Watts for wax

Harry Allen

100% natural beeswax; wick

A really smart observation

This Into That

This Into That™ Two-Bracket Bookshelf : Jim Rosenau

Size: Approximately 24"-28" long x 7" tall x 7" deep

This piece reminds me of the 10X10 project I took part in last year. Using found/recycled materials to product new products, the fact that the raw materials of this piece are found object makes it "limited - edition" as no two will ever be identical, I think that adds value to the piece, the back story of where the raw materials come from enrich the product and add history to it. 

It is also interesting to note this is a piece of literal design. A book shelf... manufactured from books. Oh how i love the irony...

Hyper-Realism

Sam Jinks

Still Life (Pieta) 2007

silicon, paint & human hair

160.0 x 123.0 cm

Excerpt from An Interview With Sam Jinks:

- -"What do you hope the viewer will take away from your sculptures?
I’d like to think that the viewer would feel something after viewing the work, perhaps they could even have some sort of physical experience or maybe see something that they can relate to in their own lives. "- -

This hauntingly realistic piece of Sam Jinks' work says to me: "Your life is in your hands..."

It boldly represents that familiar old saying people bat about so often that: "life's too short.." and conjures thoughts of looking forward at your aged-self , from yourself in the here and now almost to seek futuristic answers. It's an image that is frankly quite upsetting but incredibly, intrusively thought provoking and like all of Sam Jinks' work, something that cannot be ignored. The craftsmanship that has gone into creating each piece is something to behold itself.

Twitter?

Polly morgan

Receiver, 2009

24x8x7cm

Bakelite Telephone Receiver

+ 7 Taxidermy Quail chick Heads

I saw a piece about her on The Culture Show a while ago, maybe over a year ago and read an article in the Sunday Mail about her today on my lunch break. I think her work is fascinating and again in it resonates this kind of strange visual representation of something literal that subtly lures me in; it makes me envisage the sayings: "What are you yittering/twittering on about?" - or "It soudns like a hen hut in the background"

- - Morgan's work is certainly evolving, whether as a conscious reaction to fears of faddishness or not. The decorative, dollhouse-scale tableaux are being joined by the bolder, more abstract and more defiantly sculptural pieces, such as the giant spore-like orbs of wings that her assistants are prepping for on the other side of the room. Her newer work is perhaps less a subversion of the conventions of taxidermy — the glass domes, the life-like poses — and more an exploration of animals as a raw material.

"Maybe it will become more of a conventional medium, like using clay or oil paint," she ponders. There are certainly no immediate plans to abandon fur and feathers. "I don't know of many artists who use taxidermy pretty much exclusively as I do, and I just haven't exhausted it yet. - -

Excerpt from the Guiradian's: Observer On Sunday.

Its interesting to note she thinks of animals corpses now as a raw materials its an intriguing notion to explore... Can't help thinking there may be some use for that otter we have in our freezer after-all...

My Soft Office

My Soft Office by Hella Jongerius

This is a prime example of the kind of designs that make me stop and think..

I saw this piece in New York last year; to me its a very visual representations of the mind set of society. We all waste our lives away in from of the latest LCD/LED screens and this product is a true reflection of the breakdown in societal family values. What happened to the "all sit down around the table" dinners of yester-year? They're now something you can reconstitute with water or micro wave the life out of because family values have broken down and people spend every waking minute over working themselves and where are we eating them? In isolation around the technologies which we find our life completely and utterly consumed by.

It may be the case that the intention for this product was to be functional and meet the demands of modern lifestyles, but it's the provoking visual appearance of what that need it that makes me recoil in horror. I would like to think it has been designed to exaggerate what we've become..

See What You Say

Really interesting area of design: creative product designs that literally represent the products themselves. What really interests me is the kind of play on words that literal design has. Not to be confused with the products made from words, but the meaning behind the word, the noun, the given name or phrase and how it can be visually represented in a very literal manner.

It's like the T.V Show "Catch Phrase"; I was obsessed with it as a child, I loved how the images you saw portrayed the phrase, sometimes subtly and cleverly when you really needed to break the image down into different components to figure out the meaning. Sometimes blatantly and when everyone could guess it straight away and everyone could relate to it. When you see a visual representation of something that you have said, it gives you a better understanding of what it means and just how funny/hurtful/absurd/comforting etc. it is.