Bonsai Tree Houses

Japanese artist Takanori Aiba creates fantastically detailed tiny tree houses atop bonsai trees. Using copper line, epoxy putty, plastic, resin and stone clay, he fashions detailed buildings, bridges, balconies and towers.
Takanori Aiba was born in 1953 in Yokohama, Japan. He built his first career as a freelance maze illustrator working for the Japanese fashion magazine POPYE. After a decade he founded his own company,"Graphics and Designing Inc.” in 1981. Since 2003, he has been putting his mind to the creation of three dimensional art works which combines his knowledge and experience of both maze illustrator and architect.
Aiba says:

My source of creations are my early experience of bonsai making and maze illustration. These works make use of an aerial perspective, which like the diagram for a maze shows the whole from above(the macro View) while including minute details (the micro view). If you explore any small part of my works, you find amazing stories and some unique characters. The early bonsai-type models look like bonsai art. Bonsai reflects the Japanese traditional aesthetic sense of expressing the magnificence of nature in a small potted plant. However, the density of decoration and the rich stories of my works contain extraordinary times and spaces which differ from the bonsai world determined by plants physiology.

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Food Carving Photos by Ilian Iliev

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Large Scale Snow Drawings by Sonja Hinrichsen

Using snowshoes artist Sonja Hinrichsen, with the help of 5 volunteers, created these snow drawings at Rabbit’s Ear Pass, a lofty mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains. Sonja Hinrichsen had previously created snow drawings at upstate New York, Colorado and Hayden in the past few years.
Hinrichsen, 44, hails from south-west Germany. She landed in California in 1999 for graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute. Snow drawings first crept into Hinrichsen’s inspiration in 2009 while working at the Anderson Ranch near Aspen. She was inspired by animal tracks left in otherwise unmarked and massive canvasses of snow laid out before her in high mountain meadows.
She created her first spirals on Lake Tahoe. Over time, she started pre-empting her drawings with sketches on paper. But concepts often changed because her effort is a direct response to the environment, and snow behaves differently depending upon its depth, moisture and texture.
“Snow drawings last such a short time. It could be two to three hours, or two to three days,” she says. “They define the landscape and they are defined by it.”

See more pictures on Flickr. If you liked this, you will also love Jim Denevan’s large sand drawings and drawings over frozen ice.

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Coffee Cup Stain Portrait by Hong Yi

Malaysian artist Hong Yi uses all sorts of unconventional objects to create portraits. Recently, she created a huge portrait of Taiwanese musician Jay Chou by staining the canvas with a coffee cup.
The 26 year old artist drew inspiration for the portrait from one of the Chou’s songs “Secret”, whose opening lines is about lifting a coffee cup off the saucer. The ending line of the song is about autumn leaves and fragmented pieces. The singer tells a heartbreak tale of a lost romance with a girl from 1979 who time-traveled forward 20 years and met Jay in 1999, and they fell in love. She then went back to 1979 and sketched a portrait of him.
Hong Yi’s portrait consist of hundreds of individual coffee stain rings, many of them broken and imperfect like fallen autumn leaves, to form a whole portrait. 
“Coffee is quite a challenging medium to use,” she said. “Too much water and the rings wouldn't form easily, too little water and the rings will be too light. I had to be precise with where to place the cup because the rings would be permanent.”

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Drawing With Fire- Pyrography by Julie Bender

Pyrography is the art of drawing with fire; using a heated tip or wire to burn or scorch designs onto natural surfaces such as wood and leather. Pyrography was practiced since the dawn of recorded time by Egyptian and African tribesmen fascinated by the mysterious beauty and power of fire. Modern day pyrography is typically done with solid-point tools, which resemble but are more sophisticated than soldering irons or hot wire tools. These tools are electrically heated by equipment that may allow temperatures to be adjusted, thereby producing a great range of natural tones and shades. Subtle or bold effects may be achieved, depending on many factors, including heat, pressure, type of wood or surface, and tool tips used.
Atlanta-based artist Julie Bender’s technique is to use tools that allow her flexibility to develop her unique style. Inspired by animals and nature, her process begins by compiling inspiring photographs and penciling in her subjects on a well-sanded maple surface with a keen sense of composition and attention to wood grain. Light-handed strokes and smooth, subtle shading using very tiny tips to attain detail in each work of art characterizes her technique. When it comes to pyrography, Julie considers herself a purist. The wood and grain she uses is selected carefully for best composition and aesthetics.

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Stunning Glasswork by Shayna Leib

Shayna Leib was only seven years old when she saw glassblowing for the first time at a local university, an experience that changed her life forever.
While completing her Bachelors of Art degree in Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, Shayna also studied literature, glass, and concert piano. Accepted to pursue a Doctorate in Philosophy, she chose instead to enter the University of Wisconsin-Madison for graduate studies in glass and metal.
Her glass interests at UW-Madison led to an equal focus on functional and sculptural works, where she explored the subtly different ways in which glass' most unique qualities were captured in each. Shayna uses the flow of hot glass, its capacity to freeze an artistic moment in time, and the inherent ability of glass to manipulate optics to express her artistic vision and inner direction.

Each of the glass pieces takes nearly a month to create and involves a painstaking, multi-step process that begins with pulling individual 30-50 foot segments of glass called cane, a step that’s repeated 8 to 200 times depending on the scale of the piece. She generates over 1 mile of thin glass pieces from which she cuts into tens of thousands of segments organized by shape and length. Next begins the tedious process of building the actual sculpture, requiring roughly 45 minutes for each two square inch area.
Leib has received numerous honorable mentions and grants for her work and exhibited across the United States. Apart from her glass work, she is a concert pianist.

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Camouflaged Self Portraits by Cecilia Paredes

Cecilia Paredes was born in Lima, Peru, and currently lives and works between San Jose, Costa Rica and Philadelphia. Her artistic career began as a painter but her creative concepts evolved, revealing themselves first in three-dimensional objects, then through photography. This works is a series of self portraits where Paredes paints her own body to blend in with the background.
Working with her assistants, Cecilia covers herself with make-up, body paint and clothes to literally vanish into the background. Her works reminds me of the Liu Bolin who is a master at disappearing.

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