Incensed - 3/10: Stairway to heaven (v1.1)

Turkish born Mehmet Ozgur is an engineer by education and profession, Mehmet is also a masterly photographer. His work spans a substantial range of subject matter and technique, from the landscapes panorama to digital compositions and his amazing smoke works (seen here). Mehmet has mastered a technique where he can photograph tendrils of smoke and then combine them into recognizable shapes and figures through digital manipulation. All are executed with fine precision using differing photographic manipulation techniques to achieve the desired outcomes. Looking through his smoke works collection you will notice an enticing glow of transparencies mixed with the suggestive texture of flame - most in monochrome. His series includes Genies and bottles, surreal clocks, feather-like waterfalls, swirling swords, and misty ocean scenery. Here are[16] more examples of Mehmet’s smoke works after the jump.

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Hive Scans: photo-printed, 24×30 inches, mounted on gaterfoam and framed

Canadian Born Aganetha Dyck has shown her work extensively in over 30 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions across Canada and internationally since 1975. Perhaps best known for her collaborative work with live honeybees, Aganetha’s most recent practise has concentrated on placing ordinary household objects in beehives, allowing the bees to become her artistic partners by adding wax sculptures to the objects. The image to your right is part of a collaboration between Canadian artist Richard Dyck and Agnetha involving a flatbed scanner inside a beehive. Apparently the bees paint as they move relative to the scan head over the scanner bed, their images compressing and smearing anfractuously. Incidentally, sunlight is controlled with the lid of the beehive.

[16] selected photographs of Aganetha’s artworks after the jump.

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Design, Direction and Doodles

Couscous Kid is the work of British illustrator and designer Mathew Star Thomas. Mathew’s illustrations are the cutting edge of the new breed in contemporary illustration, finding homes embodying and embracing beauty, fashion, nature, music and above all life. His pen doodles and photographs combine with vector images, giving Couscous Kids’ dream-like and innocent style, that: “leads us dancing eerily among the childlike leaves we cling onto through life to a deeper and darker space. A timeless place where fantasy and fairy tale doodles combine with intrigue, mystery and sex. At first glance all is as it seems with hints of sixties abandon, but closer inspection reveals a 21st century humour and physical freedom hidden among the sublime and ridiculous forms and characters”. [11] selected images of Mathew’s Illustrations after the jump. more…

Nathan Sawaya has been many things in his life…corporate lawyer, Lego Master builder at the Legoland theme park, and a pervasive media soundbite. Sawaya, who is perhaps the preeminent Lego sculptor working today, can add another title: Solo museum exhibitor. If you find yourself in Pennsylvania during the next month, put down your Tastykakes and Utz pretzels, and head over to the Lancaster Museum for The Art of the brick, a solo exhibition from Sawaya. For Sawaya, who left a high-paying job as a lawyer for a $13 an hour job as a master model builder at legoland, this exhibition is a way to spread his wings and get the art world attention that is sorely overdue. His sculptures are as witty as they are intricate–from a life-sized Han Solo frozen in carbonite to the sculpture that you see right, a self-portrait revealing the passion for plastic bricks which he is unable to contain.

His work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both beautiful and playful. Sawaya’s ability to transform LEGO ® bricks into something new, his devotion to scale and color perfection, the way he conceptualizes the action of the subject matter, enables him to elevate an ordinary toy to the status of art. [15] selected photographs of Nathan’s lego art after the jump. more…

Georgia Russell is a British artist who uses a scalpel instead of a brush or a pen, and works with obsessive perseverance and patience to make her constructions of cut paper. She appropriates found materials and utilises their decorative qualities and inherent potential as she manipulates, cuts and transforms ephemera: music scores, newspapers, currency, maps and photographs.

She sees books as sculptural objects with an inherent history, representing ‘the hands which have held them and the minds they have passed through’. She uses a scalpel to dissect and flay the pages of her chosen books, her intention being to give them ‘a new life and new meaning’. The resulting works hover between object and image, and she somehow manages to retain and reclaim the past life of an object as much as her techniques attack it. Russells’s chosen materials are transformed, sometimes with flamboyant colour and wild cutting, sometimes with discreet play on the subject or title of her printed ephemera. Take a look at [20] more of Georgia’s interesting sculptures after the jump.

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The world’s smallest and most wondrous works of art

Snow White and the 7 dwarfs in the eye of a needle

• Willard Wigan

“The best things come in small packages - they really do - and local artist Willard Wigan is the only person in the world who can put Snow White and her Seven Dwafs into the eye of a needle..” Jonathan Jacob

British artist Willard Wigan is a “micro-miniaturist”, an artist known for creating some of the world’s smallest sculptures, often taking months to complete one, working between heartbeats to avoid hand tremors. Wigan uses a tiny surgical blade to carve his microscopic figures out of grains of rice, sand and sugar, spending months meticulously carving his materials into micro figures like the ones displayed above, which are then mounted on a head of a pin, the tip of an eyelash, the eye of a needle or even a grain of sand and are at least three times smaller than this full stop. His sculptures have included a Santa Claus and a copy of the Football World Cup trophy, both about 0.005mm (0.0002in) tall, and a boxing ring with Muhammad Ali figure which fits onto the head of a match. To watch another video about Willard and his art go here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3298352

Take a look at [20] more of Willard’s amazing micro-sculptures after the jump. Enjoy.

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