PLN 6 - Pip & Pop

In the past few years, friends Nicole Andrijevic and Tanya Schultz created an entire floor display of what they call, “sugar art” in Australia. Andrijevic and Schultz are commonly known as “Pip & Pop” because of their colorful and eye-appealing work. With the inspirations of Willy Wonka, Candyland, and Fantasia, they created an entire hand-made candy wonderland with nothing but daily objects such as sugar, wire, glitter, clay, beads and candy. 

The two designers create their masterpieces directly on the floor of the selected art gallery they show in. They do this because the work isn’t physically attached to anything; it just gets set up on the floor and stays there. From far away their artwork looks like a colorful candy city but the closer you get you can really see the detail work used through the piece. This is where the beads, wires and clay figures come into place. 

In total, Pip & Pop create larger and more extravagant works every time they have a new show. Pip & Pop place their work directly under a black light. The entire candy wonderland illuminates in new colors and creates what feels like an entirely new piece. 

I chose to write about these two artists and their work because they really inspire me. I ran across an article of theirs a few months ago and forgot about it up until now. I think Pip & Pop’s work really is by far my favorite out of anyone’s I’ve ever seen. 

The colors are beautiful and the detail work is so impressive to me. I could never work with such tiny objects so it amazes me that someone could. It would be incredible if they someday traveled to America and I could see their work in person. 

Peter Callesen - PLN 5

Touring the world with his detailed creations, Peter Callesen is widely known for his hand-crafted white paper artwork. By folding and cutting white sheets of paper, Callesen creates mind-blowing masterpieces. Some of his pieces are created to tell a story. The stories aren’t obvious; he uses the shadows to create a “darker” story or no shadows to create a happier one. Although the majority of his pieces are done with white paper, he does on occasion use colored.

Along with his paper art Callesen is also an author and works with monoprints. Monoprinting is another form of art, but with the use of lines and images they cannot be recreated. Everything is spontaneous and original. Many of Callesen’s books include hand-made paper cute outs inside, making them pop-out books. Callesen also takes part in photography, performances and short films. His photography is all in different tones of white, or very light blue. This makes his photography very similar to his white paper art.

His paper art ranges in size, but is usually relatively small. His art subjects range of anything from birds to flowers to castles. One of his most commonly recognized works is a billboard-sized cut out of a castle. Callesen’s work takes a lot of patience and a calm attitude while creating his pieces. The fragile paper makes it easy to tear or make a mistake, requiring much concentration. Today, he holds exhibitions all around the world including Norway, Sweden, New York, Korea and London. In Callesen’s online store, he sells hand-made paper shirts with cut outs in them.

Paper Collared Button Up Shirt 

You can visit his website here

Salvador Dali PLN 4

Artist Salvador Dali is remembered by the world for his abstract and bizarre surrealism. His works include everything from film and photography to sculptures and paintings.

In 1929, Dali created a surrealist short film titled Un Chien Andalou. This was a silent film , jumping from scene to scene with no real plot. What most people don’t know is the majority of this film was created based off dreams Dali had in the past.  Many of his dreams included ants crawling all over his body, which is why ants are very common in much of his work and his film. Since the film is completely silent, the actors had to convey their emotions in a very dramatic way. Sometimes the emotions are hidden in some scenes through a deeper meaning. The total film length is about seventeen minutes and required Dali to use all his money. Once the film was complete, Dali had to edit all his films by himself with the help of a friend because of expenses.

Watch the full film here

St. Petersberg, Florida holds the worlds largest collection of work created by Salvador Dali. The museum includes 96 oil paintings, 100 watercolor paintings, 1,300 graphs, photographs and sculptures. The Dali Museum holds 7 of 18 paintings created by Salvador Dali. Not only does the museum hold artwork, but also provides activities and events such as yoga, movies, café’s, a theater and guest speakers. 

The Secrets Of A Good Marriage

By:Ellie Kelsch

Growing up I've learnt about love,

I've been surrounded by it everyday.

I'm so glad you've both found it,

And it's why we're here today.

They say there's secrets to a good marriage,

That there are rules to obey,

But the most important rules of love,

Are what you two do everyday.

It's the ''hey babes'' in the morning,

It's how she makes his tea,

It's the way he smiles at her,

Such a sweet thing to see.

It's never being to old to hold hands,

Or to watch movies on the couch,

It's accepting all the flaws,

Even when the other's a grouch.

