Fred Eerdekens

Fred Eerdekens creates amazing typographic sculptures. At first glance they appear like abstract objects. When light is shone through the sculpture, a message is revealed using the negative or positive light of the shadow. There's an inspiring beauty in the madness.

WALL-E

I went to see WALL-E today. It was fabulous. Like most Pixar movies, I was very inspired by the story, the characters, and most of all, the artwork. The story is about a robot (WALL-E) that is left on an abandon Earth to clean up the garbage. The movie has very little dialog but tons of story. The robots are all full of character and personality. I was also super amused and fascinated by their interpretation of the future. If you are inspired by Pixar's art, I recommend checking out the Art of Pixar books. I recently purchased The Art of WALL-E.

Pulse

Pulse is a live visualization of recent emotional expressions written on blogger.com. Blogged emotional expressions are parsed using a list of synonyms which are translated into physical changes on a rubbery heart. This project has a fascinating mix of human emotions and computer data data. Feelings are coded as data in blogs, and the data is turned back into Pulse, an object with its own sense of life. I appreciate that the end result seems very alive, but very robotic at the same time. It appropriately represents the mix of warm emotions and cold data that are feeding it. Pulse is the thesis project of University of the Arts Berlin student, Markus Kison. (Found through Computerlove).

Anthony Lister

I've been enjoying these great superhero paintings by artist Anthony Lister. The subjects are fierce but the style is very lighthearted.

Josh Keyes

Josh Keyes paintings have a wonderful mix of scientific and artistic spirit behind them. The paintings play with the idea of the Earth's natural system and the link between the built world and the natural world. The paintings give a wonderful sense of how small the Earth is.

Luxury Tax

I have a great appreciation for smart graffiti, and I'm definitely filing this Chicago sidewalk art under smart graffiti. Apartment Therapy (the source of this image) speculates that the artwork is a comment on the old homes that are being torn down to build luxury homes. This is something we saw a lot of in Brooklyn as well. Regardless of the message, the Monopoly sidewalk reference alone deserves a thumbs up.

A Beautiful Revolution

I just came back from a trip into the mind of Andre Jordan. It was a weird and wonderful place. If you would like to take the journey for yourself check out his doodle blog, and my other favorite part of his website, the Ordinary Love Stories.

Tom Schmelzer

Normally a diamond of this ridiculous enormity would capture your undivided attention, but it's a little hard to concentrate when the diamond is ATTACHED TO A SEVERED ARM ON A ROTATING BRACKET. This great sculpture, entitled Engagement Ring Being Followed by a Woman, was created by Tom Schmelzer. It is meant as a statement about the ridiculous measures of value that society inflicts on itself. (Found through Pan-Dan).

Bea Unenge Paintings

I want a set of these great paintings by Swedish graphic designer, Bea Unenge. I like that she chose to divide them into two paintings. The message is more effective as two separate thoughts that come together. (Found through Husmusen).

Pixlporn

Pixlporn is a risque, or rather not so risque, website that features celebrity's private bits in super pixelated form. You can look at it as art, as an interesting color study, or an exercise for the imagination. However you look at it, it's hard to stop looking. Each pixel image is tagged with the celebrity featured and the source of the image. The above pixels belong to Madonna (in case you were squinting, I mean, wondering).

Oliver Jeffers

Oliver Jeffers has all sorts of fabulous work on his website. It ranges from loose sketches to realistic paintings and book illustrations. I like his style a lot. It is very sophisticated but very relaxed.

Altered Objects

I'm temporarily preoccupied thinking about these pieces of musical artwork by Celia Richards. It is part of her Altered Objects series. I'm particularly partial to the music sheets because I enjoy the thought of trying to collect or free the notes from of the page. There is something really lovely about the notes of a song all mixed up in a zip lock bag. (Found through Sub-Studio Design Blog)

One Day Poem Pavilion

I'm totally in love with this project. It is called the One Day Poem Pavilion. It's the thesis project of Art Center student Jiyeon Song. The pavilion is an experiment in typography. Sun shinning through the dome creates a poem in light on the ground. The poem is reveled, line by line, throughout the day as the sun passes over the pavilion. The content of the poem naturally changes through out the year as the sun shifts it's position in the sky. The poem's message is sensitive to the time of the year, with a 'new life' theme during the summer and a 'reflective' theme in the winter. I appreciate that this project is so simple and yet so complex at the same time. Check out more of Jiyeon's very well written explanation of the pavilion, including sketches and a time lapse video, on the project's website.

