Wangechi Mutu’s Sculptures in Bronze Populate Storm King Art Center with Mythical Beings

“In Two Canoe” (2022). All images courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, by David Regen, shared with permission

Storm King Art Center is situated on the ancestral homelands of the Lenape, a reference point that Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu returns to for a new exhibition at the outdoor museum in Hudson Valley. Comprised of her signature sculptures of immense hybrid figures, the largely bronze body of work addresses settler-colonialism and the inextricable tie between people and the land.

Perpetually evoking nature and mythology to address historical issues of contemporary relevance, Mutu positions women as the most powerful, revering their physical form and highlighting their innate connection to ecology. The artist’s latest work, “In Two Canoe,” features a pair of figures with branch-like appendages momentarily straddling a skinny vessel, their faces wrapped in mangrove leaves. “This plant has moved everywhere, has made journeys like those who were kidnapped from Africa and taken to the Americas. The water seals this unified story we’ve created for ourselves. We are all connected on this sphere of Earth and the water is how we go and find each other,” Mutu says in an interview.

Also on the Museum Hill site is the regal “Crocodylus,” a sleek reptilian creature that faces an opening in the trees. The scaly form corresponds with the massive coiled snake that occupies “Nyoka,” one of five sculptural baskets spread across the meadow. Inside the center are smaller earthen works constructed with natural materials like bone and soil gathered near her Nairobi studio.

Mutu’s sculptures are on view at Storm King through November 7, and she’s hosting a film screening at the museum on September 3. To follow her practice, head to Instagram.

 

“Crocodylus” (2020)

“In Two Canoe” (2022)

“Shavasana II” (2019)

Detail of “Nyoka” (2022)

“Crocodylus” (2020)

Detail of “Shavasana II” (2019)

“Nyoka” (2022)

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Reimagining an Iconic Midwestern Structure, Catie Newell Cuts a Slice of Sky Out of a Michigan Barn

All images © Catie Newell, shared with permission

In the township of Hume in rural eastern Michigan, an unassuming barn stands sentry in a wide-open field, partially covered in wild vines and grasses. Like many Midwestern farm structures, it’s weathered and has seen years of use and repairs, but one recent alteration makes it a standout among its counterparts: a careful cut through the middle of the structure reveals a slice of sky. Conceived by Detroit-based architect and educator Catie Newell, founder of Alibi Studio, the project reworks the iconic framework of an aging farm building to allow light through an unexpected aperture.

A team of more than two dozen construction professionals and volunteers collaborated on Secret Sky’s transformation, which is part of an ongoing series of barn interventions in rural parts of the state that are commissioned by Greater Port Austin Art and Placemaking. The nonprofit’s project 53 North works with creative practitioners to adapt and save unused, aging, wooden barns in the region.

To make the massive cut for Secret Sky, original materials were patiently reworked and replaced by hand, including restructuring the overall design so that major beams and a column could be removed to open up the new space. Simultaneously subtracting a large volume and also adding a new area, visitors can now pass through what Newell describes as a merging of building and landscape and “a gift to the sky.” Both meditative and striking in the daytime, at twilight the barn is illuminated and glows lantern-like, casting long shadows across the field as light escapes through the slats in the walls.

As part of the ongoing project to preserve the building, Newell is currently raising funds to replace the original roof shingles and protect it for years to come. You can donate to support Secret Sky at 53 North and learn more on Newell’s website.

 

Image © Ben Lawson

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Notches, Scores, and Gouges Add Textured Pattern to Kokemusu Mokkou’s Carved Wooden Creatures

All images © Kokemusu Mokkou, shared with permission

Japanese artist Tomohiro Suzuki is behind the minimal wooden menagerie of Kyoto-based workshop Kokemusu Mokkou. From hunks of walnut, Suzuki carves miniature sculptures of wildlife like antelope, elephants, and bears, with innumerable divots and gouges forming the distinct textured patterns of their coats or skin. The artist tells Colossal that he focuses on achieving the natural shape of a hind leg or tusk first and uses the small impressions to add tactile depth to the creatures, which often appear mid-movement atop their metallic supports. Suzuki has a few pieces available from Eckepunkt, and you can follow his latest works on Instagram.

