ria brodell may brighten your day

First discovered this whimsical American artist, who works a lot with pencil and watercolor (but also does crazy sculptures!), at the DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts back in 2006, and I’m kind of obsessed with her. For anyone anticipating a week as stressful as mine’s going to be, take a minute to play around on her website. She has an amazingly articulated series called “The Distant Lands” outlining the fate of a world she imagines (the bird men and the whale are my favorite characters), and she is currently showing a new series, “The Handsome and the Holy,” that “is interested between the play between queer desire and the construction of gender identity as seen alongside her religious upbringing.” Her drawings are on the simple side, but that’s why I like ‘em. Not all contemporary art has to be so overstated!

Not to mention, Ria Brodell is ridiculously sweet and when I emailed her website senior year wanting to ask a few questions for an AP Studio project (not really expecting success), she personally answered me that day giving me more information than I could have possibly hoped for — so in my humble opinion, this chick’s awesome.