text: Nathaniel Smith, Author at Beautiful/Decay - Page 3 of 19
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  Gregory Kloehn Is Transforming Trash Into Homes For The Homeless
  May 16, 2014 by Nathaniel Smith
  California-based artist Gregory Kloehn often repurposes the still completely-usable trash and street detritus that he finds in the streets. His ongoing project Homeless Homes takes this idea one step further, offering real aid by creating housing for the homeless in Oakland. Dubbed as "eclectic building materials for small but efficient mobile homes." Kloehn and his volunteers recycle and reuse salvage to offer small, mobile house (they are on wheels), Mostly the size of a sofa or small room, these Homeless Homes offer a safe place and protection, and raise awareness to the needs of the homeless community. "Stuff people just throw away on the street can give someone a viable home," Kloehn said in an interview with NBC News. "Does it have merit as a solution to homelessness? As far as giving people a shelter, yeah, definitely. Is it a solution to homelessness? It's an answer. An attempt."
  Kloehn further describes his aims on the project's website, "Our goal is to bring together imaginative people and discarded materials to make sturdy, innovative, mobile shelters for the homeless people. By sourcing our materials from illegal street dumping, commercial waste and excess household items, we strive to diminish money's influence over the building process."
  If you are interested and able to help with the project, please contact Homeless Home Projects here. (via huffingtonpost)
  Architecture | Design | Performance | Street art
  Tagged Art, Design, Gregory Kloehn, homeless, homeless shelters, Installation, Street art. | Say something >
  Calamityware Combines Delicate Porcelain And Monster Attacks
  May 15, 2014 by Nathaniel Smith
  Made popular by the dinnerware imported by England from China during the 18th century, Willow pattern is a distinctive and delicate pattern. And probably the last place you would expect to see alien invasions, giant robots attacking cities and pterodactyls. Graphic designer and draughtsman Don Moyer started with a fairly basic premise, "I love to draw. The drawings I like best are those that make me laugh. Several years ago, I started drawing Calamityware —traditional willow-pattern dinner plates with a tranquil scene threatened by impending calamity." Funded by a successful Kickstarter to realize his whimsical drawings into actual dinnerware, Moyer has realized his dream of correcting an ancient problem, that "too many plates have been too boring for too long."If it all seems light-hearted, it really is. Moyer's drawings retain the traditional line quality and palette of their inspiration, but add in sinking ships, flying monkeys, and villages on fire. These drawings are then transferred to blank plates and fired to set the illustrations. Definitely beats your grandmother's antique china if laughter is what you are after. (via mymodernmet)
  Design | Illustration | Product Design
  Tagged Calamityware, dishes, Don Moyer, Graphic Design, porcelain. | 2 Comments. Join the discussion! >
  Street Artist FAREWELL's Destroys Outdoor Advertisements With Homemade Paper Shredder
  May 14, 2014 by Nathaniel Smith
  Street art is well known for its finite lifespan and dependence on documentation for audiences outside of the immediate vicinity of the public work to experience it. French street artist FAREWELL typically creates accompanying videos along with his interventions, expertly documenting the entirety of his project from conception to execution. And Strip Box might be his best yet.
  As seen in this poetic yet instructional video, FAREWELL creates a rather simple device (which the artist calls the "destructeur") with wood, hardware and X-Acto blades. Executed in Paris, the destructeur is placed inside of a bus stop's rotating advertisement, creating a self-shredding device when the ads rotate. Strip Box is not only ingeniously simple, but also strongly imagines a world where advertisements disrupt themselves. (via vandalog)
  Performance | Street art | Video
  Tagged advertising, Art, FAREWELL, Street art, street signs. | Say something >
  The Intensely-Detailed Intricacy Of Ben Sack's Illustrated Cityscapes
  Few artists have the talent that Ben Sack wields with pen and ink, and even fewer have the patience and control that the young artist uses to create his labor intensive, large-scale drawings. Patience is an integral part of the artist's process, as massive cityscapes are slowly constructed on paper from historical reference, often taking months to complete. Though some cities are drawn (partially) historically accurate, certain parts of the drawing are stylistically changed, by removing rivers or skylines, or being rendered in circular forms. Other cities are complete fantasy however, interjecting centuries of unrelated architecture and scenery into a hybrid sprawl, often resulting in completely new, purely imaginative renderings. When asked the simple question on his Tumblr of how he is able to create these intensely detailed drawings, Sack responded, "As per your question regarding how, I can credit patience and a debilitating love for history and architecture."
