Michael Bodiam and Sarah Parker: A Day on My Plate

Creative duo Sarah Parker and Michael Bodiam graphically re-envisioned the diets created for five star athletes by Olympic nutritionist Dan Bernadot. Each menu was recreated using laser-cut MDF, cardboard and paper to develop oversized place settings around real food products, Speaking about the project they said: "We wanted people to be able to draw direct comparison between the diets, and to produce something quite playful that subtly hinted at the sport each athlete participated in."

Illuminated Garbage Bags by Luzinterruptus

For their latest intervention titled "Plastic Garbage Guarding the Museum," Spanish performance collective Luzinterruptus created a large scale installation consisting of 5,000 colorful plastic bags filled with air, piled up in dumpsters and lit up from within. The installation was created for the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur in Switzerland and was meant to demonstrate, in a humorous way, the environmentally damaging effects of mindless consumption.

PutPut: Sponge Popsicles

For their latetst project titled "Popsicles" Swiss/Danish artist group PutPut created series of imitation frozen treats through the purposeless addition of sponges and scouring pads. Both products represent different aspects of everyday life and are recognizable in their own right. They are morphed into a fictional replica creating a visual double take and a dysfunctional bi product.

Alice Bartlett : The World at Your Fingertips

Alice Bartlett explores the concept of scale and illusion by using her fingernails to stage and photograph miniature scenes. Alice came up with the concept after covering her nails with textured green flocking. She then added miniature model figurines to complete these little Summer vignettes. Absolutely brilliant!

The Week-End

Our most popular posts this week featured impressive sculptures created using rolled up pages of magazines glued together, a collection of personal artifacts organized by color, a series of portable sculptures created using materials found in hardware stores, and large-scale installation comprised of hundreds of origami flying cubes.

And from around the Web...

A typewriter for your laptop.

Creators Project interviews photographer Li Wei.

A London bus doing push ups.

Competitive swimming architectural models. 

A perfume that will make you smell like freshly printed books.

Graphite Pencil Carvings by Diem Chau

Seattle-based artist Diem Chau creates amazing miniature carvings from the graphite of pencils. Chau combines common mediums and common means to create delicate vignettes of fleeting memory, resulting in works that combine egalitarian sensibility and minimalist restraint.

Murat Palta: Classic Movies in Miniature Style

For his senior graduation project, Turkish illustrator Murat Palta recreated famous scenes from movies blending traditional ‘oriental’ (Ottoman) motifs and contemporary ‘western’ cinema. It all started 2 years ago after Palta received very positive responses for his "Ottoman Star Wars" film poster. Palta says, "Combining global with local, traditional with contemporary, and adding a bit of humor made it a fun and rewarding experience for me. According to my marks that I got from the project, the teachers' opinion were the same."

Pinaree Sanpitak: Anything Can Break

Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak is currently participating in the 18th Biennale of Sydney (June 27 – September 16) with a large-scale installation titled "Anything Can Break", at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Installed in a double height gallery of the museum’s new wing, the installation comprises hundreds of origami “flying cubes” and glass clouds suspended from the ceiling. Illuminated by fiber optics, the cubes and clouds are lined with motion sensors that trigger musical motifs in response to the audience’s movement.

Eyal Gever: Collisions

Artist Eyal Gever creates sculptures based on the destructive impact of accidents. Using his own proprietary 3D physical simulation technologies, Eyal captures and freezes catastrophic situations as cathartic experiences. He says, "I am influenced by the destructive impact within our environment. Uncontrollable power, unpredictability and cataclysmic extremes are the sources for my work. They inspire, fascinate and remind me of the constant fragility and beauty of human-life."

Tracy Featherstone: Wearable Sculpture

For her latest project titled "Wearable Sculpture", artist Tracy Featherstone created a series of portable sculptures using materials normally found in hardware stores. A cross between sculpture, architecture, and clothing, these wearable structures materialize our daily struggle between control and chaos. Tracy says: "The traditional role of structure or stability becomes mobile when placed on the figure allowing the individual to indulge in the illusion of stability. The mobile element of the work further subverts attempts of control and order. Similar to the way water will carve a new path around an obstruction, participant finds new ways to move about daily routines in ordinary fashion."

