Beachcombing, a few years back, my friend found a piece of driftwood that looked exactly like three horses’ heads rising from the waves. Very cool. But that’s nothing compared to the driftwood horses of artists Matt Torrens, Heather Jansch, and Deborah Butterfield.

The differences between the artists’ interpretations of “driftwood horse” are striking, but all have achieved a remarkable combination of driftwood’s naturally weathered graceful lines with the powerful majesty of the equine form.

Matt Torrens

Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta (“Cow Town”) and now living in southern California, the horse rendered in driftwood is a natural subject for sculptor Matt Torrens.

“Spirit,” the driftwood horse head sculpture by Matt Torrens shown here, was exhibited at the California State Fair in Sacramento, August/September 2008. Photograph by laura.bell.

“Each piece of Manzanita driftwood, with its contours and veins, helps bring my otherwise dead-wood sculptures back to life. I strategically select each piece of driftwood based upon its size and character. Naturally occurring notches on the wood help the animals take shape; flaws provide definition and contour; while other pieces are used for their muscle and bone-like appearance. Each sculpture is a unique, one-of-a-kind, work of art.”

Heather Jansch

Driftwood horse by Heather Jansch at Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, January 2007. Photograph by Ennor.

Many more photographs of Heather Jansch’s horses in driftwood, bronze and mixed media can be enjoyed courtesy of the Flickr community, and on HeatherJansch.com.

Deborah Butterfield

Born on the day of the 75th running of the Kentucky Derby, in San Diego, California, it’s perhaps not surprising that Deborah Butterfield felt an early affinity for the equine world and chose to establish her art studio in Montana. Her one-of-a-kind original driftwood sculptures, cast in bronze, bring something of the horse’s own strength and endurance to the graceful and fragile driftwood pieces, making them suitable for outdoor installations.

“Cabin Creek,” 1999, Bronze: Deborah Butterfield. Photograph by Cliff.

In the following brief excerpts from a 19-minute video documentary produced for the Denver Art Museum, Deborah Butterfield: A Dialogue with the Artist, we see the artist actually creating some of her driftwood horse sculptures while she talks about “the creative process, her relationship with horses, and her philosophy of living. Filmed on location at her studio in Montana, an art foundry in the state of Washington, and the installation in Denver, this is a vivid and insightful portrait of a remarkable artist.”

“It’s more like I’m discovering the personality of the horse that I’m working on. I can’t really preconcieve what it is that will work, and so it’s just trying to see as many things as you can and to incorporate them.”

Perhaps one of Butterfield’s best-known works, the bronze driftwood horse “Monekana” resides at the Smithsonian Institution‘s American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery complex in Washington, DC. Photographs of the piece are by Thomas Guest, top photo, and catface3, below:

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It just doesn’t get any more Steampunk than this! Benches, armchairs, tables, beds, wood-burning stoves like something pulled from a Jules Verne story — even a baby carriage!

The mine furniture of Mati Karmin, one of Estonia’s leading sculptors, is more than a felicitious marriage of invention and industry that makes you go “Wow!” (and call your significant other to Drop Everything Right Now and come take a look.

The frame of the modular furniture-art pieces is a reclaimed deep-sea mine of AGSB-type, made in Russia in 1942 and used to fight submarines. It was still being manufactured in the 1950s, and a stockpile — nay, a whole field — of abandoned mines can be seen by visitors to historic Naissaar Island in the Gulf of Finland.

About the Artist

Mati Karmin was born in 1959, at the tail-end of the baby boom. For an Estonian, whose tiny country was pounded into abject poverty by occupying forces, that would mean growing up with a strong tradition of self-sufficiency and making over and making do — traits we can all applaud.

No doubt, too, there’d have been a pronounced shadow of the World War 2 experience hanging over his generation; the repurposing of Russian marine mines into intriguing art furniture seems a natural fit.

(I’m just “supposing” all this bit, mind you, based on the story fragments I gleaned from an elderly Estonian man (a post-war immigrant to Canada, now gone) while he was teaching me to weave the traditional baskets that had been used by rural families in his own country, in his youth… That’s another tale for another day.)

