Ukrainian Artist Julia Pilipchatina Draws on the Centuries-Old Tradition of Porcelain Painting with the Future In Mind

All images © Julia Pilipchatina, shared with permission

In the 7th or 8th century, Chinese artisans devised a way to combine feldspar and kaolin and fire it at a very high temperature to produce the first porcelain, which was traded globally and highly sought-after for its elegant surfaces and ornate designs. The precise process wasn’t easy to replicate: not until the early 18th century did makers in Germany first achieve the right mix of materials and methods to produce the ceramic in Europe. Around the world, the bright, white surfaces of dinnerware and decorative vessels provided canvases for the painstaking craft of porcelain painting, emphasizing numerous patterned layers of colorful glaze. For Ukrainian artist Julia Pilipchatina, the craft of hand-embellishing plates connects her to a rich creative legacy and to personal stories and family heirlooms.

Formally educated as a historian, Pilipchatina is fascinated by the profound ties to ancestry and culture that tableware represents. “By choosing a unique plate for ourselves, we draw upon our own values, and—I hope—these objects remain in our families as testament to the lives of past generations,” she says. As a refugee from Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, the artist was forced to close her workshop, leave all of her belongings behind—save for her two dogs—and start from scratch. Now in Belgium, she’s developing a series of plates depicting detailed, chromatic insects with spotted wings, serrated legs, and feathery feet. She says:

The Beetles series was born out of an attempt to overcome my fear. It’s difficult for me to approach the topic of war. It’s too painful and feels like a black hole that drags me in as soon as I focus on it. But I suppose the nature of fear is the same, and I decided to take on a somewhat safe but strong and irrational fear of insects.

 

While insects have long appeared in ceramic tableware alongside other popular motifs like birds, trees, and bucolic landscapes, Pilipchatina renders each critter in a style mirroring her watercolor illustrations, inspired by an encyclopedia depicting exotic, jewel-colored specimens in intricate detail. The more she studied the images, the more the creatures ceased to be a source of anxiety as she noted their elaborate patterns and found beauty in their vibrance and textures.

Each bug’s bold, saturated color emerges through the meticulous layering of thin coats of paint, or overglaze, to the surface, then firing the piece at 800 degrees Celsius. “The cycle consists of heating and cooling to room temperature, which means that one firing can last 12 hours,” Pilipchatina says. “Since the paint is semi-transparent, achieving brightness, depth, and contrast requires many layers, and therefore many firings.”

Emphasizing beauty as a reprieve from the loss of her home and the ugliness of war, the artist focuses on tenderness and fragility in the natural world and humanity’s relationship with it and one another. Combining art and utility, an elegantly crafted dish emphasizes longevity, continuity, and tradition while connecting loved ones around the table. She says, “Having an item that belonged to a grandmother or great-grandmother is of great value and rarity. Now, I am creating such objects for the future.”

Pilipchatina explores a range of decorative ceramic designs in addition to a few series of illustrations about her dogs and children’s stories. You can find much more of her work on Behance, Instagram, and in her Etsy shop.

 

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A Collaborative Photo Project Imagines a World Where Street Artists Have Free Rein

Victoria Villasana, Les Arenes de Picasso near Paris. All images courtesy of Joseph Ford, shared with permission

What would artists create if all of the world’s surfaces could become a canvas? Joseph Ford—of Invisible Jumpers fame—responds to this question in a new project called Double Take. Collaborating with eight street artists including Peeta (previously), Levalet (previously), and Victoria Villasana (previously), Ford reimagines the possibilities of public spaces that are otherwise inaccessible due to scale, safety issues, or restrictions.

To begin the project, Ford photographed the locations, which include the Panthéon, the Seven Sisters cliffs in Sussex, and the center of a highway in Los Angeles, and then handed over enlarged prints to the artists. Once their additions were complete, he returned to the original sites and documented the altered images against the original backdrop. Playful and imaginative, the juxtaposed photos envision “a parallel universe where (artists) have complete artistic freedom.”

Shop the limited-edition prints and find behind-the-scenes looks at Ford’s process on his site.

 

Levalet, Brighton Marina, U.K.

Ador, The Pantheon, Paris

Peeta, Shoreham Cement Works

Ador, Seven Sisters, U.K.

Denis Meyers, National Theatre London

JanIsDeMan, Balcome Viaduct, U.K.

Morely, Los Angeles

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Invoking the Divine Feminine, Delita Martin’s Mixed-Media Portraits Embrace Self-Empowerment

“Blue Stars” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, acrylic, liquid gold leaf, decorative papers, hand stitching. All images © Delita Martin, shared with permission

“Duality is the idea that there are two realms within (the) spirit world,” says Delita Martin, “one that is seen and one that is unseen.” This coupling is a grounding force for the artist as she practices an alchemy of spirit and aesthetics, coaxing dynamic figures from a mélange of patterns, materials, and symbols.

