Fenicologia (collaboration with Tarina Tarantino) - Adam Wallacavage

When I finally get my enormous sea palace one of Adam Wallacavage‘s magnificent Octopus Chandeliers is going in the main entrance to better illuminate the grand staircase.

Aren’t they stunning? I think my favourite thing about them is that even when you’re not using them as sources of light, they keep drawing your attention by casting wonderfully octopus-y shadows on the walls and ceiling.

According to Jonathan LeVine Gallery who represent him there’s a solo show of his work at the Philadelphia Art Alliance from 17 May – 15 June but the listings on PAA’s website don’t go far enough into the future to check that. Perhaps that’s no bad thing though as there’s no way on earth I can get to Philadelphia during that time so I’d just be torturing myself!

Topaz - Adam Wallacavage

Royal Little Red Riding Hood (after Kilimnik) - Justin Rowe

Justin Rowe creates these magical sculptures from hand cut books and found images with the help of just a touch of gum arabic and 24 carat gold or palladium leaf. Some are very much in the realms of fairy stories like the one above, but my favourites are the stories below where Justin’s skill brings the book’s own illustrations to life.

Still No Soul Appeared Upon Her Decks - Justin Rowe

Those particular images are half pop up book, half sculpture, so it’s no surprise that he’s currently in talks with Hodder/Hachette children’s books to develop a pop up version of his Twelve Days of Christmas series (previously Cambridge University Press’s Christmas 2011 window display).

You can see a selection of Justin’s work below, but you can buy prints of his work thanks to his range of blank greeting cards on Etsy.

Alex Gross

They are mixed media pieces which take vintage Cabinet cards (those little Victorian portrait photographs like the example on the left)  and transforming them into pop culture characters (as on the right).

You can see a whole range of the finished cards on his website – well worth a browse through. If you’re hoping to see more of Alex’s work he has a solo exhibition, Product Placement, coming up at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery – 25 Feb-24 Mar – in New York.

Fans who cannot get to NYC should keep an eye on Amazon for his upcoming book, Now and Then: The Cabinet Card Paintings of Alex Gross. It doesn’t appear to have a listing yet but according to his Facebook page it should be up in about a month.

Sandman - Alex Gross

(Via io9)

Blue marble view of earth. Photo: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

If I didn’t make the effort to do otherwise, I could EASILY devote this entire art blog to the stunning photos that NASA makes publicly and freely available (and which I am so grateful that they do).

Unlike the solar flare picture, I know exactly how this one was created – it’s actually a composite image made from pictures of swathes of the surface of the planet taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The VIIRS is aboard the satellite Suomi NPP.

You can get an idea for how detailed the image really by looking at the partial image below – it’s taken from the original sized image which is far too big (8,000 x 8,000 px) to fit more than a tiny bit of it on the screen in one go.

See the whole thing on NASA’s Flickr account.

Tranquility park - Paulius (reproduced under CC licence)

Paulius (I’m afraid I only have the Flickr username to go by) has created these great panorama planets by stitching together a collection of photos taken from the same vantage point but turned a little each time.

It’s something I’ve seen done before but these really stood out because the positioning of the object in the frame is so dependent on the shape of the skyline from each ‘planet’. The one above is particularly beautiful, thrown off-centre by the trees and with some lovely vignetting in the corners.

Planet City Square - Paulius (reproduced under CC licence)

Image: NASA/SDO/GOES-15

I saw this image in the paper the other day and resolved to find out more about it. NASA gives it the following caption:

Still from video of Jan 19, 2012 long duration solar flare and coronal mass ejection (CME) which is expect to reach Earth on Jan 21, 2012.

So (having established that 21 Jan has been and gone and was clearly nothing to worry about) what the heck is a solar flare?

A solar flare is an intense burst of radiation which is caused by plasma (electrically charged gas) slamming into the surface of the Sun. Basically a massive explosive event.

And what the heck is a coronal mass ejection?

A coronal mass ejection is when, instead of colliding violently with the surface of the Sun as with the solar flare, the plasma is directed outward and – as NASA explains – is “squirted out into interplanetary space”.