However, as the artist’s bio explains:

Northern coast of Estonia and especially the islands, wich during the years of occupation were an almost inaccessible border zone for the common including heaps of corroded mine shells, wich are basically spheres with holes, spireks and shackles. Karmin got inspired by these mines and started to collect them. The ambiguity of large scale corroded mine shells intrigued the artist. The shape of the mine is perfest and uniform, while still clearly bearing the stamp of its intial destructive function. Being marked by its belonging to the past, it is closely connected to the complicated recent history that Karmin has always been facinated with. [sic]

Did you get this bit?

“The shape of the mine is perfect and uniform, while still clearly bearing the stamp of its initial destructive function.”

To my mind, that’s exactly what makes these pieces so powerful, I think, and especially that baby carriage: rounded forms and domestic objects, intimate, familiar, in the case of the armchairs softly upholstered, comfortable in every sense of the word — but never too comfortable. Because there’s no getting away from the origin of these pieces as instruments of violent death.

Turning those old naval mines into art: A gesture of optimism in a post-WW2 / post-Cold-War world that, er, turns out not to be quite the peaceful Utopia of which the flower children dreamed? — or is it a disturbing reminder that our troubled human history has a habit of repeating itself, while we’re off busily preoccupied with the unfolding of our own lives? Your call!

If Mati Karmin’s art pieces / mine furniture (and the history that inspired their creation) are as fascinating to you as they are to me, visit Marinemine.com to see and learn more.

So, you want your kid to have a bedroom that’s decorated to match his dreams — but you don’t want to spend much money?

Sensible!

Especially if the kiddy’s wished-for bedroom decor is based on the latest from Disney or Pixar or whatever video game is hot in the school yard this week…

What to do?
Well, here’s one incredibly frugal solution to that decorating dilemma…

Block Posters lets you send any image from your computer (up to 1 MB size file), slice it up, print it out, and turn it into a giant wall poster — free!

Check the gallery of other people’s posters (like the lovely Nemo wall art that Phil made for his young daughter’s bedroom) for inspiring ideas like these:

• Leave the white edges of the paper on for a cool tile mosaic effect;
• Decoupage the pieces onto a room divider screen;
• Frame each paper tile separately in black and hang them really close together to look like a piece of stained glass;
• Go black-and-white or monchrome for an high-toned artsy look;
• Blow up a smaller image for a cool blocky pixelated effect (turn a nature shot into modern camouflage, anyone?);
• Posterize yourself!

Okay, maybe your children don’t really want your face looming down at them from the wall above their beds while they’re sleeping at night… but you could do a nice family portrait, or a favourite pop star, or a role-model athlete, or even a screenshot from a favourite game…

Your imagination is the only limit!

Or, to be factual, about 8 feet x 10 feet is the limit, finished poster size-wise.
But you don’t really need a larger poster than that, do you? Unless you’re making a mural to decorate a great room… hmm….

Why pay big bucks for the same casual shoes you see in every park, schoolyard, gym, or dorm, when you can strut in custom kicks? And why toss out those tired old hightops, when they’ve still got good life left in them?

Give ‘em new life and express your creativity, with a custom design job!

If you can peel-and-stick, you can do Sneakart stickers. Or go for the full sheet patterns… there are about a kabillion designs to choose from, and you can mix and match to create the look of trendy (and expensive) hand-decorated sneakers.

Totally waterproof, these sneaker skins stand up to regular use for a couple of months — or you can peel them off and make a change, any time you like.

Is graphic design your gift?

You can even upload your own artwork to the Sneakart site, to make truly one-of-a-kind footwear stickers. But that’s not all — “Creative design deserves to be rewarded,” they say. So you can choose to keep your designs to yourself, or submit your art to the shop.

If it’s accepted for the design Gallery, each time someone buys your design to customize their shoes, Sneakart will credit your account with 10% of the sale price. You can cash out your royalties payments via Paypal or roll it over to get more Sneakart stuff for yourself.

