What at first looks like an experiment in a psychedelic Petri dish is actually an installation by artist Ambreen Butt using hundreds of cast pink fingers and toes made of resin that seem to explode on the walls at Carroll and Sons in Boston. Titled I Am My Lost Diamond the piece will be up through December 22. All photographs courtesy Andrew Katz at New American Paintings.
From the kabillions of likes on YouTube and Tumblr this project has apparently circumnavigated the internet already, but for some reason it’s been entirely off the Colossal radar. A collaborative installation between Mike O’Toole, Andrew Ratcliff, Ian Charnas and Andrew Witte, the Waterfall Swing is an intelligent swingset made from mechanical waterjets (solenoids) that create a falling plane of water in the path of the swinger. However just as the rider reaches the rainfall the water parts briefly ensuring nary a drop dampens their swinging. The swing was unveiled at the 2011 World Maker Faire, and you can find additional videos and specifications to build your own here, and for more intelligent rainfall goodness checkout the Rain Room. Photos above courtesy Paul Sobota.
A few days ago I stopped by Carrie Secrist Gallery here in Chicago to discover a new thread installation from Kansas City-based artist Anne Lindberg (previously) called Zip Drawing. The piece was created by stapling taunt strands of Egyptian cotton thread in a meticulous yet seemingly haphazard fashion between opposing gallery walls resulting in an ethereal field of suspended color. Although these photos by Derek Porter do a great job of conveying the hue and scale of the piece (35 feet at its widest) it’s hard to feel the magnitude and energy of the piece without standing right in front of it. Stop by if you can, the exhibition runs through October 20 and also includes a number of her colored pencil drawings.
A grid of physical entities, 2012
A capacity to breed and recover, 2011
Circle of reception, 2011
An upward displacement, 2010
Resound with an echo, 2011
Revisit the revolution, 2012
Second system of ethics, 2012
Science of planting forest, 2010
Norwegian conceptual artist Rune Guneriussen (previously) explores a fascinating balance of human culture and nature with his outdoor installations of electric lamps, stacked books, chairs, and phones that appear to have gathered in small herds and swarms as if suddenly sentient. Each work is assembled and photographed on-site without any digital intervention in various rural locations around Norway. Guneriussen just updates his website with nearly two dozen new photos of works over the past three years (the photos are scattered around the site, but it’s well worth the clicking) and also opened a show at Rheingalerie Bonn gallery which runs through November 10. (via my modern met)
For the past few months Indianapolis-based artist Tasha Lewis has been traveling around the country creating guerrilla installations using a swarms of 400 cyanotype butterflies printed on cotton fabric (cyanotype is a photographic printing process that results in blue images, just like blueprints). Each blue insect is embedded with powerful magnets allowing her to place them on any metallic surface without causing damage, which as far as impermanent street art goes, is brilliant. Of her work she says:
My current body of work was drawn from an investigation into the cultural/scientific/historical context in which the cyanotype was born. Popularized by scientists, and botanists in particular, the cyanotype is intrinsically tied into the scientific recording boom of the late 19th and early 20th century. These are the times of the curiosity cabinet, the prints of Anna Atkins and a rush of explorers/scientists to colonial lands only to bring back specimens from foreign ecosystems. [.. ] The cyanotype is a process of documenting. The resultant image is a kind of scientific stand-in for the actual object in question. It is the trace of the original. In this way, like cyanotype’s use for building blue prints in more recent centuries, my work is formed as the re-presentation of something real; it is somehow not quite the object itself.”
Tasha has published photos of numerous installations on her Tumblr, definitely worth a look. (via empty kingdom)
This is a fascinating and touching glimpse into the ongoing art installation of Austin, Texas resident Vince Hannemann (aka the Junk King) who since 1989 has been collecting thousands of discarded objects and turning them into a giant cathedral of junk. In 2010 the city closed the structure claiming it was unsafe and demanded Hannemann obtain proper building permits for his “auxiliary structure”. He was then forced to remove nearly 60 tons of materials before finally obtaining the approval from an engineer. Over seven months hundreds of volunteers stopped by to lend a hand and the cathedral has begun expanding once again. Shot and edited by Evan Burns. Last photo by Blake Gordon. (via vimeo)
CLOUD is a large scale interactive installation by artist Caitlind r.c. Brown that appeared September 15th as part of Nuit Blanche Calgary in Alberta, Canada. The piece is made from 1,000 working lightbulbs on pullchains and an additional 5,000 made from donated burnt out lights donated by the public. Visitors to the installation could pull the chains causing the cloud to sort of shimmer and flicker, I can’t tell you how much I would have enjoyed seeing this up close or at least on video. Did anyone film it? Learn more about it on the project website, and if you liked this also check out Wang Yuyang’s Artificial Moon. (via my eclectic depiction of life)
Update: Now with video. (thnx, fortunat!)
Forget hover cars, when do we get our compostable ones? I love these buried vehicles being reclaimed by nature at CMP Block in Taiwan that seeks to merge “art, aesthetics, and nature”. Reminds me of the Mossy Beetle at Belladrum last year. (via toni wang, and tao)
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© 2010-2013 Christopher Jobson, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. I try my best to attribute images, videos, and quotes to their creators and original sources. If you see something on Colossal that's misattributed or you would like removed, please contact me. The Colossal logo and name Colossal are the trademarks of Christopher Jobson.
