I came across these origami papers over at Pingmag (along with many other souvenir ideas from Tokyo), and thought they were pretty clever: having the final form pre-printed on the origami paper so that the end product has an additional dimension of appeal. Of course, this would mean that the paper is restricted to only that particular fold/object, but it’d still make a good gift especially for beginners!
Graphic design on the paper done by cochae.
Give a man punched holes, and he’d file it in a folder. But give him a hole puncher (that can punch different sizes, please), and – voila – he can churn out magnificent art piece! Discovered over at NOTCOT:
Steven Nicholson is a 2yr student at Plymouth university in the United Kingdom studying Graphic communications with typography. And apparently he is a genius with a hole punch? Check out this self portrait using 10 different sized single hole punches on a a1 piece of paper that he just sent over. Can you imagine the patience?
All I can say is WOW. This work just makes anyone else with a hole-puncher (What? You only use it for document archiving?!) look really boring and uncreative.
Time has an archive of some wall murals in Philadelphia – I must say I’m very much impressed by the quality and maturity in some of them. Like the two examples above: ‘Malcolm X’ by the artist Ernel Martinez, who grew up in gang-plagued L.A. and Detroit but grew up an artist and muralist; and ‘Careers: Head to the Sky’, created by artist Cavin Jones who broke up the children’s’ faces into simple zones and invited local students to help paint it.
I thought it’s really great that quality art are spread (and in a big scale) in the city, where they can be seen in an everyday context (as opposed to a museum, which might serve a more niched audience in an curated, artificial setting). These murals are not only artistically well-painted, but they also carry a sense of hope and maturity in their message. Beautifying the landscape and lifting the mind – great works indeed!
Brilliant!
The pottery, named Yuanyang II, is one of the collections of Hong Kong Museum of Art now displaying at the Central Concourse of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). It is produced by Tsang Cheung-shing, a ceramic art tutor and product designer.
Yuanyang II is modeled in a distinctive form with two figures indulged in kissing each other. Their heads support two elegant cups for drinking tea and coffee. The form and concept design fully complement the theme “Yuanyang” (a typical Hong Kong beverage of mixing tea and coffee), a symbol of marriage and love, with a touch of humour for artistic creation.
Stumbled across some rather well-done caricatures of famous people – usually caricatures are limited to pencil sketches or maybe paintings…but these have a much more 3D feel to them! Not sure who’s the artist behind them though…[Edit: The artist is David O’Keefe – I have modified the link above to point to his site; Thanks Joe]
No prizes for guessing who are the celebrities – though I must say the second one looked rather more like Michael Moore than the supposed Elton John.
[Nicole Kidman, Elton John, Hillary Clinton]
Mmm, it’s amazing how art can lift even the most ugly and stinky (literally) dump truck into something that – *gasp* – one might even look forward to, as evidenced by how New York city has to shuffle its truck schedules so that more people can see the truck murals (they have covered 6 of them with artwork):
“We’re going to rotate them so more neighborhoods can see them,” said John A. Liszewski, the commissioner of the Public Works Department for this city of about 200,000. He would like to see the rest of his fleet undergo makeovers if his staff can attract more private sponsors.
Now if they could apply that to trains, light rails, trams, buses too…
This, my friends, is the most ingenious use of old telephones and cords. I certainly was tricked.
The name Yann-Arthus Bertrand may strike a familiar chord – he’s perhaps most well known for his “Earth from above” series, where he’d take stunning images of the Earth from a helicopter. It turns out he’s not just a one-dimensional aerial photographer.
I just discovered one of his other ventures, 7 Billion others , which is an equally inspiring set of interviews: about 6000 people from 65 different countries were interviewed on topics common to all humanity – god, happiness, parents, experiences, family, etc, bringing a sense of commonality amidst diversity. As Yann-Arthus describes the motivation for this project:
The idea came to me while we were taking the shots for “Earth from Above”, in Mali, one day when the helicopter was out of action. The pilot had gone and I was waiting for him in a little village where I started to have a discussion with someone. I stayed there the whole day. In the evening, by the fireside, that man I’d been talking to told me his entire life, his desires, his wishes, his ambitions – they could be summed up in four words – “to feed my family”. In spite of the poverty, the drought, I still thought I understood the whole situation. But in fact I didn’t have a clue until that man put it to me, just like that, looking me straight in the eye, not complaining, not asking me for anything. That meeting changed me, it changed the whole way I see the world.
From shooting hundreds of meters above ground, he’s zoomed right to the human, face-to-face videography – the portraitures are close-up and tightly framed, capturing every bit of emotion that makes it much more touching and intimate.
And as these fellow Earth-inhabitants look straight on, honestly and earnestly sharing their personal feelings, dreams, aspirations and worries, we can’t help but be inspired, to relook inside ourselves, and into our own lives.
There aren’t too many details from the Times newspaper article, but I’m loving this make-over of the satellite dish to give a bright dash of fun and joy to an otherwise drab urban flat. By Dutch artist Peter doeswijk.
Incidentally, the hooks you see are for lifting heavy furniture up into houses through the balconies, as the stairwells are too narrow to fit them.
[Edit (Thanks Martien): “The artist’s name is Peter Doeswijk. The drawings were actually made by children. In this specific part of Amsterdam live a lot of foreigners. They use the satellite dishes to receive the broadcasts from their country of origin. Doeswijk printed the drawings on stickers which he put on the dishes. The stickers will stay on for a couple of months. The project gained a lot of positive response and publicity and the artist is considering making a business out of it.“]
Happy Easter! Eggs and Easter have come to be associated over the years (which apparently is due to the ancient belief that Easter bunnies laid eggs in the fields). So, lots of eggs for you today as seen above – an amazing egg stacker!
