Since 1997 Brazilian artist Andre Muniz Gonzaga has been turning haphazard, porous, or cracked surfaces into bizarre, misshapen faces in his unique style of street art portraiture. His site-specific paintings have appeared around the world this year in places like Senegal, Portugal, Berlin, Amsterdam and of course his native Brazil, and he’s also known for much more elaborate and polished graffiti murals. You can see much more of his work over on Flickr, and if you liked this also check out the work of Nomerz. (via hi-fructose)
London-based artist Mark Powell has chosen the backs of old envelopes as a canvas for these delicately rendered portraits of the elderly, using nothing more than a standard Bic Biro pen to create the delicate folds and wrinkles of their skin. I love everything about these. See much more of his work here and he sells a number of art prints over on Society6. If you liked this also check out the photography of Lee Jeffries.
Seed Faces are little heads made from recycled paper pulp. You put the suckers in some dirt and in a few days heirloom sprouts grow out of their friggen’ faces. If you want, you can then eat them. The whole endeavor is a little quirky and weird but, purchased! Made by Kelsey Pike at the Sustainable Papercraft Studio, available in packs of 25 for $7 or 10 for $3. See also Comic Book Farming. (via the rhumboogie)
Sculptor Manuel Martí Moreno lives and works in Valencia, Spain and forms these wonderful figurative pieces out of iron nuts. Via email Moreno says that he is most interested in showing the passage of time, the transience of life, and our collective awareness of our own mortality, seemingly evidenced by the spectre of decay at the edges of his works. You can see more images including installation shots on his blog, and also here. If you liked this, also check out the sculptures of Park Chan-Girl. Thanks Manuel for sharing your work with Colossal!
Illustrator Florian Nicolle (previously) has published a wonderful collection of his textured illustrations from 2011. Layering scans of newspaper, ink, paint, and a fair amount of digital retouching he arrives at these truly remarkable portraits. See more on Behance.
I’m in love with these stunning drypoint prints by Düsseldorf-based artist Angie Hoffmeister. Drypoint is a printmaking technique in the intaglio family where images are etched onto a plate using a sharp metal or diamond point. Give anything some extra eyes and I’m usually a fan, but there’s also something about using a more traditional and laborious printmaking technique to make such intriguing imagery that I really respect. You can see much more of her work here. (via)
For a second year, street art collective Mentalgassi has partnered with Amnesty International and Wieden + Kennedy creative team Lisa Jelliffe and Kirsten Rutherford to help highlight some of the year’s most prominent human rights abuse cases playing out around the world. Via Unurth:
This year the German street art collective have created work that appears in 26 sites across Wales, Ireland, Germany and Denmark. The 6 individuals highlighted in this year’s work include Fatima Hussein Badi, who faces the death penalty in Yemen after an unfair trial, Jabbar Savalan, who is in prison in Azerbaijan for his peaceful anti-government activism (including comments he made on Facebook), and Natalia Estemirova, a Russian human rights activist whose murder has not been brought to justice.
Mentalgassi transformed large portaits of each individual into segmented strips that are applied to the slats of fences. At first the images aren’t readily visible and only come into focus suddenly from extreme angles, reinforcing the campaign’s theme, ‘making the invisible visible‘. (via unurth)
