Theo Jansen

This guy blows my mind with the creations that he makes. All of his important work is kinetic sculpting and it all works on making what he calls "strand beests". These things aren't made to look like anything specific but the mechanics that goes behind them is remarkable. basically, they use the power of the wind pushing them along and the manner in which the joints are placed to create a continuous movement over land without the use of wheels. The end product is basically a giant walking pile of sticks.

Theo Jansen, 2010 

Now, they are all simply modifications of one another so I'm not going to go into detail about each and every one of them. However, I will talk about Theo as both an artist and an engineer. Theo is both because of the complexity of his creations as well as the beauty of his contraptions. In an interview, Theo claims that engineering and art are one in the same. He says that the only place that we differentiate between the two would be in our minds.

Theo Jansen, 2010 

Some of his creations are completely wind powered and harness the wind using these complicated and also kinetic sails on the top of them. Now, for each of them, the sail structure is different and that is where I think he gets a chance to express himself artistically through his machines. 

Theo Jansen, 2010

When I first saw these things moving around as if they were actually alive, I felt a little bit of fear in that they looked like giant spiders and glided over the ground in a both elegant and awkward way. It is hard to describe in words so i'm going to post a link to his video and website ar the end of this blog. actually, right now: http://www.strandbeest.com/

Andrew Matin

Andrew Martin more than anything else is a satirical sculptor. He takes the concept of the bust and turns it into something both informal and amazing at the same time. The majority of his work is done by creating molds and using the molds to make the final piece. His subject however is much different than that of any other sculptor I've seen. Apart from playing with the associations that come with making a bust of someone, he also enters some of his work in contests.

"Zombie" Andrew Martin, 2011

This piece is exactly what I was talking about. Andrew takes the classical concept of a bust and turns it into something a more modern audience can enjoy. Some characteristics of this piece that I think were very well done would be the texture of the skin and gore that comes with creating a zombie. Also, I think that the mastery of the human (or less than human) form is evident in this piece in that the facial expression of the figure is very accurate to that of a real person. 

"Tweedle Deedum" Andrew Martin, 2011

This piece is less satirical and more just an example of the style of sculpture that he likes to create. The story behind this sculpture is that he entered it into a contest held by deviant art in which you had to create a sculpture of a character from Alice in Wonderland that you think best represents yourself. Now, I don't know about any hidden messages inside the piece but I do appreciate the quality of the work. Not only is that texture still apparent in there, but the piece as a whole is accurate to the character in the story in that you can see the personality of the character through things like the posture and the facial expression.

"Mario" Andrew Martin, 2006

This is the part where I get a little depressed. This is a sculpture that he made when he was just starting to get into sculpture and art as a whole. The character is obvious and there really isn't a meaning behind the piece but what I really appreciate about this piece is the size of it. If you look at one of the pictures above, you will see that the sculpture is only about three inches tall. Now, if you take into account the amount of detail that is behind this, you can see why I would be depressed. Some people have to work hard to become good at what they do but this guy just comes in and does this on one of his first tries. ugh.

Jeremy Mayer

Jeremy is an expert of taking things apart and using the pieces to make something very special. His medium is old typewriters. His process is pretty much exactly what I just said, taking apart old typewriters and finding the form that is hidden inside them. This is why I chose to cover Jeremy. I really appreciate how he uses the material withing an already made object in order to take something that already works and change the purpose of it. Not only that, but I think that the way he arranges the parts often times is really engaging. 

"Cold Assembly" Jeremy Mayer, 1994

The cool thing about most of his pieces is that it looks like there is a possibility that is could work. It seems like if you had one of those old wind-up keys to plug into it, you could literally bring it to life. Features like the ears, eyes, and hip joints seem to infer that the old typewriter was really meant to represent a cat in the beginning and that is why i really like his works. You can almost seem the process of him seeing the pieces and relating them to a specific object. 

Jeremy Mayer, 1994

Again, this is one of his works where you can see that he found the pieces and immediately thought of a specific body part. Things like the old keys that make up the fingers seem to have really been created to be fingers of something but were accidentally put into a typewriter factory. There is one thing that I don't find appealing about this figure and that is the proportions. At this angle it seems as though the head is really too big. 

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

Tim and Sue are very good at what they do. They take something that people interact with everyday. Their work shows how complex shadows and light can be. I don't think they are trying to make a statement through their work, but if I had to search for one it would be that we shouldn't take things for granted. Even the light that we use every day is given to us.

Tim Noble & Sue Webster, 2008

This piece is really remarkable. What i find really cool is that they took simple blocks that small children would use to play with and made something that most people can't make with the best of tools. I also think that the way they showed the human figure to such a believable standard using straight lines rather than a curved and fluid form that more closely represents the human figure. 

