All posts filed under: Faves

Devoted

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At 15, considerably late in the game, I first picked up a skateboard and decided that this was the way I want to spend my time with, the way of exploring and making sense of the physical world around me. When I’m at my parents, my old room still has that skate rat feel to it. Broken boards here and there, some cut-out photos and ads of my favourite pros, some worn-out shoes crammed in the back of the wardrobe and of course, the huge pile of magazines collected along the way. A big chunk of my early skateboarding education, I owe to the videos I borrowed from friends on VHS or DVD and studied over and over and over again, yet my weapon of choice for inspiration were the print magazines released every month. Now, in times of the digital word, countless blogs, social media, digesting the news about literally anything – not just the subculture of skateboarding – has changed radically, not just compared to the early 2000’s, but the pre-internet times. And …

22nd Century Writing in the Making: The Future Library

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What will we read in 100 years? Probably nothing, if they don’t come up with a solution to the natural consequence of ageing. Of course there are these timeless classics that will endure the passing of time and people will revel forever, something that Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dickens, Austen, Poe or Kafka can tell you a thing or two about. We don’t even know if picking up a book in its traditional form and paper shape is going to be a thing in the 22nd century, but at least there is a bunch of new works that will most certainly hit the bookshops (or whatever people go to these days). Two years ago, Scottish artist Katie Paterson launched her much-noticed project ‘Future Library’ that gives us a tiny glimpse into the future of reading: A forest of 1000 trees was planted in Oslo’s Nordmarka Forest to supply the paper for an anthology of 100 books, to be unveiled in 2114. With every passing year, an author is selected by Paterson to produce a work of …

Chasing Lyrical Natural Sciences: Katrina McHugh

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Last year, I dived head-first into quite a challenge. I vowed to tell a story through a photograph for 100 days straight. It was a tough, fun and quite frankly a liberating thing to do – you should all try it some day. And as I already said back then, the aspect that makes the #100dayproject so special is the communal spirit that ensued, learning about the daily struggles and inspirations of thousands of other participants, and eventually, finding out about the many supercool projects out there that otherwise might not’ve seen the light of day. #100daysoflyricalnaturalsciences was a quick favourite of mine. San Francisco-based graphic designer Katrina McHugh set out to create beautiful diagrams and infographics out of song lyrics that are rooted in the natural world: ‘I was and am interested in how often people rely on references to nature when attempting to bring shape to the intangible complexities involved in this “being alive” business. It’s no easy task to communicate our human experience so if a nature metaphor gets you a bit closer to whatever the …

Creating ambiguous realities: Luisa Azevedo

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I have to admit, it has never been easier to search and find beautiful things that spark my imagination. However sceptical we might be about it, Instagram is a real treat for those following the movers and shakers in the creative community. So this is one of my most recent sightings. Even though she doesn’t really like to consider herself an artist per se, Luisa Azevedo is a bright, young Portuguese photographer, instagrammer and collagist from Covilhã with a ton of creativity up her sleeve. Curious, playful and boasting a glaring love for the sea, she captures the sun-kissed moments she comes across on the Atlantic coast and wittily blends them into grand compositions that certainly makes you look not once but twice. Check out her work below & follow her adventures via instagram over here.                

Verónica Losantos: Screen Memories

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When I grew up, my dad’s been following us with his faithful Canon AE-1 at every turn. The first smiles, the first steps, the first time sitting on Santa’s lap, mad birthday parties or my first day at school, you name it. But suddenly, things change. These important occasions become rarer, we begin to overlook the small moments and the gaps between collected memories in my parents’ photo books are getting bigger and bigger. Until there’s only blank pages left. Now, with literally everyone able to keep hold of the things we experience day in, day out with our smartphones, our lives are more documented than ever. There’s all the meaningful moments we keep safe in our hearts as well as those we would instantly forget and never revisit, if we wouldn’t have the technology at hand. But what happens if you never had the luxury of someone documenting your dearest memories with families and friends? What if there’s not a timeline from infancy to teenage years you can simply look back at? Photographer Verónica Losantos can …

