Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Joshua Smith Serves Up Slices of Main Street in Meticulously Detailed Miniature Buildings

A 1:20 scale model of a building facade with lots of posters and graffiti on the doors, and moss growing near the pipes.

Photos by Andrew Beveridge/ASBCreative. All images © Joshua Smith, shared with permission

Wheatpasted posters, spraypainted tags, and signs with missing letters are just a few of the hyperrealistic details on the facades of Joshua Smith’s extraordinary miniatures. “My work focuses on often neglected and abandoned buildings, which more often than not are covered in graffiti, rust, and grime,” the Adelaide, South Australia-based artist tells Colossal. Rendering corner stores, photo booths, and anonymous entryways with precision, he adds layers of lifelike details both inside and out, from stacks of boxes to checkout counters to racks of merchandise.

For his source imagery, Smith draws from visits around the U.S. and abroad, plus images he finds on Google Street View. Thanks to a popular Instagram account, if he can’t get to a particular location in person, sometimes his followers help out by visiting specific sites and snapping photos for reference. “I then break it down into different components, such as walls, windows, the ground, and other details,” he says. “Once the basic shape of the building has been made, I then apply the paint, signage, graffiti, and finally the weathering.” Using a variety of techniques, from 3D modeling to scratch-building with styrene, he creates every element himself.

Smith recently co-curated the group exhibition Miniature Worlds at the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania, which continues through February 4. He will also exhibit as part of a group show next year with Outré Gallery in Melbourne, emphasizing signage and type. Small sculptures and accessories are often available in the artist’s online shop.

 

A figure holds a 1:20 scale miniature sculpture of a facade of a shop with posters and graffiti on it.

A scale model of an aging brick facade.

Detail of a miniature model of a storefront, focused on a rusted awning and old signage with letters faded and missing.

A side-by-side image of two miniature structures. The one on the left shows a photobooth, and the one of the right shows a Maj-jong shop.

A scale model of an aging apartment building with posters and crumbling signs on the front. On the side, a mural of two figures covers the blank end.

Detail of graffiti and stickers on the walls and doors of a miniature model.

A miniature model facade of a run-down bookshop.

A scale model of a vintage luncheonette. A hand holds it for scale.

Details of a scale model of a newsstand, focused on tiny magazines inside the shop.

A scale model of a corner shop with a sign that reads "American Deli Market."

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 Joshua Smith Serves Up Slices of Main Street in Meticulously Detailed Miniature Buildings appeared first on Colossal.



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Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Elaborate Personas Spring to Life During Carnival in ‘We the Spirits’ by Jason Gardner

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. They have on a mask with a pointed crown, a red cape, and club-like hands.

Pantalla, Xinzo de Limia, Galicia, Spain. All images © Jason Gardner, shared with permission

Between January and March in Christian communities around the world, incredible personas emerge for Carnival in the form of mythological creatures, folkloric emblems, and historical figures. Donning elaborate masks and costumes, people obscure their identities, indulge in abundant fare, and gather together in parades and street parties before Lent. In his forthcoming book, We the Spirits, photographer Jason Gardner explores the remarkable diversity of Carnival and its traditions. “‘Winter and spring; barren and fertile; life and death; beauty and ugliness; light and dark; ritual and reality; chaos and order—the annual Carnival is much more than a party and parade in the streets,” he says.

Gardner traveled to 15 countries to document the festivities, capturing vibrant portraits of local revelers in elaborate, handmade costumes. He says, “In a time of screens, computers and A.I. simulations, there’s a movement back to the analog and gritty experience of Carnival, back to tradition and to feeling something more primal, animal, and pagan.” The annual ritual, which traces its origins to ancient European festivals like the Greek Dionysian or Roman Saturnalia, is rooted in a subversion of hierarchies and social norms, releasing people from typical roles and obligations in a symbolic period of renewal, after which chaos is then restored to order.

