If you ever have some spare time on your hands, and a hankering to put the same to good use, check out Custom Paper Toys. The artist also makes little paper toys that move, that he calls automa. And if you like that kind of thing, he has a heap of links to other paper toy makers, so if you have a couple of years to spare, you can keep yourself busy.

I’m enchanted with the art you can see on limoon’s website. The art has a sublime timeless serenity to it.

You can find further poster infographics at Bachman’s website: WallStats.com, including a superb giant poster detailing the US 2009 budget.

If you sometimes experience a strange sense of Deja Vu when you see an advert, maybe there’s something to it. The two adverts above both promote teeth whitening products, the one on the left is Orbit, from 2002, and the one on the right is Dr Sedoc, from 2008.

Joe La Pompe has made it his mission to expose these copycat advertisers, and has a huge collection of faxsimile ads for your viewing pleasure. What’s not surprising is that two ad agencies would both create a similar campaign, but what is surprising is just how similar two adverts can be. So, are great minds thinking alike, or is it more like Picasso said, “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal”.

Found via Kottke, French art student Nadine Grenier used more than 500 clocks to construct a giant wall that spells out a time-related message every 12 hours.

Translation:

Times passes,
and every time that time passes,
something fades away.

Cool, though kinda disturbing poster from Wondermark (An Illustrated Jocularity), entitled The Hierarchy of Beards. You can see an enlarged version here.

The one thing that disturbs me about beards, apart from beards themselves, is that beard anagrams to bread. That’s always bothered me, for some reason.

Mark Khaisman makes portraits and studies with packing tape, that brownish tape that is used to seal boxes the world over. This is another example of someone who has more artistic talent in their little finger than I have in my entire body.

DNA 11 are the pioneers of truly unique, truly personalised artwork for you. They can make large canvas art based on your DNA, fingerprints, kiss-print. Chair not included.

Nathan’s work with Lego is truly fantastic when I remember back to my efforts with Lego.

Helen fascinates me. She’s smart, knows her way around the BASH shell, and is an advisor to the likes of Bill Gates.

This is not a photo. It’s a painting. Termed ‘hyper-realism’, the paintings of Denis Peterson are more real than real. The painting above, “Neon Lights”, is a 54″ x 34″ piece (acrylics and oils on canvas). Amazing work.

(found via paintalicious)

 

They’re not made of cardboard, silly. They do work in cardboard.

Mark Langan & Chris Gilmour.

There are art exhibitions and there are art exhibitions. Cow Parade is of the latter. According to the website: 

Cow Parade originated in Switzerland in 1998. Cow and bull figures decorated by local artists were displayed on the streets and the event generated so much interest that it attracted sponsors and donations. Since then, Cow Parade has been held in a number of major cities including New York and Paris, drawing phenomenal turnouts each time. 

Yes. Decorated fibreglass cows are placed around the chosen city to entertain and, surely, bemuse the local population. There are many locations every year, one of which is the cow parade in Tokyo. Enjoy!

My favorite is the Emo Cow, pictured above. It’s Moo-ving. Oh, be sure to check out the store. Need I say Moo-re?

There is a very unusual project going on in Canada. Called the Solar Collector, it’s a modern sculpture that collects the sun’s energy during the day to put on a light-show performance at dusk. What makes this project special is that there are a set of controls that you can access here. Your settings translate into a sine wave pattern that the Solar Collector will perform that evening (queue permitting).

The performance continues until the batteries run out, which is rather cute. Of course, it would be useless if you couldn’t see the performance. Thoughtfully, they have a webcam and they tell you exactly when your performance will occur.

Found via EnvironMental.

Who says graffiti needs to involve spray cans?

The Reverse Graffiti Project proves otherwise. Artist Paul Curtis, known as “Moose”, makes his art by cleaning—removing the dirt and pollution from walls, exposing the original surface. Termed “green art”, you could refer to it as selective cleaning.

You can watch a short movie intro on the site in which he takes a section of the Broadway Tunnel in San Francisco, and using stencils, creates a 140 foot long piece of art.

One advantage of this way of working is that it’s hard to prosecute him. Who owns the dirt that he ‘paints’ with?

If you’re like me, you want to do more than just hang art on your wall. You want to wear it! Designgive is an online T-Shirt shop with a difference. At designgive artists give a design to the site in return for exposure. The designs are amazing, the prices are very reasonable (about $13 per t-shirt), and a portion of the proceeds from the sale go to the charity of your choice.

The tragedy here is that the designs sell-out very quickly, and there are some great previous designs that are no longer available.

The added bonus is that there is a bio on all the artists who’ve donated, and of course a link to more of their exciting work.

On Flickr, of course, fast becoming the world’s photo-album…

USSR Poster Set

There are nearly 1,500 posters in this set, covering the period 1917 to 1991. The posters vary from adverts to propaganda, and all have that lovely industrial stoical style. Most of them promote hard work and self-sacrifice, drawn/painted in that indefatigable Soviet Constructivist style.

Put on some rabble-rousing music and spend an afternoon viewing the posters as a slide show!