Kazuhiro Yamanaka: Paper Moon

Kazuhiro Yamanaka's Paper Moon light consists of three simple elements, a wooden peg, a piece of paper and a light bulb. A fan shaped paper can be rolled up to be clipped by the large peg to wrap around the bulb. Any type of paper, different colors, shapes, can be used  showing distinct appearances with different lighting effects. The lamp is carefully designed in order to balance the weight.

Sara Cwynar: Accidental Archives

New York-based artist and graphic designer Sara Cwynar transformed her huge collection of objects from  the dollar store and flea markets, into a series of beautiful photographic still lifes sorted by color. Her show, titled “Accidental Archives” at the Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, on view through Aug 18, organizes chaos into something coherent and resolved. She says, ‘It’s about working through all the junk, souvenirs and photos we accumulate, and the collective body of photographs we see and understand in our culture".

Yunwoo Choi: Rolling Paper

Korean artist Yunwoo Choi creates impressive sculptures using rolled up pages of magazines glued together to make forms inspired by theoretical physics. Choi explains, “I am interested in invisible and intangible matter itself. Books by the philosopher Ken Wilber, along with Taoist and Buddhist texts have inspired my work. For me, the answer is to express my unseeable and untouchable deep internal interests and spirit.”

The Week-End

Our most popular posts this week featured a series of photographs recreating meals eaten by literary characters, kitchens photographed inside out, large scale collages combining photographs of popular sport moments with pictures of classical sculptures, and a series of paintings made from cut-up sweaters that have been stretched and sewn together.

And from around the Web...

A Crocheted alligator playground in São Paulo.

Digitally dressed up statues.

A digital gumball machine.

Anne Lilly's kinetic sculptures.

A "Water Café" in New York's East Village.

Stefen Chow: The Poverty Line

Stefan Chow's most recent project titled "The Poverty Line,", explores a simple question. What does it mean to be poor? Stefan and economist Lin Hui-Yi set out to visualize what poverty looks like by highlighting how much food people living at the poverty line in various countries can afford to buy. Speaking about the project Stefan says, "We are not trying to compare different countries’ poverty, but rather to have a starting point to understand poverty within a country’s context. One frame. One person. One day. Everything else is left up to interpretation."

Alex Chinneck: The Art of Destruction

For his latest project titled "Telling the Truth Through Broken Teeth", British artist Alex Chinneck removed every pane of glass from an abandoned industrial building in Hackney, in east London, and then replaced them with broken panes, each cracked in the exact same way. As Pablo Picasso once said, " Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."

Video: New York Park by Black Sheep Films

Black Sheep Films merges New York's most famous landmarks with rides from Brooklyn’s Luna Park, transforming the city into a massive amusement park. The result is a fun video that defies all known laws of physics.

Jayson Musson: Halcyon Days

Artist Jayson Musson (aka Hennessy Youngman) creates paintings made from cut-up sweaters that have been stretched and sewn together. His show, titled “Halcyon Days” at Salon 94 on the Bowery, on view through August 17, consists of several huge canvases of cut-up and stretched COOGI sweaters reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's work.

Things: Scotchblue Lamps

When designer Dino Sanchez was asked by Design Milk to create something out of 3M's ScotchBlue painter's tape, he came up with the idea of building a set of DIY lamps constructed solely of layered blue tape, wooden dowels and a corded light source. Dino explains, "3M ScotchBlue tape is very accessible and available at any hardware store. Going along with that I wanted to create something just as accessible, simple enough that anyone could make. The goal was to use as few materials and tools possible. It was important that all the pieces could be purchased anywhere ScotchBlue tape could also be purchased."

Erik Klein Wolterink: Kitchen Portraits

Photographer Erik Klein Wolterink explores kitchens of various ethnic groups within the city of Amsterdam. For this project he mapped these kitchens in a systematic, almost maniacal way. The inside of cupboards, drawers and fridges were photographed in the way that the original user had left it and then reassembled into a single seamless composite image.

Moritz Heller: Conversation Pieces

Created by Moritz Heller, these "Conversation Sculptures" were inspired by visualizations based on actual conversations between four people. The sculptures were assembled using separate pieces of cardboard that were crafully measured, cut, and then finally glued together to create a real-life waveform. Speaking about the project Moritz says," I chose cardboard as the material because I think cardboard is like a conversation, it's everywhere and most people can have it".

