media source. We bring forward the latest revolutionary inventions from across the globe, as well as the brilliant people behind them. We provide the platform for you to create your own individualized reading/viewing experience. 

Each issue of THE UNLIMITED comes with a carefully chosen topic, which we make sure to dissect to pieces. From wearable tech and cutting-edge artists, to unusual cultural events, and novelties in the music field, THE UNLIMITED is an internationally available format that is innovative in nature and timeless in essence.

Artist Profile

Filtering by Category: Inspire Me

Francine Dressler

The Unlimited Magazine

We had Francine Dressler's daughter and business partner, Madelyn Somers, interview Francine about the re-launch of her original prints from Los Angeles circa 1979 AND WE GOT A SNEAK PREVIEW FROM THEIR UP COMING COLLABORATION WITH ARTIST HATTIE STEWART.

SCRATCH IMAGE BELOW TO REVEAL FRANCINE DRESSLER X HATTIE STEWART COLLABORATION 

“I had often looked at them and thought like what am I going to do with all of these. I was done with her really, or I thought, but I guess not.” - Francine

Madelyn Somers

Madelyn Somers

Madelyn: Do you feel like the response that you got in the 70s with your artwork is like the same response you are getting today?

Francine: I think it is still brought about that people love to laugh, people love good sense of humor. I was a little bit shocking then,  I was really the only one on the street showing boobies, in fact one time I did a show and they asked me to put a blanket over my work.

M: It is so relevant though, I have talked to so many of my friends and they are just like she didn’t make these today? Just how liberated and cheeky and boisterous these women are, and there is so much about feminism in todays world. I know you were just creating these women without thinking about a feminist attitude.

Francine Dressler

Francine Dressler

F: Well no, I did not get married until I was 32 years old, so I was single for a long time. I had to fend for myself. It was my life, that is how I felt about it, it was not really like I am a feminist it was just who I was. It was the times, and it was newly acceptable for women to behave in ways that it was not before. A lot of exploring.

M: Not only does her sense of humor relate to so many people, but also her figure it is very relatable. Was she inspired by someone specific?

F: I lived with my cousin and I used to draw her a lot, but I do not think she inspired me to draw her. I think when I ended up living on my own I used the mirror a lot and I posed myself. I think it is just all women, and just experiences I have had with women and their humor. You know if I am sitting across the table and somebody is eating something and they are eating something in a funny way, I would think oh that would be a funny drawing. People do say it looks just like you. So I guess it is me.

M: I mean definitely over time it is uncanny how much you look like her. Were you posing naked in the mirror for yourself?

F: I mean I did, not naked, but I used my hands and I used my poses cause I lived by myself so she had to come from that. I would just make myself pose and think, oh that would be funny I am going to draw that. It just evolved.

M: You were just doing selfies.

F: Yes I was doing selfies that is a good point!

M: And they are funny selfies.

M: It was cool to come home, because she has so many prints in her drawers that are not colored. She goes back and hand paints the color, and I was trying my hand at it. Then she brought out all her pen and ink and actually dipped the pen in the ink, and I really just didn’t fully realize the medium that she used. It felt like a quill, like old fashioned.

F: I get asked a lot what is it like to live in the 70s. If I asked you what is it like to live in 2014, I mean it is just your life you are just living it. When you are living your life a lot of times it is not that romanticized. Its not like oh wow you lived in the 70s, you lived when so and so was happening. Its like yeah you just sort of expect it. When I look back I feel fortunate to be young when the Beatles first came because it really did influence you and your life, but yeah it is just your life I can not really pin point anything, except...it was good.

M: Yeah I am sure one day someone will ask me and I will reflect back on it, but mine was more of a hodge podge of like the 70s, the 60s, the 90s the 80s, we are now all reliving the past. All these trends are coming back. I was just in a vintage store, he is like the 70s are coming back.

F: Yeah well it was the 40s and the 50s for when I was younger.

F: We started this collaboration with having Stewart, who Madeline told me about her and I love her, and I love what she does. She looks like she is having a lot of fun doing her work, and I was having a lot of fun doing my work.

M: When I approached her and just told her the adjectives of how we describe your women, liberal, sassy, cheeky, she was like those are exactly the same adjectives I would use to describe my work. I think that caught her attention. She has been so sweet. We are going to launch in 2015 and my dream would to create like a pop up Keith Haring like store, like he had in the 80s. Just gathering all these emerging artists and talents from all over. I mean now I guess you do not know who is going to be still talked about in 10 years like Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, but kind of create the factory scene but now.