Where's Waldo, Google Earth Style

I was a huge Where's Waldo nerd in the late 80s, so I'm loving this idea. Canadian artist, Melanie Coles, has created a Web 2.0 version of Where's Waldo by painting an image of Waldo on a secret rooftop. The challenge is to be able to find Waldo on Google Earth. Google's secret and sporadic updates of its satellite images mean that it's unpredictable not only where Waldo will show up, but when. Melanie's Where On Earth is Waldo website encourages other people to hide Waldos by providing complete how-to instructions.

Bert Simons

Check out these crazy paper heads by artist Bert Simons. His sculptures strike a really cool mix of fine art and CAD. They tread an interestingly fine line between real and digital sculpting. Bert creates the heads using the dot per dot reference method to represent a real face in 3D. He then uses Blender to render and flatten the image. Pieces of the image are printed and reconstructed like a 3D puzzle. The explanation behind the methodology and thinking, as well as some of the 2D print files are up on Bert's website. (Found through Hip.Young.Thing).

New York City Garbage

It's hard to know what kind of souvenir to buy in New York City. Do you go with the Statue of Liberty foam hat, the scaled model of the Empire State Building, or the always classic, I Heart NY t-shirt? Well how about going for something completely different and with a much better story... like a cube of garbage. Artist Justin Gignac (also of Wants for Sale), specializes is collecting and selling NYC garbage in neat little smell-proof clear cubes. I love them because they are so representative of New York (and I mean that in the best possible way). You can even purchase special event garbage such as, garbage from New Year's Eve 2008 in Time Square, or garbage from the national republican convention. Brilliant! I want some.

Re:Construction

Lower Manhattan is filled with all sorts of ongoing construction work. Re:Construction is a project aimed at turning unsightly construction sites into works of art and architectural. They have 3 pilot projects including Concrete Jungle (shown above). The project is sponsored by the Alliance for Downtown NY and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Brian Jungen

Brian Jungen's work appeals to both my industrial design side, and my new found west coast side. Brian is a Canadian artist who makes art out of everyday objects. His series Prototype for New Understanding creates aboriginal style masks out of Air Jordans. The red, white and black of the Air Jordans amplifies the aboriginal feel, while making the material instantly recognizable as that of the pop culture shoes. It's a nice juxtaposition that starts the gears of the mind turning. Some of his other works include large whale skeletons made out of plastic lawn chairs and golf bag totem poles. Very cool artwork. (Thanks Mike!)

Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far

I'm kind of intrigued by the site Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. It invites users to contribute maxims that they have learned about life. The site asks "What have you learned in your life so far? What is it that you are fairly sure about? What is it that you believe in by now?". What I like about this site is that they have put an artistic spin on things. Contributions are made in the form of digital artwork. They are sketches, or photos, or movies created to illustrate or include the advice. This one hit home for me... Take a moment, locate yourself. (Found through Josh Spear).

Aitor Throup

I was very inspired looking through the portfolio of fashion designer Aitor Throup. I'm not sure that fashion designer is a very good title for him. He seems like more of an artist/illustrator/storyteller who just applies his talents to the world of fashion. The end result is captivating. You can see the background story and characters oozing out of every piece of clothing. Aitor's stunning sketches add the extra wow factor.

Virtually Mine

Virtually Mine is an interesting exhibit created by CITIZEN:citizen for the Peel Gallery. The exhibit examines the value of objects. By value, they don't mean how much it would sell for at an auction, but what kind of value the object has to its owner. The general public is invited to bring objects into the museum to be cataloged for the collection. When someone submits an item they describe themselves, the object they are submitting and the explanation for its inclusion. One of my favorites is the Armani Handbag included in the image above. The owner explained its value by saying "It's my favorite bag. I think it's extremely classy and I got it on sale in SoHo for nearly nothing. I feel sexy when I use it."

Wants for Sale

Artists Christine Santora and Justin Gignac have come up with an uber creatively practical approach to art - they simply paint what they want. The project is called Wants for Sale. Each oil painting that they do is of an object or concept that they desire (i.e. an iPhone or some buffalo wings) and then they sell the painting for the cost of that object. For example their painting of a Slice of Pepperoni costs $3 while the Financial Security painting cost $1000000. They are also willing to trade if you have the exact item they want. There is something really refreshing about the honesty and directness of this approach.