 

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Aggressive Avians Dominate the 2022 Bird Photographer of the Year Contest

“Fight,” Spotted Redshank Tringa erythropus, Finnmark, Norway, Erlend Haarberg, Norway, Category: Bird Behaviour

From rival spotted redshanks to combatting spoonbills, quite a few finalists from the 2022 Bird Photographer of the Year contest center on avians as they fight for territory, food, and mates. The seventh-annual competition garnered more than 20,000 entries from 115 countries that capture a wildly diverse array of behaviors and habitats. Winners officially will be announced in September and coincide with a book release and exhibition of the top photos. Until then, see some of our favorites below, and check out last year’s winners, too.

 

“Full Contact,” Eurasian Spoonbill Platalea leucorodia, Hortobágy National Park, Hungary, Gabor Baross, Hungary, Category: Bird Behaviour

“Head Over Heels in Love,” Crested Caracara Caracara cheriway, Laguna Seca Ranch, Edinburg, Texas, Marti Phillips, United States of America, Category: Bird Behaviour

“Hummingbird Hideaway,” Anna’s Hummingbird Calypte anna, Vancouver, British Columbia. Liron Gertsman, Canada, Category: Bird Behaviour

“Upland Buzzard Versus Corsac Fox,” Upland Buzzard Buteo hemilasius, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China.Baozhu Wang, China, Category: Bird Behaviour

“Wart Head,” Ocellated Turkey Meleagris ocellata, Chan Chich, Belize, Leander Khil, Austria, Category: Best Portrait

“A Cartoon Bird Rasing Its ‘Hands,'” black-and-yellow Broadbill Eurylaimus ochromalus, Selangor, Malaysia, Weng Keong Liew, Malaysia, Category: Best Portrait

“Life Hanging in the Balance,” Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias, Skagit Valley, Washington, Glenn Nelson, United States of America, Category: Bird Behaviour

“Manitoba Burrowing Owl Recovery Program,” Burrowing Owl Athene cunicularia, Manitoba, Canada, Walter Potrebka, Canada, Category: Conservation Award

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A Typographic Tribute Honors the Residents and Neighbors of a Now-Demolished House in Sainte-Marie

All images © Paprika, shared with permission

For five days in November 2020, a house in Sainte-Marie, Québec, identified all of its residents and neighbors on Saint Louis Avenue. Antoine Audet, Maude Faucher, James Audet… the list included hundreds of names inked on strips of white paper and pasted to the clapboards.

The ephemeral design was the project of Louis Gagnon, creative director of the Montréal-based studio Paprika who lived in the house as a child and wanted to honor its tenants and friends before it was demolished. Back in 2019, major flooding swamped the city, and the government required that the most damaged residences be razed. 283 Saint Louis was one of nearly 60 to be torn down that summer.

At the time, 93-year-old Béatrice Vachon had been living in the house for nearly seven decades. “She hoped to spend her twilight years at the same address,” the studio said. “Sainte-Marie is the kind of tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, from one generation to the next. Here, neighbors saw children being born and growing up; and neighbors helping each other was simply a common practice. Very few people have ever walked away.”

 

As the city prepared for such life-altering change, Gagnon reached out to his sisters to help remember former residents, frequent visitors, and others with ties to the neighborhood. Before printing the names, he tweaked an existing font to reflect the decorative architectural details, and many of the letters feature curved flourishes with upper points evocative of those on the front porch columns.

One photo of 283 Saint-Louis just before it was leveled shows Vachon standing outside her home plastered with the typographic tribute. “As darkness arrives, the house stands before its imminent destruction, bearing witness to a life of stories and memories,” Gagnon said. “A last hommage. An act of resilience.”

For more images and video from the demolition site, visit Paprika’s Behance.

 

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Light Pierces Through Colorful Haze Suspended Above the Composite Landscapes in ‘Metamorphe’

“Taste.” All images © Reuben Wu and Jenni Pasanen, shared with permission

In the unearthly Metamorphe series, smoke-like masses swirl around hoodoos and dunes dotting the terrain. A mysterious air pervades the six illuminated works, which blend the drone-light photographs of Reuben Wu (previously) with Jenni Pasanen’s digital creations produced through artificial intelligence. Each piece envisions the earth’s surface following metamorphosis when living beings are extinct and only the landscape remains.

Named after human senses, the otherworldly composites imagine topographies brimming with enormous formations of stone and sand to explore the “sublime and beyond emotion,” the artists say. “Humans are emotional beings, their decisions led by their feelings. A machine has no such constraints, enabling it to conceive what human minds could never be capable of on their own.”

For more from Wu and Pasanen, head to Instagram.

 

“Sight”

“Smell”

“Preception”

“Hearing”

“Touch”

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