Author Archive


Posted on February 22, 2012 - by

Jessica Drenk

It’s a barnacle bonanza over here tonight – thanks again to the people of Pinterest I came upon the work of Jessica Drenk tonight in all of its glory. Jessica takes everyday products from pencils to coffee filters to mops and creates the most amazing installations, wall art pieces and smaller sculptures. As I should have expected, Jessica’s from Montana originally, starting her love of nature!

Guess what that material is…toilet paper rolls…coated and ensconced in wax. How cool – they look like little hives! Currently Jessica works from South Carolina.

More beautiful, framed toilet paper rolls. Who would have thought these would be made into art objects. I feel like this is something my brother would send me and ask, is this art? It definitely is.

The above are from her Erosions series – the material? Carved PVC pipes. Initially the erosion part didn’t come through to me but as you scroll through the whole series on her site it becomes very clear.

Carved books! I feel like Jessica’s work is a fun game of posting images and seeing who can guess what’s what first!

What I can’t quite figure out is if the books are waxed first and then carved or if they’re carved and then waxed. I imagine it’s the former.

So this is where the barnacles come into play…these are coffee filters and cable ties. Look how beautifully they cover a wall / room.

With the varying depths they truly look like coral reef structures. They have shadow and variety – I just love them. And they’re monochromatic, my favorite.

The full room view gives you a real sense of what they look like in aggregate. I love that this is something that, ostensibly, you could create after stopping at the grocery store and the hardware store (no accounting for the patience and creativity required). It’s just fun to see what can be created out of everyday materials.

…a book! Carved, wax embraced again – who would have thought.

“Swirl” the above piece is also wax books. I love these small scale installation type of works. They do seem more collector friendly for some reason (this may be due to space constraints).

This is where stuff gets even more interesting. Jessica not only uses wax as a stabilizing medium for her works but also porcelain, a favorite material of mine. Guess what this is? Q-tips, dipped in porcelain and fired. I absolutely love this. I love that the Q tips don’t totally disappear, I love that the cotton bits look like they’re exploding. I just love it all.

Cotton cosmetic pads, also dipped in porcelain slip and fired. In this case it looks like more of the cotton pads burned out in the firing process but that they’re shape remained. I wonder how long she lets the porcelain slip harden before firing – or if that even matters.

This looks particularly barnacle-y to me. It’s gauze, dipped and fired. I just love how paper thin these look. I could never have these in my home – someone would break them immediately.

Mop…I don’t know how she does it. I love it though. I know some people who have homes that are like museums in some areas with really, truly wonderful artwork in them and I would love to someday have these amazing things but I just can’t see myself able to live around them. They’re so inspiring and magical – thankfully I can hide them all here for when I have to make that call.


Posted on February 22, 2012 - by

Lauren Kussro

Sometimes I come across an artist who makes a variety of works but I’m particularly drawn to one – such is the case of Lauren Kussro’s barnacles – they are awesome and remind me of Emily Barletta’s crochet domes. The below piece, with those vibrant colors, stretches across a huge wall – these are not tiny!

I should also mention that today I’m blogging from my new computer (an Air) and I’m loving it – though it’s so small I am worried that the weight of my arms could break it.

Look at how beautiful those individual barnacles are! And no, that’s not paper from the Papersource down the street, Lauren hand texturizes plain paper into these gorgeous colors and patterns.

Not only does she print the patterns but then she hardens the paper with a waxy coating, then forms the barnacles, sews them into shapes and then sews beads into their “corners” – THEN she hems the internal open areas – what a process! I can appreciate that time!

Totally beautiful – I wish I had a whole wall covered in them – I say that about everyone making barnacle-y type things, I know. Success – I’ve written a post and the computer’s still working!


Posted on February 18, 2012 - by

Eva Hild

I’ve been on a mini vacation since I last wrote – some girlfriends and I went down to Turks & Caicos for some much needed sun and mid-afternoon cocktails. It was awesome! We went walking on the beach, enjoyed the crystal clear waters, and even went banana boat tubing! Now, back in cold Boston, I’ve been looking at artists who continue that clean and simple aesthetic of island living – on Pinterest I found Eva Hild via a pinner called See Cunda.

