1. Michael Capozzola - Sorro: The Gloomy Bandito
My favorite new-to-me comic strip, Sorro is a little bit Incredibles mixed with a large portion of Jim's Journal.
2. Bernard Verkaaik
With a background in advertising, Schiedammer Bernard Verkaaik is an unlikely candidate to be one of the most technically skilled painters I've seen. His still lives--food and serveware arranged in stark, contrasting settings--look good enough to eat, and he paints a lot of onions and eggs, so that's saying something. They look a little bit photographic, ever so slightly shy of trompe l'oeil, and one hundred percent stunning. I have coveted his paintings since living in Amsterdam.
3. Do Ho Suh
Long a fixture at Seattle Art Museum (however regrettably they've penned in and roped off his art), Do Ho Suh masterfully sculpts large installations from repeated tiny objects and creates stunning architectural representations out of silk - apartments with rooms and furnitures, staircases that climb to nothing, archways, etc. I remember walking over a transparent floor that was held up by thousands of tiny plastic soldiers.
4. Max Cole
One of my favorite nonrepresentational abstract artists. Menswearish. Stripey. Delicious! You probably need to be there, since her work doesn't translate well to wee jpegs. I fell in love with her paintings in Buffalo, which houses several in their university-run art museum.
5. Livio de Marchi
Gorgeous, realistic wood carvings of all kinds of everyday items come out of Livio de Marchi's studio. Whether it's a trenchcoat hanging on the wall, a table with a permanently carved tablecloth, an array of wooden bras, or the hand-carved wooden ferrari boat he uses to get around Venice, I covet it all. He's another artist from Lieve Hemel on the Spiegelstraat, which I'm convinced is the best private gallery on earth.
