Stop-Motion Jelly Beans!

Want to see what pure dedication looks like? This music video for the song In Your Arms by Kina Grannis is a stop-motion animation done with a background composed of jelly beans. It’s a crazy project that required 22 months, 1,357 hours, 30 people, and 288,000 jelly beans!!! (Yikes!) They could have used CGI, of course, but each frame was carefully created by hand and photographed with a still camera. It’s even more mind-blowing given this fact: none of it was done with a green screen.

Watch the making of - it's mind blowingly incredible!

Can art change the world?

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Photography Art to Turn The World Inside Out Ted Talk Inside Out Project I love photographers and artists who have a cause, a message from a small snap shot to a world scaled communication of billboard visuals to get us all thinking and eager to become part of the change.  This is a Ted Talk that has ideas worth spreading.  JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting billboard size canvasses of people around the worldd showing us the human face across massive outdoor gallery    At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. Learn more about his work and learn how you can join in at insideoutproject.net

More textile art...

Cross stitch into found book by Lauren DiCioccio

I've been getting into textiles more recently.... So here is some more textile art for you...

Lauren DiCioccio investigates commonplace objects, more recently mass produced items like newspapers, plastic bags and writing pads, as these objects become more obsolete, replaced by the invisible efficiency of various techniques and the hole and questions that will be left behind after the disappearance of these everyday objects. When will we no longer write longhand? When newsprint does not rub off on our fingertips? Her tedious handiwork and obsessive care reminds the audience of these simple but intimate pieces of everyday life and provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects.

Textile Portraits

Elly au Verso

Textile Portraits by Cayce Zavaglia  http://www.caycezavaglia.com/

Artist Statement:

"I still consider myself a painter and find it difficult not to refer to these embroidered portraits as “paintings”. Although the medium employed is crewel embroidery wool, the technique borrows more from the worlds of drawing and painting.

Initially, working with an established range of wool colors proved frustrating. Unlike painting, I was unable to mix the colors by hand. Progressively, I created a system of sewing the threads in a sequence that would ultimately give the allusion of a certain color or tone. The direction in which the threads were sewn had to mimic the way lines are layered in a drawing to give the allusion of depth, volume, and form. Over time the stitches have become tighter and more complex but ultimately more evocative of flesh, hair, and cloth.

My work unabashedly nods its head to the tradition of tapestry and my own love of craft. Using wool instead of oils has allowed me to broaden the dialogue between portrait and process as well as propose a new definition for the word “painting”."