Roberto Benavidez

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Fantastical Plants and Hybrid Characters Form a Strange Menagerie Crafted by Cat Johnston

…the animals I saw there (hummingbirds and pelicans and raccoons!) and wanted to create a landscape of plants and creatures that felt as alien and magical as California did to me,” she says. Currently living and working in Portland, the illustrator and model maker first worked with paper for a stop-motion animation she did with Andersen M and Tundra studios and has been creating with the material since. She’s in the process of crafting two more characters, which she’ll be sharing soon on Instagram. You also might enjoy Roberto Benavidez’s piñatas and the felt storybook creatures by Cat Rabbit.  …

Art Colossal

Interview: Artist Roberto Benavidez Shares His Fascination with Paper Sculpture and the Stories Behind His Fantastical Piñatas

From the Hieronymus Bosch Piñatas series. All images © Roberto Benavidez, shared with permission Harboring an ongoing fascination with the piñata, artist Roberto Benavidez (previously) centers his practice on translation as he crafts fantastical creatures and scenes from Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, medieval manuscripts, and landscape photographs. When it comes to the form, that’s the challenge for me. The sculptor in me wants to not necessarily replicate the reference material but to capture the spirit of it. At times making adjustments that are either self-referential or just a play on the history of the piñata. In the most recent interview available…

Art

Fantastical Creatures From Illuminated Manuscripts Recreated as Piñatas by Roberto Benavidez

Robert Benavidez looks to famous paintings and literature for source material for his metallic piñatas, such as Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (previously). The Los Angeles-based artist’s most recent series Illuminated Piñata pulls characters from the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1325-1335), a famous medieval manuscripts. The book contains illustrations of fantastical hybrid creatures, which Benavidez further explores by creating three-dimensional sculptures using traditional piñata motifs. Works from his Bosch series will be on view at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, CA in the group exhibition BEAST, opening February 2, 2019. You can see more of his sculptural piñatas on…

Art

Figures From Hieronymus Bosch's Paintings Recreated as Sculptural Piñatas

Artist Roberto Benavidez focuses on the art of piñata making in much of his sculptural practice, producing birds, sugar skulls, and paintings out of the same technique used to create the iconic candy-filled party object. His latest series of piñatas focuses on the work of the 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, reimagining Bosch’s 2D figures as life-size sculptures. Although most of the pieces focus on the various bird figures in Bosch’s work, Benavidez has also sculpted a blue, armless frog and a winged boy from his famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights. You can see more of his…