ColumnFolds that shoot right for our imaginations.

It is not unusual for a five-year-old child to fold paper into an airplane. What sets Sipho Mabona apart is that fifteen years after that first fold, he had exhausted his airplane designs and ventured into origami where his passion took a twist.

Says Mabona:

I grew up in small, picturesque Lucerne, Switzerland. My mom taught me how to fold paper airplanes around age five and I fell in love with the self-made toys right away. I always threw the planes out of our 3rd floor apartment window. The landlord wrote several letters to my parents telling them this needed to stop but I kept on throwing them into my neighbors’ gardens, until they finally threatened to evict us. 

A beautiful origami octopus became the tipping point for Mabona’s career which took off when it was spotted online, and inspired the shoe company, Asics, to create the movie shown below.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Whether creating installations and interiors, crafting animals or abstracts, Mabona works with geometry to crease patterns of intricate beauty and precision. It’s a long way from disturbing the neighbors, and shoots right for our imagination.

Inspired by an article in D Pages.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: The Twists & Turns of Sipho Mabona’s Origami appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. – Epictetus

Qingiun began photographing people and their possessions ten years ago:

Huang took his first pictures as a teenager, inspired by an uncle in an era when the obvious hobbies for young Chinese were calligraphy and singing. His first proper camera, bought when he was 18, was the most valuable item in the family home.  He was clearly committed to the process.

Next year marks the 10th anniversary of the first photograph Huang took in the series. He plans to mark it by returning to the places he’s visited, or rather locations that are still recognizable – to see what has changed.

“In the last 10 years, China has seen such a fast rate of growth, I want to go back and see what the effects have been on their lives,” he says. “From the possessions each family uses in their daily lives, you get a good sense of the real levels of life for China’s people.”

Inspired by an article in BBC News.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Huang Qingjun Photographs Chinese Families’ Worldly Goods appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column“We believe in participation – empowering people to have a place in the stories that are told around them. We research new ways to interact and tell stories.” – Daily tous les jours

The senses are tricky. One whiff of an ingredient in our favorite meal, or the sound of that love song’s minor notes, and we are transported to another time and another space, instantly. When the senses are blended, the effect can be proportionately enhanced. Such is the thinking behind the project 21 Balançoires: swinging with the  joy and freedom of abandon coupled with the creative collaboration of making sound.

21 Balançoires (21 Swings) from Daily Tous Les Jours on Vimeo

The multi-skilled, Daily tous les jours explored the topic of cooperation when designing 21 Balançoires. Cooperation, which states that together we achieve better things than separately, is at the center of the group’s success. Daily tous les jours consists of Mouna Andraos, Melissa Mongiat, Kelsey Snook who say about themselves:

We come from the fields of interaction design and narrative environments. With those skills, we design large scale projects that impact cities down to tiny ones that fit inside a pocket. Our projects bring magic to everyday places, behaviors and objects, inviting the public to become active contributors in the process and surrounding environments.

For 21 Balançoires, the result is a giant collective instrument made of 21 musical swings; each swing in motion triggers different notes, all the swings together compose a piece, but some sounds only emerge from cooperation. The project stimulates ownership of the new space, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds, and creating a place for playing and hanging out in the middle of the city centre.  We owe the musical interpretation of this playful experiment to composer Radwan Ghazi-Moumneh.

Given their process, and the magical visceral appeal of 21 Balançoires, one could say that, indeed, this project has been more than an exercise of musical cooperation. It creates the kind of memories that can be stirred by the sight of a swing set and the sounds that it emits.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: 21 Balançoires = 21 Musical Chairs appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnFilm, fashion, novels, poems and songs have all sung the praises of the Big Apple. These collages are ballads in the same vein.

Being the singularly iconic city that New York is, she has received love letters in the form of art of every kind. Now German-born and New York-based interaction designer and artist Nina Boesch is adding to the fanfare with a quintessential New York raw material: MetroCards. Boesch has been creating collages for over 10 years, collecting thousands of discarded MetroCards from NYC subway stations and fashioning the four-color collages out of their fragments, initially just for friends and family, and recently for a broader audience with exhibits in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Laguna Beach, California.

Cutting up pieces of the used and expired MetroCards, Boesch uses the front of the cards for color collages (yellow, orange, blue and black), and the back for grayscale collages (black and white).

Art imitates life as Boesch treats us to a New York state of mind with her subject matter. The effect is uniquely New York, and all Boesch’s own as she takes us not only uptown and downtown, but on all our favorite modes of NYC transit, tossing in a cup of coffee for the ride.

Inspired by a post on The Atlantic Cities.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Nina Boesch’s MetroCard Collages appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnEven after all this time the sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.” Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.

