Toothpick art

In paper engineering you have to have plenty of finger dexterity and patience. The same thing goes for this art form I've been recently looking into: toothpick modeling!

Check out this model of San Francisco built by a grocery store produce manager, Scott Weaver.



Or these toothpick versions of famous buildings and towers built by Stan Munro:



Wow!

Shelby

Posted on 2 July 2009 | 6:47 pm

AZ Pride

This was my first Pop up book, ‘Creatures of the desert world’. It shows all sorts of plants and animals of the Sonoran desert, where I'm from.


This is what it looks like:


And here is what it looks like at night:


The last page of the pop-up book is the best; it shows all the animals that come out at night. I don’t have a picture of it so you will just have to buy it on Amazon.com or something.
It’s a National Geographic book. The Illustrator and paper engineer are not named - this happens sometimes, because life is not fair and neither is publishing. Anyway, I think the paper engineer did a first rate job.

Simon

Posted on 2 July 2009 | 6:35 pm

French Rock Rocks!

If your ear has been near the radio lately, you've probably heard Phoenix's new album 'Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix'. Or you've heard some of the many mixes and mash ups that are floating around the internet. Really, Phoenix has created an incredible album (dare I say, yet again) and if you haven't checked them out already click here to their website-->

http://www.wearephoenix.com/

Keep rocking, internet world.

Jess

Posted on 2 July 2009 | 6:34 pm

A Castle on the Ocean

A friend of mine came across this while surfing the Web and thought I’d like it. He knows I like paper craft (as anyone one the blog has figured out) and he knows I like castles (as my first pop-up book can attest) – so the combination of these is a sure fire favorite. I was stunned at the level of complexity and sophistication achieved in this tour de force of paper craft. Check out some of the amazing photos at Tokyobling’s blog as well as get some info on the exhibition. A young art student named Wataru Itou spent FOUR years working on this project to complete a degree at a Tokyo art university.

A few more images can be found at the main Japanese website for the Uminohotaru gallery.

Also, I was able to find an article on the paper craft castle here. Since I don’t read Japanese, I had to rely on Google translate to get the gist of the story but it looks like the sprawling town (complete with a castle, construction cranes and moving train) was displayed in a student exhibition earlier this year. At the end of the show, this labor of love was to be burned to the ground! At the last minute, the owner of the gallery rescued it from the flames and found an exhibition space in the underwater Uminohotaru gallery off the coast of Tokyo.

So glad to see this work of art survive to enchant future audiences. Including me.

- Kyle

Posted on 2 July 2009 | 6:31 pm

Thomases

I was picking up the pieces of today’s headlines on the New York Times.com when I came across an article about Thomas Jefferson, the late great inventor, statesman and renaissance man from the time of our country’s founding. 

Posted on 26 June 2009 | 6:23 pm