Papier-Mâché Creatures Inhabit a Whimsical World in Penny Thomson’s Kinetic Sculptures

All images © Penny Thomson, shared with permission

A host of wild creatures inhabit the whimsical world of artist Penny Thomson (previously), who creates intricate, kinetic sculptures that fit in the palm of your hand. Joined in her Derbyshire studio by her daughter Briony, she works primarily with papier-mâché, which she began experimenting with when her children were still young. “Using pulp, laminated and household waste paper, and cardboard, I made a seven-foot giraffe and conducted a workshop in my son’s school, which involved all the pupils in making a 14-foot Diplodocus,” she says.

Since then, Thomson’s creations have scaled down quite a bit, but her interest in working with paper and recycled materials continues. After creating a diorama for illusionist Sam Drake’s House of Magic, she became fascinated with automata and combined skills she acquired over her career to develop the mechanical miniatures. Briony adds, “That is why we say that a batch of two or three kinetic sculptures usually take between one week and 40 years to make!” Each expressive, miniature figure incorporates a mechanism with a small handle that sets it in motion, giving life to hungry chicks, impatient zebras, and joyous penguins.

Thomson regularly releases small batches of sculptures in her Etsy shop. They sell quickly, so you can keep up-to-date about new work on Instagram, and see more on her website.

 

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Papier-Mâché Creatures Inhabit a Whimsical World in Penny Thomson’s Kinetic Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.

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Ubiquitous Items Are Organized Into Intricate and Colorful Compositions by Adam Hillman

“Skeleton Keys.” All images © Adam Hillman, shared with permission

Everyday objects are puzzled into meticulously organized compositions in the work of Adam Hillman, who has a knack for arranging items like coins, fruits and vegetables, toothpicks, and keys into vibrant flat-lays. Inspired by textures, color, and gradients, the artist responds to the tactile qualities of each material to form intricately woven straws, stacked pennies, and breakfast cereal into geometric forms. You can find more of Hillman’s work on Instagram, and purchase prints at Society6.

 

“Straws-hatching”

“Brick Work”

“Pickwheeling”

“Cubism”

Details of “Straws-hatching” and “Skeleton Keys”

“Balanced Budget”

“Break-Fast”

 

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Olafur Eliasson’s Circular Mirror Installation Embeds Viewers in the Sun-Baked Qatari Landscape

“سفر الظلال في بحر النهار (Shadows travelling on the sea of the day)” (2022), steel, fiberglass, and glass mirrors, 4.53 x 10.51 x 10.51 meters, ø 8.2 meters, ø 8.2 meters, installation view at Northern Heritage sites, Doha, Qatar. Photo by Iwan Baan, courtesy of the artist, neugerriemschneider, Berlin, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, shared with permission

Looking up also means looking down and sideways in the latest installation by artist Olafur Eliasson (previously). Opened this week at the Northern Heritage sites near Doha, Qatar, a cluster of large mirrors and rings made of steel and fiberglass stand on the dry desert landscape amongst shrubs and the remnants of animals that have passed through. Towering meters above the sandy terrain, “Shadows travelling on the sea of the day” allows visitors to wander underneath the glass surfaces and peer upwards at their reflections and that of the landscape, shrouding each figure in an endless swath of dusty earth.

“It is a kind of reality check of your connectedness to the ground,” Eliasson says in a statement about the project. “You are at once standing firmly on the sand and hanging, head down, from a ground that is far above you. You will probably switch back and forth between a first-person perspective and a destabilising, third-person point of view of yourself.”

The remote installation also groups the mirrors so that they reflect their semicircular support structures in addition to those nearby, “creating a sea of interconnections,'” the artist says. “Reflection becomes virtual composition, changing as you move. What you perceive—an entanglement of landscape, sprawling sculptural elements, and visitors—seems hyperreal while still completely grounded.” This connection serves as an urgent visual metaphor for humanity’s need to grasp its relationship to the earth as it confronts the climate crisis and attempts to find new paths for coexisting with the natural world.

Find more from Eliasson on his site and Instagram. (via designboom)

 

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Dreamlike Plush Characters by Marina Glebova Inhabit a Safe Haven After an Imagined Apocalypse

All images © Marina Glebova, shared with permission

Istanbul-based artist Marina Glebova envisions a post-apocalyptic dream world inhabited by enchanting plush characters. Hybrid creatures with both animal and human features are members of the artist’s Northern Forest community, a warm and welcoming refuge amid the chaotic catastrophe of the imagined outside universe. Dressed in layers and whimsical headdresses, the characters are often overly expressive with large, surprised eyes, wide smiles, or sly grins.

