Happy NY everyone!

Roll with it, part two

Remember my post about ways to turn ugly toilet paper tubes which you would just normally toss away into something beautiful?

Well it's time to expand that list of ideas.

Junior Fritz Jacquet is a paper artist who has always been fascinated by paper and in love with the classic art of origami. As he started experimenting with paper, he realized origami can go far beyond one single piece of paper. As he perfected his technique, his explorations went into folding toilet paper tubes and creating these impressive facial expressions.

Ok, if that was hard to master, here's an easy one. Make yourself a Toilet Roll Pixel Boy using toilet tubes as pixels. 

You can find the full tutorial on how to make your own Pixel Boy here.

"I'm a dot.You're a dot.We are all dots."

These are words by a famous dot-obsessed artist Yayoi Kusama. The thing that reminded me of Kusama and her dots was the art of Miguel Endara which I stumbled upon a few days ago.

"Hero" by Miguel Endara

The drawing above is Miguel Endara's latest drawing composed entirely out of dots. "Hero" is a portrait of Miguel's father which he made stippling roughly 3.2 million dots. He shot a great video in which he condensed 210 hours of stippling where you can see how he produced his piece of art.

Hero from Miguel Endara on Vimeo.

Repetition and accumulation. And of course...dots.

This is why Miguel Endara triggered my thoughts of Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama ( born in 1929.) is one of the greatest living artists. She works with dots through various mediums: paintings, sculptures, installations, performances etc.

"Walking in my mind", photo via Architecture Revived

"Passing Winter", photo via Architecture Revived

"Dots Obsession" , photo via Architecture Revived

"Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity", photo via Architecture Revived

While Miguel Endara's dots look so peaceful and down to earth, Yayoi Kusama's dots bring disturbance and a sense of infinity, yet both Endara's and Kusama's work, are breathtaking.

Let's get lost.

One of my favorite web destinations lately is a blog called Curious Places which is run by an inspiring artist Jinx in the Sky. She describes her blog as "a collection of the weirdest & wonderfulest places built by people with a colourful imagination all around the world." 

And that really is a perfect description. Here you can discover some of the dreamiest places from around the world. Most of the places you will see here will spark an instant desire to teleport yourself there. 

The San Cristóbal Stables, Mexico City/Mexico

Floating house, Krasnosilka/ Ukraine

"Tunnel of Love", Kleven/Ukraine

One of the places that caught my attention was San Zhi UFO houses just outside Taipei in Taiwan.

The construction of this set of pod shaped buildings, also known as San Zhi Pod City, began in 1978. but the houses were never inhabited by people as the project was abandoned in 1980. Some say the reason for abandonment was the investment losses and the more interesting stories say that the main reason was strange fatal accidents which happened during the construction. Some people believed that the site was the former burial ground and therefor haunted. 

San Zhi UFO houses

San Zhi UFO houses

In late 2008. the demolition of this site began and UFO houses were thorn down so today this site is just a ghost field. Architecturally speaking, these houses looked really futuristic for the time they were built. To me, they even look futuristic today. So you can say that people decided to build the future and then tear it down. Strange, ha?

For more weird and beautiful places, visit Curious Places.