Jens Ullrich: Pilots

Jens Ullrich’s large scale collage series titled “Pilots” consists of deconstructed photographs of popular sport moments found in newspapers mashed together with pictures of classical sculptures. The images are a striking juxtaposition of flowing, dynamic movements and solid, stationary scenes. Jens says, " Because I love figurative sculpture, I forced them into symbolic reparations, by hustling their divided bodies into new action and by violating their authorship, so that free spirit, which is known to fly like a dove, can finally take possession of them."

Sebastian Errazuriz: Drowning in Debt Salt & Pepper Shakers

Designed by Sebastian Errazuriz for Kikkerland, these salt & pepper shakers were inspired by the economic meltdown. Sebastian explains, "Like so many of us, these two humble workers have found themselves buried under an inescapable debt. As soon as the seasonings are used the two workers slowly emerge, only to find that they will soon be covered again."

Dinah Fried: Fictitious Dishes

For her photographic series titled "Fictitious Dishes", graphic designer and photographer Dinah Fried recreated the meals of five fictional characters from famous novels such as The Catcher in the Rye, Oliver Twist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Moby Dick. Can you guess which meal belongs to which novel?

The Week-End

Our most popular posts this week featured a series of photographs documenting pilgrims journeying to the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City, gravity defying images of people leaning at impossible angles, a chromatic inventory of skin tones based on Pantone's color system, and a visual-theatrical installation created for public spaces by artist Angie Hiesl.

And from around the Web...

Stunning photos of the aftermath of a toxic spill.

A public sculpture that celebrates the weather as a predominant topic of discussion.

The world's first LEGO colosseum.

Jean Jullien's egg-filled nest.

Incredible panorama of Mars by NASA.

Delightful multi-hoop basketball tree.

Yuji Honbori: Cardboard Deities

Tokyo-based artist Yuji Honbori creates Buddhist statues using layered cardboard cutouts taken from boxes that still bear marks and stains from the vegetables and fruits that were stored in them. Yuji Honobori explains, "I use household materials that are all around us, I try to recycle by transforming them into something else. I guess you could say one man's trash is another man's treasure"

Leonora Hamill: Art in Progress

Leonora Hamill's "Art in Progress" is an exploration of art schools across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The images invite the spectator to enter the studios in these schools and observe the freshly used tools of the trade which are perceived as traces that indicate, or allow us to imagine, the artistic experimentations that take place there.

Experimental Animated GIFs by RRRRRRRROLL

Inspired by the flow of time and small GIFs, a group of friends in Japan started a Tumblr blog called RRRRRRRROLL, featuring beautiful minimalist animations based on objects and people turning on a single axis. According to their twitter the group produces two animations a week, so tune in often to see what's new.

Collapse Lamp by Hayo Gebauer

This lamp by German designer Hayo Gebauer falls over when it's turned off. It utilizes the mechanism of a wobbling figure by using the electrical cord slotted through the loose wooden components to keep the lamp upright under tension. When the cord is released, the weight of the protective foam shade makes it topple over and the electrical contacts in the toggle that holds the cord in place turn the lamp off .

Paul Octavious: Lean with It

For his new photo series titled "Lean With It", Chicago-based photographer Paul Octavious captured gravity defying images of his friends leaning at impossible angles with random trees found in different locations. 

Jeannie Roux: Hidden Beauty

Artist Jeannie Roux creates small hyper-realistic paintings inspired by found objects. Her work explores how seemingly worthless objects have the potential for whimsy and how the ‘inanimate’ mundane can reveal poetic and narrative possibilities.

Alinka Echeverria: The Road to Tepeyac

For her series titled "The Road to Tepeyac", Mexican Artist Alinka Echeverria photographed 300 pilgrims journeying to the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City to pay homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe. With an interest and fascination in belief systems and rituals, Alinka’s observations led her to adopt a personal approach by photographing the backs of the pilgrims showing us a view of the paintings, sculptures and posters that they carry on their backs 

Angelica Dass: Humanae

For her latest project titled "Humanae", Brazilian artist Angelica Dass created a chromatic inventory of skin tones based on Pantone's color system. The project consists of a series of portraits whose background is filled with the exact shade of color extracted from a sample of 11×11 pixels subject’s complexion. The ultimate aim is to record and catalog, through a scientific process, all possible human skin tones.