  Explaining his interest in architecure, antiquity and cities, Sack explains, "Its this sort of image that I think most people, if not all of society have of western antiquity; stainless marble facades, long triumphal avenues, monuments to glory. In actuality, the cities of the past were far from idealistic by todays standards. Yes there was marble, lots of marble, and monuments galore, however these urban centers were huddled together and unless you were considerably wealthy, life in dreamy antiquity was often a heroic struggle. Though the societies of antiquity were bloody, dirty and corrupt the idea of antiquity has come to represent some resounding ideals in present society; democracy, justice, law and order, balance, symmetry. These ideals are now the foundation stones of our own civilization, a civilization that some distant future will perhaps honor as antiquity."(via supersonicelectronic and colossal)
  Tagged Ben Sack, cityscape, Drawing, Illustration, landscape. | Say something >
  Kimsooja's Mirrored Installation Transforms Classic Greenhouse Into Psychedelic Rainbow Room
  May 12, 2014 by Nathaniel Smith
  Perhaps the fascination for artists utilizing chrome and mirror in their works is the increasing divide between seeing ourselves more and more via social media, yet understanding ourselves less. This is particularly evident in the work of New York-based Korean multidisciplinary artist Kimsooja, which often deals with the self-perception and the self and the other. In her installation To Breathe – A Mirror Woman at the Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Retiro, in Madrid, Kimsooja transformed a classic greenhouse by removing everything and replacing it with a mirrored floor. Next, the Tague, South Korean-born artist used a translucent, light-diffracting film to coat the windows, which cause an array of naturally occurring rainbows, which were in turn continuously reflected by a mirrored surface that covered the entire floor. Like many of her projects, an audio pairing accompanied the visuals. Visitors would experience a recording of Kimsooja breathing, enhancing the contemplative yet personal and relatable mystery of the installation.
  Taken from Kimsooja's description of the project, "Outside light filters through the glass of the pavilion and reflects off the diffraction film. It diffuses into rainbow spectrums, transforming the external panorama seen from within the palace. The resulting effect is that the entire structure as well as the rays of colour reflecting off the mirrored floor. Natural light, colour, and sound are all ethereal elements within the empty space. The artist's breathing from the performance, The Weaving Factory, bounces off the mirrors and fills the entire building to intermix with it, breaking down barriers of inside and outside, self and other, and reality and fantasy."
  Kimsooja's most recent project most recently wrapped the Korean Pavilion with a similar film treatment at the 2013 Venice Art Biennale. (via myampgoesto11 and colossal)
  Tagged Architecture, Installation, Kimsooha, Madrid, mirror, rainbow. | Say something >
  Nishi Building's Striking Entryway Installation Made Entirely Of Reclaimed Wood
  May 9, 2014 by Nathaniel Smith
  Combining Japanese architectural influence with a concern and skill for using reclaimed materials, Australian firm March Studio decided to make a statement to the entryway staircase to the Nishi building in Canberra, Australia. Already being called "Australia's most radically sustainable mixed-use building and apartment complex," the building's design makes an effort to harmony with its natural surroundings, treelife, and wasting as little as possible in it's construction.
  Hotel Hotel Blog explains March Studio's design goals well, quoting, "Let the location inform the materials, and then let the materials inform the design. In Nishi's case, the creative catalyst was the splendour of the construction site itself: chaotic but precise. March also prescribes to the philosophy of "letting the material be the material" (ah so desu ka, sensei) by using them in their natural state."
  Made of 2,150 recycled (or upcycled, whichever word seems more appropriate), the repurposed wood from homes, basketball courts, and the remnants of the construction site of the building itself. Held in place with over 2000 steel rods, the installation creates a striking effect, yet balanced with an ordered peacefulness. Beautiful yes, but dusting seems like it will be a pain. (via colossal and hotel hotel blog)
  Tagged Installation, March Studios, Nishi Building, reclaimed wood, Recycled. | Say something >
  Andy Warhol's Groundbreaking Computer Art Recovered
  May 7, 2014 by Nathaniel Smith
  Digitally created visuals are so ubiquitous today, from commercial applications to advertising to contemporary art, that it is hard to remember a time when it was a rudimentary technology used only be a few specialists. Commodore's "Amiga 1000" changed this, bringing image creation programs into the home, allowing anyone to create original and edited computer images for the first time. To promote the public launch of their groundbreaking model, Commodore asked Andy Warhol to create an image using the software, demonstrating the accessibility of the program, and the possibilities in the hands of a pioneering visual artist. Seen in the following clip of Warhol "painting" Blondie singer Debbie Harry in 1985, it was assumed that Warhol only used the program once, his digital experiment being forgotten.
  It may have stayed that way had it not been for the curiosity and effort of another pioneering artist, Cory Arcangel. Well-known for his early hacked video games and glitched aesthetic that came to be known as Net Art (or Post-Conceptualism), Arcangel was curious if the Prince of Pop Art created any other works on the early digital format. This search led to conversations with curators at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, who owned most of the equipment (discs, hard drives and floppies) that might contain these experiments. Connecting Arcangel to the nearby Carnegie Melon University's computing club, who have experience in recovery and "retrocomputing", the combined effort to recover Warhol's files took three years.
  In a more tech-savvy description of the difficult process at Wired.com, Liz Stinson notes, "Because of the disks' age and fragility, extracting data posed a serious risk. The archiving and viewing process could irreversibly damage the content, but letting the disks slowly degrade was an even worse option."
  The team was eventually able to recover eighteen images (some of which are shown above), among the first digitally made images by an already famous visual artist. Describing the astoundingly original files, Arcangel said, "What's amazing is that by looking at these images, we can see how quickly Warhol seemed to intuit the essence of what it meant to express oneself, in what then was a brand-new medium: the digital."
  A documentary about the recovery, Trapped: Andy Warhol's Amiga Experiments, will premiere May 10th at Carnegie Mellon (and will then be viewable at http://nowseethis.org/.), after which many more of the images will probably be released to the public for the first time ever. (via wired)
  Tagged andy warhol, cory arcangel, Digital Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, pop art, warhol. | 1 Comment. Join the discussion! >