Toothpicks can be used for a lot more than scraping that stubborn piece of spinach from between your teeth. Scott Weaver started constructing toothpick sculptures when he was eight years old. His masterpiece (pictured above) is called “Rolling Through the Bay,” an abstract representation of the city of San Francisco that took Weaver over 3,000 hours over a period of 34 years to complete. The sculpture is made of toothpicks from all over the world that the artist’s friends and family collect for him.

~Sarah

Eddy, Mia Pearlman

Between the Lines, Ariana Boussard-Reifel

Grand Island, Chris Kenny

A Space Odesey, Ferry Staverman

Paperwork #701G (in the Beginning), Andreas Kocks

The average person can do quite a bit with paper. You can write on it, fold it, make a paper airplane, tear it, crumple it, and get paper cuts from it. But who know that regular ol’ paper could be transformed into mesmerizing works of art such as those pictured above?

These works were featured in The Museum of Arts and Design (New York) exhibition Slash: Paper Under The Knife, which ran from October 7, 2009, until April 4, 2010. The exhibition explored unusual paper treatments, including burning, tearing, cutting by lasers, and shredding. Part of the exhibition focused on artists who transformed books into sculptures, and another section focused on the use of cut paper for film and video animations.

To see more paper artwork and learn more about the exhibition, click here!

~Sarah

Check out this amazing time lapse video of artist Derek Bond painting his bedroom floor using spray paint. The video was filmed over several days, and the final product is an out-of-this-world masterpiece!

~Sarah

Ashley Wood is clearly  a man after Zach Snyder’s heart(*see Sucker Punch) girls,robots, undead monsters, and other fantastic creatures are all present and accounted for.

This is not uncommon subject matter for any comic book artist what is uncommon is the manner in which they are presented. Ashley wood’s artistic stylings have more in common with Van Gogh or Monet than Jack Kirby.

His pop Expressionist style is often paradoxical in nature in that he presents the scintillating and exciting  in a dreary and lugubrious tone. It helps ground his odd visuals in a somewhat realistic manner.

What is great about his work is the unwavering sense of urgency and foreboding that is created with each brushstroke.

More of his work can be seen over here!!

~Jay

At first when I looked at the pictures above, I thought, “What’s so special about these?” It took me a moment to realize that the art was not being displayed through the tangible objects arranged in a seemingly random, haphazard manner – but rather, the shadows cast by the objects were the art! The angles and strength of the light create different effects, making these pieces a pleasure to look at.

To view some more pictures of shadow art, click here!

~Sarah

Whimsical, kitschy and cartoony like everyone’s  favorite children’s author, the only thing missing from Wilmer Murillo’s illustrations is a little bit of fur.  An illustrator/graphic designer by trade, his characters and drawings have a weird cherubic quality to them .

You can see that he takes a childlike exuberance and injects it into his art, while at the same time looking through the eyes of an adult . There is a bit of a wtf factor in his work, but once you get past the initial strangeness  you find the images oddly endearing.

There is a sense of self exploration and humor in his art and you genuinely feel like he does this because he loves art ,  but mostly because its  funny.

His work can be seen here .

~Jay

Esao Andrews might be most noted for designing all of the covers for the musical geniuses known as Circa Survive, and his work is simply breathtaking.

He is the Answer to the question what if Mc Escher and Salvadore Dali did a collaborative work ,with a goth-y twist thrown in for good measure. Spanning the realms of space and time morphing natural bodies into hideously beautiful figures and making the artificial seem natural.

Esao manages to make the ostensibly fantastic seem plausible and frighteningly normal.Which gives his paintings an almost Lynchian feeling, the border between our nightmares and our fantasy.

Eraserhead anyone?

Check out more here.

~Jay