“THE ADJECTIVES OF HOW WE DESCRIBE [FRANCINE’S] WOMEN ARE, LIBERAL, SASSY, CHEEKY” - MADELYN


francinedressler.com

hattiestewart.com

INSTAGRAM @FRANCINEDRESSL1979     


Eric Helvie

The Unlimited Magazine

Artist Eric Helvie uses snuggies as his canvas, but his work is far from being warm and cozy.  inspired by millions of VISUAL references he creates a LANGUAGE that is unique and VIBRANT, he gave us a look into his latest work. 

The Unlimited - What is the story in your work?

Eric Helvie - An addiction to looking is where it begins. A need to constantly be flipping through imagery, whether its is film, art history, other people’s art. A lot of my work comes from this addiction or this need that I can not control, and the individual works are a distillation of this process. A pure sort of refined comment on thousands and thousands of images.

TU - How do you refer to the snuggie in reference to your art?

eric3.jpg

EH - When I first came across the snuggie I thought this is a completely absurd object and it has no meaning and no cultural value. Then as I continued to look at snuggies for whatever reason I realized that there was all of these layers that I was projecting onto them from my own addiction to looking or seeing. I felt that the snuggies for whatever reason had this quality of being both humorous but also somewhat decadent and even violent in some aspects. If you consider the military endeavors that allowed people to live in the amount of comfort to give them a blanket with sleeves. All of these things sort of coming together, all these layers, make the snuggie for me a perfect example of the distillation of art history and imagery and even politics in some cases.

"I think it is a fascination because of my personal aversion to emotion in the work, and even now as I am saying emotion in the work I cringe."

TU - How do you treat emotion when it comes to your art?

EH - My art has never been focused on emotion, or emotion has never been important to my art. In fact it has been something that I have avoided. I have a distaste for this idea that the artist has to deal with his deep inner psyche through his work, its bullshit and I do not give a fuck about it. I think I view art as work and the best art as just being incredible acts of creating.

TU - And there has never been a time when your emotion crossed into your work?

EH - I need my work, but need is not an emotion. It comes to individual pieces I will say yes I love this painting, but it is more because I have a hard time imagining seeing it leave the studio. Beyond that, when it comes to my painting the thing that tends to be the most powerful presence in the studio is art history and visual references in general.

Cameron Gray

victoria brandt


Cameron Gray was Born in Anaheim, right down the street from Disneyland, and has lived all over California. This alone should sum up what “Gymnasty”, his last show at mike weiss gallery, was all about. Gray shares his thoughts with us about the over saturated internet, MIke and Claire, Spandex and the GIFration* 

Tell us about the idea behind “Gymnasty”

My personal relationship with the internet. I am working with and trying to spend less time on the internet. The whole Gymnasty show is a look at this feeling of being overwhelmed, and this saturation of media. 

What kind of  imagery inspired the GIF multi projection tunnel?

The whole LA culture of spandex, working out, self improvement, facial plastic surgery and all that stuff is in there. Thousands and thousands of images, it is just really about ultimately putting everything in and then letting the viewer kind of become overwhelmed to the point that it becomes an abstraction. I have my own references, whether it is Beyoncé or any other pop culture references. It is just the internet.  It is this tunnel of transformation that ultimately does not transform you in any way.

How was it to collaborate with Mike and Claire?

They came to see my first show at Mike Weiss gallery, and then contacted me. I sat down with them at a coffee shop and then just laughed the hardest I had laughed in years, like my  stomach hurt. Just having fun with them. They just inspired me in so many ways. They are just so creative. They are so on top of it. They are so fearless. I am eternally grateful for them and what they brought. 

You use photoshop as a medium and not just a tool for editing, is that part of your criticism on media and how you can change what a medium is?

This is a work I had started before “Gymnasty” and I felt a lot of pressure to go back into video and I did find my way to projection which was really fun. I made some discoveries along the way with projection that I am excited about but it does come back to this idea of working in video and collage. I think this idea where I have gone into complete over saturation has now led me to sort of more of a minimalism that I am really interested in exploring. I was never interested in minimalism before, but I am starting to see the power of it.  


