Meticulous Sculptures by Artist Carol Long Highlight the Curved Lines and Colorful Embellishments Found in Nature

All images © Carol Long, shared with permission

Honoring the humble shape of the vessel is at the center of Carol Long’s practice. From her studio in rural Kansas, the artist throws simple ceramic cylinders that she contorts into supple butterfly wings,  curved chrysalises, or vases with embellished handles.“When it comes off the potter’s wheel, that’s just the beginning,” she tells Colossal. “I usually sit for a second and look at the piece and see which way I can push it out or in.”

The resulting forms are evocative of both flora and fauna and traditional pottery, although Long’s sculptures emphasize smooth, sinuous walls and squiggly bases rather than angled edges. She uses slip trailing to add tactile decorative elements to the piece like small spheres, handles, or raised linework. “The relationship between the glazes that are inside the vectors, the shapes made by the slip trailing, are really important in how they’re divided and how they sit next to each other,” she says, noting that the process is particularly meticulous because it involves applying the material to each intricate, ribbed pattern and delicate outline.

Whether a vase or wide-mouthed jar, the whimsical sculptures are brimming with color and textured details. “I love the flowing lines, and I love the idea of framing a picture on my pots. A lot of times I have a focal point like an animal or insect and then I’ve framed it with other designs,” the artist says.

Long is hosting an annual open house at her studio next month and will show a body of work at Charlie Cummings Gallery in July of 2022. Until then, shop available pieces on Etsy—she also has an update slated for mid-December—and follow her latest pieces on Instagram. (via Women’s Art)

 

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Loose Threads Dangle from Bizarrely Expressive Portraits Sewn by Yoon Ji Seon

“Rag face #21004” (2021), sewing on fabric and photography, 112 x 73 centimeters. All images © Yoon Ji Seon, courtesy of CRAIC AM, shared with permission

The cheeky, uncanny works that comprise Yoon Ji Seon’s ongoing Rag Face series bring the knotted, twisting, and generally convoluted entanglements of a subject’s psyche to the forefront. Her photographic portraits are printed on roughly cut pieces of canvases and then overlaid with rows of tight stitches and loose strings that drip from an eye or loop across a face. Adding color and depth, the threads “can be seen or felt like internal conflicts, external stimuli, umbilical cord, blood vessels, sagging skin, hair, or time as a point of each viewer,” the artist says.

Zany and outlandish in expression, the portraits are a playful mix of confusion and jest that Yoon derives from traditional Korean comedies, called madangnori. Those performances consider “the suffering and reality of the people through humor and satire while arousing the excitement of onlookers,” she says, explaining further:

I think what I’m doing these days is to make (an) ‘image’ of these comedies. What I want to pursue through my work is ‘humor’ in the end, but this humor does not bloom in happiness. During intense, painful, and chaotic lives, humor can be like a comma, to relax and recharge.

Because the sewn works are unique on either side, they produce mirrored images that are a distorted version of their counterpart, bolstering the strange, surreal affect of each piece.

The Rag Face series now spans decades of the Daejeon City, South Korea-based artist’s practice, and you can browse dozens of those pieces on her site. (via Lustik)

 

“Rag face #16020” (2016), sewing on fabric and photography, 141 x 97 centimeters

“Rag face #21003” (2021), sewing on fabric and photography, 94 x 68 centimeters

“Rag face #21004” (2021), sewing on fabric and photography, 112 x 73 centimeters

“Rag face #16015” (2016), sewing on fabric and photography, 47 x 26 centimeters

“Rag face #17010” (2017), sewing on fabric and photography, 128 x 97 centimeters

“Rag face #19003” (2019), sewing on fabric and photography, 146 x 119 centimeters

“Rag face #21002” (2021), sewing on fabric and photography, 170 x 118 centimeters

“Rag face #17010” (2017), sewing on fabric and photography, 128 x 97 centimeters

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Winter In The Rainforest: Porcelain Characters Navigate the Amazon in a Surreal Stop-Motion Short

In Anu-Laura Tuttelberg’s stop-motion short “Winter In The Rainforest,” time passes at an unusual pace. The Estonian writer, director, and animator (previously) sets a cast of fragile, porcelain puppets within the lush rainforests of Chiapas, Mexico, and the Peruvian Amazon, a contrast of real and manufactured that grounds the surreal story. Throughout the film, carnivorous flowers trap their prey, an articulate grasshopper climbs a tree, and a miniature girl wakes from a stupor at a clip that’s wildly different from their timelapsed surroundings, which are evident through leaves shaking in the wind and shadows rolling across the landscape at a quickened tempo.