Angie Hiesl: Rearranging Reality

Hangie Hiesl's "X-Times People Chair" is a visual-theatrical installation created for public spaces. The performance locations are the façades of buildings on streets and city squares. Simple, white chairs made of steel are mounted on the facade of buildings. People between the ages of 60 and over 70 years old sit on the chairs high above the passers-by performing rehearsed, everyday activities in a reserved manner: they read the paper, slice bread, fold clothes… activities that have to do with their daily lives.

The Week-End

Our most popular posts this week featured a series of large photographs inspired by the forms and movements of flying kites, a LEGO forest growing in the Australian outback, found objects re-imagined and elevated to the realms of the extraordinary, and a collection of 100 black and white images created by artistic duo Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen.

And from around the web...

A bridge in Germany that has been converted into a giant Lego structure.

Poland's crooked house.

Iconic photos recreated with Star Wars figures. 

Sustainable carboard toys.

Life sized Monopoly street art.

Diana Beltran Herrera: Paper Bird Anatomy

Colombian artist and illustrator Diana Beltran Herrera creates beautiful anatomical bird sculptures using cut paper and vinyl film. The birds are made in such a way that you can actually see the "innards" through the clear vinyl. Expressive and impressive, Beltran Herrera's work satisfies our scientific (and morbid) curiosity.

Debbie Wijskamp: Black Ruby

Debbie Wijskamp's "Black Ruby" is a collection of housewares made entirely from recycled tire rubber. Wijskamp developed a new way of working with this material, and created small 'pebbles' as building blocks for this collection.

Nick Blakeman: The Human Printer

Nick Blakeman's "The Human Printer" is an amazing body paint optical illusion portraying a female body being gradually 'printed' from feet to head, mimicking the 3D printing process. The images touch upon thoughts about technology and creation; in an age where it is possible to ‘print’ a human kidney, will it ever be possible to print an entire human being?

Lego Forest in Broken Hill

"LEGO Forest" is an art installation that has been set up in a small, isolated mining town called Broken Hill, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of LEGO in Australia. The forest consists of 15 of iconic LEGO ‘pine’ trees scaling 4 metres in height and 15 flower sets. The LEGO Forest trees and flowers are 1:1 in ratio replicas of the original iconic pieces, but over 66 times bigger in size to make the magical play world a reality.

Things: Match Rockets

Steve Hoefer of Grathio Labs explains how to build tiny homemade rockets using stuff generally found around the house. All you need are paper matches, a paper clip, a pin or needle, and a scrap of aluminum foil. "I used to spend hours making these when I was young" Steve says, "My brothers taught me how to make them, but I suspect it originally dates to a time when young boys carried everything they needed in their pockets: Matches, a bit of wire, and a foil gum wrapper."

Chris Held: Hacked Objects

Portland-based object hacker Chris Held takes ubiquitous found objects and re-imagines their aesthetic and function, elevating them to the realms of the extraordinary. The resulting designs are clever, quirky and surprisingly beautiful.

Isabelle Krieg: I Refuse to be Depressed

Artist Isabelle Krieg's installation titled "I Refuse to be Depressed or Frustrated", was created using burnt branches, mirrors, plaster, polystyrene, and varnish. The use of organic materials inspire the viewer to contemplate the natural processes of growth and decline, revealing the underlying ambiguity of Krieg's statement.

Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen: Posterworks

Drawing on the histories of conceptual art, activism and advertising, this collection of 100 black and white images created by artistic duo Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen, with a standard composition and hand-painted signs, was made to encourage and participate in, public dialogue. Through the posters they address philosophical questions, comment on political or artistic issues, quote, complain, poke fun and indirectly document their lives.

René & Radka: Colors of the Wind

For their latest exhibition at Bon Marché in Paris, German-Czech photographic duo René & Radka created a series of photographs and large size projections inspired by air and wind. The exhibition titled "Colors of the Wind" evokes the duo’s fascination with the forms and movements of these fantastic flying kites. “Even though the pictures show beaches, skies and horizon, they give the impression of having been taken under water.”