Puma Sneaker Art Contest

And here’s a sneaker art contest that’s running right now, for another chance to make your artistic talents pay off — or at least to win a free pair of customized Baskets:

Sneakart is running a competition with in conjunction with PUMATALK to find the freshest new designs around. Design exactly what you want to see on a sneaker and then you can make it real with sneakskin. All good artwork will be accepted to the Sneakart library and will earn royalties on any sales made. The winner will be chosen by PUMATALK and sneakart and will receive a pair of baskets exclusively customized with sneakskin in their design.

Your custom sneaker design can be created with any software or hand drawn, as long as you use the templates provided. Check out the sneakart tutorial for more information.

Who knew that watermelon carving was such a hot art form?

Around here we tend to think in terms of pumpkin carving — especially at this time of year, with harvest winding up and Halloween just looming on the horizon.

But I’m entranced by the whole carved-radish culture of Mexico’s Night of the Radishes, naturally… and other weird and wonderful fruit and vegetable art makes an appearance from time to time…

Well, heck, why not watermelon sculpture too?

Jay Ball has even published a book on the topic, You Too Can Create Stunning Watermelon Carvings! “My style of watermelon carving lends itself well to the beginner, where you are guided by a pattern and it is more structured and easy to follow,” Jay explains. “And, unlike pumpkins, the insides make an instant delicious treat while you work.”

Of course the watermelon industry itself is full of crafty suggestions for their produce, with a particular eye to kids — cookie cutters, anyone?

And if you’re looking for even more inspiration…

Here (below) are some of the most elegant examples of watermelon art you’ll ever hope to see this week — take particular note of the overblown chrysanthemum flower, all done in fresh watermelon!

I keep finding these pictures all over the interwebs in different places, but so far without a note about the artist — my best dectective work suggests that these are the work of Japan’s Takashi Itoh, who certainly deserves lot of credit for his art!

Takashi Itoh says his watermelon sculptures are inspired by the art of Thai vegetable and fruit carving, which originated at the Loi Krathong (floating lantern) Festival in Thailand about 700 years ago. You can see more at his Watermelon Special Fruit Carving site, but here’s a sample of the artist’s work:

I don’t know that most of us are likely to reach these heights of watermelon sculpture… but Jay’s book is a good starting point.

You Too Can Create Stunning Watermelon Carvings guides you through preparing the melon for carving, and transferring the pattern.

Jay even includes 32 carving patterns, with themes around most of the major holidays in case you feel the melon decorating urge as part of your celebration — as well as different ways to sculpt a watermelon, by hand or with the aid of power tools.

And then, when you’re done, how to light, display and photograph your watermelon carving so its beauty will live on long after the melon itself has joined your compost pile!

If you try this yourself, want to send an email to let me know? Or drop your photo link in the comments, so we can all ooh and ahh at your artistic talents!

“Want me to knit you a bacon scarf?” Diane asked, and unwittingly launched my search for arts and crafts with a bacon theme. She said she could probably “fake up” a pattern. Thinking back, I’m not entirely sure whether she planned to knit it from the actual fatty meat product. In which case, er, no…

But this Unsettlingly Real-Looking Felted Bacon Scarf in merino wool is both amusing and completely wearable — at least, in cool weather and possibly not around those of my vegan pals who tend to get queasy at the sight of meat.

By the way, if you just dropped in (hello there!) and you’re wondering what the heck all this pork-related nonsense is about, please do skip back to Virtual Collection: Bacon Bits – Part 1 for the explanation.

It’s as good an explanation as anyone’s likely to come up with… except maybe for Revison3′s Lil Internet Superstar:

But enough of that.
We’ve got loftier ambitions for our pork products!

Bacon in Art and Crafts

(I’m pretty sure that Bacon in Art is an actual Library of Congress catalog heading. Okay, maybe not, but I do remember filing something under Pigs in Art back in my summer-job-in-library days. And yes, it was filed correctly.)

