“Transformed Flower,” a new public art sculpture designed and built by Phillip K. Smith, III, principal of The Art Office was installed in May, 2008 as part of the newly renovated Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Park in Kansas City. The sculpture was commissioned by Kansas City resident and philanthropist, Annette Bloch, as a centerpiece for inspiration and hope within the park’s new, open plaza. The park’s completion was celebrated at a rededication ceremony on  June 1st, as part of the 23rd Annual Kansas City Celebration of Life event.

The lower half of “Transformed Flower” was built in the studio of The Art Office in Indio, CA and delivered to the site. For six days in May, Phillip Smith and a contractor were on-site installing the upper half of the sculpture. “Transformed Flower” is built from 720 computer-milled parts of UV resistant High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) that were hand assembled to create the final sculpture. Inspired by a flower ready to bloom, the sculpture transforms formally from the bottom to the top. The base of the sculpture is a perfect circle, which then twists 45 degrees, transforming and opening into an 8-pointed star. The sculpture is pixilated in color from white at the base to yellow, orange, and red at the top.

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Andra bloggar om: konst, skulptur, usa

Kivik Pavilions is a project by Kivik Art Centre that combines architecture with art and design. Fundamental are issues of environmental solutions, a symbiosis of the landscape and the pavilion, local materials, and corporate partnership with industries in the region. The 2007 pavilion, called ‘Mother Ship’, was designed by Norwegian architects Snohetta, in conjunction with the photographer Tom Sandberg (here are some nice pictures).

The 2008 pavilion for Kivik Art Centre in southeast Sweden has been designed by David Chipperfield and Antony Gormley. The pavilion, which was constructed in only two months, is a sculpture entirely in concrete. Formed of three interlocked 100 m3 volumes – ‘The Cave’, ‘The Stage’ and ‘The Tower’ – the pavilion offers three different ways of experiencing the nature and landscapes around Kivik.

‘The Cave’ – a solid, dormant space in the base of the sculpture where one can rest on a wall-fixed bench, offers the enclosed feeling of being in the dark forest. Stairs then take the visitor up to the first floor – ‘The Stage’ – a horizontal volume open to the landscape, where one looks out but is also exposed. The third volume – ‘The Tower’ – takes the visitor up spiral stairs to a platform almost 18 metres above the ground, where one is rewarded with a spectacular view over the trees towards the Baltic Sea.

The pavilion will be open to the public from 19 July – 28 September 2008.

P.s Maybe some of you remember I wrote about a minimalistic John Pawson house in Scania in southern Sweden a while ago. It’s actually situated quite close to Kivik Art Centre, in the same area of Scania called Österlen.

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Andra bloggar om: David Chipperfield, Antony Gormley, konst, arkitektur, design, kivik art

Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion began as a teenage graffiti artist on the streets of Sao Paolo. Now in his late 20s, Orion experiments with combining his street art and his fascination with photography…a process he calls ‘Metabiotica’. He expresses his stencil-style art on the walls of the city and then incorporates unstaged interaction with live subjects to create a new photographic image - a process that not only gves the image humour and spontaneity but requires gargantuan patience to achieve. His urban inventions not only create something visually arresting but deftly capture moments of suspense, terror, joy & plain surreality.

The internet high-end webshop 20ltd is now offering a couple of Alexandre Orions photographies together with other fine art photography from Chris Anthony, Astrid Korntheuer and Matt Siber to mention a few.

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Andra bloggar om: foto, fotografi, konst, alexandre orion

Emma Hack is an award winning body artist at the forefront of an art form growing in worldwide popularity. Her work has been seen at the Tiffany & Co store launch in Dubai, and a Playstation 2 commercial in Hong Kong. But it’s her 2007 collection titled ‘Oriental Delights’ that launched her on the world stage.

These images featured Florence Broadhurst’s wallpaper murals mixed with quirky body art that created 3D human wallpaper that quite literally, brought the walls to life. “I love working with the beautiful and aesthetically pleasing designs of the late Florence Broadhurst,” Emma says. “They allow for a lovely energy with the nude form.”

A flat wall is vastly different to the rounded form of the human body, and Emma has been known to spend 19 hours creating some of her works of art, as each of the patterns are hand painted onto the models. Her current collection (part of the 2008 Adelaide Fringe Festival) features exotic Australian animals, nude landscapes and a continued collection of Florence Broadhurst’s wallpapers.

Asked why she thinks her work is so well appreciated by companies, she answers, “I think body art is a great way to promote companies as it’s totally original, and every artist is different. And of course, the human form is beautiful and interesting and always draws a crowd. My work creates that extra publicity for companies in an inventive and spectacular vision that the media adores.”

And her inspiration? “I am so inspired by nature at the moment. I always have loved flowers, but clouds in the sky also amaze me! Most of all I love to travel. And my designs are greatly influenced by this. It’s so inspiring to visit other cultures and see the artwork they have created to surround themselves.”