Tim Noble & Sue Webster, 2008

This piece has so much personality. Not only does it take something else we take for granted and make it more significant, the luxury of paper, but it also shows individual characters in each piece. you almost get a sense that the faces are going to turn around and start talking to one another. I'd also like to point out the variation of color which further separates the faces into groups. This brings me to the possibility that the message of this piece is different from the rest in that it shows a variety of facial structures and a variety of colors but they are being separated by the space in between them. They sort of cling to their individual identities which makes the piece more about making a statement on society and how we draw lines instead of erasing them. 

Tsang Cheung-shing

Tsang Cheung-shing is a ceramic art tutor and product designer. He demonstrates his mastery of the ceramic arts in many  ways and we can see his level of expertise through his work. He does a very good job keeping is figures accurate but at the same time, you can tell that if he wanted to. What i find really very interesting about his style is the way he represents water and the fluid qualities that are in his pieces even though the medium would suggest otherwise. I tend to really lean towards abstract art. Not only do abstract pieces really allow you to see how the artist views the world but they tend to question how I view the world.

"the Kiss:" Tsang Cheung-shing, 2007

This piece is very interesting in that it has both very appealing visual qualities and it illustrates a very common concept. Tsang made this sculpture to illustrate the moment when two people become married. This sculpture illustrates the combination of two lives that occurs when two people commit their lives to each other. Not only this, but it shows a very cool moment not only with the kiss, but in the pouring of the water. The piece as a whole has a very epic quality to it in that it represents a very giant moment in a person's life.

"Splash" Tsand Cheung-shing, 2007

Tsang Shows his mastery of the fluid form and the ceramic medium through this piece. The overall form of the sculpture is a water droplet. He continues with the previous theme of abstract art involving elements of the human form and water. The execution is phenomenal and the legs are very realistic which makes the piece in and of itself all the more interesting.

"Karma" Tsang Cheung-shing, 2006

I don't know the story behind this piece but I do appreciate the qualities of the piece as a whole. The piece shows a step-by-step process of how a water droplet impacts a surface. The addition of the color red gives the piece a more negative and morbid tone that completely changes the meaning of the piece to someone who doesn't know the back-story. 

Carl Jara

I’ve seen and made some pretty cool sand sculptures in my eighteen years but none of them compare to what Carl Jara does with this popular material. Carl takes a simple medium and brings it close to high art sculpting with marble. Many of Carl’s works seem to defy gravity in that they don’t look like they should be standing. Much of Carl’s work is very abstract. What I really appreciate about his sand art is that he represents the human form in a manner that you’d think he started out with a solid block of stone. the sad thing about working with this material is that it’s form is beautiful for now but not permanent. just like everyone else’s sand castles, his too will be washed away.

Carl Jara, 2008

This piece is very interesting in that it illustrates Carl's mastery of the human form in a manner that he can represent it abstractly while making the outermost figure realistic. Proportion and posture aren't sacrificed even though one would think it would have to be considering the material. most people can't make a sandcastle half that height but Carl manages to pull it off while making the shape really appealing.

"We Can't All Be Angels" Carl Jara, 2005

This piece has a lot of very well-done aspects about it. Not only are the feathers and hair of the angel way better than one would think sand could pull off but he also manages to create a very smooth skin texture that complements it very nicely. I also think that compositionally, this couldn't get much better. "There's only so much you can do with sand" is broken by this and many of Carl's other works. 

Dentsu London

Dentsu London is one of the most up-to-date artists I’ve ever seen. This is because hi material that he uses is light generated by an iPad. Through a very complicated process of creating digital 3d images and using the iPad to simulate them in space, as well as an HD camera to capture the frames on the screen. The end product is this hologram-like clip of stopmotion-like video that can be accurately placed into a space including being placed behind different translucent surfaces and still being able to see the light. Basically, it takes what we’ve seen video editors do on a computer and translates it into something that a designer or artist can do without having to know how to use complicated programs. Apart fro being on the cutting edge of the video world, Dentsu also is a moderately-skilled photographer. I say moderately-skilled because for the most part, the things that he has done have been done by a select few others. This isn’t to say that his work isn’t any less impressive, but rather that he wasn’t the one who innovated it. Basically he has worked on a pretty good method of capturing liquid collisions in a beautiful manner that actually landed him a lot of money from our friends at Hewlett Packard.

Dentsu London, 2011

This work is very interesting in that it is a style that very few people can create apart from Photoshop, which he doesn't use. I really appreciate the amount of time that it took to move the ipad back and forth along the same path to create a stopmotion-like effect for a still shot. 

Dentsu London, 2011

This photo was pretty simple to take. Basically, he put several drops of paint on a speaker and then proceeded to send a single loud sound through the speaker. The vibrations from the speaker cause the little bit of paint on the speaker to jump up for a second or two. What I really appreciate about this piece is that all of the colors are strategically chosen to make the piece very visually interesting. This shot in particular has a very nice triangular composition.