Hedgehog in the Fog

To all of you who haven't seen Hedgehog in the Fog, a masterpiece by Yuriy Norsteyn , prepare yourself to see one of the most beautiful animations. To all of you who have seen it already, I believe this is one of those things you can watch/hear/read/consume for uncountable number of times in life.

Little Hedgehog is about to visit his friend Bear so they can sit by the fire, drink tea, watch the sky and count the stars together just as they usually do. Such a simple story. So many metaphors along the way...

One interesting fact about how the fog was made: a very thin piece of paper was put on top of the scene and was slowly being lifted up toward the camera frame-by frame so that everything behind it became blurry and white.

From what I've read about Yuriy Norsteyn, I can conclude that he's a man with obsessive attention to details, admirable patience and preciseness. He has been nicknamed "The Golden Snail" because his uncompromising perfectionism always leads to veeeery slow production.

The project he's been working on ever since 1981. is Gogol's "The Overcoat" and up to this date the movie is still not finished. Everyone anticipates it, hoping for Norsteyn's greatest masterpiece, but I guess we all need to be more patient. In the meantime, you can check some abstracts from The Overcoat here.

Space dogs and some chocolate.

I've realized that most of my friends know about the tragic space dog hero Laika, but very few know the story about Belka and Strelka .

Unlike poor Laika, who was the first dog to travel into space but actually died only few hours after the launch cause of the stress , Belka & Strelka are the first living creatures who went into the orbit and returned to Earth safely.

Belka&Strelka

The recovery capsule for Korabl-Sputnik 2

Belka (Russian for “Squirrel”) and Strelka (Russian for“Arrow”) were launched into the orbit on August 19, 1960. Strelka and Belka spent a day in space in their spacecraft Korabl - Sputnik 2 along with the mighty crew of one grey rabbit, 42 mice, 2 rats, flies and a number of plants and fungi, before returning to Earth.

Now spacecrafts from the 60's are truly inspirational. So retro and futuristic at the same time.

Rik Allen is an artist who makes spacecrafts out of blown glass and recycled metals. I was instantly enchanted with his work and I really can't decide which of these cuties is my favorite.

Photo © Rik Allen

Photo © Rik Allen

Photo © Rik Allen

While on the space topic, I need to mention mouth watering planet and meteorites chocolates ( YES, chocolates! ) made by Japanese chocolatiers L'Eclat.

light&shadows.

At the moment I'm obsessing over light and shadows.

Rashad Alakbarov whose shadow paintings are all over the Internet nowadays has sucked me into this world and I can't resist sharing some of my findings.

Rashad Alakbarov is an Azerbaijan artist who uses everyday found objects and light to create his art. The work below I find the most striking and different from other shadow artworks because Rashad managed to incorporate color by using multicolored acrylic planes to create this incredibly vivid shadow painting. You can check the rest of his work on this Facebook page.

Photo © Rashad Alakbarov

Then there's Kumi Yamashita.  Kumi Yamashita says that she turns lights on and off and rearranges objects on the wall or the floor for months . The objects that she uses for creating shadows are so pure and simple and she manages to find the precise angles for her light sources so her final works are elegant and very impressive.

Photo © Kumi Yamashita

Photo © Kumi Yamashita

Below you can check a nice animation inspired by Kumi Yamashita's work by Peter Eszenyi and if you wish to see modest Kumi Yamashita in crazy Takeshi Kitano's show ( up until today I wasn't aware of the fact that Takeshi Kitano hosted several very popular television shows !!! ), go here.

And my third favorite shadow artist Fred Eerdekens. Through his shadow art, he mostly plays around with words. Below is the series of his works with twisted wires which appear to have no meaning but with the right angle lighting ,words appear on the wall.

photos via Millions of Colors

"A very short story, with a lot of fiction in the middle, and something real in the end."

Lighter than air.

via National Geographic

This is the Frost King. A giant tetrahedral kite made out of silk and wood, one of many designed by a man who was obsessed with tetrahedral kites -Alexander Graham Bell.

I simply love this photo. It is a frozen moment of men running away as a kite is about to fall.

Bell came to the conclusion that tetrahedron (four-sided object whose sides and base are triangles) is an object that is structurally very strong but at the same time very lightweight. So he kept experimenting with different designs of tetrahedral kites.He loved to watch them fly, especially on a sunny day.

via National Geographic

This is the Wheel Kite. It was one of Bell's favorite kite shapes and I have to say, mine too. Bell kept records of every kite experiment. He drew sketches, wrote down everything and took snapshots of kites being lifted in the air.

Now fast forwarding to our time to someone who was impressed and inspired by Bell's tetrahedral kites.

photos by Matt Porteous

 Artists Heather and Ivan Morison created this magical cube kite in collaboration with London architectural designer Sash Reading and design studio Queen and Crawford.

This flying sculpture called "Little shining man" was hand assembled from more than 23 000 individual components.  It took 16 months to complete Little shining man and beautiful film was made as part of this project.

Little Shining Man from Queen & Crawford on Vimeo.

blue.

Charles Bukowski's " Bluebird" visualized by Monika Umba:

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

via Moving Poems

Still in the mood for knitwear

This time different kind of knitwear.

Have you heard of yarn bombing? It's a form of street art which doesn't include spray paint but knitting. Knitting over trees, bicycles, people, sculptures, fences, cars etc.

via Agata Olek

One of the yarn bombing artists who caught my attention is a girl that goes by the name Olek. She knits a very specific kind of pattern and does it outdoors as well as in galleries. Agata Olek knits over anything she gets her hand on. One of her well known guerrilla acts was when she covered the famous sculpture Charging Bull near the Wall Street in crochet.

via Agata Olek

There's also a movement of yarn bombing evolving mostly among European artists which I especially like and it includes yarn, nails, geometry, abstraction and street.

2D version of this is done by a Spanish artist Spidertag.

via Spidertag

via Spidertag

And Teo Pirisi aka Moneyless does something similar but more 3D or lets say floating.

via Moneyless

via Moneyless

Now I dare you to say knitting is for grannies !

In the mood for knitwear

How do you feel about knitwear? And Kama Sutra?

This is "Lana Sutra" ( 'Lana' stands for wool and 'Sutra' for a thread which holds things together ), a project created by Cuban artist Eric Ravelo for Benetton. "Lana Sutra" consists of 15 installations and the idea behind the project is universal love which cancels all diversities among people and connects people no matter what race, color or religion they are.

all images by Erik Ravelo, image courtesy of United Colors of Benetton

Eric Ravelo's sculptures are provocative, yet somehow poetic as the wool gives them warmth and softness.
I must admit I admire the photographs the most. They have the perfect lighting which creates the perfect mood. For more info about the project and interesting "making of" video, go here.

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.