Horrorgami Adams Family House for Halloween

From early childhood, London artist Marc Hagan-Guirey has been a huge fan of horror movies. He began working with kirigami (the Japanese art of cutting an image from a single piece of paper) by designing a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House in Los Angeles, but then gravitated to more spooky edifices with a design for the house that served as the set in the Adams Family television show. From there he’s moved on to create a Horrorgami Overlook Hotel (The Shining), The Amityville House, and the MacNeil house from The Exorcist. He has plans to do more, and has a show coming up in November at Gallery One-and-a-Half in London. A video of the artist and his work is at this link. Thanks to Betsy Rubinstein for bringing these horrors to our attention.

Food as Fashion

 

Contemplating your costume for this Halloween? We thought you might draw some inspiration from photographer Ted Sabarese’s “Hunger Pains” project in which fifteen designers and artists created edible fashions from foods the models were craving. These ephemeral outfits took hours of preparation and lots of patience on the part of the models. They may not last through an evening of trick-or-treating, but who needs treats when you’re wearing such delectable couture?

A Garden of Lighting Delights

We at Popular Kinetics love a light show, and British artist and lighting designer Bruce Munro has fabricated several impressive installations at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Visiting the gardens on Friday night, we experienced the magic of his fiber optic artworks on our nocturnal garden walk. Forest of Light is a piece featuring 20,000 glass globes on knee-high stems, each with a fiber optic filament wrapped gently inside the clear glass. Strands of filament run along the ground from the base of each stem, gathered into spaghetti-like bundles and ending at a light source punctuated by changing colors. Walking amongst the trees and the vast network of moving and glowing hues was delightful. But it was the vast expanse of the project and an appreciation of the labor involved that pushed this from a mere novelty to a more grandiose form of expression.

Munro’s Water Towers was our favorite of the eight installations. Sitting in an open meadow were 69 towers of 252 water-filled bottles, each with a fiber-optic filament threaded through its cap. Again, the towers were constantly shifting color, and an etherial sound track accentuated the other-worldly feeling of the piece.

 

The one piece meant to be viewed by day was also striking: Waterlilies suggested  large, floating leaves of the Victorian lily with Munro’s use of a flotilla of repurposed CDs hovering on the surface of a large pond. Sunlight danced on the reflective surfaces, creating a completely different lighting effect here.

Unfortunately, we just learned about the exhibition at its close, so it is no longer possible to see it at Longwood. But with the success of this show, hopefully more of Munro’s pieces will be making an appearance in the U.S. soon.

Paper Forest Web Site

For all of you paper lovers out there, The Paper Forest blog is a treasure trove of projects to make, paper art exhibitions, and related links. Fed by five artists, Jaime Zollars, Shelley Noble, Matt Hawkins, Dan McPharlin, and Falk Keuten, it reflects their wide range of interests and artistic views. Here’s the link to the site:  http://paperforest.blogspot.com/ 

Isabelle de Borchgrave’s Paper Dress Exhibition

Hillwood Museum and Gardens, the former home of the General Foods Corporation heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, is currently showing an exhibition of paperworks by Isabelle de Borchgrave inspired by historic costumes and dresses.  Trims, ribbons, buttons and even the lace on each outfit are all fashioned from various papers, painted in a trompe-l’oeil fashion to imitate the textiles of the period. Several of the dresses are displayed within the furnished rooms of the Hillwood Mansion, while others are shown in a more contemporary gallery setting within the Adirondack Building on the grounds. Definitely worth a visit when in the Washington, DC, area, the exhibition continues through December 30, 2012.

Pop-Up Book by Andreas Johansson

We thought this pop-up book by Swedish artist Andreas Johansson was quite striking. Titled From Where the Sun Now Stands it features imaginary landscapes collaged together from photographs the artist took in his neighborhood. Says the artist, “I create imaginary places that are both recognizable and completely alien. These new sites are constructions and have no history, while the places where the photographs once were taken have a very important past. For me, deserted places have a great symbolic value. They represent society’s backside, but also freedom beyond control and regulations.” To view a video of the book, visit

http://ny.voltashow.com/Andreas-Johansson.7320.0.html

Pop Your Candidate into the White House

With the Republican and Democratic conventions now on the horizon, it’s time for everyone to make a pop-up choice. Pop your candidate into the White House by downloading the images and instructions for constructing your own campaign 2012 pop-up card. Visit http://www.campaignpopup.com  And don’t forget to vote at the polls  in November.

Der Mensch als Industriepalast video

 The early 20th century was a time of great innovation and mechanization. Artists, designers and architects were fascinated with this new industrialization. (Recall Le Corbusier’s declaration that “The house is a machine for living). In 1927, German writer and artist Fritz Kahn designed an illustration titled “Der Mensch als Industrieplast” or “Man as Industrial Palace.” It related the complexities of the human body to those of working machines.

 Henning Lederer, a young German communications student, discovered this image in 2006 and set about to update and automate it in video format. The result is a wonderful mix of science and creative interpretation. You can watch the video here. 

A Big Apple Pop-Up

We thought this pop-up book by young designer Daisy Lew was worth noting for its unusual structure, combining a host of little pop-up blocks to create larger images of New York City icons: the Big Apple, a yellow taxi, the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty. From one angle the pop-ups look like a city of multi-level skyscrapers, and from above you get the whole view. Check out the book on her web site at www.daisylew.com/popup.html

Hirshhorn Museum Song 1

We drove into downtown Washington, D.C., late last night to see artist Doug Aitken’s media piece, Song 1, projected in the round on the Hirshhorn Museum. It’s a very impressive production, including a running soundtrack of various people singing I Only Have Eyes for You and a visual dialogue of moving text and images. Eleven projectors are employed to create what the artist refers to as a work of “liquid architecture.” Even at 11 pm, there was a large audience of people walking around the museum’s exterior to experience the 360-degree video performance. The work will be up until May 13th, but if you can’t get to Washington in time to visit the museum, you can get a feel for the work by watching this YouTube video.