21 Comments
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Ann Collins's avatar

Mesmerizing 🕊️

Duane, congratulations on being invited to the show in Brazil! May your your work be seen by more eyes and appreciated for the voice it carries.

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Duane Toops's avatar

Much appreciated! It’s the boundlessness and borderlessness of art that I love the most!

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Elizabeth Grace Martinez's avatar

This one really spoke to me. Gonna go take a walk now to let my mess untangle itself.

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Duane Toops's avatar

Thank you! Hopeful you get it untangled or perhaps better, that you find a sense of wonder and discovery in getting tangled in the tangles.

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John E. Dobbs's avatar

Brazil! That's great Duane!

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Duane Toops's avatar

Thanks John! Wish I could attend, but I’m glad to know that at least I’ll be represented!

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James Hart's avatar

Awesome to hear about the show in Brazil, Duane, way to go! Very well-deserved.

I always found it strange, too—our tendency to organize from the mess and create something. Seems on the whole better than our capacity for destruction. So strange we insist on doing both.

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Duane Toops's avatar

Thanks James! That we have the capacity to raise something beautiful from out of the wreckage, is something quite remarkable.

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Sonia Otero's avatar

I love these words: <<To hear the silence in middle of the clattering, and to turn it into something>>

It's just that, it's enough and a good path to continue.

Congratulations on your upcoming participation in Brazil

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Duane Toops's avatar

Thank so much! I’m glad that resonates with you to. It’s the only path that makes sense to me.

Thanks again!

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Nathaniel Roy's avatar

No surprises here, but I love all the cropped and cut type in today’s collages!

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Duane Toops's avatar

Hopefully I’m not becoming predictable, lol! I love type and I’m always looking for ways to bring more of it into my work. I think deep down I wish I could be a graphic designer, but don’t have the talent, skills, or patience haha!

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Nathaniel Roy's avatar

No—the “no surprises” was about me liking something with typography. Because I AM predictable, hahaha

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Duane Toops's avatar

haha! My love affair with typography is predictable too! include a few letter forms, no matter how abstracted and you've got me hooked, lol.

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Nathaniel Roy's avatar

Related—are you familiar with the work of David Carson? I think you’d really dig him.

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Duane Toops's avatar

oh, definitely! I’m a fan of Carson for sure, and I love his recent collage work, obviously lol. Possibly even more than Carson I’m enamored with Chris Ashworth’s Swiss Grit design work. I just got his book a few weeks ago and it is stunning and inspiring and overwhelming all at the same time.

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Nathaniel Roy's avatar

Ooooh I need to get that book. I love his work on Instagram.

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Duane Toops's avatar

It’s so good! He goes through every cover and spread he did for Raygun and explains his process for doing them! His analog/digital flip-flopping warms every part of my creative soul, lol.

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Lisa Kahn Schnell's avatar

These are inspiring, Duane! Beautiful work. I especially love the way the colors are working together in these pieces (within each individual piece, and also across the set of them.) And congratulations on the show!

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Duane Toops's avatar

Thanks Lisa! I try to have as little waste as possible in my studio practice, so I use as many of the left over fragments as I can in new pieces. The great thing about this is that it does sometimes produce a nice continuity between works. There are echoes of previous works in new compositions. In a way I suppose it's playing off the idea that every work is built upon the work that came before. It creates a kind of artist chain of being.

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Dec 3
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Duane Toops's avatar

Well said!

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