Mia Brownell, a Chicago-based artist and daughter of a sculptor and biophysicist, has a new body of work that she says “simultaneously draw on scientific images of platelets (tiny blood cells shaped like plates) and the history of the painted food still life.” The new series is called “Plate to Platelets: and other things that travel and bind,” and it features several new palette paintings. Brownell is featured in the Hi-Fructose Collected 4 Boxset.
“My inspirations focus on the 17th century still life tradition of plates being painted on the precipice of a table’s edge (often looking like they are about to fall) and how platelets rush to the site of damage to repair,” she says. “I fantasize about what the cultural/social equivalents to platelets could be, as well as, other things that travel and bind in and outside of our bodies. These paintings dissect and interweave fundamental elements of nature, food, and culture – of movement, and impulse – that might be labeled theatric. My motivations stem from the confluences between the seductive excesses of food culture, the vanity and illusionism of traditional still life painting, and the constructed spaces of computer generated scientific imaging.”
The artist has two shows coming up in Denver with pieces from this body of work: at The Fulginiti Pavilion for Bioethics and Humanities University of Colorado at Denver (Jan. 11-March 8) and Goodwin Fine Art (Jan. 12-Feb. 24).
Demonic goddesses and amorphous love children dominate the compositions by Japanese-born, San Francisco-based artist 
Dave Pollot revitalizes thrift store paintings with surreal or pop culture-centered flourishes. The artist recently painted giant banana duct taped to an existing mountainous backdrop for a piece auctioned for charity. The reason: Pollot says these conversations “can happen while people have little or nothing to eat."