Sunday 31 December 2017

Life-Size Cardboard Sculptures of Chinese Villagers Tap Into Artist Warren King’s Ancestral Heritage

Warren King began sculpting with cardboard as an attempt to add fantasy to the lives of his children, creatively crafting masks and helmets out of the recyclable material. This slowly evolved into a more time-consuming arts practice as King began focusing less time on costumes, and more time making large sculptures of his own. After a visit to his grandparents’ village in Shaoxing, China, the New York City-based artist felt compelled to more deeply connect with his cultural past. This sparked Grandfather’s Friend, and Arrival Times, a series of life-size cardboard recreations of his ancestors. 

“During my first visit to China about 7 years ago, I visited the village and spoke with residents who actually remembered my grandparents from over 50 years ago,” said King. “It was a pivotal experience for me, one that inspired me to become an artist. Through my work, I am attempting to understand the fragile connections to people and culture, and examine whether those connections, once broken, can be restored.”

King’s cardboard sculptures will be shown in the exhibition Art of Asia at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center from February 2 to March 28, 2018. You can see more of his work on his Instagram and Flickr.

Friday 29 December 2017

Nature-Based Textiles by Vanessa Barragão Highlight Ecosystems Above and Below the Sea

Portuguese textile artist Vanessa Barragão produces carpets and tapestries from a variety of different techniques, creating multi-faceted landscapes with the use of latch hooking, crochet, weaving, basketry, and felt. Her environmental works present imitation coral, fungi, and algae as three-dimensional elements in plush contexts such as the circular work viewed above which she calls Earth Rug. The piece was developed for this year’s Milan Design Week and spans nearly 15 feet in diameter.

You can shop Barragão’s smaller coral-decorated textiles on her Etsy Shop, and view more of her larger works on her Instagram and Behance. (via Lustik)

Thursday 28 December 2017

New Hand-Painted Persian Carpets With Vibrantly Hued Details by Jason Seife

With a steady hand and several fine-point brushes, Miami-based artist Jason Seife (previously) produces paintings that mimic the ornate patterns found in Persian carpets. Seife presents the same geometric symmetry seen in historic designs, yet takes his own liberties with the colors of ink and acrylic paint chosen for each work. The vibrant hues selected are not ones traditionally found in Persian textiles, but are his way to imbue his own state of mind into each piece.

Seife is currently represented by Robert Fontaine Gallery. You can see more of his carpet-based paintings on Instagram. (via Booooooom)

Step Inside a Swirling Mirror Room of Interactive Ocean Vortices by teamLab

For their latest dizzying interactive installation, Japanese collective teamLab (previously) brought the ocean indoors, creating a projected environment that reacts to the movements of visitors, all encased within the infinite space of a mirror room. Titled “Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement” the work is inspired in part by the life cycle of the ocean, particularly the movement of plankton as represented by the reactive particle effects that spin like whirlpools as you pass through the exhibition space. The speed and direction of people’s movements are all factored into the projections and in the absence of motion the room gradually reverts to darkness.

The Vortices installation just opened at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia where it will remain on view through April 15, 2018. You can learn more on teamLab’s website. (via Designboom)

All images © teamLab.

A Floating Coffee Cup Pours a Rainbow of Liquid Pencils

Texas-based artist and maker Bobby Duke runs a popular YouTube channel where he posts a variety of art and craft videos on stone carving, sculpting, and painting projects. His latest piece was the creation of a fun floating cup that appears to pour a splash of liquid pencils. Duke is auctioning the final piece on Ebay with part of the proceeds going to St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

Wednesday 27 December 2017

Hundreds of Swinging Pendulums Subtly Choreograph Visitors’ Movements at the Paris Autumn Festival

Hundreds of pendulums swing through Paris’ Grande halle de la Villette for choreographer and artist William Forsythe‘s installation Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2. The hanging plumbobs sway together in a series of timed sequences, which force visitors into choreographed movements as they avoid the ceiling-mounted works.

“The spectators are free to attempt a navigation of this statistically unpredictable environment, but are requested to avoid coming in contact with any of the swinging pendulums,” says an artist statement regarding Forsythe’s choreographic object. “This task, which automatically intimates and alerts the spectators innate predictive faculties, produces a lively choreography of manifold and intricate avoidance strategies.”

The work has previously been installed at the Circus Street Market as part of the Brighton Festival, the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, the Arsenale of the Venice Biennale, and will be displayed at la Grande halle de La Villette for le Festival d’Automne à Paris through December 31, 2017. You can see footage from an iteration of the installation at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany in the video above. (via The Kid Should See This)

@audre.l

Image via @audre.l

Image via @tam_qubiqstudio

Image via @tam_qubiqstudio

Image via @_cedric_v

Image via @_cedric_v

Image via @ziyue_j

Image via @ziyue_j

Image via @studiomm_paris

Image via @studiomm_paris

Tuesday 26 December 2017

A Remarkable Timelapse of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launch

Last Friday SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket that illuminated the sky above Southern California in a spectacularly unusual way, leaving many unsuspecting people to wonder if they were witnessing a comet, an attack, or the end of days. SpaceX founder Elon Musk acknowledged the bizzare atmospheric effect but didn’t help clarify things much.

