So, so busy!

In case I have never mentioned it before: Summer kills me. I have no tolerance for heat, no tolerance for direct sunlight. If I suck it up and do things I like (hiking, gardening, biking instead of driving, etc.) I will get heat stroke in no time flat. If I don’t do those things … well, I feel like life is passing me by. Probably because it is.

I have found that the hummingbird feeder 10 steps from my office window helps encourage me to get to the computer and do stuff I need to do here. This week, I learned a little bit about making 3D printing plans.

Openly Admired: Mia Pearlman

In that ultra-technical art jargon I can’t stop using (thanks, art school!) the basic element here that I respond to is [better sit down if you have a weak constitution for jargon] … swirly crap. I looooooove swirly things. Pretty much anything that whooshes and swooshes and flaps around like some kind of thing…. I love it.

So, here you have Mia Pearlman. Who is apparently getting into The Zone. She’s productive, sought-after, recognized, getting press, getting commissions, getting paid (I hope!). She makes such good use of laser cutter and water jet cutting and lighting and placement. Somewhere in the grey zone bounded by free-standing sculpture, site-specific installation, 2D, 3D, and filled with the delight of curves and whirls.

Pearlman has done this in paper, metal, glass, on large and small scale. I am looking forward to where this goes for her in the future. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she gets into designing structures. Or fashion. Or jewelry.

Mia Pearlman – Go look at ALL the things.

Openly Admired: Noriko Ambe

 

I stumbled across Noriko Ambe during one of my internet image-gorging rampages. Her work is a confluence of things I love: Paper, precision cutting, satisfying reference to the real world without trying to remake it. 

Selected Works: Noriko Ambe.

Naturally, I have selected the ones that most resonate for me, and you might go to her site and see something completely other as more interesting, or not at all interesting. Whatever it is that speaks to me about paper, cut paper, paper edges … might mean nothing at all to your esthetic cortex. There is a certain viscerality here, Ambe frequently creates spaces between, and although the paper and the cuts and edges tend to dominate, all the action is really in those between-spaces. Even knowing there is a perfectly matched edge somewhere for every edge you can see, it is still necessary to think about what kind of thing would fill the void created by the separation.

Openly Admired: Zaha Hadid

 

Changsha Meixihu International Culture & Arts Centre – Architecture – Zaha Hadid Architects.

Given the size (400 employees) and scope (44 countries), it seems likely that I am the last one around to hear of Zaha Hadid. Architect, designer, international maker of magic … I find the designs to be way too awesome. I was frankly a bit shocked to discover just how much of her is out in the world, because it being so distinctly sympathetic to my own style preferences, and having never heard of this, I was sure I was looking at something obscure. (Turns out, I was just living under a rock. Such is life.)

The swoops! The whorls! The echoed linear forms! The natural, yet otherworldly effect of the transitions from flat to curved! The eye-teasing spaces created inside the forms!

These tiny pictures don’t do justice to Zaha Hadid, of course, are are from just ONE project out of hundreds to be seen on the company web site. Do click through and check this out. You’ll be glad you did.

Artistic Arrangements of Microscopic Algae Viewed Through a Microscope | Colossal

 

Artistic Arrangements of Microscopic Algae Viewed Through a Microscope | Colossal.

There is not much to say about this, except that sometimes people with a microscope and too much free time can be awesome. Click through to Colossal and check out the other images. This one is from 1952. The others are from other decades. What would they look like today? (given how much bigger we can squint things now…)