Glebova shares with Colossal that she often begins by creating the face or head, which helps to determine the figure’s body and garments. “The narrative, the story, always appears at the end of the interaction with the doll,” she says. “When the doll or series of works are ready, I can look at them in a detached way and translate the feelings that have arisen into a story, thereby connecting them to the rest of the characters already living in this universe.”

Take a peek at Glebova’s Behance for more of the enchanting characters, and see which are available for adoption on Instagram.

 

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Expressive Wildlife Portraits are Captured in Elegant Scrap Metal Sculptures by Leah Jeffery

All images shared with permission © Leah Jeffery. Photographs by Katie Jeffery

When it comes to scrap metal, Hogansville, Georgia-based artist Leah Jeffery has honed an instinct for transforming old bike parts, cutlery, and offcuts into a captivating menagerie of expressive animals. During her senior year of high school, she began exploring different trades, and after signing up for a welding class, discovered a natural skill with metalworking. She became interested in re-using discarded materials, and her first project was a great horned owl, which spurred an ongoing series portraying an array of wildlife.

Now working as Bruised Reed Studio, her practice centers around the proverbial turning of trash into treasure. “There is something about taking what was discarded and giving it new life,” she says. “I use any scrap metal I can find—mostly old bicycle parts and flatware, or people will give me their random metal junk.” Each sculpture is one-of-a-kind, formed from in a wide variety of textures, densities, and patinas to expressively capture an eagle’s intense gaze, a butterfly’s wings, or a sloth’s lazy grin.

You can follow Bruised Reed Studio on Instagram, and find more work on her website.

 

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Get Lost in the Endlessly Marbled Patterns of Nervous System’s New Psychedelic Puzzles

All images © Nervous System

Trippy zigzagged patterns grace a new set of infinity puzzles from Nervous System (previously). Part of the Catskills-based studio’s growing line of endlessly tiling designs, this series pieces together rippled lines and spirals produced through a digital simulation of paper marbling by engineer Amanda Ghassaei. There are three sizes, the largest of which is composed of more than 350 laser-cut pieces, and different iterations in warm and cool tones. As with all of Nervous System’s jigsaws, these designs embed a range of whimsy pieces, this time depicting the silhouettes of flora and fauna.

Shop the new collection on the studio’s site, and check out the video below to see the psychedelic tiling experience in action.

 

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Through a 1,600-Pound Sculpture of Moving Chains, Artist Charles Gaines Confronts the Enduring Legacy of American Slavery

All images by Timothy Schenk, courtesy of Creative Time, shared with permission

Eight years after artist Charles Gaines began work on “Moving Chains,” the monumental public work now stands at Outlook Hill on Governors Island. Evocative of a ship hull, the enormous kinetic sculpture features nine rows of steel chains that roll atop a structure made of Sapele, a wood native to Africa, with eight moving at the pace of the harbor’s currents and the other at that of a boat.

The 110-foot, 1,600-pound work is Gaines’ first public art commission and a sharp critique of systemic issues inherent within the American economy. Located next to the harbor that was an essential waterway in the transatlantic slave trade, “Moving Chains” exposes the nation’s capitalistic impulses and inextricable foundation in the heinous practice. “I wanted the piece to address that… in order to produce this kind of economy, they had to legitimate slavery,” Gaines says in an interview. “It becomes a real emblem of what I call the fatal flaw that exists at the foundation of American democracy.”

Specifically, the artist focuses on the Supreme Court’s landmark Dred Scott ruling that prohibits anyone of African descent from becoming a U.S. citizen. Although reversed with the 14th amendment, that decision has spawned myriad effects that continue to plague American society today. “It shows the history of slavery and Manifest Destiny and colonialism and imperialism as an interlinking narrative,” Gaines told Artnet. “In education, they’ve been separated, but the U.S. economy was built on slavery. Manifest Destiny legalized the taking of land from other people.”

Commissioned by Creative Time and Governors Island Arts, “Moving Chains” is one part of Gaines’ ongoing The American Manifest project and is on view through June 2023 in New York before it travels to Cincinnati. You can find more of the artist’s work on Hauser & Wirth and Instagram.

 

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