*GIFration - the GIF Generation 

Mike and Claire 

Cameron Gray 

Mike and Claire : Un-Seriously Serious

The Unlimited Magazine

Obsessed with fairy tales, moving images and availableism, creative duo Mike and Claire open up about their latest story Grimms and their role in redefining the modern day classics. 

Image from the story Characters - courtesy of Mike and Claire 

Image from the story Characters - courtesy of Mike and Claire 

Inspiration - Grimms 

Claire: Over Thanksgiving break Mike found this beautiful calendar for the 2014 year of Grimm's illustrations. We really liked them and kind of wanted to make a project that was our interpretations of these illustrations. It started out us wanting to stay in the realm of those illustrations that we found but by the time we got around to actually shooting them we realized that we were kind of essentially just really inspired by the illustrations in making up our own stories. Instead of like Cinderella or Little Mermaid or anything like that it became more like we wanted to address like gender and politics through this idea of a fairytale and it sort of feels like the project isn't finished yet, feels like just the beginning and we were really inspired by primary colors and keeping it sort of in this realm.

Mike: A lot of our work is always talking about issues that are really important to us but doing it in a playful way because we feel like if you’re too aggressive about something or if you approach it in a way that is really serious people don't want to be involved in it, or they like get too wrapped up in it to so that they don't really cause a change.

C: Its just like seriously, un-serious or maybe un-seriously serious


Reinventing the Classics 

M: I feel like these fairy tales or these morals need to be reinvented for a new generation because everything seems like its a little too far behind, you know? The idea of needing a prince charming is something that is becoming obsolete to people now, which feels really good. Then there is just the perspective of us making work as two queer people and wanting to have stuff like that available to other people. Basically were just trying to make work that starts new conversations.

C: I think with the idea of the fairy tale its been so watered down and saturated by things like Disney for example, like the Little Mermaid. The Disney movie has a happy ending, and I mean the real tale is fucked up and she gets her tongue cut off and she dies and like that is fucked up and there are numerous tales like that. Its basically like you are sugar coating a really scary thought to put in a child's mind to teach them a lesson and that has been really interesting to us because I feel like through our own work were still like growing as people too and in some ways its like lessons to ourselves that we learn that we try and put back into the work, maybe.

 

"The fairy tale its been so watered down and saturated by things like Disney..."

Don't Touch Me - Image courtesy of Mike and Claire 

Don't Touch Me - Image courtesy of Mike and Claire 

Modern Day Fairy Tale 

M: We heard this story today about this person who's lover forgot their suitcase and they were like, “can you bring my suitcase on the plane” and they were like, “sure” so they flew over and then the police went into their suitcase and found a bunch of heroin.

C: He had never met the girl before, so he brought over this suitcase that had a bunch of heroin in it and they spent the rest of their life in jail together. It sounds like a modern day Grimm's fairytale. Its just that brutal and its kind of exciting. Its kind of a Pandora's box situation, not really, but its like you don't open the suitcase what the hell?

M: Its the same thing its just modern fairy tale.

C: Yeah, its just like we are making things to fit what we want to see. It is funny because I feel like one of my all time favorite movies is Edward Scissor Hands and i love that movie so much because its taking Beauty and the Beast and redoing it in a really like beautiful modern way. I don’t know, for some reason that movie just like always sticks with me and I really, really love how he did that film. It is just that idea of taking such a basic idea and placing it in the modern world. It always feels like new or something.

M: The idea of like a cellphone being something magic is kind of disregarded as something trivial or kind of stupid or like things that take place in modern day world aren't magical anymore and thats kind of a strange thing to me because basically all fairy tales take place in like ancient times but its cool reinventing stories or just reinventing things that have elements of today in it.

 

Creating As a Duo

 M: We’re definitely not exactly the same but we are the same in the way that we recognize each other's differences when we are working and my style of work really compliments Claire's style of work and Claire's style of work really compliments my style of work.

C: It is funny because we had a guest critique in our class a while ago and he kind of told us like you guys are from the same pole, but Mike was like were from the opposite poles and we meet in the middle. I feel like Mike is like really slick and I’m like kind of a country bumpkin and I don’t know how to explain that more but thats for me kind of where it like meets in the middle. I guess if you look at what we used to do separately Mike is really slick and I used to do a lot of like digital mash up shit and I think we have sort of found a way to mash that together which is cool, but idea wise I feel like were very much on the same page do you feel like that?

M: yeah definitely

 

"Mike is like really slick and I’m like kind of a country bumpkin."