Both types of explosion release a LOT of radiation of all wavelengths which apparently affects the Earth’s local space weather.

I couldn’t find out much about the imaging equipment that records pictures like the one above but I would assume it records ultraviolet wavelengths and converts them into colour images. Ultraviolet radiation monitoring seems to be the most common way of measuring coronal activity and plasma caught in the magnetic loops of the corona gives off ultraviolet light so that would make sense.

Don’t you think it’s a little odd that the conversion from UV to the visible spectrum has been set as blue and green, though?  It makes the sun look like a strange version of earth with a particularly vicious aurora!

Martian fighting machines destroy a town in England - Alvim Correa

While perusing the British Library’s new print service I found several beautiful works by Alvim Correa. They’re deep in early science fiction territory and have a wonderful sort of Batteries-Not-Included-meets-Hammer-Horror flavour to them.

Digging a little deeper (thanks, Portuguese Wikipedia!) I found out that the illustrator’s full name is Henrique Alvim Corrêa – a Brazilian artist working in Belgium around the turn of the twentieth century who specialised in science fiction art. There was also a smidge of military art and a touch of erotica in his oeuvre but his most famous work illustrating a 1906 French language edition of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

The Martians Arrive - Alvim Correa

Happily Abebooks actually has a copy up for sale and the item blurb attests to the splendour of the image work. Sadly the book is listed at £5632.62 and is therefore not within my whimsical purchase budget.

The reason that Correa’s work isn’t more well known is, I think, down to a couple of things. The first is that the 1906 version of The War of the Worlds only had a print run of 500 making copies of the work today both rare and out of normal price range. As such I’m guessing the images haven’t really circulated as they might have. The second is that Correa died young – he only lived to be 34 years old. This isn’t always a barrier to fame but it does mean there wasn’t as much work as perhaps there could have been.

The Martian Fighting Machines in the Thames Valley - Alvim Correa

It does strike me as odd that Taschen haven’t seen fit to bring out a coffee table book of his illustrations but until they do we must make do with images from the internet and be thankful for the “lifetime of the artist plus 70 years” copyright rule…

Martian fighting machine battles with warship Thunder Child - Alvim Correa

The British Library has just launched an on-demand print service meaning you can own many of the stunning (and in some cases world renowned) images from the Library archives.

The service, which operates in association with Magnolia Box – a company who facilitate the sale of visual content – promises to

[Open] up the vast range of the British Library’s collection items, the prints available include images from past and present British Library exhibitions, such as gold-covered illustrations from medieval royal manuscripts and exquisite hand drawn maps. Also available are gems from the British Library archives, from Victorian circus posters, advertising the freakish and bizarre, to classic 1920’s fashion images.

The images on offer come in most of the usual gallery gift shop formats – framed and unframed prints, canvases, postcards and greeting cards. Sadly no word on printed teatowels. If you’re not London-based the online service has the added bonus of delivering straight to your door.

Prices start at £2.50 for a postcard and rise to £115 for the largest framed canvas print.

Oh, and I’d like to make an early bet on what the most popular print will be…

Note to editors:

Magnolia Box creates custom print on demand solutions for visual content owners.

They help artists, photographers, galleries, museums, publishers and picture libraries to sell their content online using their own dedicated e-commerce website or in-store kiosk. www.magnoliabox.com

Pride & Prejudice Valentine's card - Mr Teacup

Seriously. Consider my gauntlet thrown down.

Pride and Prejudice/Mr Darcy Valentine’s Day card – $4.40 on Etsy

Carl Kleiner for Ikea

You may remember Carl Kleiner for his recipe book photography a couple of years ago which, rather than offering up the traditional sugar and flour porn, neatly organised the ingredients on coloured backgrounds. Since then he’s done a number of things including an ad campaign for the reward program Avios which keeps catching my eye on the tube. But most of all I’m really enjoying his work with furniture empire Ikea, whose products lend themselves to Kleiner’s clean geometric style with fabulous ease.

Carl Kleiner for Ikea

Carl Kleiner for Ikea

Carl Kleiner for Ikea

Carl Kleiner for Ikea

You can see all of Kleiner’s previous projects on www.carlkleiner.com