If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): mosaic art

Showing posts with label mosaic art. Show all posts

Dream Big - Martin Luther King Jr. Mosaic Made With 4,242 Rubik's Cubes.

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, I'd like to share with you this mosaic montage of MLK created with solved rubik's cubes.

Created by Pete Fecteau, shown below in front of his work, the mural is titled Dream Big.

The mosaic is made of 4,242 officially licensed Rubik’s Cubes and measures just shy of 20 feet wide.

details:

above detail photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitsorf/

Pete at work on the mural:

Technical info:
It measures 19′ x 8’6″ x 2.25″ (5.8m x 2.6m x 5.7cm ). It weighs roughly 1000 pounds (454kg). Each cube has been “reversed solved” or twisted so that one of the faces maps it’s nine stickers into the total image, 38,178 stickers total.

The construction process took a little over 40 hours and the final installation to about five and a half hours with 6 volunteers helping. The cubes were rented through the You Can Do The Cube organization. The mosaic was on display during the 2010 ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan USA from September 22nd to October 10th. There were roughly 30,000 people who came to view the mosaic during that time. “Dream Big” placed in the top 50 out of 1,700+ entries. The mosaic was left intact for a month after the competition in an attempt to sell it. The pending sale did not materialize and the mosaic was disassembled in late November and the cubes were shipped back to their originating points.

Costs:
The cubes themselves were rented for roughly $8,000 however the total cost of the project was approximately $9,000. A private donation was made for $4,000 and fundraising through special events and Kickstarter.com helped to raise the remainder.

About the Artist:
Pete Fecteau is a designer by day. He attended Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan and attained his BFA in Digital Media Design in 2007. His design portfolio can be seen at http://buttonpresser.com. He mainly works as an interactive designer and helps build online and mobile experiences. Pete also loves illustration, painting, and sculpture and finds time between work to create more traditional art aside for his Rubik’s Cube mosaics. His wife Caitlin and he were married on August 27th, 2011 in Brighton, Michigan they both relocated to San Francisco in January, 2011 were Pete had been awarded a fellowship with Code for America.

images courtesy of Pete Fecteau and additional photos courtesy of Uthink media

Portraits of Black Icons Made With Thousands Of Colorful Thumbtacks.

Andre Woolery's work depicts his journey as an artist and reflects his personal cultural experience as a young black man. His current work, comprised of thousands of colored thumbtacks (not unlike Eric Daigh's pushpin portraits) combined with paint, is primarily portraits of black icons by design.

above: Artist Andre Woolery with some of his thumbtack portraits

Initially inspired by Fruit Loops, because of their bright colors, Andre considered using the children's cereal as a medium. He then found a package of multicolored thumbtacks and began searching for them in all the colors he would need (apparently trying to find "orange" was like searching for the holy grail according to Andre).

Thanks to Mike Jacobs of Jam Paper, he ended up a wide array of colors (including orange) that made the following portraits of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Jimi Hendrix, President Obama and All About The Benjamins possible.

Challenged to find a way of keeping the tacks in place on the canvas, he bought ALL of the hardware store's expanding foam to spray the back of the canvas. The rest of the piece was tack-by-tack trial and error. Every 'pixel' was a lesson in spacing, light, and color to create the vision of Mr. Sean Carter (aka Jay-Z).

Jay-Z "The Tackover," April 2010
7,633 thumbtacks in total
Price for the original: $ 7,633.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem School of Arts.

Kanye West "Tacks on Tacks on Tacks," September 2011,
Over 8,000 thumbtacks
Price for the original: $ 12,000.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem School of Arts.

President Obama "Wet Paint," November 2011,
Over 10,000 thumbtacks.
Price for the original: $ 15,000.00

"It's All About the Benjamins," (featuring Benjamin Banneker) November 2011
23,850 thumbtacks in total
Price for the original: $ 25,000.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem Children's Zone.

Jimi Hendrix "Electric Feel"
Over 2,000 thumbtacks
Price for the original: $ 4,250.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem School of Arts.

Artist Andre Woolery:

All the artwork in this post (and more) is available for sale as originals or digital prints, some pieces whose partial proceeds go to the Harlem School of the Arts and the Harlem Children's Zone, making them that much more attractive.

Andre's thumbtack portraits only represent some of his artistic work. Check out his website to see more.

His etsy store

Shop for Andre's work here

Nonpareil Pet Portrait. One Sweet Beagle Made of 221,184 Colored Sprinkles.

What began as a university fine arts project on Pointillism and Georges Seurat by student Joel Brochu, evolved into a remarkable artistic idea.

What looks like an image of a beagle getting a bath (above) is actually a 4’ by 1 ½’ high definition photograph covered in 221,184 nonpareil sprinkles, each placed painstakingly by hand.

At a distance of 16 feet, the sprinkles blur, tricking the human eye into believing that it is looking at a large photograph. Only when you closely examine the work do you realize that it has been created entirely with tiny spheres of rainbow nonpareils.

Meticulously placed by hand using jewelry tweezers, the sprinkles adhere to the board with the help of double sided tape and a thin layer of glue.

Using only 6 colors of sprinkles (Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Black, and White), a myriad of hues was created.

Joel used a customized computer program, in which a template was created from the original image which guided the placement of each sprinkle. Taking just under 8 months to complete, once finished, it was permanently preserved with a clear acrylic resin.

Sweet, huh?

A big shoutout to Betsy Wills and her wonderful blog, Artstormer, for bringing this unique piece to my attention. Most images courtesy of Joel Brochu

Eye Popping Pill Portraits of Celebrities Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger & More.

Get a load of Jason Mecier's portraits of celebrities Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Courtney Love and Kelly Osbourne made with actual pills. While it's true that some of these subject's undoing was the medium itself, others, like Kelly Osbourne have successfully kicked the habit. Either way, these are interesting homages to them.