The Throne of Africa

Today again, and just as it happened with our previous posts on the Tree of Life, the Transforming Arms into Art Project or the Freedom sculpture, we bring you another art piece produced within the scope of a humanitarian project devised with a deep concern for social awareness and social justice. Its ultimate objective is that of encouraging a culture of peace in a country emerging from a sixteen-year long civil war. We are referring to the unique project “Transforming Arms into Art” developed in Mozambique. We, therefore, expect to touch your hearts and alert you to the global need for solidarity and against the destructiveness fuelled by illicit arms trade throughout the world.

Story Telling

“I wonder what’s in a book while it’s closed.(...) something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there’s a whole story (...) and all kinds of adventures and deeds...” says Bastian, the young boy in Michael Ende’s fantastic book The Never-ending Story.

Making a Feast of Straw

“The key to life is imagination. If you don’t have that, no matter what you have, it’s meaningless. If you do have imagination... you can make a feast of straw”, says Jane Stanton Hitchcock, New York Times bestselling author, who started her career as a playwright and screenwriter.

Nothing could better fit Rajan Koshy, a rice straw artist born near Trivandrum, in Kerala, southern India, and living in Galveston. A nurse by profession at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Koshy has dedicated himself to creating art pieces using rice straw, since he wants “to save an ancient and endangered form of art”, as he states.

Underwater Wonder World

Imagine yourself diving into the crystal-clear blue waters of the Caribbean, into that unique blue you can find nowhere else in the world. Imagine yourself exploring the sheer beauty of the coral reefs and swimming among the most colourful species of fish and other underwater organisms. Pure magic! Now go a step further and imagine suddenly finding yourself among absolutely stunning sculptures scattered on the seabed. It can only be that you have unknowingly entered a magic world... We are precisely taking you on a guided tour of that enticing and fantastic place.

Flowing, Floating, Fleeting...

“Life is energy: pure creative energy”, says celebrated author Julia Cameron. Nothing could better fit the powerful yet fluid and strongly sensual sculptures by Gil Bruvel, whose work impresses and intrigues viewers at first sight and makes them prisoners of its fascinating and inescapable appeal.

Fairy Tale Forest

Forests are the very source and the main setting of fairy tales. As Sara Maitland states in her book Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forest and Fairytales, “Forests to... northern European peoples were dangerous and generous, domestic and wild, beautiful and terrible. And forests were the terrain out of which fairy stories... evolved”. This could well have been the idea behind the creation of Steel Flowers and Trees Sculptures, a fascinating collection of works by world famous artist Zadok Ben-David, on exhibition at the Singapore Botanic Gardens between October 2012 and February 2013.

Shooting Poverty into Art

Although not so much falling within the aesthetic pattern of the artworks we have been dealing with in this blog, we bring to you today something that, however, totally meets its objective of also introducing art pieces which have been produced within the scope of humanitarian projects with a social purpose. In fact, and just as we hope to have achieved with our post on the Tree of Life and the project behind it, we expect to touch your hearts and to emotionally engage you.

Feast your Eyes on Feathers

Fancy a peacock’s superb tail, trailing behind it as if in a pageantry full of pomp and circumstance. Now think about the magnificence, the beauty, the fascinating colours in shades of deep blues and greens and the absolutely perfect shape of each of its feathers...  It could only spark off the greed of royalty and the vanity of the affluent throughout the world.

Beyond Boundaries

“... The call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound...we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind... The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.” This statement by David Richo, psychotherapist, university teacher and author, could well have been Bruno Catalano’s keystone for the creation of his thought-provoking sculptures.