Bringing both color and light to a drab stairwell in Lima, Peru, artist and illustrator Xomatok painted this piece titled “Snake of Light” in the Villa el Salvador district as part of a collaboration with Crehana. You can see more of his light-based mural and design work on Instagram. (via Juxtapoz)
This brief educational film takes us into a paper marbling studio from the 1970s where centuries-old techniques are used to create elaborate marble-like designs on paper. The video was produced by the Bedfordshire County Council and posted online by the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives. (via Laughing Squid)
One might not think that parking lots, crosswalks, and other broad asphalt expanses would be particularly amenable to artwork, but for Montreal-based artist and activist Roadsworth (aka Peter Gibson, previously) every white or yellow traffic paint stripe is a new opportunity. Although his work on the road is what he’s most known for—turning parking stripes into dandelions or urging drivers to get out of their cars and onto bicycles—he’s also branched out into other mediums, creating large scale installations and working on mural commissions. He recently updated his website with tons of work (both old and new) and currently has a print available. You can also follow Roadsworth on Instagram.
Mini Metros is an ongoing series of worldwide public transit maps that have been “shrunken and simplified” into tiny diagrams by D.C.-based designer Peter Dovak. So far he’s completed over 200 light rail and metro systems and made them available in different configurations as posters and mugs on Society6. (via Kottke)
Photo by Craig Boyko
Carved the size of a palm or smaller, these miniature boxwood carvings featuring religious iconography from the early 16th century have long been a mystery to researchers in the field. It is believed that the entire body of work was created during a 30-year window between 1500 and 1530, somewhere in Flanders or the Netherlands.
The tiny altarpieces, rosaries, and prayer beads are each produced from a single boxwood fragment, incorporating pins smaller than a grass seed that hold the pieces together. Using micro CT scanning and Advanced 3D Analysis Software, curators and conservators of Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures an exhibition at The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum have gained new insight into the materials and subject matter of each boxwood carving.
Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures will showcase AGO’s collection along with 50 other loaned pieces from other museums and private collections, including some rare carvings that have never been seen in North America. One work, the eleven-bead Chatsworth Rosary (c. 1509-1526), was owned by King Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon. You can tour the full exhibition yourself at the AGO through January 22, at the Met Cloisters on February 21, 2017, or when the exhibition makes its last stop at the Rijksmuseum on June 15, 2017.
You can also follow AGO on their journey to discovering the mystery behind the boxwood miniatures in the video below, as well as see detailed images from the entire collection on AGO’s website. (via The History Blog)
Photo by Ian Lefebvre
Photo by Craig Boyko
Photo by Ian Lefebvre
Photo by Craig Boyko
M.Arch 1 project by Luiza De Souza
SCI-Arc, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, in Los Angeles is a school that considers architecture an art form capable of engaging with contemporary culture and public imagination. At the graduate level, the school offers creative individuals with an undergraduate degree in any field of study the opportunity to transition into the professional and academic world of architecture through its 3-year professionally accredited Master of Architecture 1 program.
Students in SCI-Arc’s M.Arch 1 come from a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds, but they all share an interest in cultural production. In order to familiarize students with problems central to the discourse of architecture, the program begins with a design studio that sets up a foundation of technical rigor and fine craft while utilizing contemporary architectural tools.
The first studio project uses Tony Smith’s sculpture, Smoke, whose angles offer a difficult drawing and modeling problem for students beginning architectural studies, to initiate a conversation about the techniques used to communicate ideas about geometry, form and space.
Transitioning from two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional figures, students offer new readings of the formal parts that compose the matrix of Smoke as they build a family of closed physical models. These models launch the development of abstract ideas that shape the students’ proposals for a Hyde Park Branch Library in Los Angeles.
This first semester’s final drawings and models are thus reflections of the students’ individual creative positions, developed over the course’s rigorous exercises, and articulated through a small building proposal.
Following SCI-Arc’s studio model of the practicing architect as educator, this studio was coordinated by Anna Neimark whose professional practice, First Office, was a 2016 Finalist for MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program. To view more SCI-Arc student and faculty work, visit sciarc.edu or instagram.com/sciarc.
M.Arch 1 project by Jackson Lucas
M.Arch 1 final project by Andrew Chittenden in Matthew Au’s 1GA studio
M.Arch 1 project by Mikiko Takasago
M.Arch 1 project by Dylan Graves