Availableism 

M: We have always been really interested in the idea of availableism, which is making work with what you have available and it even applies to making food or it can be anything just using what you have available around you. So, if you have you know 500 slinkies that we found on the street then were going to make a project that uses slinkies.

M: Everything DIY

Interview by - Karin Bar 

 

The Infinity Pool

The Unlimited Magazine

The Infinity Pool is a digital exhibition space that features a different artist each month. The digital platform was created by artists David Alexander Flinn and Adam Patrick Ianniello. The Unlimited sat down with the two to talk about how this digital curated space functions, and Adam's currently running series.

What is The Infinity Pool?

David: The infinity pool is an entity. It is like an alien brain hovering in space. That is how I think of it.

A word to describe it?

David: Vacation.

Adam:
It is like an alien thing, but it is also a bit like a labyrinth in the way that we want it to be complex and we want you to feel like you are lost in it.

David:
The evolution of it and its natural design, the growth is not linear, so it is constantly going to be zig-zagging and bouncing between universes and dimensions because it is dealing with totally different subject matter from totally different people. Some alive, some dead.

It is already everything, so it will never need to expand. I think that is the benefit of having it be something digital and kind of ephemeral. It is unbound by weight, by rent, it has no limitations, which to me makes it everything. If the infinity pool became a gallery format, physical manifestation, it would just be a gallery. You loose the freedom to be entirely open to any type of project.

I think watching the artists grow, and watching the capability of the infinity pool grow, that growth in enough.

We have a really big sense of humor, and something we are really into is challenging institutions and challenging standard notions of right or wrong, so I think that is the beauty of having it as an abstract entity.

Adam:
We take people that are not comfortable being in a gallery, or showing art in a gallery. Then pushing then to do something that would be the equivalent of exhibiting work. We are getting them outside their box and we are learning more about ourselves and what we sort of like to see from them. It is a push and a pull when we finally get to meet, and finally get to talk about something. They do not know themselves going into it what they want to do. It is always cool to guide them along their path and figure out who they are for the website.

"The main thing is we are interested in the work, thats all. There is no money, no sponsors, there is just us wanting to see people make good work, and trying to give them the opportunity with what we have, which is this."

That is what the website is, we want it to be a sort of rite of passage. In the sense that people feel comfortable doing it but they have to step up and do something more than they have normally been doing.

Adam:
We do not want mid-career people, we don’t want people everyone knows. We either want people that are emerging in a way, or people that we idolize and respect greatly. We wanted to have new people where we can have a fresh look at things.

If the infinity pool had to exist in a world without internet what would it be?

David:
I think the infinity pool would have been more like a monthly book.

Adam:
An AA meeting.

David:
Either like an AA meeting or a monthly...its already kind of like an AA meeting. I think probably a monthly or quarterly book. I am thinking if we met in the 1700s what we would have done and it probably would have been like a manifesto. Yeah a manifesto.

Flags-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

Flags-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

What inspired you to produce for this month? as a founder and participant

Smoke-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

Smoke-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

Adam:
In the past year I have been going upstate to work, to photograph. Every time I go up there it will clear my mind and I figure out new projects to do, especially in the form that I do them, which is dark room photography. The first time I went up there I went to a place which is a Tibetan monastery. Its all deep up in the hills of Woodstock, and there is an area up there that is basically a path where monks walk everyday and its covered with these Tibetan prayer flags. So that really inspired me and I really got into wanting to do something with Tibetan prayer flags and I sort of dove deep into Buddhism and meditation. When this month came around I decided to go back up in August and I brought a video camera with me, and I started filming things. I spent the whole week filming nature basically. Just whatever I felt like doing, I wanted to film. When I came back I realized I could use that footage and sort of transcode them into the flags themselves. All the flags have a good luck meaning, and they are broken down into five elements: sky, wind, earth, fire, and water. When that hit me I realized I am going to do five videos and each of them is going to contain just that element, and try to portray it in the most pure way possible.

I think when we talk about the infinity pool we always talk about taking whatever practice we do and trying to transform it into a digital format. Approaching it as this is what I am, this is what I do, this is what I like to do, but I have to make it in a way that people on the internet will understand. Which is different than the way that “the gallery” would fit into the picture.

I basically took what I did photographically, and turned that into a video format. So people could visualize what it is like to stand in front of one of my pieces.

 

http://www.theinfinitypool.com