We the Spirits will be released by GOST Books this month in the U.K., coinciding with the exhibition Costume and Masquerade: Photographs by Suzanne Jongmans and Jason Gardner at Stadhaus Ulm in Germany. The title will be released in the U.S. in February, and you can pre-order a copy now on GOST’s website. Follow along with Gardner’s work and travels on Instagram.

You might also enjoy Robert de la Torre’s photos of the Entroidos celebrations in Spain.

 

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. The jacket and mask are both furry, and they wear large bells around their waist.

Arapides, Monastiraki, Greece

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. They wear sheepskin and denim, hold a cane, and done a large hat with a photograph of a woman on it.

Augustus I, Sopotnia Mała, Poland

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. They are dressed like a tree with a face.

Hombre árbol (Tree Man), Silió (Cantabria), Spain

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. They wear numerous patterned fabrics and carry a stick with a goat on the front as if riding the goat.

Geiss (Goat), Weisbach, Germany

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. They stand underneath a frame of a giant hen.

Kürika (Hen), Markovci, Slovenia

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. They stand in a forest and wear numerous types of shawls and fringed fabrics with a mask, a turban-like hat and lots of feathers.

Bonita, Sande, Galicia, Spain

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. The costume consists of a long burlap body and a head that looks like a monster with a big open mouth, peg-like teeth, and horns.

Schnappviech / Wudele, Tramin (South Tyrol), Italy

A portrait of three figures wearing elaborate costumes for Carnival. They crouch down next to a wall and hold yellow sticks, wear yellow masks with oversized teeth, and are covered completely in fabric with draping threads.

Ta Terjasti (The Thread Men), Cerkno, Slovenia

A portrait of a figure wearing an elaborate costume for Carnival. A colorful set of shirt and trousers in blue, yellow, and red complement a horned mask, a belt with bells on it, and a hand-held figure of a dog or small animal.

Botarga Arbancón, Guadalajara (Castile-La Mancha), Spain

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 Elaborate Personas Spring to Life During Carnival in ‘We the Spirits’ by Jason Gardner appeared first on Colossal.



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Design Platform Modyfi Introduces Playful and Innovative Real-Time Animation Editing

If you’re looking for a new way to electrify your social media channels, explore dizzying generative animation tools to enhance your art practice, or have a tight deadline for a campaign that needs a mind-melting visual effect, there’s a new graphics tool to add to your arsenal – and you don’t even need to learn to code.

Modyfi is a brand new world class design platform based entirely in your web browser that incorporates intuitive vector tooling, team collaboration, AI-driven art direction, and now motion graphics. Best of all, it’s totally free.

Simply launch Modyfi and without writing a single line of code, you can experiment with a range of modifiers, tools, and helpful tutorials that send you on a playful path of serendipitous creativity. While myriad animation tools are currently available for hardcore designers and programmers, Modyfi demolishes the barrier to entry to create an accessible and intuitive platform where eye-popping visual effects are rendered in real-time right in your browser.

 

Piers Cowburn, for Modyfi

We invited composer and multimedia artist Simon Alexander-Adams to try Modyfi to create some of the pieces seen here.

“I can see this as being really valuable for somebody who doesn’t have a coding background,” Alexander-Adams shares. Using native tools like pixel sorting and heat shrink, he spent a week experimenting and generating new ideas. “There are a lot of features that, as somebody who uses this kind of tech professionally a lot, I really appreciate that this [tool or feature set] has exposed,” allowing for a more powerful and experimental approach to graphics editing only accessible with significant time and training until now.

 

Simon Alexander-Adams, for Modyfi

Of particular note is the release of several new motion-editing tools available in Modyfi today. Artists and designers can now manipulate compositions, modifiers, and parameters, and the animation will update in real time, an editing process more familiar to audio engineers, where all elements of a piece are editable at any time.

