A British Sculptor Created Life-Size Sculptures from Woven Rods of Willow

The ancient art of basket weaving is thought to be among the broadest spread crafts at the history of human culture. The procedure involves weaving pliable, natural materials together to create an assortment of useful vessels and forms. Inspired by the craft, a British sculptor known as Anna & the Willow has set a contemporary twist on this timeless technique. She creates incredible nature-inspired sculptures created from English-grown sticks of willow.

Anna first started working with willow ten decades ago when she took a weekend sculpting course.

“Working with an organic material opened up a new world and I consequently went on to find out the different techniques of basketry,” she says. “I enjoy using the skills of basketry and adding my flare to the procedure.”

The talented maker crafts many willow baskets and little gifts, but her remarkable sculptural work showcases the traditional technique at a whole new level. Every large, outdoor piece is planned with hand-drawn sketches before being rendered from bespoke steel frames. Anna then wraps them with layers of interwoven willow rods, showing their remarkable forms.

One 9-foot figurative sculpture, titled The Huntress of Skipton Castle Woods, depicts a girl shooting a bow and arrow. Placed amongst a woodland environment, the impressive piece looks as though it has grown from the forest floor and may come to life to take her arrow at any moment. In other works, Anna has sculpted life-sized creatures, including a stag and a horse, both of whom seem as though they’re surveying their landscape, suspended in time.

Zac Hacmon’s AFTERLIFE series hints at the ‘in-between’ spaces

Artist Zac Hacmon is known for utilizing architectural design and ubiquitous materials to develop simultaneously recognizable and unrecognizable non-places: spaces without history or identity, yet are entirely familiar. His work elevates and bends traditional architecture and material usage, focusing on techniques and elements both from the old and the modern, creating “super-modern” architectural models for space-age, futuristic and imaginary worlds. He aims to challenge accepted notions of necessity, functionality, and memory.

Afterlife, a series of tile-based sculptures consisting of 4×4 inch white industrial tiles, encouraging viewers to consider  memory, time, displacement and altered states of ‘being’. The artist began to consider this portal-like concept with the recent loss of a loved one.

The tiles are representative of the artists’ everyday surroundings; subway stations and domestic areas. Public spaces relating to and reflecting the private, each influencing the other. One of the sculptures is equipped with 16 grab bars suggesting safety and security, yet defective.

Several forms are sealed with transparent glass acting like filters or triggers, capturing the space inside these structures, giving a false sense of depth and the notion of another dimension within the form. Viewers are momentarily disoriented by what seems familiar and logical, yet they eventually realize the opposite is true.

Hacmon describes the individual pieces as “devices”, operating with efficiency rather than as a passive object. These “devices’ can be considered, portals; a gate or gateway to somewhere unknown. Shown together, the series of sculptures can be seen as multidimensional or shrine-like.

“I’m interested in the ‘in-between’ spaces, like corridors, borders, transit hubs. There’s something fascinating that draws me to this, like the psychological shift that occurs between places, between a person’s role in one location to another. In my work there’s an attempt to catch the moment of the shift itself. The fragments in my work come from these places, like the ceramic tiles, reminding us of a subway station that is in-between destinations. These places, and alterations of role can offer a sense of freedom.” Zac Hacmon

Zac Hacmon (b. Holon, Israel) is an artist based in New York.  Hacmon uses architecture as a mediator and is interested in notions of the non-place: spaces without history or identity. His work operates with the efficiency of a device rather than as a passive object.

Check out his work at www.zachacmon.com

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An Artistic Duo Created a Sculopture ‘Absorbed by Light’ to Highlight an Obsession with Phones

The Amsterdam Light Festival is one of the largest light festivals in Europe, hosted yearly since 2012. During the winter season, artists from all around the world take part in the festival, producing unique light exhibitions that inspire and inspire both its customers and fellow artists.

Gali May Lucas is a British artist and among the participants of the festival.
Together with sculptor Karoline Hinz, they created a sculpture, featuring people focused on their phones with light illuminating their faces. Created a series of statues, featuring people focused on their phones with warm light illuminating their faces. The installation is titled ‘Absorbed by light’. The artist claims she wanted to create something that everybody could relate to.

“Cycling to work in the evenings, I see folks lost in the light of Their mobile phones. On park chairs, on the tram, in restaurants — nobody talks to each other. The white light and white noise is somewhat eerie if you take a look at it in a specific way — and you’ll see this come through strongly in the last work,” states Gali.

Check out the sculptures from the gallery below, and if you’re in Amsterdam right now, you can see it firsthand Before the Hermitage!

