sculpture

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Art

Feathered Skulls by Laurence Le Constant Serve as Objects of Memory Dedicated to Departed Loved Ones

Laurence Le Constant started working with feathers in the early 2000’s while employed as a sequins designer in haute couture workshops throughout Paris. Inquisitive about the meticulous art, she would ask embroiderers and feather workers to teach her the trade during breaks or her lunch hour. After her grandmother passed in 2010 she created her first skull as a memorial, spending hundreds of hours of works selecting and gluing feathers to a resin base. Since this first skull, her other pieces have also served as tools for memory, honoring prominent women in her family and beyond.

“With the series ‘My Lovely Bones,’ I became the Huesera, or the ‘bone lady,'” Le Constant told Colossal. “Like this mythical creature from the Mexican folk tales, which roams the desert to collect bones and bring back life through its singing, I bring the magnified skulls of women back from the afterlife, giving them a new life and a new voice.”

The artist sources feathers from animals farmed for the food industry in Europe and never uses feathers from protected or endangered birds. You can see more of her feather sculptures on her website and Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions)

Art

Mercurial Emotions Carved into New Glitched Sculptures by Yoshitoshi Kanemaki

Japanese sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki (previously) captures the emotional complexities of youth in his glitched 3-dimensional portraits. Kanemaki carves tree trunks into figures—often young women—whose faces are multiplied in expressions that range from distressed to joyful in a single sculpture. The figures’ casual, natural poses seem to capture them in real time: some of the artist’s characters perch on chairs mid-conversation, and others gesture with their arms to express confidence or bashfulness. In his finished works, Kanemaki usually uses lifelike coloring, but for one recent sculpture shown in detail below, the artist experimented with creating the sensation of an out-of-focus image by using soft, blurred shapes and colors to complete the expression. See more of the sculptor’s finished and in-progress works on Instagram and Facebook. (via Hi-Fructose)

Design

A Playful Building Kit Incorporates Real-World Physics Concepts With Springs and Magnets

Mola Model is a modular tabletop building kit that includes springs, magnets, and cables to create a realistic experience for hobbyist engineers and aspiring architects. The Brazilian company’s kits help users learn about real-world structural concerns like buckling and sway frame structures by incorporating flexibility that demonstrates the impact of environmental influences. Each kit includes rigid and flexible connections, cables and bars of varying length and flexibility, as well as plates and mats to ground each structure.

The idea for the company came during Márcio Sequeira’s days as an architectural student: he was concerned about how well he was learning the real-world factors that he would need to take into account in his future career. Sequeira spent almost ten years working on developing Mola Model, and has funded all three of its editions on Kickstarter over the last five years. The latest edition has currently secured over 150% of its goal—find the Mola Structural Kit 3 on Kickstarter. (via FastCo)

Art

Twisted and Layered Balloons Form Eye-Popping Animal Sculptures by Masayoshi Matsumoto

Master balloon artist Masayoshi Matsumoto (previously) continues to amaze with his incredibly intricate animal creations. Using only balloons—the artist abstains from using any additional materials like markers or adhesives—Matsumoto shapes his raw materials to mimic the unique limbs, spikes, and wattles of a wide range of animals. The graceful silhouettes of birds and insects with their textural exoskeletons frequently appear in the artist’s body of work, but he also tackles flora including pitcher plants and cacti, and other creatures from mammals to maggots. Discover more of Matsumoto’s inflatable menagerie on Instagram and Twitter.

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

Building Bridges: Six Sets of Reaching Arms Clasp Hands Over a Venice Waterway

In 2017, one of the most talked-about works seen during the Venice Biennale was Lorenzo Quinn’s Support, which was not an official part of the iconic art fair. The sculptural installation of hands emerged from Venice’s waterways and appeared to hold up an old building. His follow-up piece to Support, which has been installed with backing from London-based Halcyon Gallery, is again not officially associated with the Biennale. Constructed with white resin, Building Bridges features six sets of reaching arms with hands clasped over a waterway, meant to represent people and cultures coming together over differences.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Quinn explained, “Humanity has never grown by creating barriers. It always grows when it opens up its borders and it welcomes new cultures. Venice is a testament to that… It has been a driving force of European growth always.” The location of the towering white appendages at a former shipyard provided viewers with multiple vantage points, and at night Building Bridges was illuminated from below. A photo gallery on Quinn’s website shows the artist at work on his large-scale sculptures, and you can follow along with his new projects on Instagram.

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.