Christine and Justin also have an even more brilliant sister site called Needs for Sale where they use the same approach to raise money for charity. You can buy paintings of a Toilet ($100 for Habitat for Humanity) or a Can of Peas ($250 for City Harvest). Not only do you get to donate to charity, you also get a piece of art with a great story behind it.

Big Dipper

I just finished watching this mesmerizing video of Sarah Van Gameren's recent Big Dipper exhibit at London's Design Museum. The project is a large machine that creates candle-dipped chandeliers. Two rows of strung wicks circle each other, periodically being dipped into wax. The process takes 12 hours to create 24 finished chandeliers. It's really beautiful to watch. (Found through Hip.Young.Thing).

Roxana Zegan

I like the thinking behind the work of Canadian artist Roxana Zegan. She uses acrylic paints to transform Montreal's potholes into temporary works of art. The contrast of the colored paint on the dark asphalt is stunning.

I found Roxana's gorgeous work on an old Design Sponge post. I can't seem to find a more direct link to her work. If anyone has one, please let me know.

Distellmap

Ben Fry is a fabulous designer/artist/computer scientist who focuses on visualizing data. This project, called Distellamap, (a spin-off of Dismap) highlights the beauty of code. The project features the code of 6 different Atari games overlaid with curves to show its 'go to' elements. The visualization emphasizes the flow of the code, showing it off as a complex piece of poetry. (Found most recently through Pica + Pixel).

Bryan Christie Design

Bryan Christie Design specializes in scientific and architectural illustrations and diagrams. Their portfolio is very inspiring, especially the medical illustrations. You may recognize some of their work from recent covers of Wired or Business Week.

Look-a-Like Kitties

How super cute is this. I'm not normally SUCH a sucker for cuteness, but this is cute combined with brilliance. If you send Electric Luna of Ploesie Poesies a picture of your cat she will make a plush cat replica for you. This isn't just a cheesy stuffed toy, it's a stylin' kitty work of art. All the cats get a special numbered label. Check out the archive of all the 151 look-a-likes that have been created so far. Some of them are really amazing. (Found through The Style Files)

Martin Klimas' Temporary Sculpture

Martin Klimas' photography is meant to capture an image of an object in a state that it only exists temporarily. By photographing objects at their breaking point or at a point in motion, he is able to show them with new character and meaning. My favorite is this series of breaking porcelain statues. Captured just as they hit the ground, the formally still statues take on a sense of action.

Earth as Art

I came across the site Earth as Art today. It's from a couple of years ago, but I found it really inspiring. It celebrates the beauty of the Earth by featuring a collection of stunning high res satellite images of our planet. Above is a photos of China's Himalayas.

'Your House'

Apparently commissioned by MoMA, artist Olafur Eliasson has made a 85:1 scale model of his house... inside a book. Each of the 485 pages was individually laser cut, taking about 3 months to complete.

Because it's 'Art', this time consuming process is acceptable but it seems like there must be an easier way. No disrespect to the impressive paper laser cutting skills that went into this, but a mass produced version would be great. The most interesting aspect of this book, to me, is the ability to move through the dimensions of the house as you flip through the book. It would be great to be able to experience that firsthand. (Found through Core77)

Michael Cross' Bridge

This art instillation called Bridge, by Michael Cross, was part of last year's London Design Festival. The setting is an old church filed with 60 inches of water. As you approach the water you are met by one single stepping stone. Stepping out onto the stone causes a series of small platforms to rise out of the water creating a walkway. As you walk out to the center of the church, the steps disappear behind. You end up peacefully alone above the water, free to take in your surroundings. Sounds wonderful.

Unfortunately, based on people's Flickr photos it looks like the insurance company stepped in and added lifejackets and an escort to the mix as well as cutting out the disappearing steps. The effect isn't quite the same. (Found through Computerlove).

Neil Duerden

I was just looking through the online portfolio of UK based artist Neil Duerden. He's a mixed media artist who combines vector artwork with photography. He has a lot of very nice work. I like the balance is able to strike between the real and the surreal, depending on the subject matter and client. I was actually surprised how much of his work I had seen before.

Sarah Hood Jewelry

I like this inventive new line of jewelry from Sarah Hood called Landscape. It is made out of model train landscape elements. There is something about the size distortion and the material combinations that really works for me.

Diesel Holographic Fashion Show

Check out some of this video footage of Diesel's Spring/Summer 08 catwalk show last week. They used animated holograms to make underwater creatures and graphics swim the runway along with the models. It is a pretty amazing overall effect. For more information read this article on the Creative Review Blog.

