Transparent Still Life

Physicist Arie van 't Riet specializes in radiation physics, and very low energy x-rays in particular. He began making artwork employing x-ray nature photographs, where radiography intersects fine art. His colourized x-ray photos of bioramas are a sort of see-through wunderkammer. He creates entire scenes in x-ray form. It makes me think of how the natural world might look if my eyes could see in x-ray wavelengths (or those back-of-the-comic-book x-ray specs really worked).

  Arie van 't Riet

Cameleon, begonia, Arie van 't Riet

Barn owl, Arie van 't Riet

Arie van 't Riet

frog, Arie van 't Riet

Arie van 't Riet

Arie & Hans van't Riet

 As a printmaker, I also appreciate how he's worked with Hans van 't Riet to produce Toboyo prints, or photo-polymer etchings, using UV light to transfer the x-rays to a plate which was inked and hand-printed. There's something poetic about using one non-visible wavelength to photograph right through lifeforms and show their structure, and then use another non-visible wavelength to bite an etching plate and print onto paper- combining the high tech with the centuries-old artistic medium.







Transparent flowers, revealing their skeletal structures, are also the subject of  architecture-student-turned-artist Macoto Murayama's work, but his is a very different medium. He uses computer graphics, 3dsMAX software usually employed in architecture (or animation), to model and then Photoshop and Illustrator depict the anatomy of flowers. It's like a specialized form of scientific illustration, as he bases his images on his own careful dissection of flowers

Chrysanthemum, Macoto Murayama

Rose, Macoto Murayama

Yoshino cherry, Macoto Murayama

Chrysanthemum, Macoto Murayama

Satsuki azalea, Macoto Murayama

(via the scientist)

paper botanicals

Mary Delany, Crinum Zeylanicum: Asphodil Lilly,
a paper collage, 1778 (via The British Museum)

The lovely and precise paper collage, or as she called them 'mosaicks' depicting various botanical illustrations by Mary Delany were recently brought to people's attention by Molly Peacock's book The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work At 72. She wished her work to ressemble dried flowers, and was so successful that some could be mistaken for actual specimen. Peacock describes a woman who in fact invented an entirely new artistic (or scientific illustration) medium, very late in life. Describing her method in a letter to her niece, dated October 4th, 1772, Delany wrote: “I have invented a new way of imitating flowers”.

Mary Delany, Magnolia Grandiflora (Polyandria Polygynia),
the grand Magnolia. 1776

Delany used hand-tinted tissue paper to create 1700 of these paper cuts, working until the age of 88, when her eyesight failed. She worked with plant specimen, and it is believed she dissected them to better observe their detailed anatomy; her works carefully reproduce petals, stamens, calyx, leaves, veins, stalk and other parts of the plant in hundreds of tiny layered pieces of paper, generally against a black background. She lived in a time where there was a revolution in botanical knowledge, a great passion for gardening, and no photography. The intersection of botany and art played an important role in contemporary descriptive science, and Mrs. Delany became a major botanical artist. (via Things that quicken the heart).

Mary Delany, Pancratium Maritinum (Hexandria Monogynia),
Sea Daffodil. 1778

Mary Delany, Vicia Cracca (Diadelphia Decandria),
Tufted vetch

Mary Delany, Iris Susiana, Chalcedonian. 1781

Anandamayi Arnold is a contemporary San Francisco-based artist who makes paper 'surprise balls', a desceptively simple medium: she wraps trinkets and ephemera in layer upon layer of crepe paper, to build up gorgeous, three-dimensional botanical objects. She calls them 'three dimensional trompe l'oeil'. Aya Brackett has photographed Arnold's work in a way which clearly alludes to Mary Delany's work, against a dark background, showing these objects to be more than paper and toys, but a sort of continuation of the paper botanical illustration tradtion, tracing all the way back to the late 18th century and Delany's pioneering work. Further, she's playing with the ideas of the ephemeral and permanance, since these objects are at least nominally built so that someone could unravel them to find the toys inside.

Anandamayi Arnold, Paper Passion Fruit (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, Paper Pomegranate (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, Kumkuat branch, 2012 (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, paper botanicals photograph by Aya Brackett

Anandamayi Arnold, paper botanicals photograph by Aya Brackett

Ceramic Stream-of-Conciousness

This post is about contemporary ceramic art. We have flowered heads, experimental, rococo and occasionally lit anatomy, and gas masks as recurring themes. Honestly.

Peruvian-born sculptor Emil Alzamora works in NY state. On his site you'll find sculptures in other media as well. I love the play between the traditional motifs or methods and the contemporary subjects. Embonpoint in particular reminds me of Julie Moon (who we'll get to). See more in his portfolio.


Mother & Child 5 ceramic 18" x 20" x 12", 2009


Embonpoint ceramic 9" x 7.5" x 7.5" 2007


Toxiconomist ceramic 11"x8"x5", 2008

The gas-mask leads us to American artist Kate MacDowell, whose rococo sculptures with elements from anatomy and natural (or unnatural?) history, combined in unexpected and surreal ways, like this mama bunny in a gas mask:


First and Last Breadth


Solastalgia

According to wikipedia, Solastalgia is a neologism coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 with the first article published on this concept in 2005. It describes a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change, such as mining or climate change.


Venus

I also enjoy the multi-media, light coming from the (ceramic) heart (with exra venus flytraps) in Venus. Follow the link to her portfolio.

Local Toronto artist Julie Moon (now also re-located to NY) is one of my favorites. I have not one, but two brooches she created and met her once at one of the MADE shows at the Gladstone. One of the brooches is an antomically correct white ceramic heart with a floral pattern, like the one illustrated; I love the contrast of the internal organ with the feminine flowers, like those you might expect on fine china. A colleague once said he thought it was pretty but actually it's gross. I think he's wrong, and it's beautiful, but that tension between dainty and blattant is part of the appeal.

She also has the mixed-media, including ceramics with lights, the surreal anatomy and flowered heads like those we see above. Check out her extensive portfolio.

whispering Lucía

Dear internets,

O, you are the source of so much wonder.
Perhaps in your web you could find me a Spanish speaker who would like to provide me with a gloss of this whispering world?
I watched this without sound and thought beautiful & strange!
I listened to it and am flummoxed.
What can it mean?

love,
magpie & whiskeyjack


"Lucía is a short video shot frame by frame with a digital photo camera. Materials: charcoal, dirt, flowers, found objects and cardboard. July 12th, 2007 by Diluvio"

[via Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien]

Brontosaurus adrift and twittering

Check out New Hampshire illustrator Katie Vernon. There is a lot of understated humour in her layered and textured work. She can not resist illustrating puns and sayings. Here is her calendar for June ("if april showers bring may flowers, what to may flowers bring?")


and a flowered hedgehog


from her blog.

But this project is genius: she is illustrating 'tweets' (if you haven't fallen into the twitterverse blackhole, or steadfastly ignore the twee naming scheme, a 'tweet' is a maximum 140 character posting on one's twitter blog). These can be found on tweets illustrated.





This really appeals to my love of typography!

Some of her illustrations from her site:

Tree Destroyers - a veritable wunderkammer of hazards to trees.

Bye-Bye Brontosaurus

She also has an etsy shop called ChipmunkCheeks

{More or less via Blossem}