Awesome Light Arrival

The EL wire just arrived today! It has fast pulse, slow pulse, and continuous settings. This stuff is awesome!

Manuel Albarran and an Enflamed Wrist

I've been doing a lot of wire bending lately. I'm almost done scaling a 30" arowana, which has become rather painful. My right wrist is swollen from making all of the little scales, some of which are quite small. And to make it better, the Lowe's wire supplier changed the packaging of their lighter gauged wire. Not only that, but they made it thinner!!!! I'm not happy with this move. So, about half way down the arowana's body the scales get thinner. Hopefully the beading will hide this. Anyways, I'm going to take a few days off from the wire until my wrist recovers.

Anyways, wonderful Olas sent my a link last night to this metal artist, Manuel Albarran. Manuel describes his work as Metal Couture, a blend of fashion with metalworking. Like my work, it's not very practical, but looks awesome. His work has been used in numerous ads, commercials, publicity campaigns, art videos, and films.

Here's a sampling of his work, I can't find titles for any of them;






The way he photographs his work helps to enhance the detail and form of his pieces. This encourages me to do this idea I've had for a while now. I'm going to photograph each of my wearable pieces and hang the photos next to them. There will be 2 photos of each piece, one without the EL wire turned on, and one with illumination.

Progress on the Exoskeleton

For those of you who haven't seen the Facebook photos yet.


I have added some brass wire details to the face.It won't be much longer until it's done.

Claire Prebble

I was browsing, again, when I found this phenomenal artist. She's from New Zealand, and has been dominating art shows for years. The most unexpected thing about her is that she's only 21! She first entered the world art arena at the age of 18, winning the coveted Supreme Wearable Art Award. This makes her the youngest artists to ever win that particular award. To make her work even more unbelievable, she won her first award in a professional artist show at the age of 8....... Now, she's flown all over the world for internships, shows, and more. Like myself, her wire techniques are self taught and she has a keen interest in designing and making props and costumes for film and fashion. Even some of her techniques are the same as mine!

Oh, by the way, she was the costume designer of Avatar.

Anyways, here is some of her work.

EOS (the Supreme Award winner)



Perelandra

Fasianos

During my stay in Rhodes, Greece I found a small modern art museum close to one of the gates by the marina. They were having a solo exhibition by a rather famous Greek artist known as Alekos Fasianos.

Fassianos in not only a painter, but a proficient violinist. After his studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts and Athens Conservatory, respectively, he went to Paris to study. Here he learned the art of lithography. Since 1950 he has had numerous exhibits around the world, 70 in total. On top of being a world renowned painter, he also worked with the National Theatre of Greece. His most recent and widely viewed works were posters and stamps for the 2004 Athens Olypics (I picked up a few).

His style is a quirky fusion of classical and modern styles. The colors are highly saturated and the figures are mostly flat. A common theme in the vast majority of his work is a scarf and an olive branch. There was only 1 pieces in his entire solo show that did not have an olive branch or scarf present. The figures that he paints are a single color, and more times than not they're not a flesh tone. All of his figures typically look them same, regardless of gender. this adds an odd sense of humor in his work, which I like very much.

Here are some examples of his work;

Un Voyage Unique


Zeus & Thetis


Bicyclist

Theo Jansen

Before I get into this I need to say something. I am not going to be building anything on this scale..... yet.

Theo Jansen is a kinetic sculptor from The Netherlands. His works are part art, part engineering marvels. His Strandbeests are massive skeletal sculptures that lumber across beaches, powered by nothing but wind. Despite their behemoth sizes they are remarkably light weight, being built out of plastic tubing and paper. His materials and subject matter relate to my thesis in that he is creating organic forms with mostly inorganic materials.

And now for some photos ad videos.
One of his Strandbeests


Another


and yet another


"Transport"


And a video