As summer gasps its last hot breaths, it may make one nostalgic for gazing up to the heavens on a warm night, to take in the expansiveness of the sky. The Skycatcher Wallpaper by Jonathan Puckey and Luna Maurer gives us a reason to step back and appreciate the impermanence of moments as captured by the artists.

The visualization takes place over the course of 2 years. In that time, over 200,000 images were scanned by Sky-Catcher, a project by Maurer, that takes a picture of the sky above Amsterdam every 5 minutes. Each vertical strip in the installation equals one day, and contains 144 images that change by the size of the blue bar: a visualization of daytime.

Says the Museum De Paviljoens, which sponsored the exhibit:

The wall print contains a wealth of information that reveals itself to a close observer. Even within the dark night images, there is much to discover: fireworks on January 1st, the Moon, swirling plumes of smoke. On a few occasions, the night is remarkably light, due to the fact that falling snow is reflecting the shine of the Moon, stars and street lights.

Indeed we can stand transfixed by the view as the sky is brought to us on a horizon. The Skycatcher Wallpaper does the impossible: it holds the sky forever captive for our amazement.

Inspired by a post on My Modern Met.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: 88,000 Photos = Two Years Worth of Sky appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“Nature’s Toolbox” features work from artists around the world and across a wide range of media using nature’s wisdom as inspiration. Of the traveling exhibition the show’s curator, Randy Jayne Rosenberg, says:

Science provides facts while art tells stories.  The need for environmental stories has never been greater, people are hungry for positive images of the future. The stories at the heart of ‘Nature’s Toolbox’ offer fresh solutions, making it clear that humanity is itself an essential piece of this system. By understanding the relationships, not only can we save nature, we can save ourselves, too.

The Waribashi Project by Donna Ozawa

This approach is refreshing in a time when some ecologists predict that half of all mammals and birds could be extinct within the next century, with similar losses in plants, marine life, and other species. According to others, entire ecosystems are in peril. That artists can tell us stories to disrupt what at times seems like a swirling vortex towards oblivion grants opportunity.

Aquarium From The City by Lori Nix

Harnessing technology and inspired by nature’s amazing design concepts, the show’s innovative, eye-capturing art helps visitors understand and appreciate the life-or-death interdependence between the 10-20 million species on earth, which includes humans and the quality of the environment we share.

Collection: Aepyomis, Gallimimus, Allosaurus, Pelaeomastodon, Lucy and Jorge Orta

 E.V. Day

Moreover, Rosenberg explains:

They explored its genius and found opportunities for invention by employing the lessons nature offers. We learn, for example, how by mimicking nature we can harness energy from algae, create fabric with the strength of a spider’s web, self-medicate like a chimp, create amphibian cities with the structure of a lilypad, and build walls made from sugar.

Collaborating in the Darkness Series Aganetha Dyck and Richard Dyck

Nature, indeed, has much to teach us and in this exhibition, the artists are listening. In Rosenberg’s words, “Many people still don’t realize how much our very lives depend on the biodiversity of plants, animals, and everything else.”

Top Image: Midway: Message from the Gyre by Chris Jordan

Inspired by a post on CoExist.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Nature’s Toolbox: Biodiversity, Art & Invention appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column“With clay there is no separation between the artist and the material.” -Derek Weisberg

Derek Weisberg is a sculptor who uses clay to create works of art that are emotional and psychological self-portraits. When his mother passed away, Weisberg began to include themes of death, afterlife, spirituality and the metaphysical into his work.

He says:

In traditional Jewish thought, the voyage of the soul is dependent upon the actions of the ones who are living.

It would seem his actions explore experiences which cannot be easily articulated, but are universally felt. His stylization of the figure brings aspects of the human condition to his viewers, utilizing symbols like tattoos and pop culture in his version of canopic jars.

The idea iteself comes from ancient Egyptian burial practices and beliefs about the afterlife. Weisberg takes this ancient ritual and brings it into the present by replacing the gods with portraits of rappers who have passed away. The series deals with themes of life, death, and the afterlife. It is also about a culture he has been involved in his whole life.

Weisberg says:

Simultaneously igniting contemplation, reflection and a lasting relationship with the work, I attempt to express basic human qualities, which are universal and timeless.

Weisberg’s searching for truth through our universal morality may sting with the discomfort of pain and melancholy, yet at the same time, his renderings bring other mediums to the clay.

He explains:

To experience death is to experience the most unique situation in life; it is simultaneously completely familiar and alien, definitive and confusing, guaranteed and mysterious. This work is a combination of all those things and has been a way to help me navigate through and reconcile with the loss of my mother.

