Archive for the ‘Materials’ Category
Posted on September 26, 2011 - by Kate
Lara Knutson
I probably get 40 shopping emails a day from all sorts of sites – group buying, discount, just awesome – and I hate to say it but rarely is there a day when I have time to open any of them except for the home decorating ones. Today I really didn’t have time but I’d seen people raving about Fab.com on Twitter so when it came into my inbox I took a peak thinking maybe their user interface was just too cool to miss. There I found Lara Knutson and became a fan of Fab myself.
These are Lara’s knit vessels.Initially they just look like super cool knit structures, which of course I love but then you get to the heart of the matter – the material from which they’re made. That’s reflective glass fabric. As Lara explains on her blog, “Typically found on fire men’s suits, traffic cops, sneakers and athletic clothing, so that cars can see them at night with their headlights, this fabric is comprised of 50,000 microscopic glass beads per square inch that are mirror backed and magnify light 100 times.”
The way she explains the pieces is just so cool. This one she says looks like it fell from outer space and washed up on shore. I love that visual. The yurt would look awesome made of this stuff!
I couldn’t help wondering how Fab.com found her, or vice versa. These seem to me like art objects and yet they’re on sale online. Is that a new norm we should start to expect? I’m used to seeing the occasional poster sale on One Kings Lane but to have actual contemporary art objects seems new. Some of her works she weaves other materials into including mohair, nylon thread, cashmere, feathers, etc.
I love that her work is called “soft glass” – something that seems like an oxymoron but that is obviously quite tangible.
I wonder if this fabric is able to be colored itself, not just added / woven with other colored fabrics but actually not produced in this gunmetal tone.
I really recommend reading her blog, I’ll never be able to show or explain what these pieces do when light hits them, especially in a flash! Also, Fab.com just seemed to have updated their sale page to show each piece they’re offering both with and without light on it, that’s awesome!
They look like the above – how cool! Lara also keeps a blog about her “material adventure” called Aurora Materialis, also worth a deep read. One of the best parts about reading her blog was the subhead, Light Should Be Considered a Material. I’ll drink to that!
Posted on August 9, 2011 - by Kate
Kohei Nawa
I went back down the rabbit hole after a homemade dinner tonight and stumbled upon Tokyo artists, Kohei Nawa. I forget how I found him but it was on someone’s Facebook tonight! I was drawn to his pieces for a few reasons – scale, material, shape.
The above is from his Scum series, which is mixed media but the shape itself is born out of polyurethane foam sprayed onto an existing frame. Nawa’s works all take specific items and then augment their surfaces somehow – foam is just one of his chosen methods but it’s the most visually appealing to me.
As you can tell from the pictures these pieces are quite large. I’m curious as to their weight and the difficulty with which they are created. I’ve never worked with this kind of foam so don’t have a lot of context regarding its density.
I like the above both for its title, “Black Yarn” and its technique – just glue from a glue gun. According to Kohei, “I draw on a wall directly using a glue-gun. As the bond melted and liquefied with heat gets cold, it becomes hard. The grains stand up and the lines hang down from the wall. The images are connected to each other and grow like an ivy. It is a picture and is also a sculpture.” I love that thought that it’s a picture and is also a sculpture – I feel as though that applies to a lot of works on this blog.
Another way that Kohei morphs the surface of elements is by adhering many clear glass beads. It takes a real-life object and makes it look pixelated in a way – he calls these PixCells. His process of time consuming, repetitive activities to make something look digital / technological is an interesting juxtaposition. I would have shared more pics but his site has small thumnails – I highly recommend taking a look for yourself though!
Posted on June 7, 2011 - by Kate
Noriko Ambe
A month has passed? I knew I was being a bit derelict about the blog but this is terrible – apologies. I’ve been bookmarking things left and right to write up but haven’t found the time. Work has been very busy, I had my five year college reunion, my brother had a baby – I’ve been MIA. Let that not distract from the awesomeness that are the paper cuts of Noriko Ambe.
Noriko makes all of her cuts by hand, though I’m under the impression she pre-draws them – she prefers the natural look of the cuts to the machine made ones.
I’ve written on people who cut paper in the past but I do think Noriko’s work goes to a new level – as she describes in her artist statement, “When I am drawing or cutting lines, I am interested in observing the power of the changing growing shape. This dynamic shape becomes an entity in itself, ‘Another geography.’ In a sense, the empty space is myself, and the materials represent the present world.”
