January 7, 2013 by bpwilliams72

The natural world art of Svetlana Ivanchenko

The pictures below blew me away. Blogger Spooky, on the site Oddity Central, gives a brief biography:

Svetlana Ivanchenko is a talented Ukrainian artist who uses overlooked natural materials like sand, seashells, quartz, tree roots and tree bark to create wonderful mosaics that look almost painted by hand.

Born and raised in Yalta, on the shores of the Black Sea, Ivanchenko was always fascinated by the abundance of natural materials that surrounded her. She studied at the Crimean Art School, under the supervision of renowned artist Sergei Bokaeva, and later graduated from the Glukhivskiy Pedagogical Institute. The artist currently based in the city of Dnepropetrovsk uses a variety of sand, shells, quartz and tree parts to create amazing works of art inspired by her place of birth and the warmth of the female body. It’s hard to believe, but every little piece of material used to create the artworks is placed by hand, and no coloring other than that of the composing elements is used.

As Pinar from My Modern Metropolis notes, Svetlana “merges the various textures and colors brilliantly, making it difficult to imagine the frames being made of anything else.” Her natural masterpieces have been exhibited in international galleries, and many of them reside in the private collections of connaisseurs in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Estonia and the Dominican Republic.

Enjoy them.

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January 2, 2013 by bpwilliams72

Gimli at Helmsdeep, Gollum karaoke, Indy brilliance and French Art House – more LEGO® anarchy

Can’t beat a bit of LEGO® stop motion. There’s some truly brilliant stuff around, some of the best knocked up by the Brotherhood Workshop. Here are four of my recent favourites, two from the aforementioned creative team.

This has a great Lord Of The Rings riff on a box (Legolas trying to help Gimli see over the parapets):

Gollum singing the Justin Bieber classic “Baby”:

A lovingly created Indiana Jones pastiche from kd2apoof called “Indiana Jones and the Mystical Gemstone”:

A full-length French thriller, by Maxime Marion and Studio Sepsilon, complete with subtitles (!):

October 28, 2011 by bpwilliams72

Katie’s camera blog and Ellie Williams on WordPress

I’ve just added a new category to my links for Arts, Culture Etc and have added two great blogs (see the sidebar).

Katie’s camera blog is a smashing photography site, where Katie Johnson, a professional photographer, indulges her creative side. Ellie Williams is of course my sister’s blog – also a professional artist!

I hope you enjoy them both.

April 2, 2011 by bpwilliams72

The stories in numbers

Last night I stumbled across one of the most inspirational and best-presented documentaries I’ve seen in years. Typically it was on in the middle of the night and a brief summary (a history of statistics presented by a Swedish professor) might make you think it was one from the early canon of Open University spectaculars.

However, Professor Hans Rosling is one of the most exciting and engaging presenters I’ve seen on television in a long time. After a long day in the office, his quirky, amusing and insightful jaunt through the past, present and possible future of statistics was gripping. If you missed it, you can look at The Joy of Statistics on BBC iPlayer.

One of the most engaging aspects was his demonstration of how the stories of numbers are often best told through visual depiction.

For instance, I had no idea that Florence Nightingale was a statistician. It was her meticulous record-keeping translated into startling pictures that drove the changes in nursing that she instituted:

Over a hundred years later, people like David Mccandless make their living finding ways to translate complex information into more readily understandable pictorial form. On his Information Is Beautiful blog he finds different and exciting visualisations of statistical data. The Billion-pound-o-gram is his way of making those mad, large numbers more comprehensible:

Perhaps the most spectacular use of animation was Professor Rosling’s depiction of the progress of countries in terms of their life expectancy and their income. His enthusiasm, love and knowledge are a real joy to behold. To really see a story told in numbers, watch this little snippet below:

Vodpod videos no longer available.