Link: Swiss Miss via Fast Company

Obviously. Link

Sayaka Kajita Ganz makes sculptures from recycled materials, and here she’s made a dramatic pair of horses from black and white plastic objects.  The installation is called Emergence; you can guess which horse is Night and which is Wind.

My working process is reminiscent of my experiences growing up in several different countries, of being disconnected from the place I was born. Then, I began searching for a new community where I truly belong. I find discarded objects from peoples’ houses and give them a second life, a new home. For my sculptures I use plastic utensils, toys and metal pieces among other things. I only select objects that have been used and discarded. The human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes.  My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist.

Much more fantasticness at her site.

-via Design You Trust | Photo credit:Sayaka Kajita Ganz

Artist Hubert de Lartigue was playing with his Paris Métro ticket between stops, folding it this way and that, wondering how he could give it a cool shape.  He did this for six months, and discovered that with a scalpel and a folding tool, but no glue, he could transform two subway tickets into an X-wing fighter.

Lartigue says:

“I’m very proud of how it turned out and I feel like I am the author of a little masterpiece. I got to the point where I asked myself whether the Parisian metro tickets hadn’t actually been designed to enable me to one day use it as a canvas for this ‘work.’ Their proportions and even the patterns and drawings on them take part in the whole of the work. I’m not kidding, I find that there is a great underlying mystery here…”

He gives step-by-step directions for making an X-wing starfighter here.

More about Paris subway tickets and the history of the Paris Métro here.

Photo by Hubert de Lartigue

Link

This Steven Shearer’s art piece, titled Geometric Healing Cell for Youth – Model III (2007) reminds me of two things: first, a Borg space ship, if a Borg space ship were made from copper plumbing.

And second, the Redneck Pool Heater, a BBQ grill modded by Todd Harrison and his daughter Veronica Harrison into a DIY pool heater. More BBQ stuff: Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills (And Then Some!)

The Big Picture has a bunch of beautiful pictures of this year’s International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in Harbin, China. Buildings made of ice blocks are illuminated both inside and outside, creating a magical effect.

Link

(image credit: REUTERS/Aly Song)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by tsevenut.

Photo: Glowing Wood Sculptures

Artist Billy Hall uses a lathe to sculpt whole wood blocks thin enough to be used as lampshades. The shades are usually between 1/32 and 3/32 of an inch thick and coated with epoxy. Pictured above is “Luna”, a globular design made from Southern Yellow Pine.

Link via DudeCraft

Australian artist James Corbett began sculpting old car parts in 1999 while managing a car recycling business in Brisbane. Eighteen months later, he closed the shop and turned pro. Corbett never bends the parts, but uses the existing shapes to create (comparatively) realistic forms. Gallery at the link.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist’s Website | Image: James Corbett

Emily Berezin made a woman from eleven loaves of Wonder® Bread and the bags they came in. The result is, of course, Wonder® Woman! See more pictures in her Flickr set.

Link – via twitter

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by andrew-lynch.

When I die and become Saint Neatorama, I’d like sculptor Al Farrow to make me a reliquary to treasure one of my body parts. Presumably my blogging pinkie. Al has made some 40 unusual reliquaries, mausoleums and monuments out of guns and ammo parts, dedicated to preserving the body parts of fictional saints.

Link – as suggested by Minnesotastan in this Neatorama post by John Farrier (yes, I do read the comments

Although this wood sculpture looks basic enough, it’s actually quite remarkable.  You see, artist Ron van der Ende creates works like this out of found wood – and makes bas relief sculptures.  So while you’re correct in deducing the width and height, the depth is only a few centimeters.

Inspired by working in his father’s woodshop as a young man, Ron went to art school where he studied painting.  Dissatisfied and longing for working with wood again, he opted for sculpting, and soon found a knack for off-beat bas relief.

I collect old doors and stuff. Old painted wood that I find in the street. I take it apart and skin it to obtain a 3mm thick veneer with the old paint layers still intact. I construct bas-reliefs that I cover with these veneers much like a constructed mosaic. I do not paint them!

This one took me a while just to figure out what I was looking at!

Link to Interview on diskursdisko.  Ron’s website. via The Donut Project.

In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table in the shape of the periodic table of elements. From a campus newspaper:

The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.

Link via Make | Image: Anonymous Make reader

If you took a look at the larger version of this sculpture (left), you’d immediately conclude that it was made out of Styrofoam.  As impressive as that would be, the real mind-blower here is that it’s actually marble.

