Photography

Traditional and Contemporary Japanese Culture Collides in Striking Photographs by RK

Tokyo-based photographer RK explores the far reaches of Japan, as well as neighboring Asian countries, shooting images that capture both timeless and of-the-moment scenes.  RK often includes signs of life in his landscape images, whether a fisherman casting a line beneath a vibrant Japanese maple tree, or a carefree skateboarder cruising down a paved road with Hokkaido looming in the distance. The photographer also highlights the densely-packed nature of life in Japan, from masses of commuters forming a sea of umbrellas to shop owners surrounded by huge selections of neatly organized inventory.

Despite the highly composed quality of his photos, RK shares with Colossal, “There’s always new places I want to take photos, so I always try to find new compositions and ideas when arriving at the photo spot.” RK explains that he came across photography by chance: he was immersed in street culture and working as a professional DJ, when he joined an urban running crew and the founder asked him to take some photos of his teammates. From there, he dove into the field, teaching himself to shoot and edit images.

You can see more of RK’s work on his website and stay up-to-date on his most recent photographs and travels via Instagram. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

Art Craft

New Ceramics by Heesoo Lee Capture the Ephemeral Beauty of Seasonal Woodlands

Artist Heesoo Lee (previously) uses multi-layered techniques to form intricate trees, complete with leaves and branches, that seem to grow out of her functional ceramic vessels. Lee’s careful use of color establishes a seasonal mood in each of her works, some evoking the warm tones and fallen leaves of autumn, while others capture the barren beauty of winter. Each woodland scene is drawn from Lee’s imagination. The artist shares that she happened upon her current style of work by chance: her background is as a painter, and she used clay more as a smooth canvas until one day she was working on a tight deadline and was attempting to repair a broken pot, which inspired her to build three-dimensionally.

Lee explains that she uses translucent porcelain because its “beautiful clarity and color and is the perfect canvas for the bright underglaze and glazes I use.” The artist begins by forming each tree individually, starting with the closest and largest trees as she builds perspective by filling in the background with progressively smaller trunks, each of which is individually formed with a clay coil. Next, for her non-wintry pieces, each leaf is individually formed and applied to create the dense foliage that further increases the sense of depth on the surface of her ceramics. After an initial firing, Lee applies colored details using painted underglaze, which must be applied without overlapping different glazes to prevent discoloration after firing. Lastly, she chooses from a range of finishing glazes, selected depending on the desired effect, like an icy blue vernal pool or clearly defined leaves.

Lee shares that she first came to the United States, looking for freedom and adventure and with little knowledge of English, first living in Berkeley, California. She started re-exploring ceramics outside of the strictures of traditional Korean ceramics, rediscovering her love of the tactile medium after studying painting in college. Lee has been a working artist alongside her partner, a fellow ceramic artist for many years, and cites her time in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation as a seminal experience:

 My work, mostly in medium-range porcelain, expanded beyond painted surfaces, my mainstay for many years. I pushed my work beyond the motifs I had been using for many years–flowers, mostly–and built larger than I had before. I was inspired by my children, the landscape of the places where I lived, and my own childhood in Korea, and reflected these themes in my work. I found that working in a place like the Bray, surrounded by other artists who created a supportive, inviting, and welcoming community, gave me the freedom to grow as an artist.

Lee lives and works in Helena, Montana, where she has a home studio and kiln. You can see more of Lee’s in-progress and finished work on Instagram, and she also keeps her Etsy shop updated with new pieces available for purchase.

Art Illustration

Birds Sit Delicately on Vintage Sewing Machines and Typewriters in a New Illustrated Series by Steeven Salvat

French artist Steeven Salvat (previously) creates meticulously rendered drawings of animals inhabiting the same world as machinery, such as his previous crustacean series. His project Perchés showcases different breeds of birds using antique objects as areas for temporary rest, like the above owl which sits atop a typewriter. “I wanted to highlight the contrasts between lightness and brutality, fragility of nature and immortality of objects,” Salvat tells Colossal.