Haunting monoliths of magnetic tape | The “V”HS Project

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Over the years, the hunger for new technology has relentlessly thwarted one or another beloved everyday gadget we couldn’t imagine living without. While vinyl records made a miraculous return to strength, things that once reigned our living room shelves for a heartfelt eternity – music cassettes, polaroid films, Super-8 or VHS tapes – were reduced to mere nostalgia by the hands of their successors.  Meanwhile the French mixed-media artist Philip Ob Rey has dusted off the good old magnetic tapes in style to turn his fantastic “V”HS project into a piece of social and environmental critique. His dark and brooding monoliths, created in collaboration with painter Louie Otesanek and photographer Mailie Viney, walk the frozen Icelandic vastness, clad in old VHS film-rolls, stones, feathers, shells or dry seaweeds with one single purpose: Questioning the global tech craze, the overconsumption of new technologies and consequently the unstoppable plastic pollution of the Earth. With the use of a doomed technology that humanity has inevitably forgotten, Ob Rey wants to remind humanity of the mortality of its existence, …

The Monsters By My Side: Lucas Beaufort

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If you’re into surfing, snowboarding or skateboarding, you might’ve come across one or two of Lucas Beaufort’s rad artworks. Be it for magazine covers, photo series, ads or even whole board graphic series, the French illustrator and painter bursts in on the scene with his acrylic drawings of edgy, colourful monster characters. And as they’re peering out of a window, lurking in a sewer tunnel, drinking beers, having fun and cheering the riders on, he gives the rough, jaw-dropping shots a twist of humour and weirdness that surely leaves you with a big fat grin on your face. While the artist draws inspiration from his dreams and particularly his nightmares, not every stunning photo he finds fits his painting makeovers. It’s not so much the action or the trick that he looks for, but all the elements that make up a great piece of photography. So before he experiments with the canvas and lets them creep right into the open, Lucas makes sure his monster brigades have enough space to hang out and support the cover boy/girl in their own, adorable way. Astonishingly, …

Spot On | The mystical world of Daehyun Kim

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We always want to explain everything. Find an answer to the question. Find a reason for doing something this way or that way. Even vindicate why we adore or reject something. Sometimes, you see things that are just so breathtaking, there’s not much you have to explain. A simple ‘W O W’. That was pretty much what my brain was able to piece together at the mere sight of Daehyun Kim’s deeply mysterious, captivating and yet so simple Moonassi-series. Taking influence from his own studies in traditional East-Asian art and painting, the Seoul-born illustrator creates intricate ink drawings of characters symbolising ideas and aspects of daily life, relationships and the search for identity in an incessantly philosophical manner: ‘I wanted to draw something I really know and something I really can speak about. It was my inner feelings and my intimate relations that give me various emotions. What I like to create is a drawing as an empty space between me and the viewer, so that people can talk and find their own story from my drawings.’ …

Shaping Mountain Silhouettes | Katy Ann Gilmore

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If I’m honest, Christmas has been a wonderful time of repose, contemplation and, of course, overindulgence, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been all lazy, smug and reluctant to spend some time off browsing, searching and discovering exciting new talent now and then. So one of the names that’s scribbled on the top of my list is Katy Ann Gilmore’s and you’re about to find out why she’s the real deal: For her eye-catching drawings, large-scale murals and installations, the L.A.-based visual artist takes inspiration from nature and topography and seeks to further explore the relationship between 2D, perpendicular planes and their distortions into 3D space. Usually armed with her army of acrylic markers and a steady hand, Gilmore meticulously works the canvas, adding pen stroke after pen stroke in a staccato fashion that eventually weaves into biomorphic silhouettes of the hilly landscapes and monumental mountain ranges waiting on her very doorstep. Have a look, it’s a real treat!                   Check out more of her artworks & get in touch via social media. …

Spot On | Emma Abad

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For some reason, I’ve never featured someone on here who’s (predominantly) working with collages. Well, every streak has to come to an end some day. May I introduce? This is Emma Abad. She’s a mixed media artist and Jersey native, who grabbed my attention by, well, just being awesome on my instagram feed. Her work merges photography, illustration and watercolours in beautiful image manipulations that seek to explore the relationships of identity and narratives encompassing our lives. “I’m forever influenced by narrative art. Creative stories without explanations or consequences that build self-discovery and awareness is an ever-growing process for me. There is a desire to always find an answer to a problem.” Indeed, there’s something incredibly mysterious, soothing and adventurous about her dreamy collages that resonates in between the layers and makes me want to play detective, uncover and suss out the hidden story fragments. Check it out, it’s pretty rad!               Check out more of her artworks & get in touch via social media. Emma Abad @Twitter @Instagram @Facebook