Shot with 16-millimeter film, the grainy short is years in the making—Tuttelberg details the process on her site—and blurs the boundaries between the imagined and real in both material and narrative. Rather than create an illusion of the characters occupying the tropical ecosystem in a lifelike manner, each element progresses at its own speed. She explains:

While moving the puppets frame by frame, I let the light and the nature in the background move naturally. In this way, the puppets are moving smoothly in their own pace and the nature around them is changing rapidly. This creates a new obscure reality of time and space in the film. It keeps the viewer aware of the stop motion technique in the film. I don’t want to hide the animation technique behind the scene but rather to bring it out and observe the new strange reality it creates.

“Winter In The Rainforest” has already won numerous festival awards, and Tuttelberg tells Colossal she’s working on a sequel titled “Weary Wings Go By,” which brings the same cast to the frigid beaches of Estonia and Norway. You can keep an eye out for that project, and watch the animator’s previous works, on Vimeo.

 

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From Intricate Stencils to Vibrant Flowers, Nine New Murals Transform Blank Facades in Tbilisi

MonkeyBird. All images courtesy of Tbilisi Mural Fest, shared with permission

Since Tbilisi Mural Fest began in 2019, the streets of Georgia’s capital have seen the towering, large-scale works of artists like Collin van der Sluijs (previously), Case Maclaim, and Faith XLVII (previously), whose celestial, intersecting circles are a highlight of this year’s event. The 2021 festival features nine pieces in total that range in aesthetic and subject matter, including a mythological, black-and-white stencil by MonkeyBird (previously), bold botanicals by Thiago Mazza (previously), and a striking trompe-l’œil papercut by 1010. Each monumental work addresses an environmental, social, or other relevant issue affecting today’s world, and you can find 2021’s lineup below. (via Street Art News)

 

Thiago Mazza

1010

Faith XLVII

JDL

Left: Kade90. Right: David Samkharadze

APHENOAH

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Learn to Build Speculative Worlds in SCI-Arc’s LA-Based Fiction and Entertainment Postgraduate Program

“Mercury XX,” short film designed and directed by Miriam Kuhlmann, SCI-Arc Fiction & Entertainment 2020

SCI-Arc’s Master of Science in Fiction and Entertainment is a one-year, three-semester program during which students work with world-renowned professionals from the entertainment industry to develop expertise in worldbuilding, storytelling, film, animation, visual effects, and video games to build new forms of creative practice.


Our perception of the world is unquestionably determined by the extraordinary shared languages of fiction and entertainment. Through these stories, we exchange ideas and engage with our environment. Fictional worlds have always been sites where we can prototype new scenarios and emerging cultures. They can act as teleportation machines, helping us immerse ourselves in the various consequences of the decisions we face today. They can be both cautionary tales or roadmaps to an aspirational future.

The Master of Science in Fiction and Entertainment at SCI-Arc provides the opportunity for students to learn the techniques of entertainment design and visual storytelling, as well as employ a broad range of digital and narrative tools to imagine, animate, and produce compelling, alternative worlds. Deeply embedded in the entertainment industry of Los Angeles, the program challenges students to develop provocative stories that critically examine the emerging conditions of contemporary life.

Organized as a year-long thesis project, students are encouraged to develop a unique directorial voice and personal body of work that may take the form of a short film, animation, music video, documentary, video game, graphic novel, VR environment, immersive experience, or performance. The Fiction and Entertainment curriculum simultaneously creates space for students to develop their own interests, passions, and agendas while directly focusing on preparation for careers that will continue to propel their professional practice after graduation and help them to transition into their chosen field.

Throughout the year, students are supported by an intense program of workshops, talks, and mentoring sessions led by world-renowned filmmakers, concept artists, screenwriters, and animators from the film and entertainment industry. A critical motivation of the program is helping students to establish a productive network of collaborators and ongoing mentors to help launch them and their work after graduation.

Recent graduates from the program are developing careers in production design, creative direction, video games, visual effects, commercial, music video and TV production, media art, and design research. Projects incubated within Fiction and Entertainment have premiered at festivals such as Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Rotterdam, and platforms such as Nowness, VICE, FACT, and many more.

Applications for students and scholarships are now open, and details can be found on the program website.

 

“Breach,” interactive concept album by Rick Farin, SCI-Arc Fiction & Entertainment 2019

“Earth Mother Sky Father,” music film directed by Kordae Henry, SCI-Arc Fiction & Entertainment 2018

“Where Turtles Fly,” video game created by Andre Zakhia, SCI-Arc Fiction & Entertainment 2020

“A Graphic Memoir,” VR experience created by Ainslee Alem Robson, SCI-Arc Fiction & Entertainment 2019

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Infrared Light Enhances Versailles, Provence, and the Beaches of Normandy with Dreamy Shades of Pink

All images © Paolo Pettigiani, shared with permission

Previously having captured the Dolomites and New York City’s Central Park in a candy-colored glow, photographer Paolo Pettigiani now adds urban and rural France to his ongoing collection of infrared images. The magical series documents the rolling lavender fields of Provence in watermelon hues and Versailles’s landscaped terraces or the Gothic abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel in bright, saturated tones. Pettigiani shoots each location with a full-spectrum camera that unveils otherwise invisible wavelengths and enhances the trees, grasses, and stone surfaces that reflect infrared light with varying shades of pink.

