Ken Price’s work is so beautiful on the outside I kind of want to explore the inside too, don’t you?! Very excited to go check out the show at LACMA today. For more than fifty years, Ken Price, born in 1935 in Los Angeles, California, created remarkable and innovative works that have redefined contemporary sculpture and ceramics. His work is beyond beautiful. Read more here and here.
Using carpentry skills and tree saplings as his medium, North Carolina-based sculptor, Patrick Dougherty, creates large-scale environmental works outdoor and indoor.
I’d say the work of sculptor Anish Kapoor speaks for itself. I’ll leave it at that.
I think it’s pretty awe-inspiring in its immense simplicity. Just beautiful.
We’ve all heard it said that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. For Dmytro Szylak the saying rings all-too true. The Ukranian immigrant has managed to create a treasure on the level of Watts Tower in the middle of the Hamtramck neighborhood of Detroit. It began as a project for Szylak after he retired from a GM factory after 32 years of work, and it seems to have never stopped. It is named “Hamtramck Disneyland,” though I would say Disney is a bit of a stretch (minus the Mickey head that can be found in the mix). Perhaps Szylak named it that because it offers the visitor that same bit of fantastical whimsy and heart-warming joy that can be found at the themepark, in the comfort of good ol’ Detroit.
Phillip Low constructs one-off, laminated and milled acrylic sculptures from thin sheets of colored acrylic laminated onto large blocks of the same material. The blocks, offered in a variety of sizes, are then milled into deceptively simple, yet in reality complex geometric forms, combining highly polished surfaces with more rough-hewn planes that radiate different colors when viewed from different angles. Kinetic, the works invite re-positioning, which dramatically alters the perception of volume and color. They are pretty much like the coolest man-made crystals you could ever imagine! Get them if you can at Moss in NYC …
Jason Mecier has a vision unlike most. He is an artist, and a creator or some pretty rad portraits, but he does not imagine his subjects in pastels or watercolors, pencil or acrylic; instead, Meceir creates his masterpieces out of junk – everything from bubble gum and pickles to sunglasses, deodorant, and makeup.
As a child Jason’s grandmother encouraged him to create masterpieces using whatever he could find, and he says, “I learned from her that I can make art out of anything I want to, and that there are no rules.” So true, so true.
In 2002 Meceir completed a true masterpiece. A project that he worked on for half a decade. A piece made of 185,252 pencils in the house of Jaina A. Davis in San Francisco, CA. It is called Pencil Vania—the “Forest of Pencils.”
Ok, let’s be honest. There is no way that there is any danger or action involved in the world of artistic sand sculpture. I was just trying to add a bit of energy into what seems like one of the more dull, lackluster pastimes ever. It’s just the artist, sand, and their trusty chisel, but to be fair, they do manage to make some pretty amazing things out of the most basic and brittle of materials. My one question, how do they decide on their subjects?!
Have you ever sat around and dreamed of creating the coolest clubhouse or treehouse, or just making your bedroom into the best hang ever? Verner Panton certainly did. He was a Scandinavian designer who created a lot of amazing things in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, some of my favorite being the swinging chair, and his full environments. In these spaces Panton would carve out seats from soft foam in all sorts of bright colors to create spaces that resembled the most incredible space caves you could ever imagine. His creations were more than just furniture, they were actual fun, functional objects that made any room infinitely more rad!
The Swing Chair from 1964
Panton also designed a DIY sculpture/toy in 1975 called the Pantonaef for the Naef company. Essentially, you could buy a kit to build all sorts of different animals – elephants, cat, cow, fish, owl, etc. Inside the box would be a number of basic cubes that you would then have to clip together to create the sculpture of your choice. The last step was to then place colored panels on top of your sculpture and voila, your own homebuilt amazing toy!
Drawing in Space
Do you remember the book Harold and the Purple Crayon? It tells the story of Harold, a young boy who escapes from his house in the middle of the night armed only with a purple crayon and a limitless imagination. Whatever he wishes to see or experience instantly comes to life, in purple, once Harold draws it - landmarks to make sure he won’t get lost, a boat to cross deep waters, a purple pie picnic to satisfy his pangs of hunger. Harold and the Purple Crayon is an amazing story about the powers of imagination and the impact of the line, two things that come to mind when I think of the work of artist Nathan Carter.
Nathan Carter makes wall reliefs, sculptures, collages, and hanging objects all of which are inspired by the world around him. Most of Carter’s work revolves around communication, and the complicated ways in which messages get from one place to anther (and the ways in which they might be lost along the way). Just like Harold, Nathan is able to experience his environment and create pieces of art that are not only based on what meets the eye, but rather on the things a person might/could/dreams of seeing, with a bit of imagination of course.
