Masahiko Kimura and Bonsai as Living Sculpture

The term Living Sculpture can be applied to a number of categories such as Land Art, Environmental Art, and Bonsai. Today, we look into the life of the "Magical Technician of Kindai Shuppan"; Masahiko Kimura. Bonsai art is no easy task, people have to intensively twist and coil wires into young plants to inhibit or shape their growth, at the same time leaves and roots have to be trimmed for the tree to grow into miniaturized proportions. At the early age of 15, Kimura became the apprentice of bonsai master Motosuke Hamano of Toju-en Bonsai Garden. His great skill in conceptualizing the growth pattern of trees became his catalyst into the bonsai society's greatest. He was also able to swiftly move past critiques who said his works were widely controversial at first.

In his early years though,  Kimura did not have the entire support of the Japanese Bonsai community because he desired unconventional forms for his art. His very first workshop was at the 1987 Golden State Federation Bonsai Convention in Anaheim, California. He has been giving workshops on Bonsai ever since, and has grown in popularity over the international art scene. Most of the trees he designed were Juniperu Chinensis, but he expanded his trade to encompass different kinds of local and foreign trees over the span of his long career. Kimura had won many awards for his bonsai sculptures, such as the Prime Minister's Award four times (4 years), and the Minister of Education Award in 1999. He was also the teacher of popularized bonsai artist; Marco Invernizzi.

Read more »

Origami Bonsai Sculpture

A few weeks ago we posted an article about the sculptural potential of Origami and Kirigami. Today upon browsing through some art prints, we found that among the origami artists of Japan, some consider a few form to be a hybrid between two types of art. Bonsai Origami is a combination of the paperfoldding craft and the tree-shaping craft, both popular art hobbies in Japan. In this hybrid hobby, the technique uses tree branches from actual plants, and combines these elements with paper flowers, leaves and fruits. This interesting artform was actually introduced by a foreigner; John Coleman in 2010.

Coleman wrote a book entitled Origami Bonsai during April of last year. Aside from his initial publication, Coleman still strives to improve the technique further. He developed a technique called Makigami which uses rolled up newspapers in specific contours to substitute the real tree branches. Coleman's organic passion for origami has taken the practice to a different level of orientation. He has adapted his own style into an age-old art form and has gained a number of followers at the same time.

Read more »

John Chamberlain's Rustic Beauty

These days, fine art is a broad concept unrestricted by classical standards unlike in the Greek and Victorian ages. Many sculptures believe that making use of scrap or found objects is a good way to help rebuild something by turning it into something else. John Chamberlain uses old automobile parts and crushed steel to create distorted compositions of rustic sculptures in pure abstract form. Chamberlain wen to the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College during his years of learning. He became quite famous for his unique style of painting into three dimensions and his usage of car parts. He works and resides at Shelter Island in New York and has been sculpting for over fifty years.

Sculpture by John Chamberlain - Photography by Ser Amantio di Nicolao

Chamberlain's sculptures have been seen in Biennials around the globe, including the Sao Paulo Biennial in the early 1960's and the Whitney Biennial in the 1970's. During his career, Chamberlain was also represented by two esteemed galleries; the Gagosian Gallery and the Pace Gallery chronologically. It is rumored that he actually has a piece of his artwork on the moon. Not many sculptors can boast that kind of accomplishment indeed. Aside from these little pieces of information about him, he has also garnered several recognitions from various institutions like the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture which awarderd him the Skowhegan medal for sculpture in 1993 and the National Arts Club in New York that conferred upon him the National Arts Club Artist's Award in the late 1990's.

Read more »

Bill Woodrow's Sculptures Combine and Create from a Degree of Metal Diversities

In the 1970's many new faces in the world of Britain's sculpture community emerged into popular society. Among the personalities, Bill Woodrow stood out as a contemporary sculptor of mixed media creations. Many of his very first sculptural pieces were works made from materials and objects found in scrap yards. He has a fondness for using metal wares and machinery that have been discarded and abandoned. Many of the artworks made by Woodrow actually retain a sense of their former elements. Woodrow alters a diversity of materials to present them to the public in a new context of understanding, but still creates a personal feel and narrative by which people can relate with.

Sculpture by Bill Woodrow - Photography by John McCullough 2006

He started using bronze as a material for his creative process during the 1990's. He was also one of the three artists selected to make a sculpture for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2000. Woodrow's many exquisite pieces made him famous for his metal assemblage skills and his original kind of creativity. Some of his other works distinctly proclaimed a new take on mixed media, such as his sculpture Pond in 2006 which made use of hundreds of copper or bronze coin shapes. The image featured above is Woodrow's sculpture Sitting in History which was bought by Carl Djerassi and Diane Middlebrook in the late 1990's for the British Library. Bill Woodrow's contemporary creations have earned him a following even among the younger generations of today's modern art world.

Read more »

Jay Gubitz and his Stained Glass Sculptures

You've all seen the usual stained glass artworks at cathedrals or deco building windows, but did any of you know about the artist who pioneered the usage of stained glass for 3D sculpture? Jay Gubitz turned the industry into an artform by innovating a stereotypical 2D media into new heights. Jay was always interested in the process of design, but began his career as a marketing artist. Eventually though, he found his way into glass by enrolling at several workshop courses at the suggestion of his wife, Elaine Gubitz. Using a basic foundation of knowledge from his lessons, he then built on them using trial and error methods. Through his own self-taught art methodologies, he was able to free the stained glass medium of its flat limitations.

