Not exactly toy related, but here is a link to some great work by Jonathan Koshi:

http://notesfromthezeitgeist.blogspot.com/

I am a huge fan of these prints and the care and traditional technique he uses to create them. Basically, anything Day of The Dead is pretty cool in and of itself, but combining nerd culture takes it to a whole other level. I am excited to see a release of new prints (and am still holding out for the Cthulhu edition!!!)

Pretty lame, really. I definitely respect Dia de los Muertos for what it stands for, just not the over-saturation of its imagery in Western artwork. It's become tired.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion, art is subjective after all. Personally I haven't seen any saturation (or even any exposure) to it here, maybe you just saw some bad stuff. I don't think it's fair to call them 'lame' though. This demonstrates a lot of creativity and skill, not to mention craft in printmaking. If you're expecting high art, look at something else. I mean c'mon, this is a forum for toys after all, what are we really talking about here?

I believe it's his opinion that they are lame.

And yea, the sugar skull thing is very overdone at this point in western art. From graphic tees to dummys. I respect it for what it is and am very into them though, but I don't need it on all my stuff. I'd way rather have traditional sugar skull stuff anyday.

Fair enough. I guess if its gone the way of 'Che' stuff in the US, then I can see what you are saying. Obviously authentic is better, but you take what you can get. Hey, I'd love to have a full Stormtrooper suit from the filming of Star Wars, but I'll have to settle on my 3 3/4" figure.

I had noticed a whole lot of stuff with this imagery... I'm still wondering where it all started or why. From all those things I've seen I think I've had different feelings about them, but at the end, yes, I has come to a point of saturation. Although grom these images I dug the Daruma one, an interesting crossover.

Yikes. I can see that the artist has technical chops, but appropriating a folk style with centuries of significance in typically scattershot dumb-hipster fashion and applying to Kermit the Frog, Spy vs. Spy and Daruma ... thoughtless, meaningless, and disrespectful. Not saying that it can't be done, and as others have noted it has been, ad infinitum, but this particular appropriation just looks really shallow and pointless to me, sorry. No resonance there, just E-Z juxtaposition of a clichéd sort. Again, sorry to be so negative but sometimes this sort of stuff really sets me off, probably due to my love of authentic Mexican culture, so frequently misappropriated by people elsewhere "because it's cool."

I think these things look nice and the printmaker makes an interesting adaptation to non-conventional supports. BUT i am so in agreement with people critical of gringo hipsters picking up a ready-made set of graphical codes and using them as their own in gratuitous ways seems...easy ? redundant ?

Its like fast food or something in the sense that i flash "nice !" and then ....euh , wtf am i enjoying here...?

I think it fell into the "hipster" repertoire with people tattooing sugar skull designs...thats the first time i saw these motifs outside of their traditional context.

I also am getting tired of people pulling out the sugar skull at every corner, its kind of a cheap shot in the sense that a) its so fucking WIN + b) the artist just lifted the WIN from someone else.

I have this resin piece which i like and dislike for the positive and negative reasons listed above. I wonder if the artist being mexican would minimize some of my ambivalence.



But the the artist is french-canadian and seems to have latched on to the sugar skull motif to define his signature character more or less out of the blue.

I believe that if the artist in question feels a strong connection to Mexico through life, family or heritage...well awright. But even then...i'm not sure i agree with the approach. On the other hand if Saner wants to do a Posada inspired skull Dumby or Frank Mysterio wants to put his Lucha libre stamp on every toy under the sun...well more power to them, because in that case they're representing their culture.

In my opinion it boils down to the fact that the context in which the piece is created plays an important role in determining that piece's credibility.

Although i try never to lift whole straight references i use many éléments of different traditional repertoires in my own work. But recently i've been kicking myself a bit for succumbing to sugar skull influence in my latest paid illustration job, (check the eyes on the skull headdress...) so i understand how attractive the sugar skull meme can be.

^ Skunk !

I usually love de facto any Cthulhu illustrations / toys / whatever, but I hardly recognize my lord in this



(on dirait une boule de noël)