Category Archives: Eyecatchers

Eyecatchers: Hong Yi

Posted on
Reply

Just a quick recommendation for an amazing piece of work by Malaysian-born artist Hong Yi.

The portrait she’s posing with here, made over the course of 12 hours using coffee stains from a coffee cup, is of Taiwanese pop singer and songwriter, Jay Chou, whose song, Secret, opens with the lifting of a coffee cup off its saucer.

This is one of those works that is remarkable as much for the process used to make it as for the final product, and thankfully, via some photos from the Hong Yi’s website, as well as a YouTube video, we are fortunately able to fully appreciate both aspects.

Via Laughing Squid, via oh I see red:

P.S. Be sure to check out another work by Hong Yi, a portrait of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, made entirely of sunflower seeds.

Eyecatchers: Valerie Buess

Posted on
2

I might as well come right out and admit it.

I’ve become a Christopher “ThisIsColossal” Jobson fanboy.

The thing is, he posts the most consistently interesting, regularly beautiful, and occasionally astounding art and design of any site I know.

Just a week or so ago, I blogged about an artist working with paper, Claire Brewster, whom I discovered at Colossal, and now today I’m blown away at Colossal once again, by another artist working with paper in a painstaking technique that is hard to imagine having the patience for.

But, oh the results! (You MUST click on the lede photo to see exactly what’s going on there.)

By now, rolled paper crafts are fairly popular, fueled originally by a variety of fair trade importers supporting microbusinesses in Africa, and you can now find bowls and picture frames and coasters at art fairs and import stores far and wide.

But Valerie Buess takes this idea to a whole other level, creating stunning objects both abstract and representational. Her work is not confined to this rolled paper technique, so do treat yourself to a nice chunk of time to explore her website, where you can view a vast collection of her work.

Here are some of my favorites:

Video Fridays: A Change Is Gonna Come

Posted on
1

This morning, when I stumbled upon an unusual clip at Paste of Lou Reed performing the Sam Cooke classic A Change Is Gonna Come, I really, really did want to like it.

I’ve been a Lou Reed fan for years, including his Velvet Underground days, and I’ve known about his love for early Rock & Roll and soul music from his discussion with Elvis Costello on Elvis’s show Spectacle. And yet, despite a stellar performance by a very good backing band, despite the fact that I got a kick out of Lou reading the lyrics off of an iPad, occasionally scrolling and pinching a zooming, I just couldn’t abide his vocals for this particular song.

Now, I’m not a snob who thinks that all vocals have to be pretty (I’m a HUGE Bob Dylan fan, nuff said), and I can see that Lou really feels the emotional intensity of the song. But, A Change Is Gonna Come is so special to me because of Sam Cooke’s gorgeous, soaring vocal delivery, and Lou’s voice just doesn’t work here.

Please do go and check out Lou’s version, because if you’re a music geek like me it’s still TOTALLY worth it from an academic standpoint. In the meantime, however, I thought I’d post a version of A Change Is Gonna Come by someone other than Sam Cooke that I think does work.

In fact, it works in a big, BIG way.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the incomparable Al Green:

Eyecatchers: Claire Brewster’s Birds

Posted on
5

Back in March 2011, I blogged about the stop-motion animation work of Anderson M Studio, having been blown away by the painstaking paper art involved, and today I discovered some more beautiful paper art, this time from British artist Claire Brewster.

Brewster’s work, cut out of old maps, is a wonderful salute to the bird’s ability to fly freely above the topography that we ground-bound creatures must work so hard to navigate. The maps themselves add color, texture, and a 3-D quality to the birds that I find very appealing.

Via Colossal, here’s a sampling, though I highly recommending checking out Claire’s blog to see more of her work:

Oh, and I must say, I couldn’t help it, but Claire Brewster’s work made me think of this:

Eyecatchers: John Ito

Posted on
6

I hereby issue a great big BOOOOOOOOOOOOO to our local daily newspaper, The Bellingham Herald, for an article they published today.

What starts out as a wonderful community arts piece is rudely interrupted by an exposé of a controversial public works project, and it’s as clear as can be, to anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of journalism, that the two stories should have been kept separate.

The article begins…

Soon after John Ito moved to Bellingham a year ago for his job as a designer at Mindport Exhibits, he became smitten by the decorative crosswalks downtown.

So smitten that he has crafted an 8-foot-tall, 5-foot-wide windup kinetic sculpture inspired by the crosswalks. Rotate the large wooden key and a system of gears and pulleys – visible behind a clear plastic cover – activate a painted fiberboard replica of the crosswalk on the other side.
“It’s something that people see everyday,” Ito said of the star-and-circle crosswalk pattern. “Everybody can relate to it.”

Midway through, however…

Four years ago, six intersections on Holly Street – from the intersection at Lakeway Drive and Ellis Street downhill to the intersection at State Street – had the intricate crosswalk patterns installed as part of a “streetscape” project…

When the crosswalks were installed, the expectation was that they might last up to eight years. Instead, parts of the design began rubbing away within a few years…

Of course they share some content, but they could have easily been printed on the same page and hyperlinked on the website as related stories.

If I were Ito or the folks who run Mindport Exhibits, I’d be pissed.

And so, in support of the artist, I repost the video of the making of John Ito’s sculpture, Bella Stella, here, as I found it mesmerizing and a complete joy.

Eyecatchers: Becha

Posted on
1

Yesterday, via abduzeedo, I discovered Serbian graphic artist and illustrator Becha (aka Vesna Pesic), and her work it is utterly fantastical and fun!

Like a cross between Terry Gilliam and Salvador Dalí, Becha’s collages offer mind-twisting juxtapositions and turn ordinary things upside down and inside out in a playful manner.

Her images range from subtle to not-so-subtle to scratch-your-head-in-confusion-give-up-and-just-enjoy. She works with a lush, highly saturated palette, and her illustrations are noticeably darker in mood than her graphic art (see her website).

Anyway, without further ado, here’s a selection of my faves: