sculpture

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Craft

Using More Than 4,000 Pieces of Paper, Artist Lisa Lloyd Painstakingly Constructs Birds and Butterflies

Employing tweezers to place each bit of paper, London-based artist Lisa Lloyd (previously) meticulously assembles birds and butterflies. Her realistic sculptures feature geometric pieces that are arranged in a pattern by color and then glued in place. Lloyd’s birds are constructed internally with a card, paper, and tissue paper skeleton before they are outfitted with more than 4,000 individual paper pieces that the artist hand-scores and fringes. Wire covered in tissue paper creates the birds’ feet, and the eyes are Filmo with a high gloss varnish. A recent butterfly sculpture posed a particular challenge, the artist says, because each wing had to be perfectly symmetrical, just like the real-life insect.

“Through practice, I’ve learned how to sculpt the paper so they look like they’re titling and turning their heads, which makes them feel more alive. Also, I try to give the wings the appearance that the birds are ruffling their feathers, also to make them seem more alive,” Lloyd shares with Colossal. It took her about two months to make three birds: the robin, the great spotted woodpecker, and the blue tit, which have found their permanent home perched on willow branches in a glass display, thanks to one of Lloyd’s London-based clients. You can add one of the artist’s vibrant sculptures to your own collection by purchasing from her shop, and follow her latest work on Instagram.

Art

8th Annual Light Festival Illuminates Amsterdam with Glowing Sculptural Installations

This year’s Amsterdam Light Festival, running November 28, 2019, to January 19, 2020, lights up the European city with illuminated art installations. The festival, now in its eighth year, attracts tourists and engages locals at a time when the city is cloaked in darkness for about sixteen hours each day. Visitors to the Light Festival use a phone app to guide themselves through Amsterdam’s city center, perusing twenty light works by artists from around the world. This year’s show theme was “DISRUPT!” and artists reflected the concept in pieces that ruminate on climate change, national history, technology, and more. See some of our favorites here, by Masamichi Shimada, UxU Studio,  Sergey Kim and others. You can explore the full line-up and programming on the Amsterdam Light Festival website.

Art

Dense Installations by Max Hooper Schneider Feature Vibrant Landscapes Scattered with Human Objects

Max Hooper Schneider‘s formal training in marine biology and landscape architecture is apparent in his recent installation titled “Hammer Projects.” Schneider’s work features rich landscapes overflowing with colorful natural elements that are interspersed with human objects, like a container of cheese balls, a rusting rifle, and strings of beaded necklaces.

The Hammer Museum describes the Los Angeles-based artist’s work as an attempt to decenter the human experience and challenge assumptions about how and why we classify objects. Through his installations, Schneider explores dichotomous relationships—like the human and nonhuman, construction and destruction, and the political and the personal—that traditionally have informed daily life.

If you’re in Los Angeles, you can see Schneider’s work at the Hammer Museum through February 2, 2020. Otherwise, follow him on Instagram.

Craft Design

Intricate Battleships by Atsushi Adachi are Constructed from Vintage Newspaper

The Japanese visual artist Atsushi Adachi creates miniature replicas of objects from the past using old newspaper clippings and articles sourced from the same period. Artifacts from history like battleships and Neil Armstrong’s space suit come alive in what Adachi describes as a meditation on memories of our collective memory.

Adachi chooses to work with newspaper because be believes that the medium embodies society’s values of that certain period. Like time, our values are fluid and ever-changing, influenced by events of the world that we often find ourselves swallowed up by.

By working with newspaper clippings from certain periods, Adachi gains an understanding of what was going through the minds of designers and creators of that time as they tirelessly worked on creating machines of science, adventure and sometimes war.

If you’re in New York, Adachi’s work is part of an exhibition titled “Emerging Tokyo” that’s on view in East Harlem from December 3 – December 7, 2019. The address is 213 East 121st Street. You can also keep up with Adachi’s work on Instagram. (Syndicated from Spoon & Tamago)

Art Craft

Sci-Fi Inspired Cardboard Sculptures by Greg Olijnyk Feature Fully Articulated Limbs and Working Motors

To balance out his working life as a graphic designer focused on 2-D digital projects, Greg Olijnyk creates cardboard sculptures  in his free time. The remarkably refined artworks are made with packaging-grade cardboard and tracing paper, and finishing touches added with LED lighting and glass accessories.

Cardboard’s affordability and malleability, as well as its surprisingly pleasing surface texture and color, have made it the medium of choice for Olijnyk. The designer tells Colossal that each piece comes together organically, and he draws inspiration from sci-fi books and things he finds on Pinterest as he evolves each concept. “Every piece has the limitations and advantages of the cardboard material in mind, how it bends, how strong it will be, etc.,” Olijnyk explains. “The sailing boat sculpture started with the desire to use a pleated, folding effect to simulate water and the rest of the form evolved over the course of a few months.”

As part of his engineering efforts, Olijnyk incorporates movement and articulation. His robot limbs are movable, and wheels rotate. In some of his works, the designer even incorporates solar panels and small motors to activate various components. “Even if, once behind glass, they remain frozen in a pose, I like to know that the capacity is there to bring them to life,” Olijnyk tells Colossal.

Olijnyk notes that he admires fellow Melbourne-based sculptor Daniel Agdag, who creates similarly fanciful worlds using precisely manipulated cardboard. See more from Olijnyk’s studio as he starts new projects and shares the process on Instagram.

Art

Transformation and Excess Explored in Heavily Decorated Wax Sculptures by Rebecca Stevenson

The sweet and the sinister commingle in Rebecca Stevenson‘s wax sculptures that depict humans and animals bursting open to reveal flowers and fruits. Classical busts and seemingly deceased animals are surrounded by ribboning cascades of plants. To create her sculptures, Stevenson starts by modeling the animal or figure in clay, and then moulds and casts the model with layered resin and wax. Stevenson then cuts open and reworks the sculpture, a process both surgical and artistic, as she decides which elements to dis- or re-figure, and which to leave alone. “These actions supplant or corrupt the object’s original meaning…a desire both to reveal and to mask the inside of things derives from my student experiences of drawing from cadavers and dissections,” the artist explains.

“Creating ‘wounds’ or openings in the work undoes the sense of a clear boundary between object and viewer,” says Stevenson. “The viewer may be invited to gaze deep inside the object, a ‘non-sculptural’, intimate experience of looking.” This experience subverts the traditional narrative of sculpture as a vessel for heroism, crafted from the hard media of stone and metal and meant to be admired from afar.

Stevenson tells Colossal that she began working in wax as a student, fascinated by its translucence and its ability to closely mimic other materials and textures. “Over time, its material properties of fluidity and mutability, as well as its historical associations, have become intrinsically linked to the meaning of my work,” she says.

“Wax is traditionally associated with the creation of doubles or stand-ins for the human body,” the artist explains. “Whether used to create votive objects, funeral effigies or life size simulacra of contemporary celebrities, wax is so explicitly visceral that it not simply represents flesh: it is transubstantial.” Stevenson cites the anatomical wax figures of La Specola, Florence’s zoology and natural history museum, as a particular influence on her early practice.

As her work progressed, Stevenson also began to draw inspiration from Baroque sculpture and Dutch still life painting. “While remaining fascinated by the interplay between interior and surface, I also began to explore the visual experience and the meaning of excess, of sensual overload, of ornament and detail as a means to attract and repel the viewer.” The initially alluring decorations become somewhat sickly upon closer examination, sparking reflections on transformation, generation and decay.

If you’re in Berlin, catch her work through October 31, 2019 as part of a group exhibition at the Wunderkammer Olbricht. The artist also has work on display at Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders as part of the 50 Years of the Kraft Collection, and in So Beautiful it Hurts at James Freeman Gallery in London. Explore more of Stevenson’s sculptures on her website and Instagram.

Art Craft Design

Ceremonial Dragons and Colorful Cactus Gardens Formed from Intricately Worked Ribbon

Birthday presents, apparel decoration, hair-do accessories: this is what comes to mind when most people think of ribbons. But for Japanese duo Baku Maeda and Toru Yoshikawa of Ribbonesia, the ubiquitous material is fodder for multi-part sculptures. Ranging from colorful cactus gardens and floral landscapes to freestanding foxes and ceremonial dragons, Ribbonesia’s creations blur the lines between art and craft. In their artist statement, the duo explains their approach to the unusual material:  “Just as a painter would use hundreds of brush strokes, ribbon forms can also be made from a variety of twists, bends and folds. They become paintings as much as they are sculptures.”

Working in tandem since 2010 as Ribbonesia, Maeda is the artist of the pair, and Yoshikawa the creative director developing the theme and concept. You can explore more of their in-progress and completed projects on Instagram and Facebook.