And it’s not just the human body that this self taught artist paints. For her ‘Cowscapes and Painted Ponies’ collection she painted live farm animals to raise awareness of farmers affected by the drought, and donated a percentage of sales to the South Australian Farmers Federation.

And for the future? “I’m very interested in creating a documentary on my journey into body art from around the world.” So then, expect the world’s cultures to be Emma’s canvas of the future.

Images courtesy of Emma Hack

This is post by David Report contributor Kristina Dryza.

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Andra bloggar om: design, konst, tapeter, australien

Etienne Meneau is the a French designer that makes the really different wine carafes. Know he is back with two new unique decanter sculptures. Below is one of them. You can see the other one here.

Earlier decanters by Etienne Meneau here.

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Andra bloggar om: vin, glas, design, skulptur, konst

OPENnetwork is a tool for the creative industry by Danish Lynfbrikken. It’s all about inspiration, people and products. It’s a Panel-based rendering engine allowing mixing and comparison of multi-section content side-by-side as the basic information architecture - keeping the “let me quickly see what’s here” functionality from the old site, but greatly enhancing it’s potential. You can easily create collections of your favourites

The “Inspiration” section is populated by content gathered through numerous RSS feeds. Various workflows based on Yahoo Pipes (among others) are used to pull hard to get content, like Flickr Sets. Keeping the content sources for the “Inspiration” section strictly remote, allowed the developers to tap into the multitude of (mostly) freely available tools developed to manage the publication of online content - providing the users of OPENnetwork with a flexible and ever increasing platform of tools, like mobile-blogging, and the availability of highly personalized workflows for content publication. Making OPENnetwork exist as a node in a network rather than yet another self centered hub.

Of the numerous innovative features of the site, the ability to save a given selection of panels into a Collection (available as a RSS feed, permalink-able and print-able) makes it possible for users to create design Issues of their own. Products can be compared and saved as share-able inspiration or shopping lists, News articles can be referenced side by side and Persons can be located and recommended.

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Andra bloggar om: internet, inspiration, design, arkitektur

I’m off to the Milan Design Week tomorrow morning. As always it will be nice to come to Milan and meet the spring (I’m from Sweden you know…). What interests me most is to see if the DesignArt, or Vulgarism trend as I prefer to call it, from lasts years Milan Design Week is as strong this year. The invitation cards shows that designers like Studio Job and Jaime Hayon (who is responsible for the creation above) is well represented at different shows at town. Also the presence of Meta, the contemporary arm of Mallet, the London and New York antique house shows that Milan follows the trend from Art Basel Miami Beach.

I will let you know in a couple of posts from the Milan Design Week in the next couple of days.

Arrivederci!

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Andra bloggar om: milano, möbelmässa, konst, design, inredning, möbler, trender

I have been writing about the amazing paper art by Jen Stark a couple of times (here, here, here and here). Jen Stark is now in a 2-person show (together with Diem Chau) at the OKOK Gallery in Seattle. Among here paper art is also a couple of felt-tip pen drawings which I have pasted below.

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tags technorati : jen stark art okok gallery seattle

Andra bloggar om: konst, kultur, jen stark, seattle, bilder

Today I will be in a panel debate in London concerning the hot topic DesignArt at the The Mews Gallery by Rabih Hage. Questions surrounding celebrity, significance, high prices, manufacture and integrity will be discussed and debated. DesignArt is a theme I’m quite keen to discuss and I have written about it in one of my earlier bulletins called Vulgarism. Except for myself, Jurgen Bey (Designer) Richard Woods (Artist), Alexander Payne (Philip de Pury Auction House) and Judd Tully (Art + Auction) will be in the panel. It will be chaired by design connoisseur and critic Max Fraser. The event is already booked to the limit, so unfortunately there are no places available.

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tags technorati : rabih hage designart vulgarism debate london

Andra bloggar om: design, konst, london, debatt

El Ultimo Grito has been involved in a ‘Performing Design/Design Performance’ where process and outcome become complementary. The piece was a commission by IFEMA coinciding with ARCO in Madrid (13th to 18th February).The piece was conceived as a public area within the fair, but it was completed re-using all the packaging materials that were being thrown away on the day previous to its opening.El Ultimo Grito constructed huge bags (2×3meters) in the shape of letters. There were 10 letters in total which conform the title NOWASTEEUR (letters needed to write the first sentence of the poem ‘no waste re-use’ plus the ‘W’ which can be rotated to make ‘M’) with those letters El Ultimo Grito composed the following poem which guides the narrative of the video above.

NO WASTE
RE-USE

ANSWER
ME

NOT US
USER WON’T
USER WANT

WEST
EAST
RAW
WAR

NOTE RUSE
USE ART

NAME
RE-NAME
OWN

STEM
NEW

SOME
ONE
TO
STEER

SURE
MUST
EASE
TEARS

MEET
TEAM
NOW

USE
RE-USE
WASTE
NOT

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tags technorati : el ultimo grito reuse poem

Andra bloggar om: el ultimo grito, design, poem, video, återvinning, miljö