Bacon, when raw, lends itself to weaving and shaping. Cook it and it holds its shape. What better craft material?

Instructables.com teaches you how to make your own fashion-forward bacon placemats, the inspiration for NotMartha.org’s famous bacon baskets and breadless BLT.

Or you can deconstruct your bacon for a home science experiment by making bacon soap (bacon-shaped soap molds not included), though the 2-week wait — to cure the added lye so it won’t burn your skin — may discourage all but the keenest of patient crafters from trying it.

Perhaps we’ll just admire the bacon artworks of others.

After all, even Salvador Dali thought that thin-sliced pork products were worth a place on canvas: one of his paintings was entitled Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon, Basket of Bread… but then, of course, what else is to be expected of the surrealist who brought us melting clocks and Santiago el Grande?

The Bacon in Art torch is lifted high and carried on by the artists of Etsy.com, and here are a few of my current 2-dimensional favourites. (Click each little image to visit the artist’s Etsy shop and get more views and information.)

This is an 8″ x 10″ original acrylic painting… on panel. It was painted for the LA Weekly and appeared in their publication.

~ pamelajaeger

Ever see a cute little pig advertising for some BBQ joint? They don’t want to be there. Trust me.

~ waterbears

As an ‘artist/meatcutter’ I recognized the necessity for meat to be abstracted in order to be swallowed, therefore, it was natural for me to objectify meat and approach it with the same focus as my other still-life objects.

~ mgenomgeno

Title: yummy, sinful bacon, I love you

~ welcometothedoghouse

But the piece de resistance in Bacon Art is in the realm of sculpture:

John Ptak has the competition locked up, and the key was lost sometime back in World War II: that’s about when the fabled fat artist Fleiss created and prospered and wrote an astonishing pamphlet:

In the world of found book objects, few I think are as deeply removed and as deeply obscure as the work by Otto F. Fleiss called White Art in the Meat Food Business. A Practical Handbook for Butcher, Pork Stores, Restaurants, Hotels and Delicatessens on How to Make Lasting and Transferable White Art Decorations out of Bacon Fat Back for Window Displays, Ornaments on Meat Food Cold Buffets and for Exhibits and Advertising Purposes. Enrich yourself with Personal Knowledge.

It just kills me that the time is long past when an artisan could make his way in the world by crafting a perfect 200-pound cathedral entirely in white bacon fat.

At the very heart of grey downtown Toronto, there’s a special bright sparkling place where Spanish colours riot and fairies cavort with doorstop-solid cats.

Feeling a bit down and grey, yourself?

There’s nothing I can think of to bring on the sunshine like spending some time with Tascha…

I’m not going to waste your time in gushing on about the artwork, for once, but send you over to tascha.etsy.com to check it out. These paintings sing out for themselves, and you’ll either love them as much as I do or … just wander about Etsy until you find your own favourite art and crafts!

But I’d heartily recommend sliding by YouTube to catch Tascha’s art videos if you’ve got time to spare and a creative spark you’d like to inspire: she’ll show you in fabulous fast motion, step by step, how she creates her paintings with acrylic paint, bits of paper, canvas or wood, and a whole lot of joy!

Our evironmentalist blogger with an eye for beauty, Pelf Nyok, has dropped by to introduce her latest find — an American artist who creates huge mandala wall pieces with other people’s throwaway plastic bags. The works are both colourful and green! ~ Jen

Plastic Artworks

A lot of things are being said about China’s recent announcement to ban the manufacture, sale, and use of plastic bags under 0.025 mm thick and to prohibit supermarkets and shops nationwide from handing out the sacks for free from June 1st.

And, apparently, Australia’s government also said recently that it hoped to phase out the use of plastic bags from the nation’s shopping centres by the end of the year.

With all the hoo-haas around the excessive use of plastic bags, it is heartening to learn that there are people who turn these plastic bags into beautiful art pieces!

