Sculptures create shadow faces

NYC artist Kumi Yamashita, whose thread/nail portraits Cory posted about previously, also creates head-spinning artworks from carefully-placed objects, a single light source, and shadows. "Light & Shadow".
LINK: Boingboing

Lion of Judah carved into Eastlake tree

What do you do when your beautiful old oak tree is struck by lightning? Have it carved into a ten-foot lion of course. At least that’s what Sandy River’s of Alabama has decided to do.

Four years ago, Rivers’ 100-year-old red oak tree was struck by lightning. But she couldn’t bear to let it die.

“They came out and they removed the limbs and everything. And they wanted to grind the tree down. But I couldn’t do that. Because this tree, it belongs here. And I feel a connection with this tree. And I’m all about nature. I guess that’s just the hippee in me,” joked Rivers.

A few years later, Rivers came across the wood work of Andy Cummings, a local artist known for his chainsaw artworks. The idea finally came to her like a roar in the night. The ten-foot stump would be transformed into a lion.

So far her neighbors seem excited about the rather large art piece in her front yard.

Katie Herrera of MyFoxAL has more: Link, Via: Neatorama

Portable Cities by Chinese Artist Yin Xiuzhen

Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen created a series of artworks called “Portable Cities“, which start with the used clothing of a city’s inhabitants and are remade as three-dimensional textile models of their places of origin, sprouting organically from suitcases. LINK

Árbol Serpentina

Presurfer reader Alex Fraile from Spain creates artworks made from streamers (serpentinas in Spanish), those long strips of paper that people throw at parties. LINK: The Presurfer

12 Cool Cardboard Artworks

image credit

Biodegradable art is all the rage, with artists using anything from old newspapers to cardboard. But the artists who choose cardboard do so for its structural strength.

It also happens to be cheap. Whether the materials are straight out of the trash or brand-new, here are 12 examples of what a creative mind can do. LINK: The Presurfer

Auschwitz Then and Now

Some of the prisoners liberated from Auschwitz in 1945 recreated the scenes of their lives there in art. An online exhibit places those artworks side-by-side with photographs of Auchwitz taken many years later.

In 1979, The Auschwitz Museum Archive reproduced selected pieces of art and sent them to writer/photographer Alan Jacobs.
After years of related work and many more trips, Jacobs, and his son Jesse, returned to the camps in 1996 to find and photograph the identical scenes depicted in the art. Krysia Jacobs then devised a way to present them as you see here. They are the result of work over a 24 year period.

An explanatory text, which may be disturbing, accompanies each image. Link -Via: Metafilter, Via: Neatorama

(image credit: Mieczyslaw Koscielniak/Auschwitz Museum Archive)

Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you

Golan Levin, an artist and engineer, uses modern tools -- robotics, new software, cognitive research -- to make artworks that surprise and delight. Watch as sounds become shapes, bodies create paintings, and a curious eye looks back at the curious viewer. LINK: Youtube

Beautiful Graffiti Artworks

Street culture and graffiti are well-known for being provocative, appealing, bold and uncompromising. Originally used by gangs to mark their territory in some urban area, graffitis have now become a rich medium for unrestricted expression of ideas and statements.

50 Examples of beautiful graffiti artworks. Via: Presurfer