Through a vivid body of work titled Conjure, Martin explores what it means to be self-empowered as a Black woman and embrace “the veilscape,” a spirit world in which the unseen, freedom from racism and sexism, transformation, and ancestral connection prevail. The artist refers to this space as an “intangible reality” and returns to it again and again as she overlays her relief-printed portraits with charcoal, acrylic, gold leaf, and threaded details.

 

“Resting Place” (2020), charcoal, acrylic, decorative papers, hand stitching

While this conceptual layer remains throughout all of Martin’s works, her vast use of symbols shifts with each portrait. She might feature a bird mid-flight, as in “Flying (Feather Skirt),” for example, to convey an unrestricted spirit, or a full flock bound to a subject’s shoulders as in “Feathers” to communicate the experience of being tethered to another. Recurring in different forms on garments or backdrops, circles are similarly evocative as they reference the connection between the divine feminine and the moon. Color, too, is emblematic. She shares:

Although I do not subscribe to any particular theory on color, I very much believe that color causes a reaction and can connect with the human spirit. For my own purposes, colors like red and orange carry a fiery energy, and blues are very calming and actually connect more closely to the spirit world in my work than any other color. I tend to favor blues the most in my work. Yellows and golds are what I consider outdoor colors that reference the earth, colors that are closely related to the waking world. Greens I connect with nature and growth. Purples/burgundy I associate with mystery and time.

Washes of acrylic or fragments of colorful patterns blur the distinction between body and surroundings, emphasizing the co-existence of the physical and spiritual worlds and reminding the viewer that part of the self always remains invisible and hidden behind the veil.

Martin, who is based in Huffman, Texas, and represented by Galerie Myrtis, will have new portraits on view this month at Tiwani Contemporary in London and is teaching a printmaking course in Salzburg this July. Find more of Conjure and other works on her site and Instagram.

 

Left: “Woman Sitting (Golden Stool)” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, acrylic, decorative papers, hand stitching. Right: “Claiming What Has Risen” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, fabric, decorative papers, hand stitching, acrylic

“Feathers” (2020), charcoal, acrylic, relief printing, decorative papers, liquid silver leaf, hand stitching

“Flying (Feather Skirt)” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, acrylic, fabric, decorative papers, hand stitching

Left: “Offerings” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, decorative papers, hand stitching, acrylic, liquid gold leaf. Right: “Mirrors and Sky” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, acrylic, decorative papers, hand stitching

“The Moon Now Rises” (2020), relief printing, charcoal, acrylic, decorative papers, hand stitching

Martin at work in her studio in Huffman, Texas

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‘A World History of Women Photographers’ Unearths Hundreds of Images that Enrich the Canon

Graciela Iturbide, Our Lady of the Iguanas, Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1979. Image © Graciela Iturbide. All images courtesy of Thames & Hudson, shared with permission

Photography is often touted as one of the most accessible and democratic mediums, making it a prime choice for those with little institutional support or access to funding. A new book edited by Luce Lebart and Marie Robert and published by Thames & Hudson explores the work of more than 300 women, many of whom were underrecognized during their lifetimes, and all of whose practices centered around the camera.

Recently translated from French by Ruth Taylor and Bethany Wright, the hefty A World History of Women Photographers is a corrective encyclopedia highlighting those with outsized impacts on the medium. The 504-page book pairs hundreds of images with text by an international roster of 160 women writers, granting similar space to each photographer and unearthing a chronically undervalued group. “With this collection of artists, it is not so much a matter of producing a counter-narrative or of deconstructing histories that already exist but of completing them. We have no desire to burn idols or topple statues, only to erect new ones, and to create a narrative that is richer and more fair,” the editors write in the introduction. “In other words, there is an urgent need to write another history, and to write it differently.”

 

Pamela Singh, Tantric Self-Portrait in Jaipur #18, c. 2000–2001. Image © Pamela Singh, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, New York

Included in the chronologically organized text that spans from 1850 to today are luminaries like Carrie Mae Weems and Zanelle Muholi (previously), in addition to those who have only recently come into public view. The Argentine photographer Josefina Oliver (b. 1875) was largely unknown until her great-niece unearthed her archives in 2006, for example, and that same year, Karimeh Abbud (b. 1863), the first woman to establish a studio in Palestine in the early 20th century, was recognized for her distinct portraiture style in the first major exhibition of her work. “This ‘world tour’ enables us to re-evaluate some women who were celebrated and acknowledged in their own time, to remember others now unjustly forgotten, and to discover others whose work was never exhibited or discussed during their lifetime,” the editors say.