Virginia Fleck began making artwork when she was a child and she eventually studied at Portland School of Art and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies including a fellowship for a residency and exhibition in Havana, Cuba.

My wall-sized mandalas, created from sections of used plastic shopping bags, analyze the activity of consumerism as a spiritual encounter. This visual experience of repetitive designs, indicative of meditative objects and advertising graphics, stimulates the viewer to yearn for more… Our hunger is insatiable; our fervor can be witnessed… Nirvana / paradise is easily obtained and owned…

- Virginia Fleck

Her work has been exhibited at Art Forum Berlin, Pulse Miami, Pulse New York, and Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy. And she recently completed The Spin Cycle for Whole Foods World Headquarters and Mandala Constellation for the Dell Children’s Hospital. Her work appears in many prestigious collections including the Marino Golinelli collection in Bologna, Italy. In 2007, she was nominated for the Texas Prize, and won the juror’s award for the 2007 Texas Biennial.

Pelf Nyok, the author of The Giving Hands, is a grad-student who is trying to save the turtles, the environment and humankind. Charity, conservation and volunteerism are things that are very close to her heart.
pelf-ism is contagious!

You’d think that the Museum of Modern Art’s online shop (MOMA) would be all tasteful leather desk accessories and reprints of Old Masters, right?

Not so!

Clockwise from top left:

• Curved glasses in a rainbow of colours. Maybe not the best thing for your restorative orange juice on New Year’s Day morning, but a cheery sight in the winter kitchen.
• The essential wall clock for peeking around corners at fridge-raiding roommates and mischievous children — the Spy Clock is a convex glass mirror with sleek metal hands that tell you how long you’ve been obsessing about what other people are doing in the house, instead of minding your own business.
• How could a Color Spectrum umbrella not perk up a dreary wet day?
• So, Broadway’s on strike, and you can’t afford a weekend in New York anyway, even if the shows are flowing? No worries — MUJI’s New York in a Bag has it covered, with all the important architecural icons made in miniature of sustainable wood.
• And finally — my personal favourite — a cuddly Pig Finger Puppet that can double as a fridge magnet if you feel the need to pretend that you don’t really play with soft toys… (Six bucks for a flying pig! Who could resist?)

Etsy.com is my number-one source for hand-crafted inspiration… and I thought you might like to see a few of my current craft crushes.

This display will change almost every day as I discover and add new favourites by Etsy artists from all over the world — so you might want to bookmark this page, to check back in from time to time… Also, if for any reason you can’t see the pretty pictures here, you can jump right over to my etsy page to see it all.

I’ll probably never get over craving an Andy Sanchez vanity top, or Shawn Lovell’s metal-sculpture bed where the term “forest canopy” is almost literal… but there’s an endless supply of tree-inspired objets of home decor to snag our attention — and here’s a selection of recent finds:

Clockwise from upper left:

• Yellow Gocco Tree and Tissue Paper Note Cards by bubbledog on Etsy.
• Forest Leaf Collection twig-inspired silverware by Michael Aram [via stuff-i-like]
• Jelly Beans’ bright watercolour painting, The Turning evokes the spirit of autumn. [via Morrgan's Creatures]
• Gum tree jewellery stand by Polli can double as a tabletop screen.
• Woodwright’s oval tree pendant is handcrafted in birch wood.
• Red tree notecards by tamar say “I love you” inside.
• The Alberto clotheshorse — Casamania by Frezza — is actually inspired by coral plants, but it reminds me of the stark shape of a dead tree against the distant skyline, very elegant and sculptural.

Lovers of art and fans of technology will equally appreciate this stunning video, tracing the evolution of our ideals of feminine beauty through famous portraits of women, spanning the centuries.

I’m sure there’s a deep message to be gained here — something about beauty and art and character showing through the eyes and body language giving clues to the authority of women in a certain place and time.

But frankly, I’m just not that much of a feminist intellectual, nor an art historian. I just think these woman are beautiful… individuals, or one ever-changing Platonic Ideal of womankind.

Enjoy.

[via The Silent Maiden]