Aakash Nihalani
I love these awesome tape and cardboard artworks by Aakash Nihalani. His website is also full of other awesome work and goodies.
Chloe Early
Chloe Early’s partial abstractions are really beautifully balanced. They remind me of some of my favourite Richard Hamilton paintings.
Bomber
Swing
Delta Wing
All images © Chloe Early. Visit http://www.chloeearly.com/ to see more of her work.
Paper beats Internet
Paper beats Internet is an ‘analog’ social networking site that is a
home for entries that focus on exploring the use and relationship between hand-rendered type and images. The work is a dialogue between students and invited guest contributers with professional backgrounds in design, illustration, fine art, writing and other disciplines
It’s like a forum where threads start as drawings and all the replies are drawings.
Below are some great illustrations from the site, all copyright their respective owners.
An example of a thread and its responses…
[That reminds me…] Pattern & Embellishments
Today I saw this lovely piece of work for Madam Madsen by Tim Bjørn whilst reading the selective and inspiring blog designworklife.
This made me think of other inspiring work I have been seeing lately that use pattern in a similar way. Firstly, it reminded me of Jessica Hische, (previously featured) and her wonderfully intricate embellishments, and secondly of the wonderful Marian Bantjes’ complex, highly resolved work.
Jessica Hische
Marian Bantjes’ Restraint typeface
And thirdly, it reminded me of the Kolam patterns that I also saw very recently on the equally wonderful BibliOdyssey.
Kolam (as it is known in Kerala and Tamilnadu) is form of sandpainting using rice powder that is traditionally practised by female members of the family outside the home. They are thought to bring prosperity to the home.
Images from BibliOdyssey
According to Bibbi Forsman:
“The basic pattern is a mathematical construction of beauty, one single line with no beginning and no end.”
Images — Bibbi Forsman
There’s such a rhythm and balance to these patterns and designs, and I love the craft and the mathematics involved in its traditional practise.
A few other delightful aspects of Kolam:
“Through the day, the drawings get walked on, rained out, or blown around in the wind; new ones are made the next day. Every morning before sunrise, the floor is cleaned with water, the universal purifier, and the muddy floor is swept well for an even surface.”
And my favourite:
“In olden days, kolams used to be drawn in coarse rice flour, so that the ants don’t have to work so hard for a meal. The rice powder is said to invite birds and other small critters to eat it, thus inviting other beings into one’s home and everyday life: a daily tribute to harmonious co-existence.”
(both—Wikipedia)
These characteristics of the practise reminded me of part of an essay by Ros Moriarty called Interpreting Visual Language: Aboriginal Australia (in Open Manifesto 2, 2005). Moriarty explains that the Indigenous Australian mark-making process similarly rejects the idea of art as precious, and immediately after being made a mark will naturally start to deteriorate and disappear.
“The diametric opposition between Indigenous and Western approaches to art, applies equally to signage. While a Western artist might often create a work to hang in a permanent location, to be reviewed and assessed, judged and acclaimed, the immediacy of Indigenous art making has no such aspirations. Whether gouged from rock on an inaccessible cliff face, scattered in ochre on the ceremony ground, or slathered in river clay on an initiate’s body, patterns and symbols are about the meaning of the moment. Their spontaneous beauty lacks artifice or self-interest. The very act of their creation is to pass knowledge, re-enact process, ensure meaning will pass to each new generation.”
Art & Street Type: (Ben) Eine [UK]
On my train ride home today I was looking at graffiti and marveling at the typographic mastery that sometimes surprises me amongst walls of scrappy tags and figurative murals. Then this evening I read about Eine’s work, over at my love for you is a stampede of horses, and it tied in so nicely with what I had been pondering earlier. I’m also pretty grateful to be introduced to Eine, though I feel I am somewhat behind the 8-ball.
On Thursday, July 9 Carmichael Gallery will play host to The A – Z of Change, the debut LA solo exhibition of Eine. Internationally recognized for his super-sized lettering in urban areas, Eine will unveil a new body of works on canvas that combines his trademark typeface, a vivid color palette and provocative imagery to powerful effect.
If I were in LA and not four squillion miles away in Melbourne, I would surely be checking it out.
There is also a Google Map of his letters in & around Shoreditch, UK.
All photos from Carmichael’s flickr set.
Illustration, Art & Hilarity: David Fullarton [USA]
These artworks are part of David Fullarton’s installation in the offices of a Houston radio station, called What I do when I’m supposed to be working.
The works were placed in amongst other flyers and notices in the office. It is part of the Sisyphus Office project which involves artists who wish
to highlight art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life.
Below are some of those necessary distractions.
All images © David Fullarton. Also see his Behance page, and Skydive gallery.
- words to live by
Artist: Giovanni Battista Braccelli [Baroque Period]
I recently found my way over to Rare Book Room via TypeNeu.
There I was blown away by images I found of a book by Giovanni Battista Braccelli (b. between 1600–1650). He was an ‘almost unknown’ Florentine painter and engraver and the book illustrated below book remained obscure until relatively recent times.
A remarkable precursor of the radical artistic movements of the twentieth century, this rare show of visual oddities is filled with fabulous and jocund variations on the human form, constructed from a hallucinatory variety of animate and inanimate components.
— From Octavo
The book, Bizzarie di Varie Figure, (1624) is full of the most extraordinary figures made up of all sorts of different shapes and objects. It is fascinating and brilliant.
All images below are © The Rare Book Room. http://www.rarebookroom.org/
