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Showing posts from June, 2016

Details from lucid dreams

If Audrey Stomme s' paintings came alive and transformed into celebrities, they would be Alicia Vikander or Cara Delevingne — confident, perky, and unabashedly luxe. The Minnesota-based artist has a knack for blending ink and acrylic paint in striking combinations to create abstract human forms with an exciting curiosity surging through them. Her pieces brim with courage and exhibit the inherent freedom of her subconscious. Sometimes I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but it still fascinates me.

Ceramic coral reef by Courtney Mattison

Every once in a while, I come across a sculpture that makes me go, "Oh. Wow." This is one of them. It's a coral reef that artist and ocean advocate Courtney Mattison crafted out of ceramic. The monumental wall piece, called Our Changing Seas III , is the third in Courtney's series of large-scale installations "inspired by the fragile beauty of reefs and the human-caused threats they face." On view till August 28 at the Palo Alto Art Center . [h/t: journal du design ]

Name That Art

Can you correctly name a famous art piece from the description of a kid? Chris, age 7, and Alexa, age 5, try to make art experts guess iconic paintings. The videos are hilarious, but I think both of them did a pretty good job describing the artworks.

Anish Kapoor in a nut shell

A playful beginner's guide to the vast sculptures of Turner Prize winner Anish Kapoor.

These chocolates are wrapped in traditional Vietnamese art form

The National Gallery Singapore has partnered with Marou Chocolate to co-brand a line of limited-edition chocolate bars which represent both Vietnam and the architecture of the newly established art museum. The packaging features the design work of Rice Creative , who worked with artisans skilled in the traditional Vietnamese printmaking called Dong Ho . "Everything in the process is hand made. The paper is made from Mulberry bark, with a sparkle added from crushed oyster shell. Red pigment is derived from terra cotta, green and blue pigments are from natural indigo plant parts. Black ink comes from charred bamboo leaves, and the white pigment is simply powdered shell. We worked with a family whom have been practicing this art form for 500 years (21 generations)."  [h/t: Packaging of the World ]

'Starry Night' on Dyed Water

It's nice to see an artist's process, the way their composition evolves out of nothing. Ever since I stumbled upon Garip Ay's videos , I haven't been able to stop myself from watching them over and over. In this clip, the Turkish artist demonstrates how to replicate Van Gogh's The Starry Night . It's mesmerizing to see how the oil-based inks in a tank of dark water transform into a richly detailed picture. Ebru, also called paper marbling, is one of the oldest Turkish arts. A gum called tragacanth is added to the water to yield a thickened liquid, and horse hair brushes are used to apply paints which are insoluble in water. Once the design is finished, a piece of paper is laid on the water and absorbs the pigment, creating a dyed page. It's truly fascinating.

This installation puts painting robots to shame

In the courtyard of London's Victoria & Albert Museum stands the Elytra Filament Pavilion , a massive glass and carbon fiber canopy fabricated by robots. It is inspired by the fibrous structures of flying beetles and will be open until November in the John Madejski Garden. The futuristic shelter is the brainchild of experimental architect Achim Menges, along with collaborators Moritz Dörstelmann, Jan Knippers and Thomas Auer. While the structure currently measures 200 square meters in size, it will gradually grow bigger overtime, depending on how visitors interact with it.

The Work of Johanna Helmuth

I don't know Johanna Helmuth, but sometimes I feel like I do. I've been following her on Instagram for weeks now and it's quite obvious how much I love her work. Her rough portraiture on canvas plays host to a group of characters that exist in a mysterious emotional universe. Her paintings speak of dominance and subordination, frustrations and betrayals, apathy and suffering, contempt and distrust. Follow Hanna on IG to peak into more of her unsettling world.

Sculptures by Sonja Vordermaier

German artist Sonja Vordermaier wants you to ask what the hell that is.

I don't know what this is, but it sure is mesmerizing

I know it's some sort of kinetic art piece, but I have no idea what it does or what it's made of. Update: "When arranged and animated in order, the points of light represent the human anatomy. Instinctively, the brain is able to stitch the disparate points together and recognize them as one human form." According to TCP , the artists used motors, custom driver electronics, custom software, laser cut aluminum, LEDs, and a computer to create the sculpture.

Man secretly snaps London commuters as Flemish paintings

I love a good bit of fun when it comes to my morning look around the web, and these images from Matt Crabtree's 16th Century Tube Passengers series are quite amusing. Matt secretly photographs people on their commute, creatively manipulates the pictures to look like Flemish paintings, and posts them online. "All these shots are taken, retouched and sent from my phone whilst on the tube journey," he said. "I'm capturing the most of mundane commuter moments with a quiet, classical beauty." Matt is a self-taught photographer and works as a creative director in a London ad agency, so the rest of his work is definitely worth checking out too. [h/t: Lost At E Minor ]

How to make golf less boring

Golfboard is an electric vehicle on which the golfer rides in lieu of the traditional golf cart. It features a 4-wheel drive, has a top speed of 12 mph, and draws power from a 25,000-mAh lithium-ion battery, which is good enough to take the golfer around the 18 holes on a single charge. Now this could make golf a little more exciting.

