Pinar's Blog – July 2012 Archive (57)

National Library in Vienna, Austria

Bibliotheken is a photography series, by German photographer Christoph Seelbach, features some of the most exquisite libraries in the world. The traveling project, which translates simply as Libraries, reveals the majestic interiors of some of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful…

California, 1950 - A soldier leans out of a train to kiss a woman goodbye.

We're all familiar with photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt's V-J Day in Times Square in which a sailor returning from a victory in Japan is dipping and passionately kissing a young woman in Times Square. While it's a fantastic and memorable photo, indicative…

Malaysia-born, Tennessee-based artist Daniel Lai, aka Kenjio, uses a visually captivating paper folding technique for his inspired book sculptures. Each book blossoms outward in waves of paper folded unto themselves, accompanied by a clay figurine of a man deep in thought. The sculptor's series of Thinker sculptures, echoing Rodin's The Thinker, exhibit…

The 2012 Olympics have finally arrived in London and with it came a sweep of Olympic-themed art, celebrating the games and the athletes participating in them. Artists continue to churn out new works idolizing the Olympians and the varied sports competitions in the summer games, but one artist named Gustavo Sousa has chosen to focus on the Olympic rings…

Slovakian artist Roman Ondak's interactive installation titled Measuring the Universe started as a blank white room and evolved into a room with a strip of celestial black marks all around the gallery space at Tate St Ives. Through the participation of over 90,000…

Shapes and colors retain and evoke a great deal of meaning, offering a range of emotions and representing varied social issues. French artist Mademoiselle Maurice uses the power of each of these visual element to spread her message of peace through her colorfully geometric works.…

It's always impressive when an artist can take one form of established art and transform it just enough to create something new and exciting. Artist Vik Muniz, who we've seen turn junkyard scraps into classic masterpieces, is one such artistic magician. In his latest series titled…

Who says that landscape and profile portraits are mutually exclusive? Photographer and graphic designer Aritz Bermudez combines the two forms of photography to produce visually intriguing and delightful dual landscape portraits while featuring the profile of children in his series titled Silhouette Landscapes. The series, which initially began with silhouettes of…

Artist Stephanie Lempert takes the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" to a literal level in her photography series titled Language of Space. Rather than simply boring our visual senses with a typical image of New York, Lempert takes it upon herself to fill the frame with intriguing and often indecipherable text in various languages through which the…

The McClanes, inspired by Die Hard

Pop culture artist Kirk Demarais uses his skillful hands to produce color pencil portraits of some of our favorite fictional families from television and films. Whether it's a washed solid color or a red stage curtain, each realistic rendition is accompanied by a cheesy studio portrait…

Fashion photographer Marina Stenko's portfolio exhibits more than just a series of women in finely stitched, custom-fit garments. Each image utilizes the fine fabrics these women model to help weave a tale of romanticized mystery and intrigue. There's a dreamy ambience set in Stenko's body of work whose mystical aesthetic is only heightened by billowing dresses and misty environments.

The…

While most artists who create large-scale murals work with paints, brushes, and varied illustrating tools, Brooklyn-based Korean artist Ran Hwang uses buttons, beads, and pins, carefully aligning each component to produce some incredibly ambitious results. The artist recreates images of temples and cherry blossoms, which both echo Asian and Buddhist motifs, by hammering…

Where does creativity come from? Some people are just born with it, right? It turns out that there are many who say otherwise and have plenty of advice on how to cultivate and hone one's creativity. Whether you're a natural innovator or not, it can be difficult to maintain a constant flow of new ideas, so, we can always use a few tips on how to jump-start the artistic side of our brain to…

UK-based Thai sculptor Rook Floro uses his skillful hands to reproduce the human form as shadows of himself. Previously, in his sculptural performance piece titled Shadow, Floro represented his self-professed weakness defined by his desire to be the culturally created and accepted…

Jaws

Movies have captivated the attention of audiences since the medium was first discovered, developed, and shared with the masses in the late 19th century. From the early rise of silent black and white pictures to digitally enhanced and technically perfected films we're accustomed to today, there's an attraction to being whisked away into…

French photographer Julie de Waroquier began taking pictures in 2008, when she discovered her true passion for the art form. There's an ethereal quality to the 22-year-old digital photographer's work. It's light and airy with a hint of surrealism that doesn't hit you all at once. Like in a dream, it feels like everything is exactly as it's supposed to be, despite the clearly…

Denmark-based design agency Scandinavian DesignLab took on the task of creating a branding scheme for Copenhagen-based fashion store PARISTEXAS with a most unusual series of designs that merge bugs with musical instruments. The clothing retailer esteems itself on its distinct and distinguished outlook on fashion, deeming itself a trendsetter rather than a follower. Thus, the creatives at…

Located at 11,995 feet above sea level, Salar de Uyuni is a mystifying salt flat in Altiplano, Bolivia that has a reflective nature when covered with water. The briny layer of land, created through the rainy season, transforms the otherwise plated pockets of dry salt into a giant mirror, giving the illusion of walking on water. Though the salty desert is quite beautiful when left alone,…

Oregon-based artist Dean Crouser produces some of the most fantastic watercolor paintings of animals. His lively renditions feature a multitude of vibrant colors that fit so perfectly, they make you rethink about the real colors typically found in these wild creatures. Crouser exhibits a truly artistic eye, mixing shades of green with reds, blues, and browns in the mane of a bear…

Berlin-based artist Olafur Eliasson uses a mathematical approach to design his elaborate artworks. In Your Sound Galaxy, there are a series of geometric figures hanging overhead like a rotating universe of celestial black jewels. Each with its own LED light in it, the structures look like multi-surfaced lamps with an unusually thin source of light emitted only through the fine…