I love these beautiful bird sculptures made by illustrator Emily Sutton. Emily currently lives in the Yorkshire countryside, where she says she lives in a house on a hill in the middle of nowhere. Much of her work is influenced by the landscape and creatures of her surroundings, so I guess she gets to see a lot of birds from where she lives. She’s already has made over twenty unique songbird sculptures and each one is really lovely. You should check out her full series of birds here.
Today I thought I’d share a track from the Toronto four-piece The Holiday Crowd. Formed in 2010, the band recently released their debut album Over The Bluffs and it’s been getting its fair share of rotations around these parts.
The track above, Never Speak Of It Again, is particularly great. Starting off with a jangly melody not dissimilar to something by Wild Nothing and then bursting into frontman Imran Haniff’s Morrissey-style vocals. Filled with nostalgia for another-time, Haniff sings with a mix of fondness and melancholy, and all the while his voice is underpinned by the brilliant stripped-down pop sensibilities of the band. It’s a winning combination and The Holiday Crowd are well worth checking out.
Over The Bluffs is currently on release through New Romantic and Shelflife.
In the world of fine art photography Edward Burtynsky is a household name. Since the early 80′s he has set out to create images that work as metaphors for our modern existence, and in doing so, he has become one of Canada’s most respected photographers. Over the years he has been the recipient of three honorary doctorates and has won numerous awards including the esteemed TED Prize in 2005. In 2006 he was named Officer of the Order of Canada, and the following year the documentary Manufactured Landscapes was made about his work.
Since seeing his work at the Prix Pictet in 2008 I’ve been a fan. Recently I discovered that Burtynsky’s own website is a wonderful archive for his projects and it includes an impressive amount of his work in high-resolution images. One could easily loose a large chunk of their day simply gorging over all of the detail in some of these photographs.
The pictures above come from one of Burtynsky’s earliest series entitled Homesteads. Made between 1983 and 1985, the series was photographed in a number of locations including Bingham Valley, Utah; Fort Macleod, Alberta; Upper New York State; Toronto, Ontario; Walkerville, Montana and Browning, Montana and locations in British Columbia. It’s interesting to view Homesteads now in hindsight. It’s one of Burtynsky’s earliest series but it still holds many of the themes and dilemmas that his current practice still holds. These images show a photographer interested in rethinking the landscape and concerned by how industry cuts into our natural world.
If you’re new to the work of Edward Burtynsky and want to learn more I highly recommend you check out his TED Talk from 2005, and make sure to check out his website to see more of his photography.
This work by Barcelona-based artist Axel Brechensbauer is great. Like obscure chess pieces or futuristic totems, his sculptures demonstrate a wry sense of humor and a wonderful sense of form.
Nature plays an integral part in his practice, and his work attempts to explore man’s obsession with creating systems, patterns and shapes. On his website he draws an interesting analogy, explaining that we create gardens because we feel that we can control the pattern of nature better than that of nature itself. If this is the case, do we then believe that our own man-made systems are better than the systems of nature? Or, as Brechensbauer asks, are we ourselves just another version of nature? Certainly it’s an interesting thought process, and by the look of Brechensbauer’s sculptures, it definitely leads to some great work. Check out more work here.
Found through theCargo Showcase
I really like these landscape paintings by Japanese artist Hiromichi Ito. Hiromichi majored in illustration at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University and then returned to Japan to study under the amazing Tatsuro Kiuchi (who we featured recently here). These days, Hiromichi now shares a studio in Tokyo with Tatsuro called Pen Still Writes.
Hiromichi’s paintings are really charming and he has a very playful sense of color. This great use of color also carries over to his other work, which is well worth checking out. His porfolio is filled with editorial projects and illustrations which features cute characters and adorable animals.
We’ve featured Catacombkid on this blog a few times before, but there’s no reason to not feature him again – especially when he keeps putting out such great music.
Normally I’m not one for mash-ups but this just works really well. The track starts off with the soothing hum of Sigur Rós before an addictive beat cuts in and the whole thing builds up to a catchy vocal hook from The Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann. The harmony of The Beach Boys over such a synthesized beat sounds great and it means that that the track doesn’t sound too dissimilar to the music of Panda Bear – which is always a good thing!
When Harrison Mills (aka Catacombkid) posted this track on Soundcloud last night he also accompanied it with a photograph by Thomas Jackson, so I felt it was right to do the same thing here. Make sure to grab a free download of the song here.
