Craft Design

Build a Miniature Hangout with a DIY Wooden Treehouse Kit

A new DIY kit transforms any ordinary houseplant into a miniature haven complete with mood lighting. Created by Australia-based British designer Lars Wijers, Tiny Treehouses feature multiple configurations, from an ornate gazebo to a multi-roofed structure resembling tropical architecture. Each is equipped with LED lights (batteries included!) and manufactured to hang from a branch or rest on a flat surface.

Back the project on Kickstarter—$1 from every treehouse will be donated to restoring Australian forests—and follow Tiny Treehouses on Instagram for updates on designs and buying options.

 

Art Illustration

Vintage-Style Illustrations Merge Animals, Insects, and Botanics to Form Bizarre Hybrid Creatures

Full of extraordinary creatures, the illustrated series The Creative Specimens seamlessly combines species into unusual hybrids. Similar in color, each organism is bizarre in form. The feathered head of a bird is placed on a tortoise’s body, octopus tentacles sprout from the bottom of a cactus, and speckled coral comprises a deer’s antlers.

Adobe’s 99U Conference spurred the collaborative project as a way to offer a visual language encompassing various creative careers and passions. Inspired by the biological classifications of Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, New York-based art director and graphic designer Mark Brooks digitally rendered the organisms by referencing vintage illustrations. He then passed the project to Joanmiquel Bennasar, an illustrator living and working in the Balearic Islands, who recreated the creatures in watercolor.

Explore more of Brooks’s and Bennasar’s illustrated projects on Behance.

 

Art Food

Insatiable Mouths and Fingers Rouse a Delicate Tea Set by Artist Ronit Baranga

Israeli artist Ronit Baranga (previously) embodies voracious appetites by merging anatomical parts, desserts, and serving ware in an evocative ceramic series titled All Things Sweet and Painful. Dextrous fingers balance a plate and manage to swipe a bit of frosting from a cupcake. Whether implanted in a fruity pie or a teacup, gaping mouths clamor for a taste of the pastries and stick their tongues out for a taste.

In a statement, Baranga explains that the surreal series is focused on luxurious foods. “The mixed emotions of need and the insatiable hunger for more – more sugar, more attention, more love. There is a constant push against the boundaries of rational consumption, craving the sugar rush, forever tempted to go overboard,” she says.

Baranga has a number of ongoing and upcoming exhibitions scheduled, including at Munich’s størpunkt through October 31 and the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel-Aviv through 2021. The sumptuous artworks shown here will be on view at Beinart Gallery in Melbourne starting mid-October, and you can browse more of Baranga’s sculptures on Instagram.

 

Sponsor

Join Pratt SCPS For a Series of Online Floral Design Workshops

This fall, study floral design online with world-famous master florists working in diverse styles in the Floral Art for Interiors certificate program at Pratt Institute’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS). Every week, you can join a different floral design workshop and create beautiful designs with locally sourced flowers delivered right to your home.

Instructors include Ariella Chezar and Bella Meyer. Chezar, the author of Seasonal Flower Arranging: Fill Your Home With Blooms, Branches, and Foraged Materials All Year Round, will lead a workshop using flowers sourced from her farm in the Berkshires, highlighting her “nature-first” style. Meyer, the founder and creative director of fleursBELLA, will teach a session focusing on points of inspiration and a formal structure for avant-garde floral designs, using classical music and her grandfather Marc Chagall’s work as examples.

While courses can be taken individually, participants can earn a Floral Art Certificate by successfully completing any three of the workshops listed below:

• Sustainable Floral Design
• Seasonal Flower Arranging
• A Wild Duet: A Celebration of the Arts via Foraged Materials
• Floral Art Through the Eyes of Master Artists
• From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Transform Store-Bought Bouquets

Pratt SCPS provides high-quality credit and non-credit courses and programs to adult learners in a variety of subjects for educational advancement, career change, and enrichment. Visit the Pratt Institute School of Continuing and Professional Studies website to learn more and register for upcoming workshops.

Art

Interview: Artist Mohamad Hafez Explores How Multiple Identities Inform His Art and Why He Invests in Education

Formerly a corporate architect, New Haven-based artist Mohamad Hafez (previously) builds intricate sculptures that evoke his home country of Syria. The miniature scenes feature gilded furniture, ornate motifs, and the architectural details of the Middle East, which the artist explores in a recent interview supported by Colossal Members.

If you’re raised and educated outside of the region, nobody is going to teach you about your cultural roots, that you come from something very precious and you should be proud and willing, at least, to rebuild and carry the baton. It goes along with my focus on education and rebuilding the generations. Education about that art and culture and architectural wealth is a main goal for me.

In a conversation with Colossal contributor Laura Staugaitis, Hafez reflects on his time at the upper echelon of luxury design and shares why working with young people is the key to building a better future.

 

Art

Okuda San Miguel Transforms a Stark Lighthouse in Spain into a Technicolor Beacon

Situated along the coast in Cantabria, the Faro de Ajo has been transformed from a barren facade into a vivid display of more than 70 hues. The undertaking of artist Okuda San Miguel (previously), the 16-meter tower features a striped bird, wild animals rendered in bold blocks of color, and various dots and squiggles. Now bearing the name “Infinite Cantabria,” it is the first intervention on a Spanish lighthouse. “It has been a unique experience, both because of the artistic challenge that it has brought about for me, as well having carried this project out in my homeland,” says the artist, who is from the region in northern Spain.

Follow Okuda San Miguel on Instagram to check out more of his global projects, and pick up a face mask, puzzle, or print for a smaller dose of his technicolor interventions. (via TimeOut)