Um, what section should I put this in? Painting? Textiles? I’m going with BOTH! These paintings, woven from other paintings, are the work of Toronto based artist Elisabeth Heidinga. She paints the paintings, then uses a laser cutter to slice the various canvases into perfect thin strips, and then weaves them together. LOVE! The finished works are gorgeous, but can we talk about those big bunches of colorful strips of canvas before they’re even woven!? They need to be hung in giant knots beside their woven friends, yes? Yes!

Candy-colored balloons, magically stacked one on top of another. You’d think they could just float away… until you find out that they’re bronze! These sculptures (stone, urethane paint on bronze) are the work of Korean artist Gimhongsok, from his series titled “Untitled (Short People)”. All of these images are from his show, “Dwarf, Dust, Doubt” that was shown at Tina Kim Gallery (New York) in the fall of 2018. Here are some words from the gallery’s site that explains these gorgeous pieces:

“[In] Dwarf, Dust, Doubt, Gimhongsok has highlighted how society casually assigns values to objects using terms to describe their size, weight and how we perceive them. In isolating these arbitrary values, he questions the political and social judgment implied by their use, rejecting the cavalier way people treat objects upon seeing them … each work from Untitled (Short People) is comprised of blown up balloons that are cast in bronze. Varying in size, the artist enlists friends and acquaintances to blow up the balloons finding poetic resonance in the capture of human breath. Divided into groups of four and six balloons, the entire series represents a combined effort of more than one hundred people.”

Sigh. Beautiful.

Clean, vibrant, and kind of odd… perfection. This is a new, and very personal, series by Vancouver based photographer Jackie Dives. I’ll hand it over to Jackie for the beautiful explanation of these strange combinations:

“Patience and Balance” is a series of still life self portrait photographs that explore womanhood and aging as a woman. Earlier this year, while at an artist residency in Mexico City, a birthday of mine passed that left me feeling paralyzed emotionally and creatively. Looking for inspiration, I wandered the market in the local suburb where I was staying, and started to purchase items that I felt a connection to. These were mostly rotting fruit and vegetables. I received some confused looks when I purposely reached for the produce that was damaged, bruised, or rotting. But I thought they were beautiful, they were calling to me.

I brought them back to my studio and started to photograph them. I realized I was creating a version of a self portrait, a personal memento mori. When photography was a new art form and still quite expensive and laborious it was often only in death when a person would be photographed. These post-mortem photos or memento mori, which is Latin for “remember that you will die,” served as treasured keepsakes, valuable remembrances of a deceased loved one.

The process of making these self portraits about aging and death made me feel alive, and I even found humour in them. Through a mourning and celebration of my past self I found a way to heal my present self.

I looooove that she gave herself this assignment… smart and oh so lovely, just like Jackie herself. These pieces (and more) are part of a group show, titled Uncannyland, that opens this Friday, May 31 from 6-9pm at South Main Gallery in Vancouver, and runs until June 14, 2019. Go!

Art … for your fingers! What are these elegant, ethereal, translucent rings made from? Salad containers, produce bags, assorted fruit containers, and recycled silver. WHAT. I’ll let American artist (and recently graduated BFA student… as in last week) Charity Ridpath explain:

Year of Plastic

My wearable sculptures are informed by what we as humans make to be thrown away.  This past year, I collected all of the single-use plastic I used in order to better understand my own footprint. With “Year of Plastic” I transformed this collection into nature inspired, wearable compositions. I like to view these translucent forms as a hologram, a dystopian re-creation of something that no longer exists. It creates a link between the abundance of single-use plastic and nature’s destruction. Worn on the body, these pieces create an intimate relationship between the wearer and the material. I subvert the traditional ideas of jewelry as objects with value and symbols of status by replacing gold and jewels with plastic sculptures. The placement of these constructions on the body creates a visual focus on how we physically interact with packaging made of single-use plastic.The experience of wearing these pieces builds a tactile vocabulary that interrupts the common association of plastic products with convenience, and instead highlights their burden. Through this interaction with the work, I engage with the contradiction of single-use plastic; Though it plays an ephemeral role in our everyday, it has a long lasting impact on our environment and consequently, on us. 

Mic drop.

