RAW Ventura 2012 Visual Artist of the Year Award!

VC BUZZ ARTICLE LINK:

Meet Jonathan Blackburn, Ventura’s Visual Artist of the Year. As a commercial digital artist for over 10 years, Blackburn has focused his body of work in Multimedia/Web/Graphic/Print and Brand Design. His designs combine photography, custom Photoshop brush design blending and implement traditional painting, pop-art, mixed media and street art mediums that are transformed to create colorful, wild and vivid collage-style expressions. “I was exceptionally interested in music and the arts and spent most of my teenage years drawing, writing and drumming for bands to express ideas that were trapped up waiting to find a voice. Maybe that’s why you see me incorporating so many ideas, collages and wild color explorations in my art,” says Blackburn.

Aside from winning the Ventura RAW Visual Artist of the Year, Blackburn was the top runner up in the 2011 Chicago Fringe Festival Logo Design Contest, as well as a 2nd place in the 2011 Ventura County Fair’s Professional Arts Dept Design Competition (Digital Arts Division).

“It’s humbling and it really means the world to me to have the exposure and placement that I have had through RAW Showcasing,” says Blackburn. “The Networking, branching out to new cities and the pleasure of being a part of something that you can share your story with others makes me grateful.”
Moving forward, Blackburn has some new ideas in the works, “I have been entertaining the notion to create new and interesting 3 dimensional pieces based off of my original artwork and incorporate free-floating metal frames or wall hangings that connect 4″x4″ squares of the entire piece into an “exploded view” sculpture.” He is also participating in a few professional gallery showcases in the coming year.

Blackburn’s professional portfolio can be found at: jonblackburn.sqsp.com
As well as his company profile and online digital community: www.Darklineink.com

RAW Ventura County Rawards

New Series Piece in the Works - Mina

Almost done. Just a few slight touches with the brush and sh'es ready for print. Will be available @ my Deviant Art Store. 24" x 12" Wide.

Darkline INK Takes On - Art Takes Miami Contest!

This portfolio is part of Art Takes Miami, an art open call awarding $25,000 in Prizes and Exposure, including a Feature Booth at this year's SCOPE Art Show in Miami.

VOTE FOR MY ENTRY!!

The portfolio with the highest of the number of votes and star rating will win the People's Choice Award and receive a $2,500 cash grant and an online feature of my work! The number of votes and star rating will have no affect on the formal judging. The Grand Prize is awarded purely on the merits of the images submitted as decided by our judging panel.

Chicago Fringe Festival Design Contest 2011 - Runner Up!

Just received an email a few days ago congradulating my design submission as a runner up in the Chicago Fringe Festival Design Contest! 3 runners up will be posted on the festival's website for our excellent designs. Makes me smile. Email I received:

Dear Jonathan,

Your design has been selected as a runner-up in the Chicago Fringe Festival Design Contest 2011. 

We'd like to congratulate you and compliment you on your outstanding design. It was extremely difficult to choose a winner once we had narrowed the field to our finalists, and we are excited to share your design by posting it to our website.

Again, congratulations!

Tim Mullaney

Here's a little something about the festival design contest:

 50 shows booked. 1 design needed.

Chicago Fringe Festival is an artistic extravaganza featuring theatricalizers of every stripe, from actors to aerialists, performance artists to puppeteers! CFF is 50 shows, from the whimsical to the WTF, performed in Pilsen between September 1-11, 2011. Last year’s Festival drew an audience of over 2,000 people. This year’s Festival will be even bigger.

Chicago Fringe Festival needs a design that is so arresting, dynamic, searing, fanciful, mind-bending or otherwise amazing that it will radiate cartoon-like waves of energy. Some further crucial information to help you create the graphic gold we’re panning for:

• The design should reflect, suggest, embody, convey or otherwise relate, directly or obliquely, to our Festival theme: On the Map, Under the Radar
• The design should capture (or at least not contradict) some of the other key characteristics of Chicago Fringe theatre. We value diversity. We feature performers of all ages, ethnicities, nationalities and orientations in shows about everything from Irish dancing to Rambo. And we believe that audiences should reflect the diversity on stage: our tickets are affordable, allowing anyone with a few spare bucks to see theatre. We are homegrown. The Festival was founded by Chicagoans and is infused with Chicago’s spirit of grit and innovation. And the Festival is proudly located in Pilsen, a neighborhood whose vivid murals testify to Chicago’s rich history and tradition of public art. We are guided by the philosophy that small theatre can be great theatre. A show performed in an improvised storefront space can be just as gripping and revelatory as the most lavish production at the fanciest theatre. To learn more about what Chicago Fringe is, visit http://www.chicagofringe.org/.

The Chicago Fringe Festival (CFF) invites emerging and established performing artists from Chicago, the U.S. and beyond to showcase their work and add to the dialogue of theatrical art. The Festival also seeks to enhance the perception of Chicago as a major hub for theatre. CFF encourages performers to take bold risks by providing an avenue for affordable productions. It also seeks to bring in non-traditional theater-goers through a commitment to low ticket prices and outreach into communities not commonly represented. In this fashion, The Chicago Fringe Festival provides an avenue for diverse artists and audience members to connect in a singular and immediate way.