All of Fabio Viale’s creations from marble have a deceptive quality to them, prompting the beholder to utter “No way,” with each new sculpture.  From paper airplanes, to actual working boats, to classic renderings of the human form, they all inspire.

For instance, these seemingly impossible tires linked together? Black marble.

Link

Photo: ~toge-nyc

deviantArt user ~toge-nyc created this dragon out of plastic forks, spoons, and knives held together with glue. It took him about 80 hours complete the project. If you check out his page, you can also see some pretty cool pen-and-ink drawings.

Link via Geekologie

Victoria’s Way Indian Sculpture Park is home to over 14 amazing pieces respresenting the spiritual progression to enlightenment. These statues were created by craftsmen in Mahabalipuram, India. I love the fact this amazing Indian Sculpture based is in County Wicklow, Ireland! The results speak for themselves.

Link – via babycreativeblog

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by cakehead loves evil.

Here comes October, which means it’s close to pumpkin carving time.  But if you’re reluctant to let go of summer, head on over to Takashi Itoh’s and check out some wonderful watermelon carvings.  Takashi says it only took him three weeks to become skilled at it.

Link

Artist Luke Jarram has created glass sculptures of some of the deadliest diseases known to man including HIV, E. Coli and Small Pox.  The incredibly intrincate sculptures challenge both the state of the art in glass sculpting and the ability of scientists to visualize these diseases.  For instance scientists are unable to describe to Jarram how RNA is situated in the Capsid.

Jarram’s website includes a video showing how he uses glass blowing techniques to create the sculptures.  The video shows him working on the HIV sculpture.

Link – via digg

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.

Dutch artist Peter Jansen creates polyamide and bronze sculptures that look like a split second in time. They don’t actually move, but they look like they are in motion. Perhaps appropriately, he started out as a physics student rather than as an artist.

Link via Dyscario

Every breed of art deserves at least a short moment in the limelight. Microsculpting, however, deserves quite a bit more. Taking up to six weeks on a single piece, microsculpter Willard Wigan creates miniature versions of pop culture icons that must be viewed from a microscope. Wired Magazine shares this incredible story:

“I’m like a mad professor, but without the spiky hair,” laughs Wigan, 52, who spends about six weeks on each piece. “I get down to 6, 7 microns, which is one-third the size of a period you’d see in a newspaper.”

“I cut the joints of this nylon fiber and moved the arm toward its head, but as I bend it, the arm keeps wanting to spring back,” he says, describing the delicate process. “I’m making little grooves, and as I’m cutting, the body starts to bend and twist and by then, perspiration starts dripping off my finger down the tool and toward the sculpture, like a little tidal wave of sweat coming down.”

Link

Previously on Neatorama: Posts about Willard Wigan

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by theturbolemming.

Artist Junior Fritz Jacquet crumples and folds toilet paper rolls until they make faces displaying anguish, happiness, disgust and more. Once they’re folded right, he adds just a bit of color to help bring out their color and then they’re ready to go.

Link

Los Angeles-based artist Mike Kelley brought the bottle city of Kandor from the Superman comic series to life. If you don’t know, Kandor is a Kryptonian city miniaturized by Brainiac and kept in a bottle by Superman:

The exhibition of new works by Mike Kelley at the Jablonka Galerie features sculptures, lenticular lightboxes, and videos related to the fictional city of Kandor, the capitol of Superman’s home planet Krypton. According to the Superman mythos, Kandor is the only remaining vestige of the exploded Krypton, and the city is preserved, in a reduced state, in a bottle in Superman’s possession. Interestingly, the image of Kandor was never codified and the numerous representations of it in the comic book throughout the years vary widely in appearance. In this exhibition Kelley reconstructs ten unique versions of Kandor, with its enclosing bottle, which, despite obvious differences, purport to depict the same city.

John Struan over at Super Punch has more pics and a video clip from the
exhibit: Link – Thanks John!

Sander van Heukelom combines typographic design, graffiti and sculpting into unique pieces of 3D graffiti (He uses styrofoam, plexiglass, synthetic resin and wood).

This one above, Quod dubitas, ne feceris – Latin for "when you doubt, do not act" – is probably a concept most graffiti artists do not recognize.

Check out the rest of Sander’s artwork here: Link [Flash] – via Rue The Day!

