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      Evoking Mythology and Urban Culture, Beaded Masks Brim with Geometric Motifs and Embellishments

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      Art

      #beads
      #masks
      #mixed media
      #mythology
      #shells

      September 20, 2021
      Grace Ebert

      All images © Fefe Talavera, shared with permission
      From small shells and Amazonian beads, Brazilian-Mexican artist Fefe Talavera strings together elaborate masks that fuse ancient mythologies and contemporary urban culture. The mixed-media works are part of an ongoing series—Talavera shares more on her site and Instagram, along with vibrant silhouettes painted in acrylic and her large-scale murals—that embellish expressive faces with stripes, symmetries, and various geometric patterns. Sometimes spanning upwards of ten feet or featuring a long tuft of straw, the masks are an amalgam of color, motif, and material that blur cultural boundaries and the tenuous distinction between humanity and nature.
      The São Paulo-based artist tells Colossal that the series “developed when my government opened the doors to cattle ranchers, when forest fires began, putting an end to Indigenous tribes, exotic animals, and trees,” and initial iterations used açaí seeds, shells, and mirrors to explore birth and death through a mystical lens. “When we looked at our reflection in the work, we would be seeing ourselves with respect and love, and it is this look that we should have with the Amazonia,” she says.
      Currently, Talavera is working on a larger-scale piece using 20,000 beads, and she has a solo show planned for May 2022 at Paris’s Bandy Bandy Gallery.

      #beads
      #masks
      #mixed media
      #mythology
      #shells

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      Bizarre Porcelain Sculptures by Artist Morel Doucet Tangle Limbs, Seashells, and Coral

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      Art

      #climate change
      #coral
      #flowers
      #installation
      #plants
      #porcelain
      #sculpture
      #sea
      #shells
      #surreal

      August 4, 2020
      Grace Ebert

      “White Noise, Let the choir sing a magnified silence (25 Affirmation)” (2017), slip-cast porcelain and hand-built and altered forms, 5 x 5 feet. All images by David Gary Lloyd and Pedro Wazzan and © Morel Doucet, shared with permission
      Based in Miami, artist Morel Doucet imbues his surreal artworks with a reminder that the natural world is ripe with entanglements. Often monochromatic, the slip-cast and hand-built porcelain pieces merge flora and fauna into dense amalgamations: a series of naked figures sit with coral, safety pins, and starfish as heads, while other assemblages feature a singular arm or pair of legs jutting out from a mass of sea creatures.
      Doucet not only considers how humans are damaging the environment but also who is most likely to suffer in the process. In the series White Noise: When Raindrop Whispers and Moonlight Screams in Silence, he responds to the impacts of the climate crisis and ecological disaster on communities of color in the Miami area. “The beaches are eroding into the sea, coral reefs are turning bleach white, and residents wait tentatively for seawater rise. Everywhere you look Miami is undergoing drastic infrastructure changes trying to gear up for a losing battle against land and sea,” he shares with Colossal. “I believe these communities will experience the greatest climate exodus within our modern times.”
      Doucet’s recent endeavors include an upcoming series called Water grieves in the six shades of death that will respond to climate-gentrification and its impact on communities with lower incomes.  Follow the artist’s sculptural considerations on Instagram. (via The Jealous Curator)

      “Jaded Moonlight (Gardenia)”
      “White Noise, Let the choir sing a magnified silence (25 Affirmation)” (2017), slip-cast porcelain and hand-built and altered forms, 5 x 5 feet
      “Black Madonna & Venus”
      “Regal Black Madonna (black is black, black is motherhood)” (2019), porcelain ceramic with cast altered forms, 22 to 24 inches in diameter
      “When all the gold fell from the sun (Fall from Grace)” (2019), slip-cast porcelain ceramics
      “The black on my back dances in a room full of to many silence part 2” (2019), slip-cast porcelain ceramic and hand altered forms, 6.5 x 10 x 5.5 inches

      #climate change
      #coral
      #flowers
      #installation
      #plants
      #porcelain
      #sculpture
      #sea
      #shells
      #surreal

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      Stones, Leaves, and Shells Whorl in Hypnotic Land Art by Jon Foreman

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       “Whirling Colour” (2019), Freshwater West, Pembrokeshire. All images © Jon Foreman Jon Foreman arranges his seashell coils and stone gradients knowing that they’ll be washed away by the tide or kicked over by passersby. The artist’s ephemeral land art is hypnotic and entrancing in its precision, arranged in perfectly concentric circles and exacting compositions […] More