I wrote about Brooklyn based, Australian artist Liesl Pfeffer YEARS ago. I featured her series of mountain collages, but when I saw this new work, titled “Garden Study”, I knew it was time to write again! I’m seeing cactus and succulents in a lot of work at the moment, but I haven’t come across any others that made out of lakes and skies… sigh… I would love to spend an afternoon in this garden.

AND THE WINNER IS…. Denise Davis!!! Congratulations, Denise! I’ll email you shortly to get your address : )

ps. soooo many of you that entered asked how to buy it if you didn’t win… just click right here to buy one [scroll down on their site a tiny bit & you’ll see a blue ORDER button on the left]. Thanks to everyone that entered, and don’t worry, I’ve got yet another giveaway coming up later this week for a new special little treat!

A DIY, screenprinted & diecut by hand, pinhole camera made of recycled card… that works! So cool!!! This is VIDDY. So designy, so creative… it’s a little box of creative potential! I love it, and I love it’s back story too. There’s more to it than this, but here’s the gist… UK based artist/designer Kelly Angood made her very first pinhole camera while in University back in 2010, but it was a one-off. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, and a few refinements {wow, I really cut that story short} VIDDY was born! And guess what… Kelly and her very cool company, The Pop-Up Pinhole Co. want you to have one! YES! Leave a comment below to enter and I’ll draw one name on Monday Dec 1 at noon PST. Oh, and if that wasn’t exciting enough, the winner gets to pick the color of their choice… green, black, blue or red! (ps. if you can’t wait for the giveaway, you can also order one right here)

ps. Here’s a look at what VIDDY can do…

So good! {Um, can I enter this giveaway!?}

These are the original mixed media works of Naomi Vona. She’s an Italian artist living in Dublin, and I had the great pleasure of meeting her when I was there a few weeks ago. We had a few minutes to talk, and I asked her about these pieces. She buys vintage photographs from people all over the world… sometimes just one tiny photograph, sometimes a whole package… and then she gets to work! She draws, paints and collages right on top these little pieces of personal history. I’d be scared of “making a mistake”, but not Naomi! Her portfolio has hundreds of these creative interventions. The fancy masks are my favorite {can you tell?!}… they add even more mystery to these already mysterious images.

How would you spend a day with your childhood self? Baguettes in Paris? Hopping a train to Spain? Building slushy snowmen in Japan? Well, for Tokyo born, London based photographer Chino Otsuka the answer is “all of the above”! She has placed her grown-up self into old photographs with her little self… flawlessly {look at those shadows!}. The series is titled “Imagine Finding Me”, and it is fantastic! Yeah, this gives #tbt a run for it’s money.

{via Designbooom … and thank you to Beatrice for sending me the link!}

Ok, that metallic braid is killing me. I have loved the work of Chilean architect/artist María Aparicio Puentes for ages! This is her newest, most glitteriest work from a series titled “Be Brilliant”… brilliant, indeed! A lot of artists that do this kind of work use found photos, but María actually collaborates with photographers. For this series she worked with Tatjana Radičević, Lukasz Wierzbowski and Ksenija Jovišević. So fantastic!

ps. María is one of the artists in my second book, COLLAGE. Here’s what she did with the starting image that I gave all 30 artists… I love this so much:

♥

GET IT FIXED… love! I wrote about London based artist, Anthony Gerace, a few months ago… but that was for his gorgeous collages. Today is all about his photography {yes, he’s multi-talented!}. These images are from his newest series titled, Box Elder Co. UT, that he recently shot in, you guessed it, Utah! Simple subject matter, beautifully composed. And yes, the beer can stuck on a bush is my absolute favorite.

Aren’t these fantastic?! Such a unique take on landscape photography… but how did Montana based artist Katie Efstathiou get way up there to create her “Distancing” series? Well, that’s where it gets even more fantastic:

“The distance between a photographer and their camera is often only a couple of inches. It is that relationship that creates a thoughtful image. Imagine distancing the photographer 300 yards up and away from their camera. Careful composition turns into embracing abstraction. By attaching a camera to a remote control helicopter I have viewed the earth’s textured surface in a new way, but not without a challenge. I cannot see what the camera sees. I cannot be near my camera. I merely steer it over the landscape, hoping to capture details that would not otherwise be seen. I have allowed the viewer to feel this relationship by using halftone screen-printing. By distancing yourself from each print you can experience the abstraction the camera sees as it moves up. The further away you are from the print the more the image makes sense.”

Love! {Thanks to Alethea  for sending me a link to Katie’s work.}

I can almost taste the pretty iced roses of my childhood birthday cakes… après finger-swipe ‘n lick! This is the gorgeous work of UK based artist Simone Truong, and here are the thoughts behind it {which have absolutely nothing to do with icing}:

… [She] explores themes of flora and fauna in her work. A juxtaposition between the mundane and the beautiful coalesce to represent the transitionary states that occur in natural phenomena. By bleeding the present with the past and the inevitable future of the flora and fauna, a new, more permanent vision is realised and the temporariness is removed.

Lovely. And with that, I’ll wish you a happy weekend! … ps. you can find some of this work in Simone’s online shop.

Vancouver based photographer Angela Fama wants to take your picture, and then ask you…

… and then she’ll take your picture AGAIN! Yep, next spring, Angela is going to drive across Canada and the US in a used motorhome, turned mobile-photo-studio, so that she can ask that question of people from all walks of life. Her goal is to “unify individuals throughout Canada and the United States using compassion and a pop-up photo studio. “What Is Love” will reveal through comparative photography the strength and beauty of vulnerability that can be found within all adults, regardless of age, nationality, income, sexual orientation or gender.”

She had planned on doing this on her own {Canadians aren’t very good at asking for money… too polite!}, but her friends told her that she was crazy, and that she should at least try Kickstarter. So she has. Reluctantly. I’m glad she did though, because “What is Love” is going to be a beautiful project, as you can see from her past projects, Mirror Face, and How Are You. For How Are You, she set up a quiet/private temporary studio at a street festival in Vancouver. As people came in, she started by taking their “mug shot”, then she told them to close their eyes, and while their eyes were closed she asked, ‘How Are You… really?‘ which is when she captured the final shot:

Lovely, and so simply human. And so, next spring, she is going to travel through small towns and big cities, in her new/old motorhome asking people “What is Love to you?”. She’s not sure if the final faces will be happy or sad or a combination of the two, depending on what the word love conjures up for each person… if you’d like to help her get on the road, please visit her Kickstarter page {Details of the project & pledge rewards are listed there. Pledging closes on October 2nd.}

A candy-hued, geometric wonderland set against an aqua sky. Oh, the photographs of Munich based photographer Nick Frank. Here’s the description of this series, titled Mira:

“Mira” is a shopping center located at Munich/Germany Dülferstrasse. I found the colourful facade very interesting which stands in contrast to the part of the city where the building has been built. The entire Mira series has been published in the book “geometry makes me happy“.

And, just so you can see how truly special his perspective is, here’s the shopping center in its entirety…

Kind of a weird building in the middle of a field, right? His angles, use of light, and compositions turn this weird building in the middle of a field into that candy-hued, geometric wonderland I mentioned twenty seconds ago. Love.