Blog Archives
Daily Dose: Rock Art
Artists always strive to be unique. They may do this with certain techniques not commonly used with mediums or they may go as far as inventing their own thing. When they start to get really good at their own thing, you really begin to realize the level of depth one can achieve with art in the conceptual sense. You begin to realize the boundless possibilities that are only allowed through art.
Rocks are as old as the galaxy and the earth. They’ve been used for primitive cave man drawings and over time they’ve been repurposed for sculpture, etc. Taking such a heavily used commonplace material and using them as a basis for a unique type of art is by no means a simple feat. Rock balancing has been around for a while but by no means is it a simple discipline.
While walking to Queen Street I noticed a crowd around what appeared to be rock sculptures. At the center of it all was a man extremely carefully balancing a concrete block on top of some rocks. The look of focus in his eyes kept the crowd silent while the annoying sounds of traffic on the street beside became so ever more apparent. I looked into it and the man behind it goes by the name of Peter Riedel, a Torontonian Photographer. I can only wonder how he has the patience to do what he does.
Daily Dose: Face Ink
Have you ever wondered what your skin would look like if it showed all of the emotional scars you’ve gained from suffering throughout your life? This unique and impressively conceptual idea is the focus of the artwork by Chinese artist, Pinpin Co.
Pinpin takes simple gel ink and applies it to the face of her subjects and minutes later, she washes the ink off. The ephemerality of the piece is representative of how temporarily emotional scars appear on your outer self.
Daily Dose: Hunter Lee
A year ago, I was living in California. It was a normal day and I was looking through Reddit when I stumbled across this picture:
This picture had been submitted in a griptape design contest, and he had won. This year after joining Kollaboration, I met the person in this picture: Hunter Lee (the blogger you all know and love). These kinds of awesomely random coincidences go to show how art brings people together, and to different places all around the world. Not to mention, I’m currently blogging from California while looking back at how slim the chance was for me to have made a full circle, seeing this picture here, then going to Toronto, meeting Hunter, and reflecting on this while in the states.
While he might not look like your typical artsy person, Hunter does some amazing(ly unique) artwork, some of which is shown below. After looking at the artwork he’s put up on his Facebook, one thing I notice is that most of it takes a REALLY long time and dedication to finish (i.e. spidey, pictured below). Props.
Daily Dose: M.C. Escher
M.C. Escher (1898-1972) was an artist born in the Netherlands. He primarily worked with print making and drawing. While these mediums are quite common, it is his mastery of perspective and in combination with his sheer creativity that allows his masterpieces to truly amaze. Shown below is but a small sample of the types of work he has done. Many of his images are architectural and are physical impossibilities if they were to be real. He’s drawn the Mobius Strip (the never ending loop) but takes it to another level. His pattern work is amazing in that they are incredibly precise. Despite all of the seemingly perfect illusions of perspective and the calculations in his work, he was able to include a level of kwirkiness that makes his work appealing to numerous levels of audience.
MCE is an incredible artist who’s mastery with his medium makes his capabilities something to aspire to. Be sure to check out his site http://www.mcescher.com/
Corporate Art
Art is too often considered a medium to visually entertain its audience. While it does this, the artist may have greater goals they want to achieve with their work. In the case of this sculpture in Spain that was commissioned by Huwei, a cell phone manufacturing company, their sculpture is a Pegasus statue made of an iron rod frame covered in their Ascend D Quad smart phone. This artwork was meant to be used to increase awareness of their new product. Many will critique corporate art as an act of selling out an artist’s personal practice in order to make money. Nonetheless, art is art no matter how you slice it and is open for any audience for interpretation.
Daily Dose: Pencil Sculpture
Dalton Ghetti is a Brazilian artist who works with pencils in a fascinatingly unique way. Rather than using the graphite for pencil drawings he uses it literally as material for sculpture. Like how sculptors mold with clay or chisel away at marble, Ghetti chips away at his pencil tips to create tiny masterpieces. Here is his website http://www.daltonmghetti.com/shop.asp
Daily Dose: Excel Art
Microsoft Excel is an incredibly bland spreadsheet program that you use to punch in numbers and data. Who would’ve thought it would be possible to turn it into art. Joe Penna, AKA Mystery Guitar Man is a longtime Youtube star (since 2006) who uses his musical and computer savvy talents to create fun and impressive video pieces. Most recently, he has made an animation video using Microsoft Excel. Who would’ve thought that was possible.
Here’s another one of my favourites by Mystery Guitar Man.
and another
Daily Dose: Video Art
Video art is one of those artistic mediums that can cover a variety of other mediums. You can consider a video of yourself drawing a piece of video art. The aesthetic appeal of video art is the beauty of what you see on the screen. On top of that, an artist can include sound and that brings in the medium of audio art. It is arguable that video art is broader than essentially all of the more traditional forms of art such as painting, drawing, and sculpture. This is because you can essentially stick a camera and point it at what you’re doing and the final video can be considered video art. Time lapse videos are examples of video art. All other forms of art already have an infinite number of permutations and the extension of video art just takes it to another level.
Daily Dose: Concise Photography
“You need to remember that sometimes what you leave out is just as important as what you put in the shot.”
-Simon Bray
Simon is a London based photographer that in this quote describes one of the most common amateur mistakes; trying to fit everything into the view finder. Nowadays with digital photography and Photoshop, you can safely keep in mind that you can just crop out whatever doesn’t look good and click away madly at the scenes around you. The merit behind this quote is that with pure photography, you simply don’t need the post-processing (editing) stage if you’re that good. This is similar in cinematography where you can add in computer generated images and bad special effects while all of that can be achieved better if it were shot correctly the first time. As long as you’re the one pointing the camera, you have the power to compose a great shot. Don’t muddy it up with the unnecessary.
Daily Dose: Olympic Equality
If you weren’t aware, the five rings on the Olympic logo represent different parts of the world. Gustavo Sousa is an artist that has taken this concept and has created an elegant visual representation of how those rings can represent differences in equality in the world.
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