It still constantly amazes me how the internet age continues to alter every aspect of our everyday lives as a society.  Not only does it affect the way that we shop, learn, and communicate, but this media has also bled into every other form of media to influence how they operate.  Sites like Hulu bring the television to your computer moniters and Youtube has already worked to launch the careers and notoriety of musicians and created celebrities out of random family home videos and of teenagers fucking around.  There is nothing that I have witnessed in recent years which epitomizes these concepts more than the artwork of Georgia artist, Erika Iris Simmons.

Over the last week, I have seen the artwork from Simmons (aka: iri5) popping up in quite a few places.  I first came across an image through stumbleupon when I landed on a site called Technabob.  Technabob originally found out about it through a post on Neatorama and today, when I went to the website for Juxtapoz magazine, I found out even more about the artist when they decided to post something on her as well.  Believe it or not, all of this hype was originally created through simple posts of her artwork on the artists flickr page.  From there, her name has started to slingshot around like a pinball, picking up steam and enlarging the snowball along the way.  I felt that if I have started to notice it, then it will only be a matter of time before others do so, I figured it’s time for us to step in and help give this beast a push of our own. Read the rest of this entry →