Photographer Jesse Watson was in nearby Yuma, Arizona to film a timelapse of the launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Having never filmed a rocket before he wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but this 40 seconds of footage was well worth the effort. PetaPixel has some additional details about how Watson managed to get the shot.

Thursday 21 December 2017

New Sculptures by Ben Young Transform Hand-Cut Glass into Aquatic Landscapes


Ben Young (previously here) continues to use exquisite manual techniques to transform sheets of glass into luminous sculptures that give a glimpse into a moment in time or space. The artist envisions, hand-cuts, and carefully constructs layers of glass to evoke water, often offset with organically-shaped concrete topography, as well as metal details like a diver, lighthouse, or sailboat. Young, who is based in New Zealand, describes his latest body of work on his website:

Sentiments of the Sublime explores the nostalgic many and collective perspectives of the relationship between man and nature. In creating work, by hand, that makes reference to the myriad of perspectives and experiences of others, Young’s work is both deeply personal to the viewer and at the same time exploring subject matter that is universal, connecting Young, his work and his viewers in a moment of awe and nostalgia.

Young recently had his first solo show at REDSEA Gallery in Singapore, and currently has a piece, At The Helm, on view at Black Door Gallery in Aukland. Young also offers prints of his sculptures and shares updates on his work via BehanceFacebook, and Instagram.

And the winner is….

The winner of the Round the World Giveaway
I know you all have been eagerly waiting to hear who has won my round the world giveaway…and today, the wait is over.

We got thousands of entries and it was really hard to narrow it down. It took me a lot longer to read the entries than I originally thought and it took even longer to narrow down a winner. There were a lot of good submissions but, in the end, there can be only one and I had to pick a winner.

And that winner is…

Heather T. from California.

Heather, 26, attended Carnegie Mellon University as a Materials Science and Engineering major and currently works as a Senior Consultant for IBM. Inspired by the life and death of her mother, she decided to start treating her life with urgency. Heather filled her free time with singing, salsa dancing, scuba diving, amazing friends, and as many adventures as she could fit in. At twenty-six, she’s recently applied to grad school so that one day, hopefully, she’ll be making a difference with an advanced degree in Public Policy.

In her own words, here are ten facts about her:

  1. I’m a scuba diver
  2. My sister is 10 months younger than me. For one month, every year we are *technically* the same age.
  3. I make homemade artisan ice cream in flavors like sour cream, mango jalapeño, and sweet potato.
  4. I earned my degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University before taking a job in Business.
  5. I’m used to moving around a lot. I’ve moved more than 20 times (I’ve lost count). I went to 5 elementary schools 1 middle school, 2 high schools and three colleges.
  6. I’m learning Spanish. I’ve always loved the language. Growing up in LA I was surrounded by it and always wanted to learn. I’ve been taking lessons but I’m excited for more hands on experience!
  7. I’m extremely allergic to cats and strongly dislike them. Technically allergic to dogs too but I’m a dog lover so I don’t mind so much!
  8. I haven’t eaten fast food since I was 16. I saw Super Size me in high school and gave it up instantly. Soda too.
  9. I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart.
  10. I have a huge family. My dad is one of 5 and my mom was one of 14. And I have 9 siblings.

She’ll be leaving next month and we’ll be getting updates from her journey. Heather will be starting in South America before heading over to Africa then Southeast Asia and looping back to Europe before grad school! I’ll feature her each month to share what she’s been up to!

Heather in Cartagena

Here is her winning essay:

At 16, after 10 years of separation, I met my mother. She had previously been incarcerated in federal prison and I barely remembered her.

My mother was wild and warm. One time, she picked me up wearing bright green shoes, blue pants, a red top, and her hair newly dyed purple at the roots. Puzzled, we stared at her.

“Mom, what are you wearing?!” we asked.

“What? My shoes match my pants, my pants match my top, and my top matches my hair.”

In January 2015, she was given 3 months to live when she was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer that had metastasized to both breasts, lungs, liver, bones, spine and brain. My mother was tough, so she lasted 8 months. I saw the pang of regret in her eyes that only comes from a life unlived. She always waited, believing there would be more time to fulfill her life.

My mother had the power to make anyone laugh and she could talk anyone into almost anything. She taught me to live more and take risks. Over the 7 years we shared, she became my best friend. We talked every day. She completed a part of me I never knew was missing. She was the most remarkable person I’ve ever known. Even after all the pain in her life, she knew how to find joy in life and she taught me to do the same. I am so thankful every day that she found me and saved me from who I was becoming.