A World History of Women Photographers, created as part of the Rencontres d’Arles and Kering’s Women in Motion project, is currently available on Bookshop. (via Hyperallergic)

 

Anna Atkins, Alaria esculenta, from Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1849–1850. Image © The New York Public Library 

Sandra Eleta, Putulungo and Alma, Portobelo couple, 1977. Image © Sandra Eleta. Courtesy Galerie Rouge, Paris

Sigriður Zoëga, Women on the Banks of the Lake, 1915. Image © The National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik

Isabel Muñoz, Untitled, from the series ‘Bam,’ 2005. Image © Isabel Muñoz

Rita Ostrovska, My husband Alik with our son Sasha, Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, 1988. Image © Rita Ostrovska

Victoria Ivleva, Dosimetrist Yuri Kobsar climbs radioactive debris inside the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 1991. Image © Victoria Ivleva

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Future-Proof Your Digital Identity With a .ART Domain

“Heterosis” by Mat Collishaw and Danil Krivoruchko for OG.ART, which showcases curated collections of dynamic generative art and offers a space for renowned digital artists to experiment with dynamic NFTs

Celebrate creativity with .ART, the premier domain for the global art community, as it marks six years since its launch and approaches a significant milestone of 300,000 registrations. With an impressive roster of users from prestigious art institutions and renowned brands—such as The Louvre, Louis Vuitton Foundation, Ars Electronica Festival, Bank of America Art Fund, Porsche, and many more—the platform’s consistent growth highlights its undeniable impact on the art world. Individual artists, art enthusiasts, and creative minds also flock to .ART, with “NameSurname.art” being among the most sought-after standard format for domain names.

Elevate your online presence with a premium .ART domain that stands out as a unique and artistic identifier. Examples of projects embracing the power of thoughtfully chosen domains include OG.ART, a platform curating collections of dynamic generative art; C2.ART, a full-service firm specializing in investment-level art; and NORTH.ART, a regional online art gallery and art news source for the North of the UK.

Embrace the digital revolution with the platform’s compatibility with Web3 and blockchain technology. More than 3,000 recently purchased .ART domains are related to NFTs and Web3, reflecting the growing trend. The platform offers matching ENS and DNS domains, bridging Web2 and Web3 platforms seamlessly. At PROTOCOL.ART, users can register the ENS name to complement their existing .ART website, allowing it to function as a web address and email, and they can even link to a wallet, NFT, or digital asset on Ethereum and other blockchain networks. With exclusive registration rights for the matching ENS name, domain owners can ensure a consistent and clear digital identity across Web2 and Web3.

 

Martin Lukas Ostachowski (MLO.ART) is a Canadian new media and crypto artist and crypto art historian who explores geometric abstraction and minimalism through both physical and digital mediums, often integrating blockchain technology

Notable creatives like contemporary artist and designer Ali Sabet (SABET.ART), new media artist and crypto art historian Martin Lukas Ostachowski (MLO.ART), and photographer and digital creator Yakob (YAKOB.ART) have already capitalized on the benefits of ENS-DNS integration.

By choosing .ART, you also contribute to the Art Therapy Initiative, which promotes the therapeutic benefits of art. Through this initiative, the platform has funded a fellowship in Art Therapy at George Washington University.

Embrace the future of digital creativity.

Discover and secure your ideal domain at get.art. Use code “COLOSSAL23” for a 50 percent discount on any domain’s first-year registration fee.

 

Ali Sabet (SABET.ART) is an Iranian American contemporary artist and designer who founded his own branding agency

Yakob (YAKOB.ART) is a photographer and digital creator who uses the Ethereum blockchain to showcase his work, combining photography and glitch art to create distinct and engaging pieces

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 Future-Proof Your Digital Identity With a .ART Domain appeared first on Colossal.

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Paris’s Arc de Triomphe Perfectly Frames a Glowing Full Moon in a Stunning Photo by Stefano Zanarello

Image © Stefano Zanarello, shared with permission

On a recent trip to Paris with his family, Italian photographer Stefano Zanarello traveled to the iconic Arc de Triomphe on an evening with a bright full moon. With a bustling street below, Zanarello waited about 1,300 meters from the famed monument, speculating that the celestial body would pass through the cloudless night sky and precisely position itself with the architectural aperture.

“In this kind of photo, the main important thing is the planning, since the moon walks on trajectories that change every day, so it’s fundamental to predict the trajectory and evaluate the shooting point, from with the moon is viewed in the wanted position regard another element, the Arc, in this case,” he tells Colossal, noting that he used the celestial planning software PhotoPills in the process. Within about 30 minutes of his arrival, the moon centered itself inside the neoclassical arc, allowing Zanarello to capture the short-lived alignment.

NASA highlighted the striking image in its Astronomy Picture of the Day project, and you can find more from Zanerello on Instagram. (via PetaPixel)

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An Animated Swimmer Dives into the Exhausting Experience of Working Under Pressure

A relatable animated short from the Ukrainian artist and director Iulia Voitova captures the total collapse and immobility of burnout and exhaustion. “La Plongeuese,” or “The Diver,” follows a professional swimmer so affected by a rigorous training schedule and the incessant noise of her coach’s whistle that she decides to give up her career entirely. When she visits a talented masseuse, though, she finds that her nerves and anxiety, which Voitova brilliantly depicts with tightly crimped paper, finally get some reprieve.

“La Plongeusese” was the director’s graduation project for La Poudrière, an animation film school in Valence, France, and you can find more of her works on Vimeo and Instagram.

 

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 An Animated Swimmer Dives into the Exhausting Experience of Working Under Pressure appeared first on Colossal.

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