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Craft Design Music

Classic Compositions Performed on a Miniature Paper Piano by Aliaksei Zholner

Aliaksei Zholner (previously) is known for making fully functioning models from cardboard and paper. His latest piece is a miniature 18-key piano that is tuned to play popular and classical pieces such as Fryderyk Chopin’s Polonez b-moll, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Für Elise, and Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer. The “strings” of the piano are created from paper strips connected to a tension mechanism similar to a guitar and struck by hammers made from paper and cardboard. The black cardboard body is branded with Zholner’s name above the keys in the style of popular piano makers such as Bösendorfer and Bechstein. A more detailed explanation of the construction (in Russian) is available on the Only Paper forum, and you can view more of his paper demonstrations on his Youtube channel.

Craft Design

An Award-Winning Sand Sculpture by Damon Langlois Captures a Crumbling Abraham Lincoln

Since 1997, Texas SandFest has attracted thousands of visitors to Port Aransas on Mustang Island. For the 2019 iteration, the three-day-festival awarded British Columbia-based Master Solo competitor Damon Langlois first place for his illusionistic work Liberty Crumbling. The piece portrays Abraham Lincoln in the likeness of the 1920 marble statue in the Lincoln Memorial. However, this one is cracking at its foundation. With his hand to his face, Lincoln appears exasperated as he sits on his crumbling platform.

Other sculptures in the competition also had messages for the audience, although many were environmental. Todd Pangborn’s Out of Sight Out of Mind featured a giant sea turtle next to a coral reef, and Jeff Strong’s Continental Drip displayed an ice cream cone holding a melting Earth. You can see more winners and competitors from the United States’ largest native-sand sculpture competition on Texas SandFest’s website, and view more of Langlois’s sand works on his website. (via Twisted Sifter)

Art Craft

Sharp-Edged Porcelain Vessels by Martha Pachón Rodríguez

Ceramic artist Martha Pachón Rodríguez’s sculptural vessels juxtapose an extremely clean, refined construction with sharp repeated shapes and jarring color combinations. Using a mix of uncolored and pigmented porcelain, Rodríguez layers thin triangles or spikes that resemble quills or teeth, to frame gaping holes in her rounded vessels. In a statement on the artist’s website, she describes her sculptures as a “mixture of human eroticism with animal nature.” In addition to her sculptural body of work, Rodríguez also builds suspended installations and crafts fine jewelry as part of her ceramic practice. The artist was born and educated in Colombia, and continued her studies in Italy. Rodríguez is currently the Art Director of Faenza Art Ceramic Center in Italy. Explore more of the artist’s works on Instagram.

Art Craft

Twisted and Rolled Paper Forms Three-Dimensional Surfaces Inspired by Rich Patterns From India

Industrial designer and artist Gunjan Aylawadi (previously) forms sculptural weavings composed of hundreds of tightly rolled strips of paper. The works’ radial patterns are informed by her upbringing in India where she was constantly surrounded by the repetitive geometric patterns found in the country’s art and architectural details. These remembered patterns are abstracted in her paper-based works, which are equally directed by aesthetic and tactile memories. Aylawadi now lives and works in Sydney, Australia. You can find more of her woven series, including the presented Formed in Fantasy, on her website, Facebook, and Instagram.

Art Craft

Beaded Images of Disease Explore the Impact of Colonial Trade

In her series Trading, Saskatchewan-based artist Ruth Cuthand creates a visual metaphor that outlines how early settler/Native relationships influenced First Nation people’s living conditions and wellbeing in Canada. The colorful works are created from beads which were traded by European settlers for furs in the Americas. Although dazzling aesthetically, the work’s content reveals images of deadly viruses passed on by settlers as a result of this trade, such as influenza, bubonic plague, measles, smallpox, typhus, cholera, and scarlet fever.

“Beads are a visual reference to colonization; valuable furs were traded for inexpensive beads,” explains Cuthand, an artist of Plains Cree and Scottish descent, in her statement about the project. “On the plains beads were a valuable trade item, they replaced the method of using porcupine quills. Preparing the quills for decorating clothing was a long process that consisted of sorting the quills, preparing vegetal dyes and flattening the quill to sew down in patterns. Obviously beads were quicker to use, covered large areas and came in a wide variety of colors.”

Trading explores the tragic impact of European disease through the lens of one import. You can see all of the works in the series, and learn more about Cuthand’s practice, by visiting her website. The artist will also be a part of Beading Now!, a group exhibition at La Guilde in Montreal, Canada, which runs from May 16 to July 21, 2019.

Art Craft

Bold Paper Quilled Artworks by JUDiTH + ROLFE Burst With Color and Character

Minnesota-based artistic collective JUDiTH + ROLFE sculpt paper into voluptuous plant and flower motifs blossoming with movement and character. Featuring many botanical species including magnolias, irises and begonias, the duo’s work is a reminder of the diversity of plant structure and form. Each of their floral forms is ‘quilled’ into its shape, from the delicate veins making up the plant’s skeleton, to the fleshy petals exploding with color.

The duo’s business name JUDITH + ROLFE is derived from their middle names; and JUDITH (Daphne Lee) is the artist while her partner, ROLFE (Jamie Sneed), runs the business and logistics. “Before embarking on this journey as a paper artist, I worked for over a decade as an architect in New York City, which is also where I met my husband, Rolfe,” Lee tells Colossal.

Lee and Sneed were drawn to paper as a medium due to its availability and transformability: depending on light, shadows and perspective, their artworks change shape and form. “The technique I use most can broadly be called ‘quilling’ since I work with strips of paper and lay them on edge to form designs,” says Lee. Paper quilling is an artistic practice dating back to the 15th century, which was initially used to decorate religious objects. Basing her technique on the ancient craft, Lee gives her work a contemporary twist by creating big and bold pieces of single flowers or plants. In her process, Lee treats each strip of paper as its own line, from which she ‘sculpts’ her floral artworks. “The paper strips are glued individually to create the artwork, not unlike sketching with paper,” Lee explains. But unlike sketching with paper, Lee’s 3D artworks blossom out of their frame, mirroring the fragile flowers they resemble. 

To view more of JUDITH + ROLFE’s work, visit their website or their Instagram page.

Art Craft

New Small-Scale Scenes Created in Colored Lace by Ágnes Herczeg

Peaceful scenes of of domestic chores and bucolic landscapes take shape in the needle and lace work of Ágnes Herczeg. The Hungarian artist (previously) uses blue, green, orange, and brown threads to form fruit trees and figures, which are attached to small twigs and branches. Herczeg balances narrative elements with decorative motifs to create each moment in time. The artist’s compositional finesse is even more impressive at the scale she works at: Herczeg’s pieces are just a few inches tall, ranging from 2.3 inches (6cm) to 7 inches (18cm) on her more vertically-oriented works. You can see more of her delicate artwork on Instagram, and see pieces that are available for purchase on Herczeg’s website.