I feel cheated most days over the short time I had with her. When she passed, something awoke in me. Six months after she passed, I took my first trip abroad. I visited Spain with my sister. Four months later I spontaneously traveled to Iceland and got scuba certified so I could dive between the continents in 0°C water. Two months later, I got an unexpected break from work, so I traveled to London, Paris and Geneva on a whim. 5 countries in one year. I was on a roll. Earlier this year, I took a solo trip to Colombia and in a month, I am headed to Berlin, Prague and Budapest. Travelling is now my favorite hobby, especially solo travel, which gives me the opportunity to break out of my shell.

Each day I feel chained to the job that I worked so hard to earn. I dream about taking off and travelling for an extended period of time. This trip would be the perfect opportunity to do so. I would share my adventures through travel blogging and photography. I think my perspective as a single female black traveler is largely missing from the travel blogging domain.

Life is short and beautiful and I want to make the most of it. I would much rather have my mother here on this earth, but in her absence, I’m glad to have learned how lucky I am to have the adventures in front of me.

Heather and her mother

(Heather and her mother)
****
Thank you to everyone who entered. I wish I could have picked you all but, sadly, I didn’t invest in Bitcoin or any other weird cryptocurrency, so I’m can’t!

I hope this contest inspired you to take action, plan a trip, and dream big. I wish you well on your future travels and hope my book How to Travel the World on $50 a Day helps you learn how to travel cheaper, better, and smarter!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

As this is the last post of the year, see you in 2018!

– Matt

P.S. – I’m hosting a meet-up in Bangkok on Christmas Day! Let’s grab drinks and talk travel Follow the Facebook event for updates.

The post And the winner is…. appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Monumental Aged Wood Constructions by Leonardo Drew

Leonardo Drew is an artist known for his large wall-mounted sculptures composed of jagged tree trunks layered with thousands of segments of cut wood. The monumental installations perform as abstracted landscapes, which undulate and retract through a combination of natural and man-made shapes.

Although typically monochromatic, the works vary in color depending on how extensively Drew chooses to alter the material’s exterior. In some works the wood is stark black, while in others the light wood appears relatively untreated.

“By manipulating the wood and other objects to weather and age them, Drew’s awe-inspiring sculptures reveal the artist’s intense attention to shaping, cutting, building, and working his pieces through his own material language,” explains a press release for Drew’s eponymous solo exhibition at Talley Dunn Gallery this past fall. “These densely stacked and layered sculptures activate the spaces in which they occupy with a dynamic presence whereby complexity and simplicity coexist.”

Drew’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, including The Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Ireland, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Miami Art Museum, and the St. Louis Art Museum. He has also collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and has participated in artist residencies at ArtPace, San Antonio and The Studio Museum of Harlem in New York City.

Recently Drew produced an installation for San Francisco’s de Young Museum titled Number 197, a work which responded to the institution’s unique architecture by spanning three walls of its atrium. This fall he also exhibited at Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas, Texas where his solo exhibition Leonardo Drew was on view through December 16.

Wednesday 20 December 2017

Tatsuya Tanaka Continues Building Tiny Worlds in his Daily Miniature Calendar Photo Project

Since April 2011, art director and photographer Tatsuya Tanaka’s imagination has built a magnificent number of miniature worlds (previously here and here). Through the artist’s clever lens, everyday activities like construction work, walking the dog, getting a parking ticket, and plowing through a blizzard become delight-inducing scenarios. Tanaka also plays with pop culture references, building staple skyscrapers for Godzilla to prowl.

You can see more from Tanaka’s ongoing Miniature Calendar project on Instagram, where he shares his creations each and every day. With over two thousand scenes and counting, he has garnered an impressive followership of a million people. In August, Tanaka also released a book of his work, Small Wonders – Life Portrait in Miniature. (via Tu Recepcja)

Mother Earth and Her Daughter Meet in a Mural by Jess X. Snow

A new mural in Philadelphia by Jess X. Snow depicts two abstracted female figures, one young, and one old, both formed of rippling branches, leaves, flowers, and birds in flight. Entitled “A Daughter Migrates Toward The Mother Earth,” the mural was created with the support of public art nonprofit Mural Arts Philadelphia.

In addition to mural-making, Snow is also a poet, filmmaker, and educator. Snow describes her multi-disciplinary work as exploring “survival, joy, and our relationship to the Earth by amplifying the voices of those who refuse to be defined by borders, heteronormativity, gender, color, legislation and time.” You can follow her work and travels on Instagram and Twitter. Snow also designed a screen print with similar imagery available through Justseeds.