Modyfi co-founder Piers Cowburn shares that he enjoys endlessly experimenting with many of the platforms’ tools that are ripe for serendipity and accidental discovery. “Using the app now, the piece of motion design I end up with after just a 20-minute design session is often wildly different than the idea I went in with. And always better.” He emphasizes how easy it is to quickly and easily create rapid iterations around a single idea, while a new path of innovation waits around every corner.

 

You can begin exploring Modyfi yourself right in your web browser, totally free, or follow them on 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 Design Platform Modyfi Introduces Playful and Innovative Real-Time Animation Editing appeared first on Colossal.



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The Artists of ‘PULP’ Fold, Emboss, and Quill Their Way Through the Possibilities of Paper

A sculpture of a figure made from cardboard. The figure holds a cell phone and their torso is hollow with an upside-down tree inside.

James Lake. All images © the artists, courtesy of MAKE Southwest

Strips of cardboard, papier-mâché, and precision folding are just a few of the techniques artists employ as they explore of the endless potential of paper. Whether using found pages of magazines and books, intricately folding single sheets into detailed figures, or designing unique wearable pieces, artists are constantly finding original ways to use the humble material.

Kicking off next month at MAKE Southwest, a group exhibition titled PULP celebrates the possibilities of the medium in all its forms, from quilled flowers to figurative sculptures to playful miniatures. Collaboratively curated by the Paper Artist Collective and GF Smith, PULP presents the work of more than two dozen international artists, including several we’ve shared here on Colossal over the years, like Layla May Arthur, Daphne Lee, Juho Könkkölä, Kate Kato, and more.

PULP opens on January 20 and runs through April 13 in the town of Bovey Tracey, on the edge of Dartmoor. If you’re in the area, you can plan your visit and learn more via MAKE Southwest’s website.

 

A quilled paper artwork of a bright, orange flower.

Daphne Lee

A detailed artwork made of white paper of a bird with wings spread.

Emma Boyes

A sculpture made of papier-mache, portraying a pink squid.

Tina Kraus

A small paper sculpture of a little facade of a house, installed inside the opening of a tin can.

Rosa Yoo

An array of paper sculptures resembling realistic mushrooms, plants, and feathers.

Kate Kato

Two images side-by-side. The image on the left is an abstract, colorful geometric composition photographed on a green background. The composition has six sides and contains a kaleidoscope-like arrangement of bugs. The image on the right shows a single piece of gold paper that has been folded into undulating geometric shapes.

Left: Samantha Quinn. Right: Dail Behennah

A sculpture made from found paper, with laters of lattice and framework in a cube shape.

Kate Hipkiss

A ring made from compressed paper.

Jeremy May

A field of dandelions in a gallery space. The flowers are made from paper.

Monique Martin

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 The Artists of ‘PULP’ Fold, Emboss, and Quill Their Way Through the Possibilities of Paper appeared first on Colossal.



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Monday, December 11, 2023

Dan Lam Blurs the Lines Between the Alluring and Grotesque in ‘Guttation’

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Replicate.” All images © Dan Lam, shared with permission

Guttation is a botanical process that occurs when fungi or plants like grasses and ferns secrete sap from their pores. Small droplets of dew will emerge and then hang from fronds or leaves to help relieve the specimen of too much liquid accumulating in its roots.

Dallas-based artist Dan Lam evokes this vital act in an upcoming solo show at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York. Guttation comprises more than 60 of Lam’s signature drippy sculptures that take a turn toward the grotesque in comparison to previous bodies of work. Titled with biological names like “Gall,” “Gland,” and “Stomata,” the technicolor pieces vacillate between the unequivocally synthetic materials—resin, polyurethane, foam, and acrylic—and their gurgling, oozing forms.

While small, clear droplets cover some of the sculptures, others feature more mottled surfaces that veer toward revulsion. Thick, translucent glaze cloaks speckled works like “Stomata” and “Bark,” capturing her fascination with nature’s bizarre, unruly qualities and the potentially strange results of evolution and survival.