Acrylic paintings that look like posterized photos

At first glance, Lory Joy Ablola's visual compositions look like posterized images that didn't load right the first time you clicked on them. But these are not Photoshopped. These are actual paintings of Manila streets and I love them. LJ was born and raised in the city and has worked as a graphic artist in digital media before devoting herself fully to painting. She has exhibited her works in Singapore, Korea, Tokyo, Manila, and Italy.

Monstrum's play structures will make you wish you were a kid again

Monstrum is a Danish company that designs and produces distinctly delightful playgrounds with a focus on artistic and architectural quality. Looking at the photos, it looks like the colorful wooden structures do a pretty good job of promoting imaginative play. There's a giant slide shaped like a dragon, a massive eel wrapped around a lighthouse, and, my favorite, the large playground for Kristinebergs Slottspark in Stockholm . It features a pair of giant owls, huge mushrooms and flowers, stairs and ladders to climb on, and enormous creepy crawlers. I loved playgrounds as a kid. Now that I have two children, I have a renewed interest in them.

Musicians You Should Know

Have you heard of The Hamburger Boys? How about Serafino Paina, the greatest opera singer ever to walk the Earth? If you're into music, illustration, or satire, check out this hilarious new Tumblr blog called Musicians You Should Know . Warning: Strong probability of time dilation. The first time I came across it I told myself I was going to read a post or two. Then my wife called and I realized I read the entire blog. My favorite is about Ned Dreeble: "In the weeks that followed Ned Dreeble's notorious Cambridge, Massachusetts, concert, his devotees became the butt of endless Internet jabs and even a joke or two on late night television. Yet the incident—in which a group of fans, perhaps overly protective of the beloved singer, were videotaped forcibly ejecting an audience member for refusing to take off his Mickey Mouse t-shirt—was in truth fairly standard for a Dreeble show. The gentle musician is said to suffer from a host of mental disorders, including (but by no

What if Tarantino's films actually were pulp fiction?

Pulp Books is a brilliant idea: taking some of Quentin Tarantino's most iconic movies and transforming them into vintage book covers. There's Uma Thurman as The Bride wielding her katana. Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine chilling out with his rifle. A buxom blonde from Death Proof being chased by a car with the tagline, "Terror at 200 mph!" The series is so effective, I ordered a Jackie Brown framed art print. [h/t: Acclaim Magazine ]

I find this 18th-century game table kind of fascinating

The brainchild of German cabinetmaker David Roentgen, this finely crafted piece of furniture does more than play board games: It has the potential to get you laid. Like to play chess? Or perhaps you have more sinister plans like setting up an illegal casino. Just swing out a leg, adjust an arm, and voilà!

Here's how they created Quicksilver's amazing rescue scene

The reviews are so bad that I had to see for myself if Bryan Singer's X-Men: Apocalypse deserved such flak, and I found myself enjoying the movie. True, it has deficiencies and limits, but the franchise has stayed consistent in creating some big screen spectacles. One of my most favorite moments was when Peter Maximoff, a.k.a. Quicksilver, saved everyone in the X-Mansion from imminent danger, all while he's listening to Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics. As for how Singer and his team pulled it off, here's a behind-the-scenes video with some answers.

You can buy this first edition copy of 'Alice in Wonderland' for around $2 million

Reading Alice in Wonderland as a child gave me my interest in weird, anthropomorphic creatures, as well as some of my favorite quotes ("It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then"). I'm a huge fan of the book and, if I had a lot of money, I would place a bid on this extremely rare first edition copy of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel. It comes from a recalled Macmillan & Co. pressing of the book and is expected to fetch $2-3 million later this month. As Christie's explains , 2,000 copies were printed in 1865, but illustrator John Tenniel was "entirely dissatisfied with the printing of the pictures" that he ordered every copy be returned and a fresh copy printed. The returned copies were to be "sold as waste paper" but at least 23 survived — six of which are in private hands, including the one going on auction. Christie's copy was owned, at one point, by Carroll's Oxford colleague George William Kitc

Blaschka's stunning 19th-century glass sea creatures on display in New York

Someone sent this to me two weeks ago and I forgot to post it but fortunately I ran across it again this morning: Fragile Legacy is a show at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York featuring the work of Dresden-based father and son glassblowers Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.  The exhibit showcases 70 of the 577 intricate glass models of marine invertebrates acquired by Cornell University in 1885. The stunning collection "tells the story of the history of the Blaschka family, the interest in marine life and dissemination of knowledge in 19th-century Europe, the techniques and methods of creating these beautiful glass models, and finally, the story of the objects themselves as an art form." The exhibit runs until January 8, 2017.