Thursday, July 21, 2011

Art in Life

Here are two examples of art in everyday places...that I love.

The first is pencil sculptures by Dalton Ghetty.





 He makes sculptures out of the wood and graphite of regular-sized pencils. they are extremely tiny and take him months or sometimes years! He even has a collection of his sculptures that he has accidentally broken while working with them. The craziest part is, he doesn't sell them or make any money on them, he gives them all to friends.



 This one of the saw is sort of incredible, how he carves both the wood and the graphite into one cohesive sculpture...and the one below of the heart hanging on a chain...

images from here

Next is an art event from Berlin where bikers spilled environmentally friendly, water-based paint onto a traffic intersection. I would love to do this in the US and a really crowded intersection during rush hour traffic. it would make rush hour fun :)





reposted from here

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Arm Candy


This is my summer uniform for my wrist lately--or something similar to this. I have a slight obsession with bangles and a slightly bigger obsession with jewelry from special places and times. All of these pieces are from travels and remind me of a specific person, place or time frame... From left to right: the leather bracelet with the green eye is from Prague where Anni spent a semester in undergrad, the three cloisonne bangles are from the Philippines- my aunt Preci picked them out for me and my grandpa brought them back (I didn't even know Preci at the time, which made it especially exciting and mysterious to receive presents of jewelry from her), the wood-wrapped bangle is from a fruit stand in Kauai which was one of my favorite memories of that trip--we all rented cars and just explored the island via road trip, stopping at all kinds of interesting-looking fruit stands etc... The gold bangle was my grandma's- she always had the coolest treasures and saw the free-spirited hippie in me before I even hit middle school. She left me the most unique and beautiful jewelry that she collected over the years at flea markets and antique shops (because she must have known that she would have a granddaughter someday that would treasure them). The last two are from my recent trip to China- the red one is red coral and was purchased by me in a silk market in Beijing, the last are prayer beads from the Llama monastery in Beijing-they are blessed by a monk (which I'm not Buddhist, but it is still cool).
Not pictured: two delicate gold bangles that I inherited from my lola when she died. My mom said she got them in Taiwan and they were the prettiest, simple little bangles that fit my tiny wrists perfectly. They reminded me of her because she was also very delicate. Plus they were from Taiwan which is a place I have never been, but makes me think of her as an adventurous and fascinating woman. These bangles were in my purse when it was stolen out of my car when I was in dance practice. But I still remember them...and maybe I will go to Taiwan someday.


Ok, so there is a less than comprehensive overview of my arm candy. In other news, I came across a cool how-to on making a leather passport holder here. I'm a little clumsy for this kind of project, but it would be nice to try it...maybe I could paint the front...


Friday, July 1, 2011

Current Obsession: Fjords


I have this compulsive yearning to go wandering around fjords. I think the urge is a product of leftover wanderlust from China and this Sigur Ros music video that I have currently been obsessed with. According to Wikipedia, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity. That sounds so primal and epic--I want to don my rabbit-hat, a chunky sweater and some leather climbing boots and ramble all around the cliffs and crevices looking for secret caves and taking in beautiful views. According to Google Images, there are lots of fjords in Iceland (above), Norway (below), and Greenland (last picture). I think my favorite part of fjords--besides the glacial formation part--is that they have sheer cliffs. Cliffs imply adventure and frolicking and exploring in general.



For wanderlust and frolicking :)

Friday, June 24, 2011

For Funs

I'm back from China and I'm fighting jet lag--but this is funny.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Wings

Image from GAIA



I want someone to come draw wings on my apartment complex. Or maybe flowers, or insects, or a giant pig with a curly tail...the options are endless, really.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Tarzan and Jane

image from inspiration cooperative



 Sometimes methinks that I should go to Sweden and live in the forest in a magnificent tree house....

Blobitecture

  
image via kuriositas
image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas
 Aqua Tower, Chicago
Isn't that mind-blowing?? It makes me want to touch it...I wonder if it seems like it is shimmering when you are walking on the street. As a moving viewer, your perspective of all of those planes would change with every step you took--in effect the building would look like it was morphing as you move around it. If you think about it, everything does this...even if you walk around a box, the box's dimensions will change relative to your position to it, but we don't really thing about it that way when we walk around a box because we understand the entire form without having to see all of it.

This building takes your normal perception of a form (box) and forces you to analyze the way you interact with your own process of interpreting that visual information. I think that's great--bringing new perspective to everyone who is in seeing-distance of the building--that's a lot of people that probably wouldn't think about things like that otherwise...



                                                                                               
image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas

This is the Experience Music Project, Seattle. It is an example of "blobitecture" (all of these buildings are) which is apparently a relatively new style of architecture in which organic, often blob-like forms are achieved in architecture through the use of special computer algorithms that calculate how to distribute weight and balance etc...to any form. I don't really know much about it...I think the idea is that architects can design whatever form they want with this technology, because they can just create the form in the computer and the algorithms will figure out how to make it architecturally stable. Isn't that nuts? Architecture was previously limited by known support structures--think arches, post and lintel structures, suspension, etc... but now architects can literally build in any shape they want. Add to this the technology of extremely pliable and flexible building materials and you get blobitecture. I think it's extraordinary.

I like that this one is called the "Experience Music Project." I don't know what it is for...but it seems like it could be a 3-D visual representation of music...with the different colors and textures and curves and angles--sometimes I feel like my experience with music is similar to this.
image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas
 The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
This is one of my favorite buildings I have ever seen I think...and I haven't even seen it in person. It's like the building is dancing. It also reminds me of sculpture and how dynamic sculpture is a different experience from every vantage point--you can never really capture something like this in a two-dimensional format like a photograph--you have to walk around it and inside of it and view it from all the possible vantage points to really understand it's form.

image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas 
 Selfridges, Birmingham, UK
This one is kind of weird--but it is definitely "blob"-like. Those reflective discs are an interesting choice

image via kuriositas

image via kuriositas  
Zlote Tarasy in Warsaw, Poland

I really like this last one--I love how it looks like the buildings are just melting onto the city. It must be so cool to be inside that space. I don't even know what this building is for--but I think it would be great for any purpose...museum, office building, public library, government building...everything should be able to have cool buildings. I wonder what it looks like at night...maybe the glass becomes translucent and you can see the inside all lit up...or maybe the glass stays reflective and instead projects the reflection of all the city lights around it.

Saturday, April 23, 2011