Savage Little Fairies

I find the work of Tessa Farmer creepily fascinating.  Farmer, a London-based artist, creates miniature sculptures of savage little fairies from organic materials.  The fairies are no more than 1 cm tall.

Toilet Paper Creativity

My parents have asked that I make them a toilet paper roll cover and I now find myself scouring the Internet for a knitting pattern that's not reminiscent of something an 85-year-old cat lady with a doll obsession would put in her bathroom.  Thus far, I'm having little luck.  However, I did stumble upon the artwork of Anastasia Elias.  In her series Rouleaux, she creates miniature scenes from toilet paper rolls.

Ice Music

After reading a blurb on CNN, I am now fascinated with Geilo, Norway's IceMusic Festival and instruments made of ice.

"The moon decides the time and the weather decides the music."

I don't know that I'd want to actually be present for this festival because I enjoy feeling my extremities, but Norway is a beautiful, beautiful country. When I was 15, I had the pleasure (?) of taking a 12-hour bus ride through the Norwegian countryside, as well as a brief fjord ferry, visiting Lillehammer, Flåm, and Oslo.

Balloon Wiener Dogs

Today is Courtney's birthday (yay!) and before I mailed my belated card I felt the need to decorate it with wiener dog balloons because a) Courtney's dog Phoenix is part wiener, b) Courtney is the only person I know who can make balloon animals, and c) I had a whole bunch of crayons nearby.

The left doggy is better than the right.

If small party balloon wieners are cool, gigantic art sculpture balloon wieners are even cooler. Jeff Koons created 5 "Balloon Dog" sculptures of high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coatings in blue, magenta, yellow, orange, and red for his Celebration artwork series.

"Balloon Dog (Yellow)" spent some time on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008.

"Balloon Dog (Magenta)" popped up at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2006.

Apparently, Koons was born in my hometown. Who knew? I sure didn't. But trying to claim intellectual property rights to all balloon dogs is a special form of douchebaggery, so let me clarify. He's from Dover (same county), the place that had that whole Intelligent Design bruhaha several years ago.

Go ahead, play with your food!

For whatever reason (perhaps dinner), last night I started thinking about my love for potatoes. It's amazing what you can find when you type something random like 'potato' into a Google image search. Through a series of clicks, I found Hungarian photographer and food genius Balla Tamás.

You can watch him work in the videos on his YouTube channel, though I would suggest muting his music selections.

I also like to listen to Hungarian in the television clips of Tamás because how often do I get to hear Hungarian? Pretty much never.

I noticed that numerous people have confused the food art of Tamás with the food art of Saxton Freymann. My only explanation for this is blindness. Freymann's food art is geared toward children as you can see in these adorable photos:

Life After Death

So, the other weekend I was browsing the most recent issue of BUST magazine while sipping my cold-brewed vanilla latte at Borders when I stumbled upon this picture:

My first reaction was "Oh, isn't that cute?" as I showed the picture to my friend Rachel; thirty seconds later, "Oh, wait, they're dead." Yeah, not quite as cute, but interesting. The picture is entitled "Receiver" by Polly Morgan, a British artist with a fascination and talent for taxidermy. Don't worry, all animals are natural casualties or unpreventable deaths.

Make Art, Not War

In light of yesterday's events in Arizona, I was inspired to look for symbols of peace and non-violence to reinforce my faith in humanity...

Carl Frederik Reuterswärd was prompted to create his sculpture of a knotted gun entitled "Non-Violence" by the murder of his friend John Lennon. The sculpture pictured below is in Malmö, Sweden, but other versions exist elsewhere in the world, including the United Nations building in NYC.

The Gun Sculpture, by Canadian artists Sandra Bromley and Wallis Kendal, has traveled the world in an effort "to provoke thought and discussion on the culture of violence."

The Peace Art Project Cambodia was an art workshop in Phnom Penh that utilized nearly 900 weapons seized from a Khmer Rouge weapons cache. The Transforming Arms into Tools project in Mozambique creates artwork from weapons exchanged for tools such as sewing machines, hoes, bicycles, and construction materials.

Ken + Dana's GUN collection of jewelry transforms gun components into wearable art that benefits the Bronx Chapter of the Brady Campaign.

Al Farrow creates reliquaries using guns and ammunition to address the relationship between war and faith.

Finally, Francois Robert uses the human skeleton "to plant the notion of restraint and charity in an effort to promote peace and tolerance" in his Stop the Violence series of photographs.

Paper Magic

I have little skill with a pencil/pen/brush, but I love making art, so I took sculpture class in high school. We explored a myriad of materials beyond clay (which I hate), including paper. Su Blackwell's book sculptures are magical. LOVE IT!

On a side note, I adore the magazine Marie Claire Idées and am only slightly impeded by my non-existent French language skills. :/