Eva’s sculptures evoke coral reefs to me. The scale she works at is unexpected (they’re larger than you think) and reflective of just how expansive the reefs can be under the sea. Her chosen medium, stoneware.

She lives and works in southwest Sweden, which somehow seems fitting to me. I recently worked on a deal with a Swedish company and when we were briefing journalists in Scandinavia they all noted how dark it was up here – I too would want to build huge, airy, light and bright works in juxtaposition.

For scale – see how large they are in comparison to the human on the left. They’re surprisingly large – this one reminded me of a decorative sting ray!

Over time (her site is organized by years) it seems to me that Eva has gotten more exacting on the exterior surface of her pieces. The one above looks totally smooth. I also love how she displays her pieces – the colored backgrounds make it easier to see the undulating surfaces.

Eva got her undergraduate degree from the Art School of Gerlesborg and her MFA in Design and Craft from the Univ. of Bothenburg.

This one looks almost skeletal, or like an insect. I love them all – it’s definitely worth checking out more of her process on her site.


Posted on February 7, 2012 - by

Hyacinta Hovestadt

I think Hyacinta Hovestadt might be the hardest artist to track down that I’ve ever blogged about.

I can’t find a website of her own but I can find many videos and fans of her work throughout a variety of sites. That could be because of the material she uses, recycled corrugated cardboard. I’ve written about other people who use cardboard and recycled mediums but hers to me look sort of hive like Hannah Verlin’s Nesting works.

I love that even though they’re made of cardboard, which could be modeled in any way, she still chooses to cut away what some would argue is “more” than she should, creating what look like wheel thrown ceramics that go awry (as mine always did).

The setting in nature are wonderful – you can really see how, like in papercutting, the various layers build upon the others to create what looks like a complete form. It looks more hand-wrought up close but from farther away it looks quite fluid.

From what Google Translate tells me, Hyacinta studied art education and fine arts at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and Münster University. After that it appears that she worked as an art teacher at a high school and as a museum educator at the Art Collection of the North Rhine. Her bio read that she then spent years doing freelance work as a film director, writer, author and journalist.

She seems to have been a “creative” her whole life and it now experimenting with her medium and trying new things.

With the color variation it looks like a clam shell to me, which seems like exactly her inspiration area – nature and earth-tones. She uses this industrial material, destroys its initial use and recreates something out of it – which to me reads like the essence of recycling. What’s also interesting to note is that Hyacinta doesn’t look at the art market around her – she doesn’t want to know about other people doing things similar to her. I on one hand think that’s cool and on the other hand think it’s kind of sad but either way, I’m glad she’s making what she’s making!


Posted on February 3, 2012 - by

Lee Boroson

There are so many amazing people on Pinterest but one artist who I’ve been following is Mary Osmundsen. She recently posted a piece by Lee Boroson and I had to share this artist’s amazing inflated installations!

The above piece is built out of nylon, monofilament, hardware, a blower, etc. – those are handmade clouds, inflated above these little babies. I love the puffy installations.

These types of pieces though don’t just need to be on the ceiling, they are also made to be on the floor. Part of me looked at these and thought lilypad from above – the other part of me then though, upside down world with lilypads from underwater! I love the care to make sure the power cords to the blowers are matching green.

Tassels? Oh yeah, tassels. This piece is called “Outpouring,” which makes sense to me. This piece also includes wood and decorative pins.

The above piece is glass, silicone, felt, wood, rope, and hardware. It’s like a bubbly cloud and what’s crazy to me is that each one of these 7,000 spheres is blown glass.

Huge! So wild. Lee attended the Philadelphia College of Art for undergraduate and then got an MFA from Indiana at Bloomington.

I love the idea of a soft staircase above a real one – doesn’t it look like it’d be more fun to slide down the blue slide instead of using the appropriate staircase?