See more from the France Infraland series on Pettigiani’s Behance and Instagram, and shop prints of the surreal landscapes on Lumas.

 

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Light Streams through Delicate Floral Bouquets Cast in Colorful Stained Glass

All images © Samantha Yates, shared with permission

From her workshop in Shipley, West Yorkshire, artist Samantha Yates crafts long-stemmed botanicals in colorful stained glass. She draws on her background in horticulture to shape the curved metallic borders and gleaming petals and leaves. “I love the limits with the copper foil technique (no painting, no fusing), the challenge of trying to recreate 3D with 2D, (and) asking myself what are the essential qualities of that plant, that flower, that leaf? Is it color, shape, the stem outline?” she explains.

Casting vibrant shadows, the stylized pieces are based on florals the artist picks from her garden or around her home—see examples on Instagram—and are paired to evoke moods similar to those of fresh bouquets, “I love light, the transparency of glass, the paper-thin quality of petals, light through leaves,” she says.

See more of Yates’s delicate botanicals and shop individual stems and bouquets on her site. (via Lustik)

 

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Abstract, Textured Patterns Woven With Natural Fibers Compose Massive Wall Hangings by Tammy Kanat

All images © Tammy Kanat, shared with permission

A decade into her weaving practice, Australian artist Tammy Kanat (previously) continues to explore the possibilities of fiber, texture, and knots. Her giant wall hangings rely on patches of tufted wool, concentric circles in linen, and fringed, silk motifs suspended in lopsided brass rings to evoke organic forms and naturally occurring patterns.

Focusing on energy and movement, each abstract piece contrasts high piles and flatweaves comprised of thousands of knots that Kanat composes without a preconceived plan. “I often think of my weavings as a novel, as I work on a piece it is one chapter at a time until I finish it. Not knowing what the end will be keeps me driven and engaged. I have been creating more intricate woven shapes, inspired by my surroundings in nature,” the artist says. “I have become more engaged and curious about the slow detailed process of weaving, experimenting with one knot at a time.”

In her most recent body of work A Woven Metaphor, Kanat utilizes more angled frames with vibrant gradients radiating outward. The wall hangings are “about the shapes and colors gently pulling you into the piece. A dark center which evolves gradually to a lightness on the outside providing relief,” she shares. “The works are a juxtaposition of complexity and simplicity.”

Kanat shares glimpses into her weaving and shaping techniques on Instagram, and you can explore an archive of her pieces, and find her celebratory 10-year project, on her site.

 

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Miniature Watercolor Works by Ruby Silvious Are Painted on Stained Teabags

All images © Ruby Silvious, shared with permission

Ruby Silvious’s quaint seaside scenes and bucolic landscapes nestle between the torn edges and wrinkled folds of a used teabag. The Coxsackie, New York-based artist (previously) paints miniature scenes of everyday life on the stained paper pouches, leaving the string and tags intact as a reminder of the repurposed material’s origin. Silvious sells prints of her watercolor pieces on her site, and you can follow her latest projects and news about upcoming exhibitions—she will be showing her upcycled works in France and Japan in 2022—on Instagram.

 

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‘Beneath the Bird Feeder’ Documents the Spectacular Wildlife Visiting a Wintertime Food Source

A northern cardinal. All images licensed from Carla Rhodes

During the winter months of late 2020 into early 2021, photographer Carla Rhodes cared for a birdfeeder that hung outside of her home in Woodstock, New York. The suspended food source garnered attention from myriad cold-weather adventurers, including a brilliant northern cardinal, numerous pairs of mourning doves, and furry little field mice, who visited the area amongst the snow and frigid temperatures.

Thanks to a camera stationed nearby, Rhodes documented the curious cast of wildlife who wandered into her yard, an endeavor that culminated in the striking photographic project Beneath the Bird Feeder. Comprised of dozens of images primarily shot in low light, the series frames the unique features of the unaware animals, capturing the pearlescent wings of a tufted titmouse or the beady eye of North America’s only venomous animal, the short-tailed shrew.

Explore more from the collection and find an array of conservation-focused images on Rhodes’s site and Instagram.

 

A tufted titmouse

Mourning doves

A black-capped chickadee

An eastern gray squirrel

An American red squirrel

A deer mouse

A northern short-tailed shrew

A northern cardinal

A dark-eyed junco

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