Artist
Now THAT’S delicate work! Artists carve intricate portraits onto egg shells in quirky new art trend
“Now THAT’S delicate work! Artists carve intricate portraits onto egg shells in quirky new art trend”
by Qin Xie via “Daily Mail“
Yunnan born Zhao Zexi is the artist behind the egg carvings.
The 27 year old revealed in an interview that he’s been carving egg shells for around 10 years and has worked with everything from hen’s eggs to duck and ostrich eggs.
He said: ‘I liked drawing from a young age. When I went to Hangzhou to train as a chef, my main job was food carving.’
‘I stumbled across egg carving by accident after seeing it on television. Since then I’ve been obsessed with the idea so started learning to do it.’
Initially he found that every egg shell he tried to carve collapsed as soon as the blade touched its surface.
Zhao Zexi creates human portraits, like Abraham Lincoln above, as well as Chinese landscapes and plants
Egg art created by Zhao Zexi start from 500 Yuan (£50) for hen’s egg and 6,000 Yuan (£600) for an ostrich egg
But with hard work, determination and a little help from other egg carving artists, he soon progressed from carving words to landscapes to human portraits.
The work is extremely time consuming.
Carvings on hen’s eggs require one or two days to complete while goose and ostrich eggs need 10 to 15 days.
However, he is able to charge 500 Yuan (£50) for a finished hen’s egg and around 6,000 Yuan (£600) for an ostrich egg.
Last year, he quit his job as a chef to concentrate on egg carving.
Speaking of his decision, he said: ‘There’s people who ask about my work every day. I’ve already received 10 commissions from art collectors.’
Zhu De featured in the egg shell carving by Li, above, was one of the pioneers of the Chinese Communist Party
Li’s work include Chinese leaders such as Mao Zedong and Soviet figures like Carl Marx and Joseph Stalin
Zhao Zexi is not the only egg shell artist to emerge recently.
A 29 year old woman in Jiangsu, eastern China, named as Han Liping shared her work in January this year.
Han normally works at a fast food restaurant but started egg carving as a hobby.
She empties the eggs of their content before starting work but says that every stage of the carving throws up challenges.
The shells breaking is the most obvious concern but if she makes any mistakes, she will have to start over again as there is no way to repair the damage. . . . .
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50,000-flower display marks 125th anniversary of van Gogh’s death
“50,000-flower display marks 125th anniversary of van Gogh’s death”
by Gabby Shacknai via “PBS“
On the 125th anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s death, institutions across the world are celebrating the Dutch artist’s legacy.
A portrait of van Gogh made of 50,000 dahlias is on display in Amsterdam until the end of the week, and a cycling path, which drew on van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” with aninnovative light design, is available to the public. A 335-meter long cycling itinerary organized by Van Gogh Brabant takes visitors though five towns and cities, featuring sites like the school he attended in Tilburg and Etten-Leur, where his parents lived.
Auvers-sur-Oise, the French village where van Gogh spent his final days and died by suicide at age 37, has also planned several events to mark the day. Members of the artist’s family laid a wreath on his grave in Auvers-sur-Oise this afternoon. Visitors will explore the locations of some of van Gogh’s most famous work and see his former room in the Auberge Ravoux, where he lived the last 70 days of his life. Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum and the Institut Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise worked together to organize the events.
The Van Gogh Europe Foundation, a collection of approximately 30 organizations, is commemorating van Gogh the whole year under the theme “125 Years of Inspiration.” The foundation has organized events to take place throughout the year across the Netherlands, France and Belgium, all places where van Gogh once lived and worked. . . . .
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Artists (and Others) Talk About Art and Destruction
“Artists (and Others) Talk About Art and Destruction”
by John Seed via “Huffington Post“
“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” ― Pablo Picasso
During my last year of graduate school one of my art professors came by my studio one evening to lead a group critique session. “Someday,” he told me, “you will have a storage problem.”
Those were wise words. I took most of my graduate school work to the dump two years later.
The author’s post grad school dump run
Being an artist means making things, and those things can pile up fast. Only lucky works of art survive — or deserve to survive — while numerous other works are slashed, smashed, burned or trucked to the dump.
When I recently asked artist friends on my Facebook page to tell me stories about art and destruction I found that I had opened up a nerve-hitting topic. Artists destroy works both during and after their making, and they both savor and sometimes later regret their destructive impulses.
Here, in edited form, are some of the many anecdotes, comments and bits of wisdom that artists and others had to offer on the topic of art and destruction.
***
Stacy Rosende Bykuc
“Every piece has several destroyed compositions beneath. I call it ‘process.’ If a piece sucks, it’s just not done.”
April Zanne Johnson
If, as an artist, you love everything you make all the time and are never self-critical, it is impossible to grow and evolve.
Maria Teicher
“Shredded by hand with a razor (or ripped if paper)… the sound is intoxicating and freeing. Never had a single regret. I took photos before so I had it archived but have never looked back. I do a purge of work every 3-4 years and it’s great. Not everything goes but those I am not proud of or works that have lost their meaning in my life.”
Kate Shepherd
Just today. Etchings.
Nathan Lewis
“I destroyed a 52 ft. wide painting. Tired of storing. Tired of hanging onto it. Some things are better in memory.”
Lauren Levato Coyne
“In an essay I just posted I detail throwing a six foot drawing out the window. No regrets.”
Joe Fay
“When I left LA I threw out a few really old paintings in the dumpster at my studio. Before I left I saw a homeless person had made a shelter out of them. I was happy. More recently I’ve been cutting up and recycling old paper pieces and using them on my painted wall reliefs.”
Kenn Raaf
“75% of the finished work I do is deconstructed. Cut, torn, burned, sanded and then reassembled and recomposed into something radically different. As for paper used in sketch work I oftentimes cut into strips and weave to use as texture in my abstract work, and filler in my sculpture.” . . . .
Digital collage by Photofunia.com based on a photo by David Michael Slonim
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Copyright v. Trademark v. Patent
“The Sleeping Virtue” by MissNickiPink
To Be in Copyright or Not To Be in Copyright. . . That is the Question.
Here in China, I’m currently teaching my darling students Business Law, which includes a healthy dose of Art and Cultural Heritage law surprisingly enough. Although, if you think about it, Businesses deal in Art and Words as much as anyone–and I’ve discovered the rules for them are often similar to those for individual artists.
But one of the most basic questions my students get stumped with is what is the different between a copyright, trademark, and patent?
Lawyers like to throw around those words like they mean something, but it’s a big pile of nothing for anyone else. Still, many of your rights and protections are caught up in the relevant Copyright, Trademark, or Patent. So if you want to adequately protect yourself (in business or in art), you need to know which one you need.
As I help my students, I thought I would share some information here as well. I’m teaching basic overview of the law, so this is all simple information 🙂 Please Note: This is not intended to be Legal Advice! Every situation is different, and if you have a situation you need to speak with your own Attorney! (more…)
The Cultured Muse 