The artist works with watercolor on pastel paper, which he then draws millions of lines on top with .13mm Rotring pens and China ink. He collaborated with the Parisian studio Sergeant Paper to edit five drawings from the series in a signed and numbered limited edition of 100, which you can purchase via his online shop. You can view a time-lapse of one of his included drawings in the video below.

Art

Fantastical Creatures From Illuminated Manuscripts Recreated as Piñatas by Roberto Benavidez

Robert Benavidez looks to famous paintings and literature for source material for his metallic piñatas, such as Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (previously). The Los Angeles-based artist’s most recent series Illuminated Piñata pulls characters from the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1325-1335), a famous medieval manuscripts. The book contains illustrations of fantastical hybrid creatures, which Benavidez further explores by creating three-dimensional sculptures using traditional piñata motifs.

Works from his Bosch series will be on view at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, CA in the group exhibition BEAST, opening February 2, 2019. You can see more of his sculptural piñatas on his Instagram and website.

Art Illustration

Affirmational Text Art and Doodles Combine in Immersive Murals by Shantell Martin

New York-based British artist Shantell Martin is known for her black and white doodles which combine patch-worked faces with straightforward messages. Martin’s multi-dimensional works address complex issues such as identity, intersectionality, and other topics relating to the modern human condition. Her public murals and immersive gallery presentations are made intuitively, building fields of loose drawings with a meditative style. Martin teaches as an adjunct professor at NYU Tisch in the Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she combines visual art with personal storytelling and technology. You can follow her global drawings on Instagram and take a short peek into her process in the video below.

Art

Thousands of Shards of Glass Imitate Blurred Motion in a Towering Public Sculpture by Costas Varotsos

First completed in 1988, Dromeas or “The Runner,” is a 40-foot-tall public sculpture created by Greek artist Costas Varotsos. The densely layered work is formed from thousands of jagged shards of greenish-grey glass which are stacked around iron in the formation of a runner in motion. Originally the piece was installed in the Athens’s Omonia Square, but due to fear that it would topple from underground metro vibrations, in 1994 the city moved the piece to Megalis tou Genous Sholi square. When designing the sculpture, Varotsos considered which types of movement occur in these public spaces and how they might impact the viewing of his work.

“The position of people on the square is never fixed,” he explains. “As is the case with every city, here, too, objects and buildings are things you see while in motion. Rarely do you stop to look closely at something. Individuals observing the sculpture do so at two speeds, depending on where they are on the square: walking on the sidewalks or driving by in a car. The kind of space operating here is not only a purely visual one, but also one open to the sense of touch; one generating a tactile sensation.”

The ambiguous figure is meant to capture the exact moment one finishes a race—be that a literal translation of a marathon, or a more loose interpretation of conquering a challenging moment. You can see more of Varotsos’s public sculptures on his website. (via Atlas Obscura)

Craft Science

A Scientifically Accurate Hand-Knit Sculpture of the Human Brain by Dr. Karen Norberg

In 2009, Psychiatrist Dr. Karen Norberg from the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts decided to create a fibrous doppelgänger of the human brain. Using different colored yarns she knit together the two-sided organ one and a half times its normal size, with a cerebellum and spinal cord attached at the end. Dr. Norberg told the Telegraph that the piece was a labor of love. For me, there were two humorous aspects,” she explained. “One was simply to undertake such a ridiculously complex, time consuming project for no practical reason. The second was the idea of making a somewhat mysterious and difficult object – a brain – out of a ‘cuddly,’ cheerful, familiar material like cotton yarn.”

Dr. Norberg created the individual parts of the brain, such as the brainstem and amygdala, before sewing the lightly colored pieces together in its final form. A comparison of the textile sculpture alongside scans from a real human brain can be seen in the image below. (via Women’s Art)