Pinar's Blog – May 2012 Archive (62)

Fashion department store Marks & Spencer launched its project called Shwopping, a portmanteau of shopping and swapping, in an effort to recycle clothing and decrease waste. The project, which they refer to as a revolution, seeks to draw attention to the amount of clothing that's discarded every day in the UK and make a…

New York-based artist Jacob Hashimoto is known to work with bamboo and paper, taking cues from his Japanese heritage. His sculptural installations repurpose the materials traditionally exhibited in Japanese screen paintings in a new and airy way. He also adds an interactive element to his works that elevate their appeal.



Armada is Hashimoto's installation of 700 to…

Would you stay in an hotel submerged below sea level? The architectural innovators over at Deep Ocean Technology have a conceptual design that is set to change the hotel industry and the vacationing experience in the Middle East. The Water Discus Underwater Hotel is designed as a modern and aquatic alternative to the mundane hotels found on land.

The…

French artist Julien Salaud created a luminescent ceiling installation titled Grotte Stellaire, which roughly translates as Stellar Cave, at Palais de Tokyo's Alice Guy Hall in Paris. The sculptural light installation involves interweaving strands of white string, held down with nails, illuminated by a projected…

There's a sense of accomplishment attained when one has completed a creative project like a painting or a sculpture. For video gamers, there's a similar sense of achievement in winning a game. Although there isn't necessarily a physical object to show for your efforts, it's hard to deny the victorious emotions felt. Just as a painter has a brush, a gamer…

Most of Guatemalan photographer Luis Gonzalez Palma's photography deals with his mixed Latin and Mayan heritage, focusing on portraits of the indigenous people of Guatemala. However, in this series entitled Ara Solis, he turns his lens on the beautiful imagery of ships sailing across a sea of crumpled bed sheets.

The photographer retains his center of attention on…

One of these houses is not like the others. This house in Tokyo by Sou Fukimoto Architects, known as House NA, stands out with its modern and transparent style. The building is unlike its neighboring houses in its appearance and structure. The interior of the residence has hardly any walls. The house boasts large glass windows for plenty of daylight, but the downside…

Brooklyn-based Italian photographer Andrea Galvani took to the frosty mountainous regions of Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, reaching altitudes of about 2800 meters, for his photo series entitled The Intelligence of Evil. The works depict a snowy, white expanse cut by a cloud of black smoke emitting from the figure of a man in a charcoal suit. The surreal imagery gives the…

We come across traffic signs everyday that dictate demands, "STOP" being the most aggressive. Instead of feeling antagonized, the STOP Project by Changing Lines seeks to embrace visual and typographic creativity, all while putting a smile on your face with their redesigns of stop signs. By adding a few words, they redefine the text in a humorous, lighthearted fashion with…

Based in Copenhagan, international architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, aka BIG, has released its conceptual plans for an innovative residential complex in South Korea. The project known as Cross # Towers is set to be part of the Yongsan master plan in the developing Yongsan International Business District in Seoul.

The structure, whose design mimics the hashtag symbol (#), includes two…

Black and white is classic and can be quite beautiful, but there's something about a burst of color that has the ability to surge a wide range of emotions. Kansas City-based artist Anne Lindberg works with multicolored thread to create radiant installations that are a feast for the senses. Each site-specific installation uses several miles of thread, whose ends are stapled to the…

Japanese artist Mika Aoki embraces the dichotomous nature of glass's solidity yet fragility. She says of the translucent material: "Unless light shines on it, we can’t confirm the existence of it because it is transparent. But once the light shines on it, glass truly emanates a special presence." In her series of works titled Singing Glass, the artist presents glass morphed…

If you liked artist Federico Uribe's Pencilism sculptures and paintings, you'll get a kick out of his creative shoe lace art. The inspired artist simply loves to work with multihued ordinary objects, as evidenced in these series of works aptly titled Shoe Laces. The…

New York-based artist Michael Mapes takes documentation and preservation to another level. His series of works found in his virtual museum called Room 62 display tubes, glass vials, plastic bags, and gelatin capsules filled with "specimens" in an enclosed shelf. Each encased box has a unique subject whose physical identity is represented in a series of dissected photographs,…

Colombia-born, Miami-based conceptual artist Federico Uribe uses objects from daily life to construct life-size sculptural figures. His medium of choice? Pencils. Although most artists use pencils as a tool for sketching illustrations, Uribe utilizes multicolored pencils fastened together with plastic zip-ties to create a nuclear family—father, mother, son, and daughter—in…

A few years ago, Jelly Belly officially hired painter and illustrator Kristen Cumings to produce several works of art to add to their collection entitled Jelly Belly Masterpieces of Confectionary Art. The California-based painter takes about 50-60 hours to complete the life-size paintings made of approximately 9,000 to 12,000 jelly beans each. The enormous 4 x…

Estonia-based artist Irene Z digitally manipulates photos to produce surreal environments flourishing with marine life. Each of the digital artist's female subjects are immersed in an aquatic setting, whether her environment be defined by the physical oceanic habitat or the surrounding sea-dwelling creatures roaming about. The unusual dream worlds that Irene Z creates are somewhat…

They say that the human hand is the hardest thing to draw. While it may very well be true, it's the eyes that draw my attention the most. Ukrainian artist Pavel Guzenko manages to capture the glimmering gaze of the human eye with his impressionist technique. Each shimmering orb depicts a remarkable reflective surface, truly capturing the sparkle in one's eye.

Guzenko, who…

We should be grateful for our mother everyday of the year but there's one day in particular when we really need to show it and that day is fast-approaching. So what do you get the best mom in the world for Mother's Day? In this fast-paced digital age where everything is just a click away, flowers simply don't cut it. Show your love for your mother this year by…

In London and Berlin-based Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum's sculptural work titled Hot Spot, we are presented with a massive cage-like metallic globe radiating a crimson glow. In terms of global politics and news, a "hot spot" generally refers to an area of conflict. Hatoum's piece highlights every land mass by outlining it in a neon red light that fills the room with an overwhelming scarlet…