The Grand Tour

Ok, so imagine that you are the owner of an art gallery and people aren't coming to see your paintings. What do you do? You bring the paintings to the people (of course)! For the next 12 weeks the National Gallery in London England is displaying some of their most famous paintings on the streets of London. Art lovers - don't be alarmed, they are only replicas. The exhibit is called The Grand Tour. You can go to their website and download maps and audio tours to help guide you through the paintings. Or if you are just walking the streets of London and come across a painting, simply use your mobile phone to dial the number displayed and hear the museum's description of the piece. I think this is such a brilliant idea. To see more images of the paintings on display, check out this Flickr gallery. (Found through Noisy Decent Graphics)

Hasan Elahi

Part art project and part alibi, Hasan Elaihi's self tracking project is totally fascinating. After finding out that his name had been mistakenly added to the FBI's terrorist watch list, Hasan Elahi decided to be totally open about his life. So he turned his life into the ultimate blog. His site, TrackingTransience.net, shows thousands of pictures of his daily activities (including meals he's eaten, toilets he's used, airplanes he's been on) accompanied by a list of debit card transactions and his current location (care of a GPS unit he carries in his pocket). He's been doing this daily since 2002. His theory is that "the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away". He figures the government monitors all of these things anyway but without much accuracy. Why not help them get it right by simply providing the information yourself. Awesome! (Found in Wired Magazine)

Underwater Sculpture

This is one of the pieces from the Grenada Underwater Sculpture Gallery in the West Indies. The gallery was stared by artist Jason Taylor in May 2006. The underwater gallery has a couple purposes; one is to attract tourists to Grenada, another is to act as an artificial coral reef, and the last is to create a unique way of looking at art by utilizing the effects of water, light, and sea life to distort or highlight aspects of the sculptures. All of the underwater art celebrates Caribbean culture and people. The sculputres are located about 5 meters underwater; viewable by snorkelers or divers. (Found through Wooster Collective)

Lori Early

I came across the work of Lori Early last weekend in SoHo's Opera Gallery. Her work was so striking and beautiful that it drew us in from the street. All of her paintings have a certain eeriness that grabs your attention. The big gothic black frames enhance the grandeur and mystique of the images they contain. Once you see the paintings up close you are drawn in even closer by the fine detail, until your nose is almost touching the surface and you have to fold your hands together to keep from reaching out and touching the hair or fur. Neither the artist's site nor the gallery's site do the paintings justice. Her show has only been on for about a week and already all of her paintings have little sold stickers beside them (each selling for a reported $55,000-$95,000).

Peter Callesen

Peter Callesen creates some amazing artwork out of cut paper. I particularly like his A4 Papercut series. Most of his pieces use the cutout in the paper to create part of the imagery and the sculpture formed out of the cut area to complete it. You can't help but be amazed at how much thought, effort and delicacy goes into each piece of paper.

My Moleskin

My Moleskin is up for a Webby Award this year. The site is a collection of artwork by Fabio Iaschi. What I like about the site is that all the drawings are done in a Moleskin notebook and then scanned (presumably) into jpgs for the website, but it doesn't lose the feel of a sketchbook. An interesting website and nice artwork.

Mail Me Art

Mail Me Art is a collaborative art project created by Darren Di Lieto. The project invites wannabe artists to create a work of art on an envelope of parcel and mail it to the project's address in the UK. The end goal of the project is to show the submissions in London gallery where the pieces will be sold. Part of the money from the sale goes back the artist. The site also offers monthly prizes to keep the mailing momentum up. For more information on how to submit, visit www.mailmeart.com.

CrisVector

This weekend I came across the portfolio of Brazilian artist Cristiano Siqueira (a.k.a. CrisVector). All of his pieces are vector based digital artwork. His main creation tool is Illustrator; using reference pictures, hand sketches or Poser images as underlays. What I really like about Cris' work is his bold use of color, and the interesting place where most of his work exists (especially the Women series) somewhere between realism and comic.

Petr Weigl

I'm inspired by British artist Petr Weigl's work. On one hand his work is very natural and raw, using heavy slabs of concrete and ceramic with details that look as if they have almost rotted away. On the other hand all of his pieces maintain a certain level of composure and elegance. The control of this juxtaposition is what makes these pieces so dynamic and interesting. (Thanks James)

Carsten Holler slides at the Tate Modern

The spacious Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern Museum has been home to many fascinating large scale exhibits. The current one, running October 2006-April 2007, is called Test Site designed by German artist Carsten Holler. The exhibit is a series of large slides running from various levels of the museum down to the ground floor. The project is called Test Site because the artist views the exhibit as a sort of large scale user test to study the how slides could be used in public spaces. Holler describes the experience of sliding as "a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness". His larger vision is to introduce slides across London and other large cities as part of our everyday architectural lives. What are the advantages of slides? Well, they are quick, inexpensive to construct, and energy efficient, but most importantly, fun.

