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Art

Temporary Light Etchings on the Streets of Copenhagen by Asbjørn Skou

Artist Asbjørn Skou lives and works in Copenhagen where he creates all matter of prints, drawings, and occasionally public light installations. The images above are from a 2010 series called Markeringer where the artist projected a collection etchings at the Sjaeloer railway station. To me it looks almost as is the drawings have been etched into the building’s surface causing the light from the inside to creep through.

Art

New Murals by David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero on the Streets of Norway

Three new works today from artists David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero who collaborated on the streets of Stavanger and Sandnes in Norway to create these lovely figures made of trees and people. The duo joined forces earlier this year in Uruguay and I’m glad to see them continuing to explore this style in other cities. Definitely check out their respective websites for more photos.

Art

Magnetized Cyanotype Butterfly Installations by Tasha Lewis

For the past few months Indianapolis-based artist Tasha Lewis has been traveling around the country creating guerrilla installations using a swarms of 400 cyanotype butterflies printed on cotton fabric (cyanotype is a photographic printing process that results in blue images, just like blueprints). Each blue insect is embedded with powerful magnets allowing her to place them on any metallic surface without causing damage, which as far as impermanent street art goes, is brilliant. Of her work she says:

My current body of work was drawn from an investigation into the cultural/scientific/historical context in which the cyanotype was born. Popularized by scientists, and botanists in particular, the cyanotype is intrinsically tied into the scientific recording boom of the late 19th and early 20th century. These are the times of the curiosity cabinet, the prints of Anna Atkins and a rush of explorers/scientists to colonial lands only to bring back specimens from foreign ecosystems. [.. ] The cyanotype is a process of documenting. The resultant image is a kind of scientific stand-in for the actual object in question. It is the trace of the original. In this way, like cyanotype’s use for building blue prints in more recent centuries, my work is formed as the re-presentation of something real; it is somehow not quite the object itself.”

Tasha has published photos of numerous installations on her Tumblr, definitely worth a look.

Art

Enormous Daddy Long-Legs Overtake the Seattle Center Armory

Seattle artist and science illustrator Marlin Peterson was recently commissioned by the Washington State Artist Trust to paint a mural somewhere in the city. After searching unsuccessfully for a suitably large wall, Peterson got the idea to look for a large roof, and where would a painting on a roof be more visible than right underneath the Seattle Space Needle. An agreement was reached with the Seattle Center Armory (formerly the Center House) and he quickly began work on two daddy long-leg spiders using a technique called trompe l’oeil that creates the illusion when seen from above that gigantic arachnids are actually overtaking the building. You can see many more photos and an explanation of his process over on Peterson’s website. (via street art utopia)

Update: An earlier version of this post referred to these arthropods as spiders. While technically daddy long-legs belong to the class Arachnida, they fall into the order Opiliones, which means they aren’t spiders, they’re called harvestmen. We regret the error. (thnx, everyone)

Art Design

Embarrassing Pothole Caricatures of Politicians Spur Action to Fix the Streets in Russia

I can’t speak from personal experience about the political climate in Yekaterinburg, Russia but if we take this video from the ad agency Voskhod at face value it appears the powers that be neglected the city’s infrastructure one day too long. After repeatedly commenting and complaining about the pockmarked streets of Yekaterinburg, local blog URA.RU turned to Voskhod to create a brilliant campaign: under the cover of night they would paint the faces of local politicians around the most unsightly potholes and potentially shame them into action. The response? It worked! Via Ads of the World:

Quality of roads is the eternal problem of Yekaterinburg – the fourth largest city of Russia. The local site URA.RU, which writes about life in the city, decided to remind politicians that it is their duty to repair the roads. The problem is – our politicians don’t care about potholes. Their only worry is their own public image. We associated road holes with the images of certain politicians. In the night, on three potholes in city center, we drew faces of the governor, the mayor and the vice-mayor. The news about caricatures became a sensation. With this intense PR the politicians were no longer able to sit idle. The holes were fixed. The news about the action was released in more than 300 media venues, the website traffic on URA.ru doubled. The officials at last started to do their jobs.

Gotta love it when art and politics come together to create something positive, hopefully they don’t have to paint a face next to every pothole in the city. See much more over on Red Hot Russia.

Art

Artists Take a Ride on a 4-Story Goldfinch Painted on an Abandoned Building in Naples

Graffiti & Street Art reports this giant goldfinch (“The Goldfinch of Scampia”) was painted on the side of a troubled building in Naples in 2009 by German artists Simon Jung and Paul & Hanno Schweizer. Afterward the three perched on the building’s ledge for this great shot. (via graffiti & street art)