Many of her pieces are the mass with parts cut away (I do realize that this is only my perspective) but the above work is a mass itself of cut paper pieces. I like this opposite effect as well as the large scale of this piece.
She has a few series’ that she seems most comfortable in – one being layers of cuts inside typical filing cabinets. Interestingly, when I first saw them I thought – these look like the cross sections of humans I saw at the Body exhibit a few years ago and low and behold that was part of her intention!
I like them because…they look like they’re underwater – they are coral-like and tide-impacted wave-like to me and I like them because of that fact.
They also kind of look like an arial view of a dry riverbed to me – they’re open to interpretation that’s for sure.
Posted on March 24, 2011 - by Kate
Jan Burtz: Bella Porcelain
I’m still hooked on porcelain and I’m thinking I always will be. Looking back I think the obsession began when I was living in NYC right around the corner from ABC Carpet & Home. I used to go in and wander around the first floor looking at jewelry and stopping by their little shops within the shop. That’s where I saw Jan Burtz’s Bella Porcelain.
I never bought any because I was on a pretty serious budget but also because it seemed so delicate that I thought surely I would break it. Jan makes her pieces with traditional hand building out of rolled out slabs of porcelain. They are so thin and light. I know they’re dishwasher safe so quite durable and yet, they are so dainty!
Her glazes are also very pleasing, made carefully from home recipes. The colors are never too overpowering and it seems like some of the porcelain is always allowed to shine through.
We’re currently trying to figure out what to put on our mantle. It’s about 7 feet long and a foot wide so it’s quite a lot of space. Flowers in these bud vases would be beautiful though I’ve been entertaining starting a pitcher collection like my mom’s – but all white.
The place setting reminds me of a vacation we once took as a family. We were somewhere in the Caribbean and my parents fell in love with a set of dishes and platters. They carried them back to the States and they are plates and things we only use on very very special occasions. I can remember the day the platter got chipped with a knife that was going through some very hard icing…it was the chip heard round the world. I’d feel that way with this dishware too!
So beautiful! When I was in NYC a few weeks ago I popped into ABC, which looks very different I feel like and there was a whole section devoted to her pieces with the option to have them glazed with the color of your choice. Custom Bella Porcelain – what could be better?
Posted on May 21, 2010 - by Kate
Kate MccGwire
This was another find from my brother’s good friend Neil. And he is scary spot on to my interests at this point. I was in awe of every piece of Kate MccGwire’s work but I had to just keep a few pictures and examples. Her use of feathers is out of control — undulating as a word doesn’t even begin to describe them.
Those are 23,000 chicken wishbones. It’s a huge magnitude of bones and death to try to think about but all I can really think about is how wishbones look like weaving in this case, how those Vs reflect knitting in some weird way.
The whole wall of bones.
This work is a different piece but doesn’t it also look woven? I think it’s just beautiful but at the same time this is crazy chicken genocide here.
And here is a real work of “weaving” of hers. A huge floor panel of reflective tape on a perspex panel — I love this — I want it to be the floor of my yurt!
And this where the fun really begins — look at her work with feathers! This piece, Heave, is made of pigeon feathers, felt and wood — it’s incredible.
Host, as this one’s called, reminds me of a few other works I’ve looked at over the years, the name implies that it’s where some sort of growth is occurring though, which I love. Look at those layers of feathers — totally amazing.
Again, feathers, both dove and white pigeon are in this piece, Stifle, the names of Kate’s works make me so happy — they are so reflective of what’s going on in the work while still being a little ironic.
Wrest — amazing. Every single piece of Kate’s works is inspiring in its scale, beauty, precision, and materials — look at them all!
Posted on September 6, 2009 - by pokate
Nuala O’Donovan
Another great find from my brother’s honeymoon is Nuala O’Donovan — her works were also in the Organic Geometry exhibit. She too works in porcelain but in a very different way — she creates organic, intricate sculptures in the material.
These appear to be totally handbuilt and as porcelain dries so quickly I can only imagine that she might do these in pieces.
Obviously this appeals to me in every way — looks like part of the coral reef and is made of porcelain amoebas!
I have no idea how big the above is but I love that it’s porcelain lattice work – how delicate and beautiful.
I really have no words for how awesome I think the above and below sculptures are — with some mood lighting I can only imagine they’d get better too. They make me want to go scuba diving!