Check out more images of the slides as well as timelapse video of their setup and live exhibit webcams on the Tate Modern's website.

Little People

Little People are my new favorite street art (Sorry Banksy and Moose, you've got to make room for the little guys). They are tiny hand painted people placed around London and left to "fend for themselves". They are placed in contextually relevant situations, like the guy getting into his car with shopping bags outside of a grocery store or the hikers climbing through a plant in KEW gardens, adding to the illusion that they live along side us. Whereas most street art grabs your attention by being loud and controversial, these little guys are small and understated. To me, this adds to the effectiveness of their message because you have to be paying attention to see them, making the audience more exclusive, deserving and appreciative of their effect. (Found through Wooster Collective)

Russ Mills

I love the work of British illustrator Russ Mills. It's a nice mix of illustration techniques, combining real and digital media. Most of his latest work is head shots of people. There is something really captivating about his portraits. The subjects draw you in with their facial expressions and poses giving a sense of emotion and seduction.

300

I saw 300 this weekend (I had been counting down the days till March 9th). It was pretty amazing. I'm not sure if I would say I loved it but I did thoroughly enjoy it. There are so many absolutely gorgeous shots in the movie. It is so refreshing to see movie makers trying to do something new and exciting.

If you are not familiar, the film is based on the graphic novel, 300, by Frank Miller. The movie does an excellent job of capturing the composition of the comic book frames. The result is something that is much more like a moving work of art than a movie, which I really appreciated.

Almost ever backdrop in the film is computer generated. The sets that they filmed on were as minimal as possible. Check out the conceptual artwork and video journals in the "Making of 300" section on the 300 website.

77 Water St

One of my favorite things about New York City is all of its little hidden gems. This is one that I came across today. It is a full size sculpture of a World War I Sopwith Camel, designed by Rudolph de Harak and sculpted by William Tarr. The biplane sits on a green runway on the roof of 77 Water St in Manhattan's financial district. What I love about this is that when it was built in 1969 no one other than the people in the surrounding taller buildings could see it. Of course, now we can all see it care of Google Maps by searching for "77 water st, Manhattan, NY" and turning on the Satellite or Hybrid views. (Found through Wooster Collective)

Brooks Salzwedel Belt Buckles

These belt buckles by Brooks Salzwedel are not your traditional metal buckles. They are really gorgeous pieces of artwork made from layered graphite and resin. The layers create depth of field making the images very dynamic. If only I could afford the $175 price tag.

Make your own Wee Planets

I've always really liked the little planet images that people have made out of panoramic photos. They are very Little Prince. I've seen this done by a few photographers now. For a couple of examples check out Alexandre Duret-Lutz's flickr collection of Wee Planets.

I found a tutorial on Photojojo about how to make your own little planets. You basically take a panoramic photo and stretch it into a square. Then you apply a polar filter. It sounds simple but I think it takes the right photo and some handy Photoshop clean-up work to make it look awesome. I'm totally going to try it.

Sketches of Frank Gehry

I watched the Sketches of Frank Gehry today on DVD. I was somehow expecting him to be more of a rock star architect but he comes across as very down to earth and often even under confident. He spends a lot of the movie talking about how he stresses over his designs and has to become suitable frustrated with something before he can get it right. You get a good sense of his creative process and approaches by the end. There are also some great quotes from Gehry like 'That is so stupid looking, it's great'. After I was done watching, I immediately ordered a copy on Amazon. You can watch the movie trailer here.

Running the numbers

Running the Numbers is a fascinating series of photography by Chris Jordan that uses images to reinforce statistics. Each overall picture is made up of a certain number of smaller images used to illustrate a point. The piece shown above, called Cans Seurat 2007, uses 106,000 cans to make up the image. This represents the number of cans consumed in the US every thirty seconds. Other works include an image of Ben Franklin made up of 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills (amount the US government spends every hour on the war in Iraq) and fifteen million sheets of office paper (the equivalent of five minutes of paper use).

Check out these and other works by Chris Jordan at www.chrisjordan.com.