LEGO Art
Nathan Sawaya, a former 33-year old attorney, is now a famous LEGO artist. His impressive works were detailed in this CNN slideshow and is discussed in this CNN article. From a giant banana to a Starry Night replica, his LEGO sculptures and mosaics are nothing short of LEGO-licious. His official site has a lot more to offer, specifically his huge gallery. And in case you were wondering, eight same-colored 2X4 LEGO bricks can be arranged in 8,274,075,616,387 configurations, at least that’s what Wikipedia:LEGO says.
Interested in other unique artistic mediums? Check out what’s happening with gummy bears, JELLO, and chalk.
Photo is Lego Untamed from Flickr user Starcat
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Threadless T-Shirt design
Hey everyone. I’m still traveling around Europe, mostly without internet access. Still, I’d like to ask anyone who reads this website to go to my friend’s submission at Threadless.com and vote for it. If you didn’t know, Threadless is a t-shirt site that prints and sells more artsy t-shirts that are über-popular. I’m in Germany now so the keyboard actually has an “ü” button! Threadless tees have been featured everywhere, most famously on Zach Braff in Scrubs.
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Graphical goodness
This site (fakeisthenewreal.org) is full of great maps. For example, the above pictures are to-scale drawings of subway systems in New York, London, and Madrid respectively. More cities can be found at their world subways page. I like it when people reorganize information and maps in new ways. Other cool cartographic remixes found on fakeisthenewreal are Chicago Mile by Mile in which one picture representing every square mile of famously grid-like Chicago is shown on the city map, and Public Schools in Order (shown below) in which all of New York’s public schools are connected in numerical order.
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Thousands pose nude for photo
17 to 18 thousand people turned out in Mexico City the other day to take their kit off and pose for the world’s largest nude photo shoot. The photographer, Spencer Tunick, had previously taken similar pictures in Barcelona with 7,000 people posing. The throng posed in a number of configurations including this one with the entire naked crowd saluting the Mexican flag.
More at the Daily Mail.
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Jello San Francisco
This is an oldie but a goodie. Liz Hickok is a San Francisco artist that has worked with a number of media including sculpture, photography and most importantly, jello. This gallery of photos is from her most famous exhibition in which she cast a scale model of downtown San Francisco entirely out of jello, Golden Gate Bridge and everything.
Previously on duenos:
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Yahoo!’s Week in Photos
In an awe-inspiring slide show, Yahoo!’s Week in Photos details twelve worldly events each Sunday from the previous week. These eye-candy shots can be viewed with captions to snippet the news event that’s featured or solo. For the more popular ones, there’s an option to purchase a poster and/or a smaller sized printout.
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Street art debate
The Top Ten Pictures blog has posted a discussion on the merits of street art (graffiti). Among some of the breath-taking art shown as examples, they also chose to use one of my pictures as an example of the movement. I encourage you to check out the Top Ten Pictures post and weigh in on one of the more interesting debates going on in the art world today.
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The art of video games
Into the Pixel is an online art exhibition that features art from video games. It will consist of 16 of the most beautiful images from all video games, published and not.
This is an excerpt from the Into the Pixel main page that I think represents the most articulate testimony to the place of game art in the larger scheme of generalist art:
Video Games are an influential aspect of pop-culture and entertainment whose impact goes beyond the digital arts to influence perspectives in art, cinematography, literature, and even fashion. Behind every game character and dynamic environment are artists whose talents birthed the image seen in the 3-D world.
The above picture is one of the submissions entitled Chicago Train Graveyard, from the game Stranglehold by Stephan Martiniere.
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Guerrilla Benches in London
The Space Hijackers, self-described as “Trouble with an anti-capital ‘T’, have been part of a sustained Guerrilla Benching campaign in the borough of Camden in London. Apparently the Borough Council has been removing benches and the people, at least according to this lot, are not going to take that sitting down.
Photo credit to the Space Hijackers and story via Time Out
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YouTube speed painter
Artistic talents are something I’ve always envied, and this guy is no exception to that. His name is Nico Di Mattia from Cordoba, Argentina and his channel, NEXX, is the 78th most subscribed-to channel on YouTube. I can see why. The videos produced by this Argentinian are gorgeous, sped-up renditions of his own art being created with Photoshop. It really is cool to see every stage of the work, from experimenting with textures to simply re-drawing individual lines. Check out this video of his portrait of Scarlet Johannson being drawn:
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The practical wisdom of children
Big Fat Whale is a weekly comic strip by Brain McFadden. The subject matter of the comic ranges, but his sometimes dry, sometimes sledge hammer wit pairs well with the Tin Tin-like drawing style. I’d like to specifically draw your attention to his series entitled “Kids say the Most Pragmatic Things” where such nuggets of wisdom can be found as ‘Fingerpainting is fun, but I wish the curriculum would better prepare me for a world that stifles creativity’ or ‘Cooties are just a manifestation of boys’ sexual insecurities.’ See the strips here and here.
Thanks for the link Tommy.
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Homemade Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
42 year-old Constable Nick Pointing might just be the perfect husband. His wife Carolyn has absolutely loved the story of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for years and now thanks to four years of hard work and a lot of skill, she has one of her own. Nick and Carolyn built this road-legal (although not flight-worthy) replica of the famous flying car out of an old Land Rover.
Photo credit and original story at the Daily Mail
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The Art of Wii - Creativity Meets Technology
Nintendo of Canada is hosting a unique sweepstakes in which contestants can win one of six beautifully crafted, artistically brilliant, hand-painted Wiis. These systems are gorgeous.
Each was crafted by a renowned Canadian artist, and each provides a unique interpretation of Nintendo’s vision for the Wii: one features a friendly bunny waving hello to a friend, while another (pictured below) features a slick character exploding out of the Wii canvas in a fury of 1-Ups and treasure chests (brandishing a Wiimote and Nunchuk, no less).
Unfortunately for me, the sweepstakes is only open to Canadian citizens, but I may pursue citizenship just to enter. Landing any of those sweet systems seems well worth the effort!
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Armed in America
I try very hard to avoid just repeating what you can and may read elsewhere but this is something I had to highlight. Photographer Kyle Cassidy has released preview photos from an upcoming book entitled “Armed in America: Portraits of gun owners in their homes.” They are, in a word, stunning. The American fetish for firearms is something I never understood and though I’m probably no closer now than before, these pictures moved me to place myself a little closer to those I’d always feared.
The thing that really surprised me is how very normally-American all these people look. Often pictured with their little children or pets in suburban living rooms, these are no gun nuts. And yet, for a lot of the subjects, toting an assault rifle looks just as natural as a TV remote.
This online exhibition has acted to further solidify my love for portraiture. There’s something so intrinsically human about looking at another person without pretension and in their own milieu. A few weeks ago I blogged about another portrait series that’s also an internet-photography must-see featuring gangsters in New Guinea and militant Palestinians. Check that out here
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Chalk art by Julian Beever
I’m sure you’ve seen at least some of his art in your life but Julian Beever is worth another look. Using just chalk and the pavement beneath his feet, this artist makes things come to life in three dimensions by manipulating our perspective. The French have long had a term for it, ‘trompe l’oeil’ but it seems the current master of the technique is an Englishman named Julian.
This picture of Julian jumping off a wooden diving board into a pool at the base of a staircase-waterfall is my favorite.
For more of his art, check out his website
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This week in photography
Below are links to some of the coolest photography sites I found this week. The first two are along the same vein with the artists (Li Wei and Denis Darzacq) placing people in improbable or impossible positions within the urban landscape:
Li Wei Li Wei Falls to the Hong Kong
The next photo set is truly world class. They are the winners of the annual World Press Photo competition and though they were released last week, I thought there could be some people out there who hadn’t seen them. This photo is of a man in Nigeria rinsing his face just after an oil pipeline explosiong. Brilliant work.
World Press Photo competition winners
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Robert Doisneau
Robert Doisneau has to have been the most famous and accomplished photographer of the 20th century. For 60 years, the artist brought Paris to the world with such pictures as ‘Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville’ (the Kiss by the Hotel de Ville) and “the musician in the rain.’ Pictured below.
For anyone lucky enough to have seen it, a comprehensive Doisneau exhibit just closed this past Saturday at the Hotel de Ville in Paris. In addition to the more famous photographs (like the ones above), it was wonderful to see the more humorous pictures that seemed to really show the man behind the camera. My personal favorites of the exhibit were a series he took of pedestrians walking by a small gallery and looking in at a female nude. The facial reactions to the painting are priceless and I’ve posted my favorite below.
For more Doisneau photographs you can feel free to use Google Image Search but you’ll get far too many copies of Kiss at the Hotel de Ville than would be good for you. Instead try this website sponsored by Ace murder mystery games.
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Interview with Takashi Matsumoto
Check out this awesome interview with Takashi Matsumoto from We Make Money Not Art (WMMNA). Takashi is one of those incredible people who see all the wonderful application of technology in society and actually has the knowledge and skills to make it real. WMMNA is one of the better blogs I read on a daily basis and I highly recommend adding it to your daily digest. ‘, ‘
Check out this awesome interview with Takashi Matsumoto from We Make Money Not Art (WMMNA). Takashi is one of those incredible people who see all the wonderful application of technology in society and actually has the knowledge and skills to make it real. WMMNA is one of the better blogs I read on a daily basis and I highly recommend adding it to your daily digest.
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