This looks like a bomb explosion to me. Scary but then you remember it’s just air! I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to inflate this and have it not hold…


Posted on January 28, 2012 - by

Valerie Buess

Treehugger posted about an amazing paper artist yesterday – I had to share her here as well – I hope you like Valerie Buess, a Swedish artist, as much as I do!

She takes books, disassembles them and twists and shapes them to create sea-forms, a favorite here.

I also love the photography on her site – it’s so well done. Some of her twisting and curling reminds me of Wendy Wahl whom I wrote about earlier this week. Her tubes appear denser, tighter and colored though.

Look at that color – it’s like an indigo wash. You can see here clearly the repetitive nature of this work and the amazing creations that can come out of that monotony.

The above looks just like filigree – I love the idea of sculpture incased so that it can appear differently. I doubt that all these pieces of book are attached to one another but their weight holds them together here.

So incredible – I have no idea how that’s done, it looks like interconnected vacuum tubes. This reminds me of the plate sculptures of Tara Donovan that look to be growing and multiplying out of each other.

Her hanging sculptures are also incredibly – they look so airy but I imagine they are made of the same twists as the others making them have more weight.

Coral…these all look like coral. I wish I had a sense of their scale and their weight. I imagine this isn’t too big. It also could be a cool bean! I wonder if, like Wahl, she uses specific types of books to create her works or if she uses whatever she can get her hands on.

Look at that little urchin open up and show you more paper. I love all things sea-inspired and this is no different!


Posted on January 23, 2012 - by

Wendy Wahl

Oh Pinterest, how I love thee – another day another inspiring piece of installation art! This time the artist is Wendy Wahl, who creates installation art pieces using recycled encyclopedias, world books, and dictionaries.

How cool are those? They’re like trees made of paper…how meta is that? Wendy talks about it as a process of “considering the associations between the tree of life, defined as the patterns of relationships that link all earth’s species and the tree of knowledge, defined as the connected branches of human thought realized in the form of writing and speaking.”

In addition to using the pages of these tomes as leafs or layers in her new trees, she also takes and rolls the pages in a repetitive way to create the cellular, growing pieces.

How cool does that look up close…it reminds me somewhat of the work of Amy Eisenfeld Genser, though her rolls are tighter and more varied in depth.

I wonder which book each side of this work is from. The yellowing and the graying must mean different consistencies of paper / ink I would think.

What’s also cool to me about Wendy is that she’s fairly local – she lives in nearby Rhode Island an teaches in continuing education at RISD amongst other things. I love learning about artists who work in general area, broadly speaking New England. It’s fun to learn about all the creativity flowing sort of near my back door.

These look like slinkies! I can’t help but wonder what her armature is for these sorts of pieces (if there is one) and what they weigh!

Paper, ink and blackened elm – I love the contrast in this piece, which is sort of different for Wendy’s overall portfolio. I can’t wait to keep my eye on her and see when she shows near Boston!


Posted on January 22, 2012 - by

Chris Wight

I love porcelain, but within the porcelain family there is a sub-category of bone china, which I think is even finer quality from a material standpoint. Chris Wight, who I learned about from the awesome blog, Murmure Visible, works with bone china to create amazing table art pieces that push the boundaries of the material itself.

He casts his pieces and then drills away parts of them with a hand drill it looks like in the pictures. He does perforate the castings, which is pretty cool. Reminds me of the totally insane pieces of Tony Marsh.

Chris also appears to be at the cutting edge of new ceramic processes include water jet cutting, I’m not sure which he uses for which pieces. As he says in his statement, “I routinely combine traditional and modern approaches whilst attempting to push back the boundaries and to redefine the perception of bone china as something more than simply the sole preserve of fine tableware.”

Part of why he works in bone china, he says, is because it is pure white and has a translucent quality – much like can be seen in the above.

In his inspiration images he includes honeycombs and other insect imagery, which is evident in the piece like the above. He also includes the irregularity of bubbles pushing up against each other. It seems like natural, regular formations are of interest the most to him, which makes sense given where he comes from.

