Portuguese Artist Dalila Gonçalves Melds Her Native Country's Tiles With Boulders

In Blankenberge Square, "Kneaded Memory" by Portugese artist Dalila Gonçalves is an outdoor sculpture garden of concrete-cast boulders partially covered with decorative Portugese "azulejos" tiles. The public art installation is running through September 2012 as part of Beaufort04.




Each patterned "stone" has been made so by the artist’s use of hand crafted tiles which typically adorn her home country’s vibrant façades while decorated in the style of Brussels’ Blankenberge region.




The use of tile, concrete and form suggest remains or parcels, and it is through this assemblage that the artist sought to cross local narrative (the tile's patterns are from Blankenberge) and the Portuguese traditional artisanal craft of tile-making.





To develop the outdoor installation, the artist and her team mapped the outer surface of the boulders (which were made from concrete, not naturally occurring)*. A grid was used to mark where each decorative component would be positioned. Then, each piece of vibrant earthenware was fitted onto the convex and concave formation of the rocks, adopting the surface of these objects.






The ceramic tiles were molded to sit perfectly on the irregular and round surfaces of these forms, melding the two and creating an installation which combines ancient Portuguese ceramic work with the notion of the increasing degradation, destruction and exclusion of the decorative element in architectural use.

*Designboom, an excellent site, was mistaken in that these rocks are not 'naturally occurring organic forms', but were created from cast concrete for this project.

Dalila Gonçalves: Kneaded Memory
Beaufort04, Blankenberge,
Belgium
on until September 30th, 2012

images courtesy of Dalila Gonçalves, beaufort04, Designboom, and Diario Design

Dalila Gonçalves

The Rock Has Landed. Levitated Mass, A 340 Ton Boulder by Michael Heizer, Hits LACMA.

Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer, considered one of the last great 'land artists', is composed of a 456-foot-long slot constructed on LACMA's campus, over which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. At 340 tons, the boulder is one of the largest megaliths moved since ancient times.


above: Michael Heizer, sketch for Levitated Mass, 2011, © Michael Heizer

above: The granite boulder is now carefully positioned atop the center of a 456-foot-long concrete slot, which museum visitors descend in order to walk beneath it.

As with other works by the artist, such as Double Negative (shown below), the monumental negative form is key to the experience of the artwork.

above: Michael Heizer's Double Negative, 1969-70, two trenches cut into the eastern edge of the Mormon Mesa, northwest of Overton, Nevada.

Heizer conceived of the artwork in 1968, but discovered an appropriate boulder only decades later, in Riverside County, California. Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.

Visiting the Quarry: the Making of Levitated Mass:
During the winter of 2011, Director Michael Goven visited the quarry in Riverside, California where the 340-ton monolith was awaiting transport to LACMA.



Crowds gather at LACMA to see Levitated Mass:

In the early morning hours just before dawn on March 10th, 2012, the transporter carrying the megalith arrived at the museum. The transporter traveled through four counties (Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Los Angeles) and twenty-two cities in a carefully orchestrated journey that attracted thousands of bystanders.  

The Megalith Arrives at LACMA: The Making of Levitated Mass:

As a show of thanks to the many communities which saw and hosted the historic transport of the 340-ton boulder that is now part of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass at LACMA, the museum is offering free admission to residents of select zip codes during the week of June 24 to July 1, 2012.

 

Simply show proof of residence in one of the below zip codes—for instance, a driver’s license— at the LACMA ticket office, and you’ll be granted free admission to all of our exhibitions and collection.

90001 90002 90003 90004 90005 90006 90007 90008 90010 90011 90015 90016 90018 90019 90020 90021 90024 90028 90029 90034 90035 90036 90037 90038 90043 90044 90046 90047 90048 90052 90056 90057 90058 90059 90061 90062 90064 90067 90068 90069 90089 90095 90210 90211 90212 90220 90221 90232 90242 90247 90248 90249 90255 90301 90302 90303 90305 90501 90502 90503 90504 90505 90506 90601 90602 90603 90604 90605 90606 90621 90623 90630 90631 90638 90639 90650 90670 90701 90703 90706 90710 90712 90713 90715 90716 90717 90723 90744 90745 90746 90747 90755 90802 90804 90805 90806 90807 90808 90810 90813 90814 90815 90831 90840 90895 91709 91710 91715 91730 91743 91744 91745 91748 91752 91761 91762 91763 91764 91765 91766 91786 91788 91789 91792 92335 92337 92509 92821 92822 92833 92835

 images, videos and info courtesy of LACMA and reuters

Urban Plant Tags by Carmichael Collective

Carmichael Collective is an ongoing project from Carmichael Lynch, a creative company and ad agency based in Minneapolis, MN. Creating for creativity's sake, they feature various fun works in a variety of sizes and media.

The project "Urban Plant Tags" applies the familiar plastic stake that comes with household plants to various objects found in typical urban and suburban environments, complete with faux Latin names and tongue-in cheek care instructions.








all images courtesy of Carmichael Collective

Wire Faces Made From Sieves Cast Beautiful Shadows In The Installation Cement Bleak.

Artist Isaac Cordal's urban installation, Cement Bleak, in Dalston, London consisted of faces modeled on sieves or wire colanders.





Set up so that the public lights projected shadows on the pavement, the results were beautiful. See for yourself.










See more of Isaac Cordal's artwork here.