rocks

Posts tagged
with rocks

Art Design

Digital Artist Giuseppe Randazzo Creates Elaborate Arrays of 3D-Printed Stones

Italian designer Giuseppe Randazzo of Novastructura created a series of generative digital “sculptures” that depicted carefully organized pebbles and rocks on a flat plane. Titled Stone Fields, the works were inspired in part by similar land art pieces by English sculptor Richard Long. The textured works are a testament to Randazzo’s C++ programming skills used to create a custom application in 2009 that rendered 3D files based on a number of parameters.

Fast forward to 2014, and technology has finally caught up with Randazzo’s original vision. The designer recently used Shapeways to create physical prototypes of the Stone Fields project. He shares about the process:

Starting from 2009 project “Stone Fields”, some 3dmodels were produced from the original meshes. The conversion was rather difficult, the initial models weren’t created with 3dprinting in mind. The handling of millions of triangles and the check for errors required a complex process. Each model is 25cm x 25cm wide and was produced by Shapeways in polyamide (white strong & flexible). Subsequently they were painted with airbrush. […] The minute details of the original meshes were by far too tiny to be printed, however despite the small scale, these prototypes give an idea of the complexity of the gradients of artificial stones.

Watch the video above to see the sculptures up close, and you can see a few more photos over on Randazzo’s project site.

 

Art Illustration

Mineral Admiration: Watercolor Paintings of Crystals by Karina Eibatova

Mineral Admiration is a new series of watercolor paintings by Vienna-based artist and illustrator Karina Eibatova. The juxtaposition of using a water-based medium to create images of stone is in line with Eibatova’s desire to only create images from nature, an exploration that has lead to dozens of publications in magazines, newspapers, and journals around the world. These new paintings are available as prints in her online shop.

Design Food

An Edible Zen Rock Garden Made From Japanese Sweets

Zen rock gardens are typically composed of carefully placed rocks, surrounded by sand that is raked to represent water ripples. They’re supposed to inspire a meditative state of calm and relaxation. They’re not supposed to inspire hunger and a sudden urge to put it in your mouth. Except this one does because it’s made of entirely edible ingredients. “In cities today, people do not have the luxury of gazing at gardens,” says Japanese designer Tomonori Saito, lamenting the loss of one his nation’s most relaxing pastimes. So he decided to create “Shin-an-ji Rock Garden” made from black sesame (the rocks) and sugar (the sand). Now you can have your garden and eat it too. (syndicated from Spoon & Tamago)

Illustration

Stones & Bones: Illustrations on Rocks and Skulls by DZO

I’m really enjoying this illustration project by French graphic designer and illustrator DZO who covered nearly every inch of these river stones and a found skull with his wildly imaginative illustrations. If you’ve never seen DZO’s work you can take a deep dive here or follow him on Instagram. (via Behance)

Art

Pool, The Alchemy of Blue—Found Concrete Installations by Lizzie Buckmaster Dove

Coledale is a small seaside village in New South Wales, Australia, a place known for its surfing and slow pace of life. It’s also home to artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove who for years has taken daily walks along the beach, stopping to pick up things she found along the way. One of the objects she collected most frequently were smooth stones painted light blue on a single side which she would eventually discover were fragments of an oceanside sea pool that was being slowly consumed by the surf.

With help from a grant provided by the Australia Council for the Arts, Dove set to work on a series of installations using the swimming pool concrete. Titled Pool, The Alchemy of Blue, the works are meant as sort of an homage to lunar cycles and the moon’s power to create the tides that reclaimed the Coledale pool. Before an imminent construction project to completely resurface the pool Dove collected even larger pieces of the pool which would eventually help form the suspended installation you see above at Wollongong City Gallery.

You can see a video of Dove discussing the series by Theme Media and see much more work on her website.

Art

The Balanced Rock Sculptures of Michael Grab Rely Solely on Gravity

Land artist Michael Grab creates astonishing towers and orbs of balanced rocks using little more than patience and an astonishing sense of balance. Grab says the art of stone balancing has been practiced by various cultures around the world for centuries and that he personally finds the process of balancing to be therapeutic and meditative.

Over the past few years of practicing rock balance, simple curiosity has evolved into therapeutic ritual, ultimately nurturing meditative presence, mental well-being, and artistry of design. Alongside the art, setting rocks into balance has also become a way of showing appreciation, offering thanksgiving, and inducing meditation. Through manipulation of gravitational threads, the ancient stones become a poetic dance of form and energy, birth and death, perfection and imperfection.

Almost all of the works you see here were completed this fall in locations around Boulder, Colorado. You can see much more in his portfolio as well as several videos of him working over on YouTube.