Work of Art - The Next Great Artist Season Two

If you are anything like me, you were pretty disappointed to discover that Work of Art didn't air during the summer of 2011. I checked the Bravo website, checked message boards, checked the facebook page...Nothing. Well, today, I found out something marvelous. Work of Art is coming back for Season Two and will begin airing on Bravo on October 12th at 9/8 central. Hooray!

October is a bit of a wait for me, so I am doing my best to get some hints on what is going on. Bravo has a teaser video and a comment about Sarah Jessica Parker being in tears on the show's facebook page. From the teaser clip, it appears that we should be thankful for the fact that swear words get bleeped out, though!

Some of these artists seem a little...different. I don't even need to read bios to know that The Sucklord is going to be umm...odd. I do wish the site would provide last names for the artists and a link to their current work. I guess we need to do some research to find out, huh?

The artists' names are:

• Leon
• Dusty
• Kathryn
• Lola
• Sarah
• Jazz-Minh
• Kymia
• Tewz
• The Sucklord
• Ugo
• Sara
• Bayeté
• Michelle
• Young Sun

The first artist I found additional info for is Sara Jimenez. Her portfolio includes nude watercolors, so you probably want to consider the gallery portion of her site as unsafe for work. The link leads to her biography. Sara was one of the artists who did MUSE (Movement to Uncover Self-Expression), which was a free workshop for a group of women in New York City that earned her an award. She seems like she'll be pretty free spirited and bold in her work and I look forward to seeing her first piece in the competition.

Leon Lim is a deaf artist who has done a lot of major projects, including a Time magazine cover. He does a lot of installations, some mixed media pieces and some multimedia pieces. I really like his style. Check out the 3(656) installation. I'd love that piece on my wall. (Make sure to click on next when you select it from his gallery. Otherwise, you just see his idea board for the project. You want to see the final piece.

Since I'm a portrait photographer, I was really thrilled to see Kathryn Parker Almanas, who has been one of Oprah's 25 under 25 and has received a lot of acclaim from other sources, as well, listed as one of the artists for this season. She's a food photographer with a twist and does things like re-creating human organs out of food. Photo sculpture, maybe? Anyway, it is really awesome in a creepy way.

So, Kathryn Parker is gone already. I think it was a good choice. The pressure to do these sort of shows is extreme and her health seemed to be affected. I was really sad to see them sort of spotlight the moment she breaks down and cries, though.

And the criticism that they'd seen that piece before...Did they look at her portfolio before she went on the show? She makes these works of art where she makes food look like organs and takes photos of the work. That's her art. Variations on a single theme. It would make a strong one woman art show, but she isn't an artist experimenting with different mediums and trying to discover what she wants to say. She already knows how she wants to express herself and is doing so.

In retrospect, she and the show simply didn't fit.