Posted on August 23, 2009 - by pokate
Dan Walker
Charlotte and I wandered all over lower Manhattan yesterday and on our way to the gym at Astor Place we came upon Gallery 151 on Bowery, which has an exhibit in it I’d been meaning to check out called, Trashion. In the windows I’d seen these amazing dome-y colorful plastic works and wanted to know who had made them, it was Dan Walker.
Turns out, as the name of the exhibit implies, they’re all made out of discarded items, which reminds me of a class I took when I was younger called, “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure.” Turns out though that Dan comes out of the toy industry professionally so he has seen the transient properties of toys up close.
The coolest piece of his works is how their color dictates where in the work they end up — they’re gradated in color and, though it seems somewhat impossible, Dan says he does nothing to adjust the tones that the plastics are.
Dan calls these works chromo-assemblage and I’m so glad he has a website as I knew taking pics wouldn’t capture them well. Interestingly these, to me, were the most exciting pieces in the whole show — the other works looked like recycled trash, not like something new and unique. I enjoyed the large scale rust paintings but Dan was the highlight! I do like the concept behind the exhibit though — call it smart marketing if you will, however, the show was put together by the Urban Green Initiative, which is sponsored by a new luxury condominium building going up in the East Village.
What I noticed too was that almost every work had pieces of plastic guitars in them, who knew they made them in so many colors. I can’t help but wonder how Dan cleans the pieces up pre-assembly — so many toys are covered in stickers and hardware it seems.
Posted on June 19, 2009 - by pokate
Lindsey Adelman
This Saturday my brother’s getting married. I leave in the morning for the wedding and it’s interesting timing that the last few days all the dialogue my friends and I have been in over email has revolved the idea around women being able to manage families and careers and the variety of approaches they take. My dear friend Monica has been sending article after article assessing these situations and wants to create a panel discussion so that we can avoid past pitfalls – I’m a believer though that everyone’s situation is entirely unique. Lindsey Adelman has both a successful career in utilizing industrial design in the home and what sounds like an idyllic family in Brooklyn.
Lindsey creates hand blown bubbles that she turns into a variety of types of lighting fixtures – the above are her knotty bubbles.
Many are in various numbers of bubbles affixed to metal rods in clusters – sometimes 6, sometimes 9. Some are rolled in gold leaf others are clear some have helix-like stripes and others are colored- the combinations seem endless. Lindsey attended Kenyon and RISD (I.D.) to gain these skills.
Above is the Cluster Table Lamp, which I love because of the amoeba-y shapes coming of the sides of the glass, the way the light refracts is great.
She doesn’t just stick to lighting and clearly the idea of the barnacle is one that intrigues her just like it does Tristin Lowe.
Love it!
Posted on June 9, 2009 - by pokate
Patrick Dougherty
I have a vague memory of being somewhere in Western Massachusetts looking at colleges and walking right into a Patrick Dougherty installation. I have no idea if this is actually true or if in my dreams somewhere there was an amazing sculptor using saplings as construction material but Patrick’s work exists either way.
Above, The Summer Palace, is at the Morris Arboretum at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. I love that it looks like a cloud, or smoke, or a turban.
A totally different type of biological work from what I’m normalling into – Cell Division – on a building at the Savannah College of Art.
I wish I had seen this in person in New York at the American Craft Museum – Crossing Over – I love how he’s able to make the saplings appear so whimsical.
Patrick’s work has been created all over the US, Europe and Asia and he’s built over 150 of these structures or works. I’m not sure what to call them exactly.
I’ve been thinking lately about the consumptive qualities of fibers – that’s been heightened by my recent foray back into felting as it’s ability to shrink and bind is pretty impressive. I like how, in the piece above, Patrick’s saplings have consumed part of the building. This one also evoked a memory of The Wizard of Oz and a tornado sucking the house up into the sky!
Call of the Wild from the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA.
Posted on April 16, 2009 - by pokate
Rachel John
Once again I got a great tip from my mom – to check out Rachel John – a UK-based “extreme knitter” who recently knit 1,000 strands at once to make essentially a mattress out of yarn. If you haven’t already seen the video it can be seen here and is really well done. Rachel also handcrafts extreme knitting and crocheting tools, which are pieces of art in and of themselves in my opinion.
Those are crochet hooks – the hands give a great sense of scale – she isn’t messing around!
Just what everyone needs – human-size knitting needles, seriously. I think I may ask for these for my upcoming birthday though I’m not sure where I’d store them. I just love the idea that someone out there is taking the time to make the tools to enable this kind of creativity.
Subscribe