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DAILY BREAD: Still life Compositions in Sourdough

DAILY BREAD is a new food sculpture photography series on still life compositions in sourdough.
It focuses on visualizing balance and measure, two of the fundamentals of bread making.

Styling & Creative Direction by Anna Keville Joyce.
Photography by Magalí Polverino
Breadmaking by Francisco Seubert / Atelier Fuerza (Buenos Aires)

BIO: Anna Keville Joyce / AKJ Foodstyling – Food Stylist & Creative Director, originally from the USA and currently based primarily out of Buenos Aires and NYC, working internationally. With a background in Food Styling, Design, and Anthropology, Anna has participated in a large variety of photography, film, and event projects worldwide, and has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions. Her creative spark, attention to detail, and keen sense of composition has allowed her to gain a broad international client list. She has the pleasure of collaborating on increasingly creative and dynamic projects, and her work can be seen at www.akjfoodstyling.com

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Giant 12-Meter Sculpture of Whale Created from a Plastic Waste found in the Pacific Ocean

Artist Assembles Sculptures of Mythical Characters from Found Wood

Bennett Ewing, better known as Eyevan Tumbleweed, is a nature lover and artist who is an expert in wood sculpture, creating a succession of visages comprised of bits of wood that he collects from hills, mountains, swamps, forests, rivers, and beaches.

The wall hanging sculptures of faces in his group are pieced together meticulously and marginally extemporaneously, employing the natural colors, patterns, and instructions of various wood fragments to create countenances not wholly human nor entirely Elvin or fay.

Bonded with glue and reinforced with epoxy, the sylvan entities and their expressions of emotion and thought to portray a glimpse of an otherworldly kingdom which is not altogether unfamiliar. His technique ranges from smooth and spiraling to irregular and rough, blending fantasy with fact and impressionism with ornate design — an effect that might be something along the lines of abstract realism.

Unlike artists of other mediums, Eyevan can’t just buy more stuff in the art supply store. Instead, he always has an excuse to investigate the character, in search of the timber pieces to bigger unidentified puzzles.

H/T creativeboom

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Sebastian Errazuriz Transforms Classical Artworks into Naughty Sculptures

Ancient masterpieces provide the design cues for this series of furniture and accessories by New York-based artist Sebastian Errazuriz, which includes penis paperweights and statues that double as seats.

The Chilean-born artist is showing his Functional Sculptures at David Gill Gallery in London. The collection also includes a console embellished with decorative frieze plates, candlesticks that resemble small headless statues and a bust of a Greek god with a light inside the face.
The artist designed all of the pieces to look like artworks “stolen” from museums such as The British Museum, Le Louvre, and the Vatican and turned into objects for everyday use.

Errazuriz makes the pieces by 3D scanning Greek and Roman statues from museums across the globe. The scans are then digitally manipulated, and re-cast into functional furniture using marble, Corian, and marble composite.

“I use technology to ‘steal’ classical sculptures I have revered since childhood, claim their shapes as raw material to build my new works,” said Errazuriz.

“It’s an act of gluttony and lust to appropriate that which belongs to the sacred world of the arts and use it freely in an exploration of its boundaries within the realm of the functional and the mundane.”

Highlights include a bookcase called Antiquity Shelves Nike, which features a replica of the headless Winged Goddess Nike enveloped in a wooden ‘scaffold’ that functions as shelving.

Bust Low is a shelving unit propped up by six busts, with the faces of Greek gods and goddesses, while Coffee Table Bowl is a massive slab of marble with a slightly sunken center.

H/T dezeen

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An Artist Creates Realistic Fabric Tree Stumps from Strips of Fabric and Discarded Clothing

Textile artist Tamara Kostianovsky creates realistic elements from strips of cloth and discarded clothing. In her latest exhibit, the artist forms severed tree stumps from pieces of her late father’s clothes, incorporating his possessions into a landscape of layered, multi-colored logs. The works address the passing of time and allude to the body returning to the environment after passing.

The project is motivated by the South American people of the Andes who believe that Mother Earth is embodied from the surrounding mountains. Kostianovsky translates this idea to placing clothing items into sculptures which represent the world and its surroundings. She clarifies in an artist statement:”Fusing the shapes of shrub stumps of different kinds and sizes to a palette indicative of their insides of the body, [the show Tree Stumps] pays homage to the cultural heritage of the people of Latin America, while introducing an alternate way of considering our post-industrial connection to nature.”

Kostianovsky became entranced with the body whilst working in a physician’s office during her adolescence. She continues to make work that assesses muscle and bone, often in different species like livestock or whales. You can take a look inside the artist‘s studio by simply seeing her Instagram.

H/T thisiscolossal

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