Ceramic Masters of Icheon

This beautifully shot film of the working process of five Korean ceramics masters is just mesmerizing. The skill! The artistry! Ah. ❤ I could just watch it on loop...


Video by the American Museum of Ceramic Art
via My Modern Met

A beautifully expressive short ballet

I keep saying this, but I just love discovering a new piece of artwork or music and artist or singer through randomly clicking on a link somewhere. Today this video of Sergei Polunin dancing to Andrew Hozier's 'Take me to church' was trending and I clicked to see why.


Wowee! I had heard of Polunin before, I think probably from coverage for when he unexpectedly left the Royal Ballet, but I hadn't seen his work. On just this performance in the video - I think he really is incredible. The power in his leaps and turning jumps is just awesome, and I love that you can see his emotions through his movements and in his body, particularly his face and his hands, as he interprets the music.

I love dance and ballet in particular. I love the discipline and the form - the training gives ballet dancers that elegance and poise and those very particular shapes and extended lines that are really pleasing to look at. The thing is though, I'm not actually so keen on classical ballets. Yes, they're very pretty, but maybe they're too pretty. I always feel they're dancing with masks on because they can't show their effort on their faces. And it can't be messy - it has to be very neat, and precise. I feel that, dance, at its simplest, is expression. Expression is messy; it's visceral and spontaneous. So I love this way of ballet dancing. The movements are not completely tidy, in fact I feel they're quite unrestrained, in that he's not censoring himself - he's not just aiming for a picture perfect pose but to actually describe a feeling.  Yet, you can still see that he is technically brilliant because he can execute those difficult, powerful moves and look absolutely exquisite as he hits those lines.  And it feels very raw and emotive because he's showing effort and emotion on his face. What an astounding dancer. All the more impressive because I know a little of how difficult it is!

Amor Mio by Lee Hyori feat. Park Jiyong

I am so in love with this song. Not only is Lee Hyori unbelievably beautiful, this song really showcases her voice. And Park Jiyong, who duets with her on this, can really sing. My word! He hits really high notes on it. Plus he plays the piano for the piece, which is always a bonus for me =D

The lyrics are as beautiful as the melody. It's about losing the one you love, so it's a sad one. It's so powerful and delicate at the same time.

This is a live version, with English subtitles.


Sigh.... and swoon.

Ingrid Michaelson @ Union Chapel

Last week, one of my friends treated me to a gig at the amazing Union Chapel in Islington. I didn't know singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson before, but it turns out I've heard some of her work because her songs have been featured in lots of TV series, like Grey's Anatomy and Vampire Diaries. And she actually co-wrote Parachute, with Marshall Altman, which was a big hit in the UK a couple of years ago.


Parachute is a very catchy song anyway but I thought that her acoustic version sounded even better.

Apart from being an accomplished song writer and multi-instrumentalist, she has an amazing voice and is a great live performer. The set of songs she played were beautifully arranged and had wonderful harmonies (provided by equally talented Allie Moss and Bess Rogers).


What really added to the performance was undoubtedly the venue itself. The acoustics inside the chapel were just incredible, even the quietest notes carried through the whole place and I could feel the vibrations from the bass through the wooden pews. It was awesome. How better evidenced than by this off-mic performance?


Lovely quality videos via seputus, with more available to watch. ~*~

ilovedoodle by Lim Heng Swee

I saw this incredibly funny image of an ice cream cone...emm...doing its business (!) on Pinterest and just had to find out who the artist was. After a search, I finally landed on Lim Heng Swee's ilovedoodle page.

Everyone poops by ilovedoodle

An illustrator/visual artist based in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, I love how his simple illustrations are so fun and whimsical, and sometimes also carry little messages of encouragement.

Good news is on the way by ilovedoodle

The Backpacker by ilovedoodle

Dande(Lions) by ilovedoodle

Try to see things from different angles by ilovedoodle

Dare to Dream by ilovedoodle

His little catchphrase is 'doodling a smile' and they certainly put a smile on my face. For lots more of his work, visit his website and follow his doodle everyday project. =D

Yoshimasa Tsuchiya

Shhhhh! Don't scare it away...

*whispers* Aren't these beautiful sculptures by Japanese artist Yoshimasa Tsuchiya just breath taking?

Kirins, unicorns, bakus and fawns of Japanese folklore look so life-like you half expect them to start moving...

With slender limbs and delicate features, they have an ethereal beauty befitting of such mythical beings.

And yet, you sense there is something slightly wild and dangerous too.

What makes them even more amazing to me is that they are formed and carved out of solid blocks of wood!

It would be so wonderful to see these in an exhibition, I could spend hours daydreaming...

You can see more in his online portfolio.

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Ah, the Mexican guitar duo. Have you heard their work? They have a genre-defying, fast, rhythmic acoustic guitar sound influenced by classical Hispanic music with a huge energy injection from their shared love and background of thrash metal and hard rock.



The mind boggles at the speed they play at...



~♥~

Of woodland sprites & ocean critters in rainbow colour

Parade

Allow me to introduce you to, if you are not already acquainted with, the wonderfully whimsical world from the imagination of May Ann Licudine, aka MALL.

In the Hidden Lanterns

She posts as frecklefaced29 on deviantART and I've been a fan for ages - many a times I've wanted to show her work on my Thursday ♥ features, but I kept delaying so that I could do a full post on it because I just couldn't choose only one piece.

Cat Nudibranchia I

An artist from the Philippines, her beautiful colour pencil drawings and acrylic paintings evoke the magic of cute spirit worlds with lanterns and Japanese festival masks, forest sprites and deep sea creatures.

Nature Whisperer

I absolutely love her use of colour: every piece bursts with it. Oh and all the little details!

Big Gossip

Her graphite and black and white pencil drawings are just as good with their soft and dreamy focus, and still, the details!

Nature's Daughter I

Nature's Daughter II

Nature's Daughter III

Visit her blog and gallery for more! ~*~

The Great Mushroom Oranda

Yuki Kaori

Angel Sanctuary by Yuki Kaori was one of the first scanlations my sister and I read, back in the days when manga were still not yet widely published in English. Its themes of heaven and hell, corrupt angels and ambiguous demons were gripping. The biggest draw for me though, was the dark gothic drawing style.

Angel Sanctuary is definitely one of the classics, but my favourite by Yuki-san is Count Cain, and Godchild, a series set in Victorian England about an aristocrat with an interest in poisons, who for some reason is always embroiled in murder mysteries and also happens to have a really dark family secret. How much more Gothic can you get? Oh yes, by referencing lots of creepy nursery rhymes and fairytales...

I'm sure it's no surprise that her catalog of work also includes stories about vampires, fairies, and possessed puppets.

Yuki-san, along with Chobits by CLAMP and Yazawa Ai's work, introduced me to the various Lolita styles. It definitely fed my partiality to full skirts, lace and ruffles...

Stephen Mackey

I first came across fine artist Stephen Mackey's work when I found a set of avatar icons featuring these illustrations from his Porcelina series of cards and prints. I love his soft and dreamy depiction of doll-like fairies and other creatures.

He has also published a couple of children's picture books, telling the stories of a little girl called Miki and her friends who live in an Arctic-like landscape of ice and snow.

His own, non-commercial, style of work is much darker in comparison, like classical paintings with a touch of whimsy and Victorian macabre.

Visit his paintings gallery for more!

Dissected porcelain

I really like this concept by UK sculptural artist Beccy Ridsdel. Called Art/Craft, she wanted to explore the debate of craft versus art, technique and function versus idea and meaning.

Installed like a surgical lab experiment, the outwardly ordinary pieces of bone china plates and mugs have been dissected to reveal beautifully ornate innards.

Beccy explains that the '... ‘surgeon’ is dissecting the craft object to see what is within' and that '..he finds craft through and through. He tries the experiment again and again, piling up the dissected work, hoping to see something different but it is always the same'.

Her thought was that by '...turning a table full of craft objects into an artwork in its own right, it had a point beyond the technique, beyond the things themselves'.

 

I'd argue though that the dissected pieces themselves also suggest how, at its core, craft has art running through it. Beautiful craft work is, in its own right, an artform. Take any piece of tapestry, hand embroidered wedding gown, hand forged sword...

The world's smallest letter

How can you not squeal in delight at the World's Smallest Postal Service's tiny letters? Lea Redmond used to take her mobile post desk around with her and transcribe letters by hand into insey winsey miniature form.

I love, love, love the attention to detail. The envelope has a tiny address (and return address!), special mini stamps, mini WSPS post mark and is closed with a teeny initialed wax seal, then packaged with a magnifying glass to be sent in a normal sized parcel.

Lea now runs a business sending tiny letters, cards and mini parcels everywhere from her website. You can even buy your own mini letter kit!

I am unashamedly a big fan of snail mail and a super geek of all things miniature so I'm probably biased on two fronts, but an email or text just can't beat the amount of time that goes into something like a tiny letter and the excitement of receiving something like it.

Pete Revonkorpi

Painter

pesare (aka Pete Revonkorpi) is another artist I've been following for a long time on deviantART.

How to Fly

I love the soft blurred edges and simple shapes and colour palettes that he uses, but above all I love the strong sense of narrative in his illustrations.

Night Harvester

Each painting seems to be telling a story from the dream-like world of his imagination and I love their sense of the sweetly surreal.

Star Fisher

I especially like the animations he has done where the story unfolds as the painting is being painted. This one is Coffee - the 'short story of an addicted mind'.