Craft

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Art Craft

Carefully Molded Paper is Shaped into Personality-Filled Animal Portraits by Tiffany Miller Russell

Colorado-based wildlife artist and natural history illustrator Tiffany Miller Russell uses carefully molded paper to express the unique characteristics of her animal subjects. To start the sculptural works, the artist first creates an original drawing. She then she cuts and forms found specialty papers by hand to build a three-dimensional collage atop the underlying illustration. “I delight in the unique and unusual,” she shares with Colossal, “and my goal when creating is to communicate with my viewer that excitement. I hope to pass along a little bit of wonder for the world around us.”

In addition to creating paper sculptures for the past fifteen years, the artist has also volunteered in a zoology prep lab and paleontology lab to further her knowledge and personal passion for evolutionary history. Miller Russell explains, “I’ve always felt a connection to animals. They have personalities and go about the world in their own ways that matter to them. Humans can anthropomorphize them, and cultures can bound them up in symbols and mythology, but that makes little difference to these creatures which have been going about their business and doing their own thing for millennia.”

The video below offers a time-lapse view of Miller Russell’s hands-on process. The artist tells Colossal that some of her larger tableaux can take up to 300 hours to complete. You can discover more of her three-dimensional animal portraits on her website and Facebook, as well as Etsy, where the artist offers originals and prints for sale.

Craft Design

Cut Paper Illustrations Create Shadow and Depth in Imaginative Environments by John Ed De Vera

Multidisciplinary designer John Ed De Vera builds cut paper illustrations that jump off the page, inviting his audience into the minds of deep sea divers, astronauts, and long distance runners. To more deeply immerse viewers in these imagined worlds, he creates depth and shadow by layering cut pieces of paper. The Philippines-based designer first traces each element out on bond paper. These shapes and designs and then transferred to thick paper that is cut and stacked into colorful arrangements. You can find more of his sculptural illustrations, on Instagram and Behance.

Craft

Elegant Paper Cranes Composed of Detailed Cuts, Folds, and Flowers

In 2015, paper artist Cristian Marianciuc (previously) started a 1,000-day goal to create a new paper crane each day. The extravagant designs included layers of multi-color paper, detailed cuts to imitate feathers, and often gilded elements added onto the wings. After his self-imposed challenge Marianciuc has given himself more time to work on each design, allowing cranes to develop over days rather than hours. Without these constraints he is able to vary his techniques, creating increasingly difficult works that introduce more intricate cuts and folds. Marianciuc posts his cranes regularly on Instagram, in addition to selling select paper works on Etsy. (via My Modern Met)

Craft Design

Miniature Interior Decor Elements Crafted With Impeccable Detail by Kiyomi

Japanese miniaturist Kiyomi imitates antiques with a stunning attention to detail, creating worn and clouded glass jars, slightly tarnished silverware, and cases packed with dozens of drawers. The talented craftswoman produces pieces for dollhouses out of paper, wire, wood, and other materials that imitate their larger companions. To give her audience a sense of scale, the artist will present her small works alongside a scaleable object, either placing a miniature chair on the seat of a regularly proportioned seat or dwarfing a set of drawers by putting it on the step of a ladder. You can see more of her antique items and delicious-looking fake pastries on her Instagram and website.  (via My Modern Met)

Craft Design

Geometric Animals Come to Life in DIY Lamp Kits by OWL

OWL, a Lisbon-based lamp brand founded by two architects in 2016, offers a wide range of friendly wild animals that can be turned into volumetric lamps using simple folding techniques. As you might guess, OWL offers a few different owl designs, as well as roaring hippos, curious rabbits, and proud penguins. Hugo Formiga and Teresa Almeida, the designers behind OWL, explain to Colossal that their “most recent designs have focused on large, endangered mammals. The selection tends to raise awareness about wildlife and simultaneously recreates the animals in a playful and abstract manner. The designs seem to trigger stories about themselves and are conceived as fun lighting objects with a hint of personality.”  You can find their range of DIY kits on Etsy. (via Colossal Submissions)

Art Craft

New Ceramics by Heesoo Lee Capture the Ephemeral Beauty of Seasonal Woodlands

Artist Heesoo Lee (previously) uses multi-layered techniques to form intricate trees, complete with leaves and branches, that seem to grow out of her functional ceramic vessels. Lee’s careful use of color establishes a seasonal mood in each of her works, some evoking the warm tones and fallen leaves of autumn, while others capture the barren beauty of winter. Each woodland scene is drawn from Lee’s imagination. The artist shares that she happened upon her current style of work by chance: her background is as a painter, and she used clay more as a smooth canvas until one day she was working on a tight deadline and was attempting to repair a broken pot, which inspired her to build three-dimensionally.

Lee explains that she uses translucent porcelain because its “beautiful clarity and color and is the perfect canvas for the bright underglaze and glazes I use.” The artist begins by forming each tree individually, starting with the closest and largest trees as she builds perspective by filling in the background with progressively smaller trunks, each of which is individually formed with a clay coil. Next, for her non-wintry pieces, each leaf is individually formed and applied to create the dense foliage that further increases the sense of depth on the surface of her ceramics. After an initial firing, Lee applies colored details using painted underglaze, which must be applied without overlapping different glazes to prevent discoloration after firing. Lastly, she chooses from a range of finishing glazes, selected depending on the desired effect, like an icy blue vernal pool or clearly defined leaves.

Lee shares that she first came to the United States, looking for freedom and adventure and with little knowledge of English, first living in Berkeley, California. She started re-exploring ceramics outside of the strictures of traditional Korean ceramics, rediscovering her love of the tactile medium after studying painting in college. Lee has been a working artist alongside her partner, a fellow ceramic artist for many years, and cites her time in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation as a seminal experience:

 My work, mostly in medium-range porcelain, expanded beyond painted surfaces, my mainstay for many years. I pushed my work beyond the motifs I had been using for many years–flowers, mostly–and built larger than I had before. I was inspired by my children, the landscape of the places where I lived, and my own childhood in Korea, and reflected these themes in my work. I found that working in a place like the Bray, surrounded by other artists who created a supportive, inviting, and welcoming community, gave me the freedom to grow as an artist.

Lee lives and works in Helena, Montana, where she has a home studio and kiln. You can see more of Lee’s in-progress and finished work on Instagram, and she also keeps her Etsy shop updated with new pieces available for purchase.

Craft Science

A Scientifically Accurate Hand-Knit Sculpture of the Human Brain by Dr. Karen Norberg

In 2009, Psychiatrist Dr. Karen Norberg from the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts decided to create a fibrous doppelgänger of the human brain. Using different colored yarns she knit together the two-sided organ one and a half times its normal size, with a cerebellum and spinal cord attached at the end. Dr. Norberg told the Telegraph that the piece was a labor of love. For me, there were two humorous aspects,” she explained. “One was simply to undertake such a ridiculously complex, time consuming project for no practical reason. The second was the idea of making a somewhat mysterious and difficult object – a brain – out of a ‘cuddly,’ cheerful, familiar material like cotton yarn.”

Dr. Norberg created the individual parts of the brain, such as the brainstem and amygdala, before sewing the lightly colored pieces together in its final form. A comparison of the textile sculpture alongside scans from a real human brain can be seen in the image below. (via Women’s Art)