Hello Pretty is Winding Down

After more than ten fulfilling, magical years beginning in the good old days of 2012, Hello Pretty is retiring and heading off to the beach with a drink with a tiny umbrella.

Read our goodbye letter

Art

Michael Elion's urban rainbows

This is so incredibly cool. SA artist Michael Elion was inspired by a perfectly circular rainbow he saw while surfing, and decided to find out how to create a man-made rainbow to be used as an installation artwork (as you do). After a year of trial and error, he’s worked out how to create a stunning rainbow that’s on display every afternoon. We need more artists like this.

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-10-12-00-thing-of-beauty-elusive-art-for-man-in-the-street

New York City MetroCard art

Anyone who has visited the fabulous city of New York… City?… will almost certainly have taken a ride on their metro system. The exits to the Metro are always littered with dozens of used Metro cards, and so it is exciting to see that someone has created art with them!

That someone is Nina Boesch who lives in New York City (obviously!) and she makes the incredible collages that are being displayed on this MyModernMet article. I’ve only posted three here - there are loads more on the MyModernMet site.

One seriously talented lady.

Christian Faur's photo-realistic crayon art (it's not what you think)

Who doesn’t love a little crayon art! Ok, to be fair, I don’t think anything I ever did with a crayon could quite compare to what Christian Faur has done. These photo-realistic artworks created all with crayons, and only crayons, border on unbelievable.

The Forgotten Children body of work is incredible, and the artist explains that:

This experimental series of blurred children portraits focuses on images of children as anonymous individuals. The final images are littered with common names of children rendered in “crayonAlphabet” color. The anonymity of these individuals is reflected in both the technique and the written text that is being used in each individual frame as a face without a name is only a fiction of an individual. One of the faces used in the series is a self portrait of myself as a child, rendered in the same style and with the same set of random common names, to appear similar in every to the other portraits, one portrait among the many.

Seen in design-milk.com.

Samantha Huang's Altered Books

Reblogged from fuckyeahbookarts:

Samantha Y. Huang was born in 1985, in Changhua, Taiwan. She began studying business upon graduation from high school, but decided working in an office was not for her and quit after one semester. She subsequently moved to Vancouver, Canada where she studied English and began to take an interest in the Arts.

“In my art practice, I use mediums that have a strong relationship with people’s creative art productions: books, crayons, coloured pencils, paper, and acrylic paint. This is intended to portray the awareness of mediums as themselves through a sense of touch and lead the audience to reconsider the relationship among mediums, creators, and audience. The art pieces are as accessible for touching as the mediums being experienced initially by the artist. 

I believe that the messages of mediums /ideas/concept cannot be received fully by sense of sight alone. Many hidden characteristics can only be unfolded by other human senses. I would like to invite my audience to explore the experience and interact with my artwork by using sense of touch. The experience of art provides more feelings and understandings when it has a multi-sensory approach.” - Samantha Y.Huang

saatchionline | flickr

Pretty Personal with Aaron Kearney

If Irish eyes are smiling, it’s probably because they’ve spotted one of the talented Irish-born Mr Aaron Kearney’s designs. Once he got tired of overachieving at school (100% for Art & Design in his final year of high school, and Honours from Central Saint Martins) he put his talent and energy into making beautiful, imaginative furniture and ceramics.

Here’s what he had to say for himself:
 
  1. Hello Aaron! So, who are you exactly?
    Well, I grew up in Ireland and was always surrounded by art. Whether it was playing with clay, or paint, or whatever, it was awesome. My mum is a very talented former art teacher and has a couple of degrees so it all started there I guess. Then around my early teenage years I started getting into woodwork as my retired grandfather tried to find things to do with his time in the garage. Add on a fantastic art department at school, the wealth of creativity in London and Saint Martins, some years of experience, and you’re ready to serve.
     
  2. Sounds delicious! Can you tell us about the wonderful things you make?
    My Hello Pretty store is quite a good representation of the direction I’ve gone in the last year or so. There is bespoke woodwork, lasercut sculptural pieces, ceramics, and my recontextualised wheelbarrow. I realised that I had to embrace different mediums. I had ideas that didn’t lend themselves to wood, my plates being the obvious example of that, and decided I would delve into various disciplines depending on what I wanted to achieve. I’d like to think my pieces and products have a stem running through them, similar to going to a solo show at an art gallery - you can see the same palette of colours in various paintings, and you know the same artist is responsible for all the work.
     
  3. What influences and inspires you?
    People, my son, the thought of school/art college reunions, the natural world, geometry.
     
  4. Is there anything interesting coming up for you that we should know about?
    I recently sent a new Octahedron up to the Southern Guild exhibition at Everard Read in Johannesburg. Also, we’re working on the prototypes to extend the range of ceramic plates.
     
  5. We’ll definitely keep an eye out for them. Thanks for taking the time to chat to us - we’ll have to buy you a drink sometime!
    Sure, a White Russian would be ideal - Big Lebowski playing on a big projector!
 
We’re pretty sure The Dude would be a fan of Aaron’s work - much like the rug, his pieces really tie a room together. You can find them in his Hello Pretty store, and stay up to date with his projects on Facebook.

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