Guttation runs from December 16 to January 6. Find more of Lam’s work on her site and Instagram.

 

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Gall”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Bulb”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Stomata”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Bark”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Concentration”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Fluid”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Membrane”

a gloopy technicolor sculpture that appears to drip over a shelf

“Pressure”

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 Dan Lam Blurs the Lines Between the Alluring and Grotesque in ‘Guttation’ appeared first on Colossal.



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Take an Immersive Journey Through an Ancient Rainforest’s Mycelial Network in ‘Fungi: Web of Life’

“Everywhere you look, there are stories unfolding around fungi, connecting all life in the forest. But of all the fungal species on Earth, we’ve only described about five percent,” says biologist Merlin Sheldrake (previously) in the trailer for the visually stunning, immersive new film Fungi: Web of Life.

Narrated by Björk, and produced by K2 Studios, the movie follows Sheldrake—who has devoted his career to the remarkable and mysterious world of mycelium and mushrooms—as he embarks on a journey through the ancient Tarkine rainforest of Tasmania. Timelapse cinematography reveals up-close details of rarely seen fungal phenomena, from the dispersion of spores to vast subterranean networks known fondly as the “wood wide web.”

 

A still from a film about fungi, showing a cluster of delicate pink mushrooms on a mossy tree.

All images © ‘Fungi: Web of Life’

The documentary comes face-to-face with the reality of habitat loss due to deforestation and the climate crisis. “We’re burning the library—a library of different ways to rise to the challenge of living,” Sheldrake warns. He visits scientists and designers at the forefront of their fields, discovering never-before-seen species and learning from mycelium to create new, sustainable products and environmental solutions.

Fungi: Web of Life is currently showing in five theaters across North America, including IMAX Victoria at the Royal B.C. Museum in Vancouver, with numerous releases scheduled across the U.S. and the U.K. next year. Find a screening near you and learn more on the film’s website.

Sheldrake also authored the bestselling book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds. You might also enjoy the astonishing mycological photography of Barbora Bartokova in the Czech Republic or collaborative duo Danny Newman and Roo Vandegrift in Ecuador.

 

A gif of timelapses showing growing mushrooms.

A still from a film about fungi, showing the undersides of a cluster of blue mushrooms.

A gif of a timelapse of mushrooms growing.

A still from a film about fungi, showing a cluster of delicate, bright pink mushrooms.

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 Take an Immersive Journey Through an Ancient Rainforest’s Mycelial Network in ‘Fungi: Web of Life’ appeared first on Colossal.



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Jean Jullien Designs a Cheery Whale Sculpture with a Functional Blowhole

a smiling whale sculpture with pencils in the blow hole

All images courtesy of Case Studyo

French artist Jean Jullien (previously) has teamed up with Case Studyo to create a jolly sculpture titled “La Baleine,” a.k.a. “The Whale.” With a functional blowhole that can hold pencils, plants, or flowers, the porcelain vessel features Jullien’s signature chunky line drawings. The wide, toothy grin adds a sense of optimism and goodwill, while the artist likens the blowhole to “an emblem of exhaling and releasing creative energy.”

“La Baleine” is available in an edition of 500 from Case Studyo. Find more from Jullien on Instagram. (via Hypebeast)

 

a smiling whale sculpture with a plant in the blowhole

a smiling whale sculpture with a drawn plant in the blowhole

a smiling whale sculpture with a plant in the blowhole

a smiling whale sculpture resting atop a box with a drawing of the sculpture on the side

a smiling whale sculpture with a removable blowhole vase

 

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 Jean Jullien Designs a Cheery Whale Sculpture with a Functional Blowhole appeared first on Colossal.



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A Knotted Octopus Carved Directly into Two Pianos Entwines Maskull Lasserre’s New Musical Sculpture

“The Third Octave” (2023). All images © Maskull Lasserre, shared with permission Behind the hammers and pins of most upright pianos is a ...