Go to Your Studio and Make Stuff

It's a manifesto--a call to art! A call to self-expression, to taking the road less traveled. For too long, people have been buying paintings because they match the furniture, turning to sappy, picture-postcard landscapes or abstract swirls in designer colors. Well, Fred Babb is an artist and true art lover who's had it with this soulless art approach, and in Go to Your Studion and Make Stuff he presents an illustrated rallying cry for creativity, the purity of expression, and a return to honest, unpretentious, heartfelt art. Go to Your Studion and Make Stuff combines 26 full-color paintings with inspiring text about the power of art and the imagination. On the big, framable poster pages are Babb's colorful masklike faces and heads, the strange characters with the startled eyes and open mouths. But Babb has always mixed text and image, and these paintings convey his famous art observations: "Art can't hurt you." "Art is one of the few things left worth doing." "Good art is often too broad to fit through narrow minds." And the classic: "Good art won't match your sofa." Facing the paintings are Babb's thoughts about art. Like the work itself, Babb's ideas are personal, quirky, refreshing, and very insightful.