The Chrysanthemum is a centerpiece designed by South African designer Michaella Janse van Vuuren. It’s a combination of bowl/candle holder made with rapid prototyping (and manufacturing) using laser, so it’s a perfect combination of art and engineering:

The centrepiece reflects my passion for the textures, shapes and patterns found in nature. I especially like to interpret those objects that have a repetitive mathematically founded pattern. Some objects are immediately recognisable, such as the Chrysanthemum, others are more abstract. Direct 3-dimensional manufacturing methods, such as selective laser sintering (SLS) used to create the Chrysanthemum allows me to design intricate textures and objects. These textures and objects would have been impossible to execute by hand, yet the centrepiece still retains the beauty and tactile feeling of a natural object.

The Chrysanthemum is directly manufactured with the EOS P380 using the PA2200 polyamide material.

Link – via Why Me Design

Patterns and form in nature have inspired artists and designers throughout history. The microscopic drifting organisms that populate the oceans and great lakes, the plankton, are subject to very different physical forces to those that develop shape and form in larger organisms such as alleviaton of gravity. As a consequence they have developed unique forms, architectures, kinetics and complex symmetries uncommon in larger and terrestrial forms.

Link -via the Presurfer

Charlie Bucket, created this beautiful sculpture where the intricate weaving with the use of colored fluids and what I believe to be bubbles/air pockets produce a hypnotic effect. Apparently, this is just a small prototype to what I hope is going to be a giant monster of an art piece that he’ll have at the 2009 Maker Faire in San Mateo.

* I highly suggest to check out the HD version of this on Vimeo.
**And I think a sound warning is needed as TronStuck has suggested. Especially, for those of you wearing headphones.

More of his stuff here – Link

We all know about Mount Rushmore and the Great Sphinx of Giza, both carved in situ without the intention of ever being moved.  Such sculptures are often referred to as living rock.  Others, like these, are not so well known. From places you may expect to find them, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia to the far flung reaches of Ethiopia and Bangladesh, most were carved in ancient times.  In almost all cases there are no extant records which explain how they were built without the aid of modern technology.  Yet here they are.

Quazen blog has a list of 9 incredible architectures sculpted out of rocks:

China has many a Buddha dotted throughout its extraordinary landscapes but the Giant Buddha of Leshan is unique in that it was carved directly out of the cliff face – just look at the people at the feet of the statue. The sculpture, which is seventy one meters (or over three hundred feet) tall dwarfs the tourists that flock to see it. It is positioned so that it faces Mount Emei and stands at the meeting place of three rivers. Although the Government of China has promised a restoration program, the statue has suffered from the effects of pollution, particularly over the last twenty years. Fortunately, the statue was not damaged in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

Don’t ask me how Allen and Patty Eckman did it, but they have a special process that lets you create detailed sculptures out of cast paper:

Cast paper sculpture has been around since the 1950’s but should not be confused with papier-mache’. The two mediums are completely different. The artists first mix an acid free paper pulp in the studio hydro-pulper
from two raw stocks, cotton and abica. Then the pulp is cast into molds which were made from original clay sculptures. The paper is then pressed under vacuum pressure or by hand in the mold where most of the water is extracted at the same time. The drying process is completed by evaporation while the paper is still in the mold. After the dry and hard casts are removed from the molds the exclusive process of chasing, cast additions, cast alterations, sculpting in paper and detailing begins. It takes a great amount of time and experience to create each piece. Some works are so painstakingly detailed they can take many months to complete.

Suffice it to say, their artwork are fantastic: Link – via CrookedBrains

This is some incredible artwork by Hilary Berseth, and a few thousand helpers…

Artists from Rodin to Warhol to Mark Kostabi have outsourced the construction of their work. Hilary Berseth goes them one better: He constructs basic frameworks of wire and wax, then lets teams of tiny yellow-and-black art fabricators finish the job. “I knew they were ordered and regimented,” the Pennsylvania artist says about his honeybees, which built the three otherworldly sculptures on view at Eleven Rivington. “I had an intuition that I’d be able to organize that, architecturally.”

Link – via notcot

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by JKirchartz.

Forget the clunky and boxy prototypical robot we see in bad Sci-Fi movies all the time!

Behold The Rise of Discord, the sleek and sexy mechanical representation of Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord by Greg Brotherton of Brotron. Check out the rest of his sculptures here: Link – via Musecrack

Actually, that’s An Important and Unique Cat, a marble sculpture by Swiss sculptor Edouard-Marcel Sandoz, an artist of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movement. But I couldn’t resist pointing out the similarities to the Dark Knight – via The Zeray Gazette