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Photography

Surreal Photos of Seniors Communing with Nature

By Alison Nastasi on

Artists Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen have been collaborating on a multimedia project that started in Norway. Website iGNANT introduced us to Eyes as Big as Plates, a photo series featuring seniors (including a few 90-year old parachuters) immersed in the landscape as a play on characters from Norwegian folklore. Organic costumes and headdresses were created with scavenged materials — a poignant suggestion that each subject has embraced their eventual return to the earth. The project has since expanded to various cities, including New York, and the artists have developed a set of performances connected to the surreal personifications of nature. See more of Hjorth and Ikonen’s beautiful photos in our gallery. … Read More

Art

Beautiful Paper Sculptures Photographed in Forests

By Leigh Patterson on

As completely stupid as it is to admit, it’s easy to forget that paper really does come from trees. Take Chicago artist Dan Bradica’s Constructions photo series, which intersperses enormous, bright paper sculptures with nature. From packaging trees together in a bright red wrapper to piling up cardboard boxes in an empty forest, the paper constructions are transformed into glaringly out-of-place strangers in their own place of origin. … Read More

Art

Beautiful, Intricate Cut Paper Artworks by Calvin Nicholls

By Emily Temple on

Ontario-based artist Calvin Nicholls, whose work we recently spotted over at My Design Stories, has combined a lifelong interest in wildlife with an equally long love of art to create these gorgeous white-on-white paper sculptures depicting nature scenes and portraits of animals that bristle with depth. It’s amazing to us how real his animals feel, even with the barrier of a computer screen, without any attempt to colorize them. Click through to see a few of our favorites of Nicholls’s work, and then be sure to head on over to his website to see much more. … Read More

Photography

Photos of Uneasy Meetings Between Man and Nature

By Alison Nastasi on

New York City-based photographer Amy Stein creates “modern dioramas of our new natural history.” Her Domesticated series, which we first spotted on Faith is Torment, is set in the small Pennsylvania town of Matamoras. The area borders a scenic state forest. Each image is “constructed based on real stories from local newspapers and oral histories of intentional and random interactions between humans and animals.” The works show an uneasy meeting between man and nature, and explore humanity’s relationship with the “wild’ — the ways we attempt to dominate, domesticate, and connect with it. It’s a never-ending fascination that man has engaged for centuries, and nature has endured. Stein’s eco-tableaux powerfully confronts us with that anxiety and its strange beauty. See more of Domesticated in our gallery below. You can purchase a monograph of the work, which won the Best Book award at the 2008 New York Photo Festival, over here. Visit the artist’s photographs in person when Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination opens at the Glenbow Art Museum next year. … Read More

Photography

Jaw-Dropping Photos Tracking a Massive Storm

By Alison Nastasi on

Most people wouldn’t dare head directly into the eye of a jaw-dropping and destructive thunderstorm known as a supercell, but photographer Camille Seaman did. The artist is known for her stunning images of the polar regions, but her latest body of work found her on the High Plains. There, guided by professional meteorologists, she chased the winding updraft and mammoth clouds of an intense supercell. The contrast between the golden fields of wheat and swirling darkness hovering over the land is breathtaking. The artist was kind enough to share her beautiful photos with us, which we’ve featured past the break. Prepare to look up. … Read More

Music

Listen to Music “Played” by Very Unlikely Sources

By Emily Temple on

Music, you might have been told, can come from anywhere — the sky! the trees! the rushing wind! Well, that’s definitely true, but in recent months we’ve been noticing a lot of more deliberate projects dedicated to tapping very unconventional sources for their musical potential. From the universe’s gamma rays to goldfish, from traffic patterns to brain waves, turns out almost anything in our world can create a beautiful symphony, if only we can figure out how best to listen. Click through to listen to the dulcet tones of music wrung from the weirdest of sources, and if you know of any we haven’t mentioned, add to our collection in the comments! … Read More

Art

Wonderful Green and Growing Street Art by Mosstika

By Emily Temple on

The streets of New York can sometimes feel a little cold and lifeless — so much concrete and steel, so little natural world — but eco-minded guerrilla street art collective Mosstika, whose work we recently spotted over at Visual News, may have the antidote. Their graffiti isn’t made out of paint, but built from living grass and moss, meant to be touched by passer-by in need of a little earthy comfort. “We believe that if everyone had a garden of their own to cultivate, we would have a much more balanced relation to our territories,” they write. “It is with this notion in mind, that we at Mosstika, aim to collide the worlds of art and nature, creating havens of unexpected greenery, within the colder harsher environment.” Click through to check out some of Mosstika’s best works, and then get to work infusing your own city with a little bit of extra life. … Read More

Architecture

Beautiful and Uniquely Designed Art Studios

By Alison Nastasi on

An artist’s studio is the site of invention and an influential environment where form and function are of equal importance. My Modern Met’s post about one uniquely designed studio on rocky Fogo Island fueled our creative juices. The photos inspired us to search out other incredible art studios around the globe that emphasis beautiful design, integrate nature, or just wowed us with their interesting use of space. Each one becomes a work of art in and of itself. See them all past the break. If you know about an amazing studio, please fill us in below. … Read More

Photography

Stunning Time-Lapse Tree Mosaics by Noel Myles

By Emily Temple on

For the past 15 years, UK-based photographer Noel Myles has been documenting the countryside of eastern England, and arranging the photos he brings home into these lovely mosaics. In these collages, which he calls “still films,” Myles has combined platinum/palladium prints that were taken over ten years ago with more recent color photographs, creating a sort of static time-lapse of both nature and technology. He describes his work as an attempt “to extend the still photographic image beyond the single moment and the static viewpoint” and “evoke the perception of accumulated experience.” We’re not sure about accumulated experience, but definitely feel the sense of history and the passage of time in these trees. Click through to check out a few of Myles’s lovely “still film” tree mosaics, and then be sure to head over to his website to browse through even more of his work. … Read More

Television

David Attenborough's Spoken Word Version of "Wonderful World"

By Caroline Stanley on

As a commenter on MetaFilter points out, if you’ve ever wondered what William Shatner would sound like performing one of his spoken word albums as a member of the British aristocracy, then now’s your chance. But while entertaining, the vocals aren’t the real reason you need to watch this fantastic clip, which UK ad agency RKCR/Y&R created to pay homage to Sir David Attenborough’s final appearance on the BBC. Rather, it’s the breathtaking wildlife footage pulled from the filmmaker’s vast collection, made even more poignant when paired with Louis Armstrong’s timeless lyrics. Check it out now for some instant warm fuzzies, and for more Attenborough, be sure to mark your calendars for March 12. That’s when his latest project, Frozen Planet — a seven-part series which focuses on the effects of climate change — will make its US debut on the Discovery Channel. … Read More