“Suburban Edens” … oh my word, yes! This is the work of Michigan based artist Jessica Tenbusch. She also draws and paints, but I can’t stop staring at these colorful, nature-infused (literally) wall sculptures. Here are a few words from her ‘about’ page to give a little insight:

[Jessica] explores the relationships between species and how they shaped her experience as a human animal. Her work is an observation on our role as ecosystem builders and destroyers. These works are fragments of our daily environment, showing just how close nature is in our everyday lives, embedded in our homes and neighborhoods.

{via Create Magazine’s Instagram feed}

Oooh, a beautifully painted peek into the life of Korean {California based} artist Paige Moon. Who needs Instagram when you can capture moments using acrylic on panel! Okay, Paige uses Instagram too, but it’s filled with painted snapshots instead. In fact, according to her lovely feed, that final piece is from an anniversary trip she and her partner took to Palm Springs. Yep, it’s Doug Aitken’s mirror house, aka “Mirage” as seen through Paige’s paintbrush. Love.

{Found via HeyThere Projects, Joshua Tree CA. ps. Their first show opens this Saturday, May 25 from 5-9m}

LOVE! I have written about German {Seattle based} artist Anne Siems so many times, but when I saw these new paintings I just had to circle back around. Get it? Circle? Okay, sorry – here are Anne’s words about this body of work:

‘We Are One’  follows the longing of my heart and the knowledge of my mind about the interconnected web of all life on earth. The deeper we come into contact with this knowledge not only abstractly, but with visceral experiencing, the more urgent need to be the actions we take to protect that Oneness.

When I returned in the fall to my studio I suddenly felt like something new had shifted. I started to depict young women again with transparent clothing, but they were clearly contemporary, sporting tattoos, purses and their hands had become animals. 

Something about this work feels like in these last 2 years I have come full circle – no pun intended – I have have incorporated many of the new abstract markings of early 2017, the bodies are clothed and back in lots of detail, their wardrobe contemporary with a ‘hip’ nod to the 60s and 70s, the time in which I grew up. These young women and children look at the viewer with confidence and possibly daring. You will not mess with them. They are both ‘woke’ and mysterious.

Beautiful.

ps. Anne was on my podcast in 2017. You can listen/look right here.

Gasp! Bouquets of light-filled crystals hanging from gold chains… LOVE! These breathtaking pieces are the work of Stockholm based artist Frida Fjellman. You can see some of Frida’s colorful crystals right now in … “New Glass Now”, featuring works by 100 living artists working in glass today, at The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning New York : May 12, 2019 – January 5, 2020 / Contemporary Art + Design Galleries.

ps. These beauties are her most recent work, but go check out her site… it’s filled with all sorts of amazingness, from glass foxes to lightening bolts, hence the fab bio photo in her studio above {photo by Camilla Lindqvist}

Geodes, colorful plexiglass, concrete … and, oh, that neon LIGHT! These sculptures are the work of Texas-born, Brooklyn-based artist Esther Ruiz. I was instantly smitten, and went in search of the what, why, how behind her work… I found it on Artsy:

Constructing her sculptures from hydraulic cement, colored Plexiglas, paint, and other industrial materials, Esther Ruiz uses a minimalist vocabulary to create relics of imagined experiences. Of her creative process, she says: ”The imagery I work with is born out of exploring and researching fictional places imagined in my mind … Ultimately, my work exists as an effort to visually explain an emotional state of mind with mathematical acuteness.” She begins with a collection of emotions, memories, impressions of light, and sounds, then translates them into an abstract geometric aesthetic. The cylinder, the semicircle, the triangle, and other Euclidean forms are combined into colorful and expressive freestanding sculpture.

“Fictional places imagined in my mind” … sigh. Love.

Whoa. Stunning portraits, for gallery walls AND for huge outdoor walls as well. This is the breathtaking work of Belgian artist Stefaan De Croock, aka Strook:

“He is inspired by what he calls non-places: deserted locations where humans once intervened. A deserted monastery, a ruin, a perished fishing boat: the eerie ambiance in/of such places is caught in material collages and paintings. At these non-places he finds scrap material which he disassembles for his artwork.” 

LOVE.

{Thanks to @liesbetvn for pointing me to Stefann’s work}