It's telling him he's not going grey,

It's the ''You look fine in those jeans''

It's ignoring the mid-life crisis,

and all her little ''scenes''.

It's facing the world as one,

And it's more than love at first sight,

It's together being a family,

Each and every day and night.

It's the way he looks into her eyes,

It's the way that she looks too,

It's why they stand before us,

and it's why they said ''I do''.

And now I stand here today,

On this important moment in life,

With two people very in love,

Now husband and wife.

Growing up, I've learnt about love,

and seeing it today proves it true,

You've both taught me so much,

And I'd be lucky to be half as happy as you.

I decided to choose this poem because I think it's very relevant to today's society. Nowadays people get into marriages that don't end up working out in the end. My parents are both still together after seventeen years, and very happy. Except almost everyone I know have divorced parents. You never see the 60 or 70 year anniversaries with couples, I know they were a lot more common 30 or so years ago. I always wonder why that is, why the divorce rate is so much higher now than it was back then. Maybe it has to do with the economy. I've heard before that money is the number one stress on couples. Or maybe it's that people don't get to know the person as well as they should before getting married to them. But I don't see any reason as to how that would be any different now then it was back then. My parents always tell me how lucky I am to have two parents who are really in love with one another. I usually take it for granted without realizing. Being around them all the time will probably end up rubbing off onto me and how I maybe handle a marriage some day. But that's too far in the future to think about right now. The thought alone of getting married is kind of scary to me.

Alexa Meade

I’ve seen YouTube videos on this artist before and just recently stumbled upon her again while looking for acrylic painting blogs. The woman who designs these masterpieces is named Alexa Meade and she takes painting to a whole new level. Alexa takes people and physically paints on top of them. She paints on them in a way that they look like they are actually the painting themselves. Its sort of a confusing thing to explain so I’ll include photographs bellow this post. It’s absolutely incredible looking and I’ve never seen anything like it. She lives in Washington DC and holds showcases to show off her work on occasion. When she has the showcases though she keeps the live, painted people as the pieces. But when recording her work or publishing it she typically takes photographs and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between what’s an actual painting and what’s reality.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/hyperrealistic-acrylic-body

In addition to this first blog that I found about Alexa Meade, I found an additional one by the same website. Although it was the same website I found one particular article titled, "Alexa Meade Submerges Her Subject in a Pool of Milk". It showed many images of a new sort of style she recently has tried. She would first paint the person as she typically does in her day to day pieces. Except this time (the title being pretty obvious) she literally submerges her subject into a pool of milk. Not that I would ever necessarily try this with my art work but I thought it was a really interesting way of looking at things. The fact that she took her typical style and just adding something small, which then created this whole new idea of art. 

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/alexa-meade-milk-art

Ai Weiwei

Over the summer, I was over my friend Harris’ house and we got into some sort of conversation regarding the wronging’s of society. He then asked if I had ever heard of this guy, “Ai Weiwei”.  I had never heard of him in my entire life, so he went on to the Internet and pulled up a documentary of him called, “Never Sorry”. We watched the entire film, and every second of it was incredible. 

Ai Weiwei is a political activist who peacefully protests for human rights and against ridiculous laws made by the Chinese government. He does this through his art and photography. Because he speaks out against the Chinese government he's constantly beaten by police, arrested, put under house arrest, having websites of his shut down and art studios of his destroyed.

Over five thousand students died in an earthquake in China (2009). Ai Weiwei gathered one backpack to represent each student, and wrote his or her name on it. He took over 9,000 backpacks and arranged them into a pattern on a city wall because the government refused to take responsibly for not taking proper precautions for the earthquake. If they had taken proper precautions, more lives would have been saved. Another example of Ai Weiwei’s art is not to long ago he photographed himself nude except used a stuffed animal as a “fig leaf”. He did this because it was artistically interesting but also to basically curse against the Chinese government for not providing enough human rights to their country. He was arrested after this as well.

If the government shuts down a website he just creates another one. After his art studios are destroyed he creates more. Whenever the police beat him he takes pictures of it on his cell phone and posts it to the Internet. At one point policemen beat him so harshly over the head that he had to have emergency brain surgery. But he continues to risk his life to rebel against the government through his art.  Nothing stops him from standing up for what he believes in, and he’s encouraged by most of the Chinese population for his work. 

"She lived happily for seven years"

 http://www.thenation.com/article/169636/ai-weiwei-and-art-protest#