 Inspiration from Derek Weisberg’s Studio

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Derek Weisberg Uses Clay to Sculpt Emotions appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnChinese artist Li Hongbo explores the endless possibilities of paper as medium.

Li Hongbo is a Chinese artist, book editor and designer who recently graduated from the experimental art department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His work was shown in this year’s Sydney Biennial, a prestigious feat for a young Chinese artist.

Of his medium – and the name of his latest series, Paper – Hongbo says, “I love it and collect it.” He also experiments with the nature of it’s properties. “I realised it’s really quite simple,” he says, “yet the flexibility in terms of shape and properties is amazing.”

Amazing also describes his sculptures, wrought entirely of common brown wrapping paper. His series Paper, was inspired by one of the “honeycomb” paper balls one can find in Chinatown. After taking it apart to see how it was made, Hongbo fashioned more than 30,000 sheets of the wrapping paper together with carefully placed strips of glue. This formed two large blocks of “wood.” From these blocks, Hongbo carved two identical human figures, and the series began.

He hopes the work will awaken viewers to what captivates his own imagination: “the endless possibilities of paper.”

His sensuously malleable shapes endear more than the medium to his audience. The haunting quality of impermanence and flexibility draw us towards his pieces to see if indeed we might pick them up and move them like a Slinky or open them like the lanterns that inspired them.

Inspired by a post on designboom.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Li Hongbo’s Astounding Love of Paper appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe death mask of a plant, the sustained rigor mortis of maple, spruce and locust. They remind us every biological form possesses a unique footprint. -Verlyn Klinkenborg

When looking at a tree, one might see the possibility of shade, the opportunity to pick fruit or feel the urge to climb up. Bryan Nash Gill‘s ability to see the potential within the medium extends beyond the sculpture and objects he carves from felled trees, cedar telephone poles and discarded fence posts he collects in his native Connecticut. He sees into the heart of the material.

Gill’s woodcuts reveal the unique characteristics of these once-living organisms. His works on paper breathe life into the map of a tree’s existence, exposing what could be seen as their personality.

Take, for example, a 51-year-old weeping willow.“This specimen was harvested from the bole just below the main leaders, where the pith splits into two,” Gill said. “Willow grows relatively quickly in favorable conditions, evident in the loose growth rings. On the bottom edge, the irregular pattern is the result of a burgeoning burl.”

He says of an 82-year-old ash tree, “Printing in red ink was an investigation that proved to be an exciting variation of the original. It is simple but impactful and brings an unexpected richness to the reading.”

A 19-year-old maple: “As I was preparing firewood for the winter, I noticed the undulating outer edge of this maple specimen,” Gill said. “Maples generally grow straight and tall in the thick woods; however, at ground level, some take on a naturally curvy shape. Lacking visible growth rings (typical of hard maple wood), the perimeter is imperative to the success of the print. The block also features marks of peeling bark and rot, seen in the white shapes just off center.”

Stopping long enough to take their “fingerprints” Gill leaves us with a sense of knowing, not only what these trees might have looked like, but a deeper sense of how they lived while they were alive.

Inspired by a piece in TMagazine

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Bryan Nash Gill’s Woodprints Leave an Impression appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” -The King from Alice in Wonderland

What inspires you?  The drape of a fabric?  A stone washed smooth by decades in a stream? The look in your child’s eyes that is pure love? Well, for English artist Kirsty Mitchell, her Wonderland series is a labor of love inspired by the death of her mother from brain cancer. She created the costumes, wigs and sets on a shoestring budget, and some of the images took up to five months to create as she would often wait an entire year to find the perfect natural setting in order to get her shot.  The results are not achieved with Photoshop.

What began as a summer project, evolved into a project of passion that took Mitchell on a three year journey back to her mother’s gift for imaginative stories and plays.

She says, “Real life became a difficult place to deal with, and I found myself retreating further into an alternative existence through the portal of my camera.”

“This escapism grew into the concept of creating an unexplained storybook without words, dedicated to [my mother], that would echo the fragments of the fairytales she read to me constantly as a child.”

“All the characters came to me in my dreams,” she continues, “after all, it’s not often you get to stand beside an eight foot princess in the rain, or witness the dawn with a dancing circus girl on stilts!”

Her dreams are now reality, as Mitchell has completed work on the series and is now planning an exhibition and book.

“I just know that the day I see my mother’s name printed on the inside cover of the Wonderland book, it will feel like I have finally fulfilled my promise to myself and her precious memory.”

This piece inspired by Kate Greer Ginsberg from an article in the UK’s Daily Mail.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Kirsty Mitchell’s Inspired Wonderland Series appeared first on EcoSalon.