Tag: Artist

Clever Land Artist Copyrighted Earth to Beat an Oil Pipeline

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Canadian land artist and sculptor Peter von Tiesenhausen occupies a stretch of land in Alberta covered with his artworks, but it was not until he turned the top six layers of the soil on his 800 acres of land itself from private to intellectual property that he was able to fend off encroaching corporate interests.

In Canada, a landowner has surface rights but must allow the government to grant paid subterranean access, allowing companies to create or mine passageways, pipelines, minerals or other natural resources below the ground.

They are compensated, per This.org, and “this compensation is usually for lost harvests and inconvenience, but, Tiesenhausen reasoned, what if instead of a field of crops these companies were destroying the life’s work of an acclaimed visual artist? Wouldn’t the compensation have to be exponentially higher?”

Effectively, by contacting a lawyer and protecting the surface of his land as intellectual property, he has prevented anyone from breaching that surface without compensation, which, for a work of art, could be essentially any amount. While oil companies could contest his claim, so far they have settled for costly reroutes, perhaps to avoid losing and setting a precedent that could hurt them more in the long run.

“I’m not trying to get money for my land, I’m just trying to relate to these companies on their level,” says Tiesenhausen from his home near Demmitt, Alberta. “Once I started charging $ 500 an hour for oil companies to come talk to me, the meetings got shorter and few and far between.”

Now an artist, Tiesenhausen has a great deal of experience with natural resource companies, having worked in oil fields, mining gold and even crushing boulders for airstrips earlier in life before turning to large-scale works of land and installation art and sculpture.

Cantech Letter notes of the clever strategy, “This is eerily similar to the defense Portia deploys against Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in which he is legally entitled to extract a pound of flesh from a debtor who can’t pay, so long as he doesn’t extract a single drop of blood or marrow or bone.”

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Floating on Dry Land: 17 Derelict Houseboats Find New Home

Located in the north of Amsterdam, the recently-opened De Ceuval (conceptualized by Space&Matter) is a radical redevelopment project featuring homes, …
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Zen-Like Artist Creates Intricate Pencil Tip Carvings

Artists have been creating works of art in pencil for centuries – but in this artist’s capable hands, the pencil itself becomes the canvas.
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Mirage Muralist: Street Artist Bends Surfaces Using Illusion

With works often requiring second looks or sanity checks, artist Pejac bends reality in his use of paint and other materials to create sublime art from walls, …
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September 19, 2014
Mirage Muralist: Street Artist Bends Surfaces Using Illusion

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

With works often requiring second looks or sanity checks, artist Pejac bends reality in his use of paint and other materials to create sublime art from walls, streets, sidewalks and gutters.

His newest works in Paris, shown above and below, play with our sense of surface and depth, revealing a hidden world beyond the wall in each case. If the close-up scene looks familiar, you may recognize it as The Luncheon on the Grass by Manet.

Likewise implying something secret is this silhouette of a door – at a glance, it is hard to tell what part is a real crack in the concrete and which pieces are simply painted on top.

In previous projects, he has also played with the arts of subtraction and illusion in other clever ways – letting the world, for instance, slowly melt, drip and trickle toward the drain.

Some of these works are quite time-intensive and incredibly detail-sensitive, like this final piece in which the artist carefully chipped away at the white paint on a brick wall to selectively reveal the red surface below it.

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Sideways Street Art: Muralist Makes Figures Walk on Walls

These layered creations are surprisingly realistic, even in black and white, thanks in part to their scale and reinforced by their shadows and context.
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2D or Not 2D? Body Paint Illusion Makes Faces Look Flat

Three-dimensional human bodies are transformed to look like paintings on a flat surface in this curious collaboration between a makeup artist, a photographer …
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Who is He? About Banksy: Famously Anonymous Street Artist

Who is Banksy? No one knows for sure but many have speculated about the identity of this mysterious urban street artist – learn more about him here.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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September 12, 2014
Forget About Pixels – Awaken the Artist Within

I have a confession to make: I used to be a pixel peeper. There was a time when I’d spent hours zooming in and inspecting photos at 1:1 or even 300 percent. I was looking for a technically perfect photo. Back then, most of the work I was shooting was aimed at micro stock outlets. At most of them, the inspectors and image editors were not easy to get around. Noise, camera shake, out of focus, chromatic aberration, white balance, basically any issues would end up in an image rejection. That actually helped me. I learned the technical side of photography, but I also became obsessed. I became a pixel peeper.

Luckily I don’t care about it anymore, and you shouldn’t either, unless you are shooting commercially. I mean sometimes, depending on the type of work you are doing, a thoughtful examination could be needed. However, like every obsession, pixel peeping can be a detrimental habit.

If you find yourself analyzing 100 percent crops, debating about pixel counts, hitting the forums too often and compulsively reading gear reviews, please stop. Especially if the majority of your work is about documenting travel, street photography, and whatnot. This is not what photography is about.

