Work of Art Reality TV Show - Episode 3: Book Cover's

 

It's been said we shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but that's exactly what this challenge is all about. The winner for Week 3 will get to see his artwork on a real book cover published by Penguin books. If you missed this episode, you can watch it here.

In case you haven't been following the new reality series, "Work of Art," on Bravo, 14 artists are vying for the title "The Next Great Artist;" on a reality show similar to "Project Runway." Each week they're given a theme to complete and one winner is selected and one is sent home. The last artist standing will get $100K and a show at the Brooklyn Museum.

 

 Cast of "Work of Art"

For this weeks challenge, the artists were given the title of a classic novel and told to create a book cover for it. The assignments were for: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Pride and Prejudice, Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, Frankenstein and The Time Machine. There were some interesting pieces created and a few that fell short. Some worked as a decent piece of art, but failed as a book cover.

WoA Judge Jerry Saltz and Katherine Court from Penguin

When helper Simon said getting your work on a Penguin book was the ultimate accolade, Judith rolled her eyes. She said she does "fine art" and acted like creating a book cover was beneath her. Well la-dee-da-da! What a snob. I guess she didn't really want to win.

 

Judges Jerry Saltz and Jeanne "Ms. Mullet" Greenberg

 

Mark's book cover and one of the top two.

I really liked Mark's entry a lot. It looks like a real book cover to me. He's primarily a photographer and graphic artist, so this challenge was perfect for him.

 

From Mark's Facebook page.

Mark was in the top two to win, but John's depiction of "A Time Machine" took the prize. Why John wasn't given immunity for the following week is unknown to me. I really love this as a piece of art and as a book cover. I love the color and the collage elements of it. Congrats and well done, John.

John Parot's Winning Book Cover

Winner of the challenge, John Parot

The bottom 3 were Peregrine, Jaclyn & Judith

Peregrine

Book Cover entries by Peregrine and Jaclyn

Okay, Peregrine, this is a nice mixed media piece, but how it's supposed to depict "The Time Machine, " a sci-fi classic; I don't know. She didn't know either and admitted John's version of the same book was much better.

Jaclyn

Jaclyn, who takes off her clothes for every challenge, said she wanted to create something in a "modern classic style." She said she had seen the movie, but only read the synopsis of the book. It was hard to believe that after seeing what she came up with, but she knew it was weak. She had no excuse for misspelling Jane Austen's name. Nothing like attention to details.

Contestant Abdi looking at Peregrine's entry hanging in the gallery.

Judith was sent home

Judith claimed she printed the title backwards, because Jane Austen use to write letters that way. That's a nice factoid, but it's not going to sell the book if you can't even read the name of it. One of the judges said it made him feel stupid not knowing what language it was.

Judith's losing entry for  Pride and Prejudice

Judith decided to use her "finger print" method to represent the flowers and gardens in Pride and Prejudice. (Cue cricket noises here.) She spent hours on it, but wasn't happy with how it was unfolding, ended up changing a lot of it and almost started over the following day.

Despite the lameness Judith displayed on three weeks in this show, she's a successful working artist and has shown her work all over the world. Checkout her website here.

Erik's Book Cover

Erik is the novice of the show. Judge Jerry Saltz told him to stop using that as an excuse for doing bad work. I think this was the best thing he's done so far, which isn't saying much.

Contestant Erik

Erik said, before this show, no one had ever seen his artwork outside of his own family. No clue why they picked him or why he hasn't been kicked off yet.

Read Jerry Saltz on what happened behind the scene's here. 
Read my review on Episode 1, Portraits, here.
Read my review on Episode 2, Appliance Junkyard, here.