He does an excellent job of photographing his work, which I really appreciate. It’s so hard sometimes to show off amazing work when the pictures aren’t so good.

What’s even cooler about Chris is that he was born in Glasgow, where we were just three weeks ago! He grew up on the western coast of Scotland, where we explored for a week and met many artists and artisans. It’s so beautiful, lush and mountainous up there that I can imagine he drew greatly from his surroundings.

His pieces are just so fabulous – I can’t imagine how many parts he must break in order to create his whole structures like the above. These to me look exactly like the shell that comes with and protects a tomatillo. They look the same and are similarly delicate.


Posted on January 20, 2012 - by

Zoe Williams

I have no idea how I haven’t heard about New Orleans native, Zoe Williams, until this week – needlefelting to the limit, I love it. I must get 50 or 75 newsletters a day and there are some I never open but Lost at E Minor has some really crazy stuff and this week, Zoe was it.

Those are needle felted rabbits feet mounted like traditional taxidermy. I have looked at some amazingly weird and wonderful taxidermy before from the likes of Rachel Denny, Elaine Bradford and others but this might just be my favorite.

I love these little animal noses (rabbits again, a favorite of mine). I also really truly love feltidermy but for some reason it seems like no one else is experimenting with animal parts in this form.

What’s also crazy to me is that she’s only one year older than I am and she’s doing this! She lived in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina and now lives in NY, NY.

She literally has a combo of all of my favorite things in her work – animals, animal parts, taxidermy (of the textile variety), nature, sea list, etc. In her bio she talks about exploring dreams as a part of personal mythology – I love that idea of having a personal mythology. It’s so true. When I wake up for that moment when I remember my dream I think – wow where did THAT story come from.

If you can dream it you can needlefelt it I assume ;) I love that these pieces break outside their boundaries and incorporate beading (I think) into their tentacle-like forms. Though to be fair, given how hungry I am right now, these look like soft serve with sprinkles on top.

These look like punk hairdos to me – or urchins, big urchins.

Totally epic. About her work and her influences Zoe says, “My own experiences in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina also inform my work and no doubt contribute to my desire to give permanence to the fragile and ephemeral.” I might just be in a mood but it’s always so so very interesting to hear where people are influenced from and how life experiences (unexpected ones in particular) can completely shift a creative flow.

I love octopus tentacles in art – they can regrow when they get wounded / cut. That’s rejuvenation right there.

My last and maybe my favorite, HUGE rhino, breaking through and out of the frame, gold, magical, dream-like – beaded, leafed, realistic but not at all. Who needs a unicorn when you’ve got this!


Posted on January 16, 2012 - by

Hong Seon Jang

I’m horizontal on my couch this afternoon after a morning adventure to the new CrossFit location here in Boston – wow, what a killer workout. Since I’m largely immobilized and it’s a semi-holiday here for MLK Day, I’ve been perusing the internet and came upon Hong Seon Jang.

As the lover of unique uses of materials I was really into Hong’s work – the above piece is called Zip City and is made of zip ties of all things. It’s helpful for him to have included the person in the photo for scale. I particularly like how it moves from the walls to the floor and varies in density of line – I imagine it looks very different from another angle.

About his work he says it “consists of installations often made out of found objects and common products. In giving these everyday materials new meanings and aesthetic possibilities, I strive to actively practice the concepts of the Eastern philosophies of the circulatory life system and the continuous flow of connections.” The above, “fungus” are made of cut and glued magazine papers – they almost look like tongues to me.

Hong is originally from South Korea and then got his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Based on all of his activity, I think he’s still living and working in the US but I’m not fully clear. This piece is called, Parasites, which I can see ad understand – it looks like something taking over one’s veins. It’s actually made of matchsticks, glue and fishing line of all things.

I’ve looked at artists who use tape as a medium before from Tara Donovan to Mitra Fabian and others – this 2D work to create a 3D environment is really lovely – I think it’s because it’s been adhered to a black wall that sets it apart.


« Older Entries