Photography and Sculpture Artwork by Jay Gubitz

Jay often got his inspiration from nature, creating soaring depictions of eagles, parrots and other birds. He won several notable recognitions at the Gallery of Excellence at the Glass Craft Expo and the Glastar's competition. When he started, his works mostly showcased a semi-flat silhouette body with a few single layered curves. Later on, many of his avian-inspired sculptures like eagles and seagulls, started to have square bodies and more pronounced wing extremities. An evolution of his process gradually created more and more accurate depictions of wildlife and natural subjects. His most recent works have evolved even in comparison to his previous three dimensional sculptures. Now embodied with Gubitz' roundish organic style of placing glass, his artworks exhibit a life-like realism clad in a peerless technicolor glass exterior.

Read more »

The Art Practices of Sculptor John Bacon

A true blue British sculptor from Southwark, John Bacon was born in 1799 and was fascinated by sculpture at a very early age. He apprenticed at Lambeth; a porcelain manufacturer very famous at the time. Bacon was fourteen by the time he worked there as a painter and sculpture modeller. By getting accustomed to the process of high-fired porcelain, he was able to get a good learning foundation for the craft. Eventually during the course of his life, he made use of the technical and practical knowledge base to create his own unique and well-defined porcelain sculptures. Aside from working in porcelain, Bacon also mastered several other media, such as stone-working and marble-carving. He was able to improve an artificial stone sculpting process being used at the Coade Artificial Stone Manufactory.

Sculpture of Father Thames by John Bacon - Photography by John Thaxter

In the late 1700's John Bacon first started working with hard marble material. In 1769, he eventually won a gold medal for sculpture at the Royal Academy for his creation of a bas-relief scenario of Aenas' escape from the city of Troy. Because of this sudden fame, Bacon was then commissioned to create a bust of King George III. This was a landmark moment in his career as a sculptor, and the times to come were much more vibrant in terms of projects and opportunities for him. He went on to do more works for other famous identities and continued to keep the favor of King George throughout a long period of time. Bacon's works can now be seen and studied at St. Paul's Cathedral in London and Pembroke College among others locations.

Read more »

Kirigami, Sekkei and Comlex Origami Sculpture

Robert Lang, Meguro Toshiyuki and a few others developed a methodological system of origami paper folding called Technical Origami or Origami Sekkei. Unlike normal day-to-day origami folding, Sekkei Origami is more likened to an artform, specifically the artform of three dimensional sculpture. The creative output of Sekkei Origami can be characterized by complicated figures composed of well-formed details. Examples could include multi-jointed subjects with complex extremities such as toes, legs, tails and wings. Most of the usual patterns involved with this type of origami sculpting begins with something called the crease pattern, which is basically the overall layout of the creases needed to form the final model. Many origami sculptors develop their own compositions and designs by structural trial and error.

Surprisingly enough there are also computer programs that people use to aid them with structuring the comples diagrams of these origami types. Such include Doodle- which is used to create a photoshop file that has all the steps and figures needed to create a figure, and Treemaker- a program used to design a pattern of the final model.

Origami Sculpture (Hercules Beetle) by Robert Lang

Another alternate version of origami sculpture is Kirigami, where people make use of slices and cuts on the paper to form even more complicated joint systems and details. Because Kirigami includes the ability to cut creases, it gives a bit more flexibility to the artist, but makes each work more complicated for other people to replicate.

Origami may not be considered as fine or museum-type sculpture as a whole genre, but there are several artists out there who have mastered the art of folding, stacking and manipulating paper to the extent that galleries and shows have commissioned them to be a part of their collections. Origami has reached new heights in the world of sculpture, transcending price, time and even digital media. 

Read more »

Minimalism in Sculpture

For every complexity and detail observed in hyper-realism or naturalism, we can also see an opposite trait within the movement of minimalistic art. Whether sculpture or painting, photography or digital art, minimalism is a basic foundation that appeals to many in the community. Often thought over as elegant, avant-garde mannerisms of design, minimalism actually exhibits the trait of containing the strongest impact in the smallest of bodies. It portrays a certain type of aesthetic beauty that almost anyone can appreciate due to its simplicity in freeform and structure. Artists and theorists argued that minimalism conveyed every message that any other artform could, but through an extremist's definition of simplicity at work.

Free Ride Sculpture by Tony Smith (Minimalism in Sculpture)

The movement derives some of its traits from the Bauhaus period, making use of geometric abstraction. It also arose in combat to the rising complexity of abstract expressionism and non-representative abstract works that were diversely vibrant in color and composition. It was later followed by post-minimalism, which is symbolized by the usage of minimalism merely as a conceptual reference point and not a central theme.

Read more »

Sculpting the Environment

The term environmental sculpture will often bring up an image of something green. It would make you thing of something that's alive, or biodegradable, or at the very least something organic. Despite these stereotypical ideas which are not entirely wrong, many environmental sculptures generate there impact and beauty by pooling together the things that surround them and creating an assemblage of sorts. Just like in the picture below, this man-made scenery is actually an example of "Site-Specific" sculpture that resembles a spiral whirlpool in the ocean. This movement of sculpture began from contemporary abstract sculpture, but was transformed by several artists including Robert Irwin, James Turrel and Richard Serra.

Sculpture by Robert Smithson Photgraphy by Soren Harward

Sometimes called "land art" , these large sculptures or scenery designs can take months to create because of their unique media. It is indeed a challenge for any artist to get out there and use the earth as his canvas. Most environmental or site-specific sculptures are public artworks because of their great size and public availability. The artists that create them often have a purpose or message in mind that they would like the world to discover through their art. Popular themes of recent years include global warming, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and remnants of typhoons. Similar to the plop art movement, these works can amass a common area and sometimes by opinionized by many as out of place, although plop art entails much more ostracizing than site-specific art because of its nature to be a random body.

Read more »