Sweet Snowy Scenes by Su Blackwell

I have featured Su Blackwell’s work before. I admire her creativity very much, not to mention the painstaking care with detail that she puts into her work. Here are a few appropriate to the northern winter season. Click here or on any of the images to tour Blackwell’s portfolio.

Think: About Crediting the Creator

Maybe it was the master of 9GAG.COM, but who was the artist? I searched for the original without success. It’s all over the ‘Net and if the artist chose to share it without credit – as so many generously do – I hope they are aware of and enjoy its popularity.

Random Books for a Toonie

The BIBLIO-MAT from Craig Small on Vimeo. Via Taxi

I read a wide variety of books but there are many that I would be completely uninterested in. I have to wonder what happens to those ‘disappointments’. Would you use such a machine?

Inspired by the Death of the Printed Word: Nick Georgiou

“My art is inspired by the death of the printed word. Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. As a society we’re shifting away from print consumption and heading straight towards full digital lives. My sculptures are products of their environment —both literally and figuratively. As often as I can, I use local newspapers to add authenticity, and the form the sculpture takes is a reflection of the personal connection I feel to that particular city.” Nick Georgiou

Nick Georgiou: My Human Computer

Educational Art: Mysteries of the Vernacular

From Mysteries of Vernacular, where you will currently find 3 more of the planned 26 episodes – one for each letter of the alphabet. This one might be a nice little extra for Alberta Grade 6 Science Topic D: Evidence & Investigation.

The project is by by Miriapod Productions and I discovered it at TYWKIWDBI.

I Think I’ve Found My Costume!

Lilliedale’s Book Fairy Costume

Two days ago I whined that I was uninspired and had no idea what I was going to do for my Halloween costume. The elementary students, at least, would never forgive me if I didn’t do something. So I need to extend a big thank you to the wonderful Rhythm, who suggested this costume to me. A Google search for “Book Fairy Costume’ revealed the above image. It looks like it just might be do-able for me and I was also thrilled to see that Lilliedale, who posted this costume included detailed instructions on its creation. I just happen to have a stack of discarded books that nobody wants…

Pablo Lehmann – Infinite Artistic Possibilities

“For any literature lover, the book is an endless source of senses, a valuable treasure expanding the boundaries of language, a mechanism revealing the universes created by the power of words. For Pablo Lehmann, the book is, in turn, a generator of images, covert shapes and infinite artistic possibilities.

Following the steps of Stephan Mallarmé, Lehmann multiplies the visual strength of pages, although his research is no longer oriented towards the relationship between the word and its medium, but rather towards the relationship between these and the book itself.
Hence, the artist reinforces the concrete presence of the medium against the allusive strength of the text, which insists on denying its own reality.

 His working method proceeds not by addition but by subtraction. Instead of composing, he unveils what is already there, underlying in each page. The cuttings hurt the sheet of paper, but only to shake it off its subjection to the literary aim and venture it across the paths of the three-dimensional world.” from ‘The Paths of Plot’ (2007) by Rodrigo Alonso (more)

Artist’s Website

Jonathan Callan’s Stacked Book Sculptures

Artist’s Website
Via Colossal

Guerilla Libraries by John Locke

While New York city debates about what it’s going to do with its 13,000 remaining sidewalk telephone booths, John Locke is stealthily implementing his own idea – installing and stocking clip-in bookshelves on quiet Sunday mornings.

“Even as they are rendered obsolete by the ubiquity of smartphones, I’m interested in pay phones because they are both anachronistic and quotidian. Relics, they’re dead technology perched on the edge of obsolescence, a skeuomorph* hearkening back to a lost shared public space we might no longer have any use for. Something to be nostalgic for, in the way I can’t think about a phone booth without conjuring up images of an old, impatient woman banging on the door to one while I was inside using a calling card to ask for money. And of course they are nuisance, basically pedestrian level billboards that only blight certain neighborhoods (good luck finding a payphone in Tribeca, while there are eight separate phone kiosks on one block between 108th and 109th streets and Columbus Ave). But they can also be a place of opportunity, something to reprogram and somewhere to come together and share a good book with your neighbors.”John Locke

Read more:

Superman, Grab a Book - New York Times
John Locke’s Design Blog – 3rd Installation July 2012
Video interview with Locke by the NYT

* (I learn so much doing this blog.) Here is part of  Wikipedia’s explanation of a new-to-me design term that Locke used above:

“A skeuomorph /ˈskjuːəmɔrf/ SKEW-ə-morf, or skeuomorphism (Greek: skeuos—vessel or tool, morphe—shape),^[1] is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original.^[2] Skeuomorphs may be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar,^[3] such as copper cladding on zinc pennies or computer printed postage with a circular town name and cancellation lines.”

-

Daniel Lai’s “3D Hieroglyphs”

Love these!

Click on any of the images to go to Daniel Lai’s Etsy shop where you can see many more.