Yes, I get it, photography is part technology and science, but overall it’s art. Counting pixels or buying the latest camera is not going to help you to find your vision. Those are mere tools meant to aid you in expressing your voice, your art, in a wonderful medium.

I encourage you to leave the verbal flux behind and go shooting. Photography it about communicating emotions, a moment in time, the essence of a place, the soul of people.

If you’re still unconvinced, think about this. Let me start by asking you how much of your work is being shared online? Have you ever realized that the average monitor can only display 2 megapixels? And many of our photos are being seen only on tablets and phones. None of those are even close to being even viewed at 100 percent. Let’s throw in print as well; let’s say you want to enlarge your photos to 8×10, or you want to decorate a room and print a 16×24. Grab a photo that you think is not sharp or noisy and make a test. I think you’ll be delighted by how awesome it looks.

In the end, as photographers and storytellers, what we pursue is capturing a moving picture, perhaps communicating an emotion. Of course you can go after excellence and be meticulous, but always keep in mind that what you are trying to express with the craft is way beyond just a technically perfect photo. A great subject, an inspiring place or a story will always generate a reaction, an emotion in your viewer. Such an image will never be judged as too noisy, a bit shaky, and so on. In exchange, there are gazillions of perfectly technical photos floating around without any kind of content. Photos that, even though technically perfect, nobody cares about.

It is true that we have much better technology now than we had in the past. Sensors with low light capabilities, bodies and lenses with image stabilization, and software are all better than ever. But for some, it seems to never be enough; there will be always something new, something better, and we tend to get lost in the technical side instead of pressing the shutter. Many moons ago, I was always looking at these things, to the point where I didn’t even want to shoot beyond ISO 200. It was a big mistake. I lost a lot of moments and opportunities that I would’t get again. That will never happen now; I prefer to capture the instant, the character of a place, the spirit of humankind – without having to worry about pixel counts.

Forget about pixels, awaken the artist within. Go out and shoot something that moves you. You know you can.

The post Forget About Pixels – Awaken the Artist Within by Daniel Korzeniewski appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

August 24, 2014
VSCO launches $1M artist initiative fund

Image sharing and film emulation service VSCO has launched a scholarship fund totaling $ 1 million. Calling it the Artist Initiative, the program assists photographers and visual artists chosen by the company with funding and promotion of their work. The first round of recipients has been announced, including 12 creatives from across the globe. Learn more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

July 14, 2014
Perspectival Street Artist Pierces People in New Photo Shoot

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Known for his geometric art installations, Aakash Nihalani is back with a mind-bending sequence of shots that show humans interacting with his reality-warping work.

In Landline, individual and paired persons become part of the project, standing in front of urban surfaces and seemingly skewered by abstract shapes.

White shirts become backdrops for black squares sliced from each set of outfits, shot through in turn by bright neon pink, green, orange and blue rectangles.

For more of this artist’s work, including additional closeups that show the trick behind each sequence, you can follow his posts on Eye Scream Sunday.

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Little People of London: Miniature Urban Street Art Images

Wonderfully creative urban street art. These photographs, taken around town in London and even shown in galleries, are just a small portion of the work.
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Perspective-Shifting Geometric Street Art by Aakash Nihalani

Street artist Aakash Nihalani takes his perspective-skewing, geometric tape art installations to East Hampton for a residency at the Willem de Kooning estate.
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Point & Click: Street Stencils Show Tourists Where to Shoot

Urban travelers love taking pictures, but ideal angles are not always obvious to visitors – many ultimately either stand in same hard-to-find spot or …
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July 2, 2014
Urban X-Stitch: Street Artist Cross-Stitches Yarn on Fences

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Whether you want to call it a new art form or a simply a hipster hobby, an artist France is pushing street-side string art in amusing new directions.

Not quite your grandmother-in-rocking-chair approach, Urban X-Stitch creates colorfully cross-stitched pieces along the lines of yarn bombing and knitted graffiti.

So far, these subjects are mostly tame – bright logos and cute animals mixed in with only a few things that look more like spray-painted tags, but the potential is there for something more.

Another neat possible direction in which to take this: pattern sharing between artists and places, the same way cross-stitching in its traditional setting can follow guides and designs.

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Tag Clouds: Geek Street Artist Remakes Messy Graffiti

In a play on both tagging and technology, this artist turns traditional tags into computer-style tag clouds, among other geeky street art projects.
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Banksy Paradox: 7 Sides of the Most Infamous Street Artist

The following seven examples illustrate the fascinating range of Banksy’s life and works through his most controversial and compelling projects, stories and …
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Wild Creatures in Urban Mexico: New Street Art by ROA

10-foot-tall wild animals spring to life in the streets of Mexico from the spray paint can of Belgian artist ROA, champion of the underdogs of nature.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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May 16, 2014
Smear Campaign: Guerrilla Artist Remixes Adverts with Acid

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

Mutating works of public advertising with corrosive acid, this cunning urban interventionist hijacks posters from bus stops and subway stations, then adds his own message into the mix.