Intimately Cupped Hands Cast Inside Clay Bricks by Dan Stockholm

By Hand is one of several pieces by Dan Stockholm that explores the process of making an object by capturing its performative actions within the work. For this particular installation Stockholm placed negative plaster casts of his cupped hands into a series of red clay bricks that vary in how much they reveal. Some objects showcase both hands, while others only hint to a sliver of a finger or palm.

The positions of the cupped hands mimic gestures Stockholm made during a 2013 performance in which he touched every inch of his father’s house after his death. The intimate moments now embody their own structure, the abstract shape of his father’s home reincarnated through gesture.

The work was exhibited at Künstlerhaus Bethanien last spring for his solo exhibition HOUSE. You can view more of Stockholm’s sculptural works on his website.

A Year in Review (And a Needed Break)

Matt hiking in the mountains
As dawn broke on this year, I was excited for a fresh start. Last year, I dealt with panic attacks and anxiety from taking on too many projects, a breakup that left me heartbroken, and a mini-identity crisis from settling down.

But that “greatest worst year of my life” set the stage for a year in which I shifted my priorities and focused on developing routines. On a personal level, this was a solid year.

I cut my travels in half.

I now love waking up, opening my fridge, and making breakfast.

My panic attacks are gone.

I read a lot more.

I drink less and cook more.

I joined a gym.

I developed routines.

And, while my insomnia is not gone, I’m starting to sleep a lot better.

But no year is perfect.

I replaced one addiction (traveling) with another (work). On the road, it was easy to fill a day with exciting adventures. But now that I was home, what was I going to do? I did the one thing I knew i could default to: work. And I worked all the time. I annoyed my team on the weekend by sending them work. I released more digital guides and published a new edition of my print guide, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. We changed the site’s design. I did two speaking tours. I ran three tours.

And, in the process, I burned myself and my team out.

As this year ends, I’ve come to realize that while I enjoy the stability in my life, I gave up the one thing I wanted most by slowing down: time.

Time to learn languages and start hobbies. Time to read and relax. Time to explore New York. Time to date. Time to do whatever the hell I feel like doing.

While I’m better at managing time, I still have too many projects going at once. As my friend Steve recently told me, “Matt, I got tired just hearing what you are doing. I can’t imagine what’s it like to actually do it.”

There’s a certain irony in that, while I preach the importance creating time in your life for what you want, I haven’t followed my own advice.

The truth is I’m a workaholic. I have been since I was I was a kid. I used to pull 60 hour weeks at my 9 to 5. I don’t know how not to work.

I think that’s why I love being an entrepreneur. It’s easy to always create projects and build stuff.

But I take it too an extreme: I just work. And then work some more. I write, I blog, I start new website and initiatives.

But I need to stop that. I need to free up time. The average life is only 29,000 days and, as I barrel closer and closer to the statistical half way point of my own, it’s time to live a more purposeful life.

And so, as I am off to Thailand and then New Zealand through January, I’ve decided to take a mini-break from blogging. In truth, while the panic attacks are gone, the conditions that created them still haven’t gone away.

I need to work on that.

Last year was a revelation. This year was a realization:

This new me is still a work in progress.

One thing I loved about this year was that I finally got offline while traveling. I didn’t bring work with me. I allowed myself to fully enjoy the places I went. I didn’t rush off to find an internet connection or get bothered if one didn’t exist. I want more of that. It makes me love and appreciate travel.

When I’m doing that, travel isn’t work.

This is not one of those “omg blogging is so much work so I’m taking a vacation” posts. I plan to still write and be on social media. This is taking a step back and trying to figure out how to find balance.

I’m not looking for work/life balance.

I’m just looking for balance in general. I want to stop feeling like I’m five minutes away from a panic attack.

While there are two big community announcements coming in January (We’ve been working on them for months and they are freaking awesome. They are designed to get people together in real life and talk about travel.), new blog posts will be few and far between until I return from New Zealand.

If last year taught me to stay put, this year taught me the need for balance. Multitasking is an illusion, and settling in one place made me realize just how easy it is to fall into “the busy trap” of modern life. The internet, with its 24/7/365 schedule means, without proper restrictions, it’s easy to give it your 24/7/365. And that’s now a good habit to have.

2018 will be a year of focus. It will be the year of stepping out of “the busy trap.” It’s time to learn to say no to things I don’t love and reclaim the world’s most limited and precious resource: time.

(On a final note, thank you for everything. You all are amazing and I’ve enjoyed your emails, letters, and random run ins on the street! Thank you for coming to all the meet-ups! This community is awesome and I look forward to seeing and meeting more of you in the new year. Thanks for always being there. Have a happy holidays and an amazing new year!)

P.S. – The winner of the free trip around the world contest has been picked. I’ll be announcing it tomorrow. Just have a few more details to work out Stay tuned!

P.P.S. – I’m hosting a meet-up in Bangkok on Christmas Day! Let’s grab drinks and talk travel Follow the Facebook event for updates.

The post A Year in Review (And a Needed Break) appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.