Rice University Art Gallery in Austin Texas offers until Aug. 30 to discover "unwoven Light", the name of this beautiful facility thought by Soo Sunny Park. This colorful creation, composed of 37 parts staging is to discover in video and images in the future.
City condos often lack room for a full garden, or even a small backyard. There are box and kit solutions, sure, but these creative alternatives preserve your views and limited sill space while providing green growth and unique outdoor connections.
Starting with the simplest: consider pair of two half-pots designed by Kyung-Eun Oh and joined by an invisible magnetic connection – one for the inside of windows and one for the outside, one colored white (typical plastic for indoors) and one a reddish brown (typical ceramic for outdoors).
Shooting for something that adds more than decor? Rows upon rows of herbs can be planted in this more intensive option by Barreau & Charbonnet, able to be raised or lowered to optimize around rain and sun.
While the previous example might pose challenges during extreme weather (storms and so forth), this system by Junkyung Kim & Yonggu Do allows you to keep a solid window in place but choose which side you want your plants to be on.
Need something a little less conceptual and a tad easier to build? For the weekend do-it-yourself project, try this NestInStyle gutter garden composed of simple materials like PVC piping, chain link or metal wire rope.
Still want something DIY-style, but perhaps of an intermediate or advanced level? WindowFarms collects and distributes information, tips and examples of great window gardens and related technologies.
So you want to fill up some non-window space with greenery, but lack the shelves or spare square footage on the floor for the task? A retention disk keeps soil in place as you hang these minimalist black-or-white pots (so-called Skyplanters) by Boskke from ceilings above (or the tops of window frames, if so inclined).
Finally, a bit of inspiration for those with the luxury of starting from scratch – this houses by Ryue Nishizawa and Vo Trong Nghia include window-oriented greenery from start to finish, creating light and privacy filters via organic green screens that wrap their respective facades.
It is a familiar trope these days, but fun nonetheless: take a common object, tweak the scale and transform the materials, and you get a new item that has a recognizable shape but a distinct new function.
In this case, the Clip Bag by Peter Bristol manages to look both fresh and fashionable – the light (hollow aluminum) metal grip widens to fit the hand, and the felted bag manages to look a lot classier and more comfortable to carry than its plastic inspiration.
There is a curious psychological side-effect in play as well: suddenly, we are forced to rely a lot more on context to determine the size of the bag – it makes its tiny cousins look extra-small, and wood grain seem huge by comparison.
A play on memory and novelty, its scale becomes most obvious, in the end, when put to its intended use and held in human hands.
First: watch the video. Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori paints three-dimensional goldfish using a complex process of poured resin. The fish are painted meticulously, layer by layer, the sandwiched slices revealing slightly more about each creature, similar to the function of a 3D printer. I really enjoy the rich depth of the pieces and the optical illusion aspect, it’s such an odd process that results in something that’s both a painting and sculptural. Wonderful.
Fukahori just closed an exhibition at ICN Gallery in London titled Goldfish Salvation, and you can see many more images via the gallery’s Facebook
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Keng Lye paints these brilliant illusions of underwater animals using a technique developed by Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori: first he pours in a layer of resin, lets it dry, paints on it with acrylic paint, then pours in another layer of resin and repeats the process.
For added effect, he also adds a pebble which is incorporated into the artwork that bops above the surface to make the illusion even better. It’s incredible how much patience he has.