Vermibus takes posters then employs solvents to remake each surface in his studio, dissolving inks and colors already there and reusing materials from each de facto ‘canvass’ to make something new.

He then puts his transformed works back where he found the original or, in many cases, an entirely different site, city or even country, blending them back into the urban environment.

Having taken them off the streets, Vermibus brushes the idealized figures, slowly morphing them into surrealist versions of their former selves. He has repeated this unusual artistic process in various major cities, including and beyond his home town of Berlin.

Sometimes the commentary is clear – a model made intentionally skeletal, for instance – while others evolve (or devolve) into abstractions and parodies that seem almost inhuman.

The three fascinating short films embedded throughout this article (above and below) show his process, various examples of his work around Europe and his organization of and participation in the No-Ad Project. “Using a dubious inter-rail ticket, Vermibus set out with a set of 90 keys and his pallet of solvents to physically and temporally hijack the Western Worlds of advertisements in the name of fine art.”

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Smear Campaign Guerrilla Artist Remixes Adverts With Acid

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Public Camouflage: Make-Up Artist Makes Models Invisible

Illusion relies on expectation – we glance but only glimpse what is familiar and the rest blends neatly into the background of urban settings.
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Double Agent JR: Undercover Photographer & Guerilla Artist

Photographers are the subject of a medium-old question: does their work represent reality, or create new realities? This one undoubtedly does both in fantastic …
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Clean Streets: Guerilla Marketing Meets Reverse Graffiti

This group has managed to turn a street art hobby into a guerilla marketing campaign strategy.
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February 26, 2014
Artist Emma Jaubert Howell prints photos onto hand-blown glass

Artist Emma Jaubert Howell has combined her passions for glass blowing and photography by adopting the wet plate collodion process to expose images directly onto her artwork. The process alone is tricky, but to expose onto her three-dimensional glasswork Howell had to create a camera from scratch that was large enough to accommodate the hand-blown bowls. We spoke to Emma about her project. Learn more about her process and see some of her art in our gallery.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

February 7, 2014
Encyclopedic Landscape: Artist Carves 24-Volume Book Set

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

In his most voluminous undertaking to date, this book artist bids farewell to the long legacy of printed Encyclopedia Britannica sets with a mountainous tribute to their 244 years of history.

Guy Laramée, book artist and author of this piece titled Adieu (French for goodbye), has done similar works at smaller scale, sometimes carved into single books and other times made from whole sets or entire series. A range of fascinating examples can be seen below and certain pieces are available for purchase from the Foster/White Gallery.

The act of gouging into a book seems almost violent, making the idyllic and often nature-centric compositions this artist creates via that destruction seem strikingly peaceful by contrast.

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Encyclopedic Landscape Artist Carves 24 Volume Book Set

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Topographic Tomes: More Carved Books by Guy Laramee

Books are transformed into stunning landscape scenes of glaciers, mountains, lush green hills and ocean waves in sculptor Guy Laramee’s new series, Guan Yin. Click Here to Read More »»

Stories Jump Out of the Pages with 3D Book Sculptures

Characters from iconic stories like Treasure Island and Bambi leap out of the pages of open books in whimsical book paper sculptures by Jodi Harvey-Brown. Click Here to Read More »»

Wrapped & Twisted Book Sculpture by Jacqueline Rush Lee

Artist Jacqueline Rush Lee takes papercraft to a new dimension with stunning, organic book art crafted from lovingly handled used books. Click Here to Read More »»

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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December 25, 2013
LEGO Brooklyn: Artist Recreates Borough with Plastic Blocks

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Familiar scenes from Brooklyn, from the local flower shop to the train station, are lovingly rendered in pixelated plastic by local resident and artist Jonathan Lopes. Lopes loves BK so much, he has filled his entire 400-square-foot living room with LEGO replicas of his neighborhood – and he does it without altering the bricks at all, working within the limitations of the retail sets.

The obsession started with a Star Wars LEGO model purchased a decade ago, leading to the design of his own creations. By 2011, Lopes had used a half-million bricks to mimic the Apollo Theater, trolleys in Red Hook, Firehouse Engine 226 and a gardening shop on Hoyt Street.

Lopes told the New York Daily News that he works out his ideas while riding on the subway. Some of the pieces, like a four-foot-tall model of the Williamsburg Savings Bank made of 12,000 bricks, go on display around the city, while others are dismantled almost as soon as they’re finished to build something new.

See Lopes’ entire LEGO Brooklyn at MOCPages.

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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August 22, 2013