Fabio Viale is an Italian sculptor working in…styrofoam? Rubber tires? No, he’s actually adept at sculpting that most Italian of materials: marble. Viale blends the exceptional with the mundane by sculpting normal objects out of a beautiful material. Check out his site for more of his work, including a functional marble boat!
We came across this great video today from Hold Your Horses! featuring classic paintings. We love the homemade quality of the different works of art, but also how they really evoke the brilliant pieces they are copying. Plus there’s a lot of great costume ideas in there!
70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L’Ogre on Vimeo (via BuzzFeed)
We’ve never been to Japan. But we came across these images from the 1880s by Italian photographer Adolfo Farsari and we were amazed. Farsari was one of very few if any Europeans allowed access to the Japanese interior in the 1800s. He shot numerous photos (painstakingly hand-tinted) of rural life. The images are astounding and remind us of how completely different and foreign Japan must have been to Westerners when they first saw these pictures. The places and people seem mythical and fantastical…right out of a storybook of fantastic other-worldly kingdoms. Farsari’s images even inspired other artists and certainly exposed the rest of the world to the beauty of traditional Japan. Read more about Farsari and see more of his splendid images at Quazen, we’re sure you’ll be inspired.
Aggravure is a series by French artist Baptiste Debombourg depicting the fall of Phaeton in an unusual medium. The image is based on The Four Disgracers (1588), engraved by Hendrick Goltzius, after Cornelisz van Haarlem. Debombourg spent nearly 75 hours creating these works, and after the jump you’ll see why.
We have a fascination with creepy old industrial places here at Creative & Sons. Something about their energy puts us on edge and gets our adrenaline pumping. So today we really hit the jackpot when we came across this great interactive panoramic photo of a control room from the Czech Republic. Talk about steampunk…it’s actually a hydroelectric power plant! And it’s even still in use. We love the bold simplicity of the black and white tile juxtaposed with the industrial machinery’s detail. Completely inspiring.
(via BoingBoing)
We needed some color in our lives today! Jen Stark is an artist who turns practically two-dimensional paper into three-dimensional works of art. Her explosions of color and shape bursting from mundane stacks of paper is beautiful and intriguing. Take a look at her site for more amazing examples of her work. Above is Coriolis Effect, 12″ x 12″, hand-cut paper, 2007.
Jonathan Blow’s Braid is hard to describe. If it were simply a puzzle-solving side-scrolling game it would be a solid, beautiful game. It has a lovely soundtrack, lush artwork (by David Hellman) and simple arrow-to-walk, space-bar-to-jump controls. But Braid is on an entirely different with the addition of a third dimension, and we’re not talking 3D glasses. Blow has added the element of time to the manipulation of the game. What starts out as a basic way to reverse your mistakes (no more dying and starting from the beginning!) becomes an essential method of solving the game’s puzzles. Each world tweaks the way you think about and use time and each one is as confusing and fascinating as the previous. There are also sly references to other video games that will make you chuckle, and fun enemies (like the killer bunny above) that you almost hate to see die.
We really can’t do it justice, you’ll just have to play it yourself.
Watch the trailer on YouTube
Visit the Braid Web site
Download and play the game (or a free demo!) for Mac or PC
Rhett & Link put together this amazing stop-motion video animated on 222 screenprinted t-shirts. Have some fun today!
T-shirt War!!! on YouTube
In his series “Primates” French photographer Ruben Brulat reminds us that, in relation to nature, humans are just another type of animal. Brulat photographs himself nude in vast landscapes devoid of other human constructs to emphasize our frailty and our often-forgotten symbiosis with the planet. The results are beautiful and striking. Also check out his other series “Immaculate” where Brulat explores a similar but opposite relationship to the built environment.
Primates by Ruben Brulat (via WebUrbanist)
Nuit Blanche by Spy Films is a beautiful short about a fleeting encounter in Paris. Rendered in 1940s-noir style, the movie is both beautiful and visually stunning with surprising slow-motion moments. We won’t ruin the story, just watch. (And if you’re more interested in the innovation than the illusion, view the making of.)
Nuit Blanche on Vimeo (via Neatorama)