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.

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.

Someone's alone.

Thought of You.

"Thought of you" is one of the most beautiful animations which explores the contemporary dance in 2D animation.

Animator and designer Ryan Woodward is well known for his commercial projects - he has done storyboards for some of Hollywood's major hits. I would just like to mention that he worked on one of the films that has a special place in my heart - Where the wild things are.
However, the true treasures lie within Ryan's personal independent projects. One of them is "Thought of you".

What makes "Thought of you" so special is that there's no dialogue, no facial expression, only two dancing human bodies and yet, this film is packed with emotions, you feel it as something very personal and you can sense with such great intensity the complexities of relationships.

The magical song used in the film is “World Spins Madly On” by The Weepies .

To me, the process of making this film was equally inspiring as the film itself. If you're interested, you can see it here.