News and Updates about Fine Art

People have been transforming mud into art, aka pottery, for thousands of years. This is not a new phenomenon, but often the finished product has a certain utilitarian aesthetic, such as a bowl or vase.

Hi, WonderHowTo!

Swiss photographer Fabian Oefner wanted to capture the moment right before a bubble bursts, a feat that required surprisingly little equipment, but a lot of time and patience. The result was well worth it though. Here's a quick before and after:

What would happen if a working disposable camera were to travel from Massachusetts to Hawaii via first-class mail, with explicit instructions for its handlers to take photographs?

Prada is genius. If you're a hater, you've never been to the flagship store on Broadway in NYC. The fashion powerhouse enlisted the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Rem Koolhaas to design the space, a stunning retail location with impeccable service, rotating installations, beautiful architectural details, hypnotizing music, and a gigantic, monolithic glass elevator. (You can go on an interactive tour here).

Lori Nix is a photographer whose stunning work depicts curious scenes of danger and disaster: abandoned spaces, architecture in a state of extreme deterioration, natural calamities, and more. But the mysterious places she captures with her 8x10 large format camera aren't actual found locations—they're meticulously fabricated miniature dioramas.

The challenge of creating garments with unconventional materials has become an all too familiar gimmick for most first year students at fashion schools. The end result is more often than not a catwalk of garbage bags, zip ties, plastic bottles and cans, assembled into a menagerie of mediocrity. Enter Jum Nakao. But while the Japanese-Brasilian artist/fashion designer does use an unconventional and impractical material (paper) for his collection "A Costura do Invisivel"(translation: "Sewing the...

If you missed our profile on photographer Sharon Beals' new book, Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them, now's the time to check it out. You have until 11:59 pm tonight to enter for a chance to win a signed copy of Beals' book, a beautiful series of photographs demonstrating the astounding self-sustainability of the avian race. To enter, you must:

It's been a legendary year for snow art. First there was the Eiffel Tower penis. Then the crash-landed AT-AT. Then the beautiful snowdecahedron and the skull-shaped igloo fortress. Found on Unreality Mag, the latest newsworthy snow sculpture is every Star Wars-loving little kid's dream: an AT-AT "pony ride". Okay, so it's freezing cold. And it's technically immobile. Who cares. It's awesome.

Ever wonder what's inside those old vintage typewriters and analog phones? Canadian photographer Todd McLellan dissects old electronics and then captures their innards— some assembled in a painstakingly orderly array, others caught in a mid-air explosion. More images and process video here (under "New Work").

Illustrator Lisa Hanawalt innovates the typical gossip rag by rendering wicked rumors of Devil Wears Prada villain Anna Wintour as clever cartoon drawings. Though akin to political cartoons, the result is more US Magazine (if US was prettier to look at). As usual, Wintour is depicted as soulless (and to think, she supposedly bedded Bob Marley!).

Inspired by the vast and exotic geography of Iceland, Canadian-Hungarian artist Eszter Burghardt uses food and wool to reconstruct her memory of the landscape. The series, "Edible Vistas and Wooly Sagas", is molded from "poppy seeds, coco powder, coffee, milk, and chocolate cake crumbs" and Icelandic wool—there are endless herds of native sheep wandering the countryside. She then captured the dioramas with a macro lens.

Blacksmith Sage Werbock —also known as the Great Nippulini, "pierced weight lifting extraordinaire"—welded together this Star Wars Imperial Walker sculpture with a bunch of old computer parts and scrap metal. Currently listed on Etsy for $450, the AT-AT is artfully assembled as follows:

Kevin Van Aelst creates witty visual "one-liners" by recontextualizing everyday, ordinary objects. With a few simple tweaks, the viewer recognizes a roll of tape as the ocean or reads gummi worms as chromosomes or understands mitosis through the use of sweet, sugary donuts.

Um, genital anatomy is probably one of them. The image below first turned up on Buzzfeed, leading to shock, awe, and lots of head scratching over who could have possibly come up with such an interesting contribution to the world of fashion...

Alex Lewis imagines what the world would look like infiltrated by video game characters in his digital montage series "Video Games vs. Real Life".  (P.S. If you like what you see, check out Lewis' t-shirt designs at Threadless).