I hope you all had a lovely Christmas day! I’ve had a chance to tidy up, and now I’m ready for all of my guests to start dropping by… hot chocolate {with a shot or two of Baileys} for all! My first guest is Brazilian born, Vancouver based Lili Vieira de Carvalho. As far as I’m concerned, she has a dream job as the Associate Director at the Diane Farris Gallery. She also writes/curates her own blog called The Art Monitor, which in her words “is a natural side effect of a passion for the art world and the city she now calls home.” It’s really good, you should check it out… but first, check out who makes her jealous:

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I am jealous of Aakash Nihalani.

This Brooklyn-based artist is highly influenced by graffiti and his work is playful, humorous and always exciting. The fluorescent 3D boxes made of paper tape are his trademark while in gallery exhibitions he shows another brilliant side of his creative brain – the guy doesn’t have a dark side! While choosing images for this blog post I just couldn’t make up my mind trying to pick just a few. I decided to concentrate on his street works, but his sculptures, prints, works on canvas and cardboard, are equally clever. Oh boy, I’m jealous!

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Me too, me too! Love this post… thanks so much for stopping by Lili! xo

Raw photography/mixed media, right? Yep. But hold on a second… what used to be under those pretty little dots? If you said amateur photography of nudes found on the internet, you win! These are just a few of my favorites from a fairly large series titled Private Stages by German artist Peter Freitag. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I could find a sexier/safer spot to take a nude photo than right in front of my stove. Careful – that burner could be hot!

Well, I’m off to spend a snowy weekend in the mountains… clearly a perfect time to write about Dutch artist Sebastiaan Bremer. Ahh, sipping hot chocolate by the fire {or drinking white wine with young boys} while watching tiny drops of ink fall down from the sky… so lovely. See you on Monday xo

Weaved photographs? Nope. Vintage photographs chopped up into perfect little diamonds, mixed up with each other,  and then rearranged into new dizzying images. Whoa. Today’s lovely touch of vertigo is brought to you by Californian artist Allison Diaz.

{via crisaris}

“Identities Now” will be a book comprised of select images submitted by photographers around the globe. The mission is to explore the current state of the photographic portrait through gathering the best work from a diverse cross-section of artists. ~ Peter Hay Halpert of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art, New York

That could be you! If you’re a portrait photographer, you have until Friday December 3rd to submit your work to be included in this amazing book. Peter Hay Halpert has assembled a very impressive crew* to review the work, and make the selections… is it too late for me to try and be a portrait photographer? Yeah, ok, i know… but it’s not too late for you! Good luck!

* Selection committee shown above:1) David Harris, Design Director, Vanity Fair Magazine  2) Laurie Kratochvil, Photography Editor/Director  3) Sam Shahid, President and Creative Director, Shahid & Company  4) Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Photographer/Director  5) David Schonauer, former Editor in Chief, American Photo Magazine  6) Peter Hay Halpert, Principal, Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art

You know how some people are really into their hobbies? Yep, well, these are those people. In this series titled Re-Enactors , British photographer Jim Naughten has beautifully documented some of the people {and their very accurate costumes} who choose to spend their weekends recreating various battles and drills from the First and Second World War. Re-Enactors is currently showing, until December 18th, at the KLOMPCHING Gallery in Brooklyn. Ahh, a gallery in New York, now that’s where I’d like to spend my weekend… because I’m quite sure that I wouldn’t have the commitment required to wear that gas mask for an entire Saturday afternoon!

Stand on a bench. Make sure it’s Monday. Wear something pretty.

These were the rules that American fashion editor/reporter, turned photographer, Heidi Lender followed for this series titled Once Upon. That’s how it started anyway. Clearly on the path to self-discovery, she chose to leave the glossy pages of the fashion world and moved to India nine years ago to study yoga. Well, somewhere between upward and downward dog she picked up a camera, and over a whole bunch of Mondays, this fun weekly assignment ended up exposing the many layers of who she really was… wild, controlled, tough, sweet, and quite obviously, always fashionable!

{ps. speaking of upward and downward dogs, how cute is her dog? my crazy wiener hounds would just be a blur running past in the background!}

I love these large scale photographs by Nils Nova, and cannot stop staring at that cube.

Wow. Just wow.

Italian born, London based artist Maurizio Anzeri transforms found photographs of perfectly cute kids into spooky, tribal, baboon-ish looking creatures using only a needle and thread. I’m totally in awe… and just a little bit scared.

{via The Art Monitor}

I absolutely love this project! Ok, let’s start with the jealous part. Canadian artists {and brothers} Jeff and Andrew Topham did what most of us would love to do – they got to relive their childhoods… kinda. In the late 1970’s they lived in beautiful, war-free Liberia. They played on the beach, ran around the jungle, and even had a pet chimp named Evelyn. Their dad, John, documented all of it through his own amazing photographs {also part of the series}, labeling his negatives, and ultimately giving this project it’s title… Liberia ’77.

So this is where it gets inspiring/scary. Thirty years later Jeff, a film maker, and Andrew, a photographer, decided to go back to the location of their idyllic childhood and document the changes. As you can imagine, they were drastic {note the two “gas stations” above… yes, those are jars of siphoned gas in 2010}. Jeff and Andrew have created a series of photographs, and are currently working on a documentary. So far I’ve only seen the photos, and the stories behind them made me tear up almost instantly. I imagine I’ll need a full box of tissues for the film.