3D Street Art By Kurt Wenner

Kurt Wenner born in Ann Arbor, Michigan is an artist best known for his realistic street painting and chalk murals using a projection called anamorphosis. These 3D chalk drawings on pavement have been featured in many newspapers and on several television shows.(WIKI)

Kurt Wenner attended Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center College of Design before working for NASA as an advanced scientific space illustrator. Wenner eventually left NASA for Italy in order to pursue his love of classical art.

To be honest,it is really hard to describe this kind of art and i think we have to respect Kurt Wenner for such a street art.Thanks Kurt for opening our eyes wide.

Animals in the News

We humans share this planet with countless other species, interacting with many of them daily, others rarely. We treat some as sources of food and others as sources of companionship, entertainment, or education. We experiment with them at a genetic level, try to understand their overall behavior, and bond with them on an intimate scale. Most animals live their lives independently of us, but they dwell in habitats that we shape profoundly. Gathered below are images of animals in the news from the past several weeks, seen from the perspectives of their human observers, companions, captors, and caretakers. [42 photos]

A monkey who survived the Ivorian post-electoral crisis at the Abidjan Zoo. Three lions named Lea, Simba and Loulou, "died of hunger", said Claude-Sie Kam, a zoo employee, to an AFP reporter. About forty animals perished due to lack of food at the Abidjan Zoo during the Ivorian crisis. (Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images)  

Incredible Pumpkin Carvings by Ray Villafane

American sculptor Ray Villafane carves incredibly intricate and detailed faces on pumpkins, from the gruesome Predator to the friendly Barack Obama. Villafane was born on March 5, 1969 in Queens, New York and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Education from the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Villafane is a toy sculptor by trade working with companies such as Bowan Designs, DC Direct, McFarlane Toys, and Sideshow Toys. In his spare time he likes to carve pumpkins and in 2008, Villafane won the Food Network Pumpkin Carving Contest’s top prize of $10,000. His work has been featured in numerous publications as well as having pieces shown at the New York Art Directors Club, Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration, Spaces Gallery, and Jordan River Arts Gallery.

Villafane works and lives in Northern Michigan with his wife and six children.

The Modern Ghost City of Ordos

The city of Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, China, was founded on February 26, 2001. It was designed to be home for one million people, yet, the Kangbashi district remains nearly empty five years after construction began.

Ordos means "palaces" in Mongolian, and it's richer than Beijing. In fact, with a $14,500 GDP per capita, it's one of the richest in the whole country. With 1,548,000 inhabitants, Ordos is not exactly empty. But much of its modern architecture, sometimes awesomely futuristic, sometimes nafftastically overdeveloped and underdesigned, remains completely empty. The density of this city is only 17.8 people per square kilometer. By comparison, New York City has 157.91 habitants per square kilometer, San Francisco has 6,688.4, and Madrid 5,293.69.

The Kangbashi district began as a public-works project in Ordos, a wealthy coal-mining town in Inner Mongolia. The area is filled with office towers, administrative centers, government buildings, museums, theaters and sports fields—not to mention acre on acre of subdivisions overflowing with middle-class duplexes and bungalows. The only problem: the district was originally designed to house, support and entertain 1 million people, yet hardly anyone lives there.

The Secret Life of the Harvest Mice

Photographers Jean-Louis Klein and Marie-Luce Hubert, both from the Alsace, France, spent the year snapping the elusive harvest mice in a project that ended with their release into the wild. Laying patiently in meadows and reed beds, the pair were able to capture the fascinating images. A stunning and rare insight into the secret tiny lives of adorable harvest mice is revealed in incredible pictures captured painstakingly over 12 months.

An inquisitive mouse balances on two ears of wheat to take a close look at one of the cameras

NASA After the Space Shuttle

Now that the final space shuttle has landed, many thousands involved with it have lost their jobs, and budget cuts loom, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at the other projects NASA has been working on recently, and what will be keeping the agency busy in the coming years. There has been a flurry of discoveries and firsts just this year alone, as scientists have discovered a fourth moon around Pluto, and a spacecraft has entered orbit around the asteroid Vesta for the first time. Earlier this month the spacecraft Juno launched toward Jupiter, while workers prepared the next Mars rover, Curiosity, for launch by the end of this year. All of this on top of supporting existing missions to the sun, Mercury, Earth, Mars, Saturn and more. Collected here is just a small recent sampling of NASA's far-reaching projects and missions. [33 photos]

Rising from fire and smoke, NASA's Juno planetary probe, enclosed in its payload fairing, launches atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Leaving from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, on August 5, 2011, the spacecraft will embark on a five-year journey to Jupiter. The solar-powered spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles 33 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere and investigate the existence of a solid planetary core. (NASA/Scott Andrews)  

 

The Impossible Stone Balancing Art of Adrian Gray

Adrian Gray has been developing his art of stone balancing for many years. His ability to create almost impossible to believe compositions has created wonder and left witnesses in awe and mesmerized.

By very carefully feeling the balancing point of each rock he handles - a process that requires awesome skill and patience - Gray is able to arrange them in ways that seem incredible. 'The trick is putting together stones which look like they couldn't possibly sit on top of one another. Only then can you you make something extraordinary' , Gray explains.

All the stones in these pictures are balanced, strictly without the aid of adhesive, pins or computer manipulation. They remain in place through the natural force of gravity and friction. ‘Nature’s glue’ sustains them in these seemingly impossible positions and it is the capricious natural forces of wind or waves that returns them to obscurity amongst their fellow boulders.

Where in the World? A Google Earth Puzzle

Looking at the world through via Google Earth offers striking images of the diversity of our planet and the impact that humans have had on it. Today's entry is a puzzle. We're challenging you to figure out where in the world each of the images below is taken. (You'll find answers and links at the bottom of the entry.) North is not always up in these pictures, and, apart from a bit of contrast, they are unaltered images provided by Google and its mapping partners. So I invite you to open up Google Earth (or Google Maps), have a look at the images below, and dive in. Good luck! [25 images]

This community lies near the intersection of seven rivers. (Answers are listed at the bottom of the page) (© Google, DigitalGlobe) 

Kay Petal’s Needle Felted Celebrity Wool Sculptures

Kay Petal is a sculptural needle felt artist from Alaska who specializes in soft-sculpted lifelike dolls with a focus on celebrity caricatures.

Kay Petal discovered needle felting in 2007 when she was recovering from cancer. After surviving from a rare cancer Petal became keenly aware of the need to stop giving in to the mundane things in life and find that thing she is truly passionate about. When she purchased a book by a pioneer of needle felting, Birgitte Krag Hansen, she discovered what she really wanted to do.

Kay Petal’s Felt Alive dolls are fully jointed, solid felted wool and require no sewing, no stuffing, no painting, no knitting or crocheting, no patterns and no wire armatures. Her work has been featured in numerous magazines and has been getting accolades in the blogosphere.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel

In the book Hungry Planet, photographer Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio present a photographic study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family's profile includes a detailed description of their weekly food purchases; photographs of the family at home, at market, and in their community; and a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries.

To assemble this remarkable comparison, Menzel and D'Aluisio traveled to 24 countries and visited 30 families from Bhutan and Bosnia to Mexico and Mongolia, and recorded what they ate for a week. Menzel photographed each family in their kitchen with the week’s worth of groceries, while D’Alusio interviewed them about their food habits and family structure. Accompanying the portraits and narratives are detailed breakdowns of each family’s grocery list, more photographs of the family and home country, and statistics for each country visited.

Here is a selection of pictures from the book. Note: the book was made about 5 years ago, and the prices were of that time.

Buddhist Temple Built from Beer Bottles

Drinking is a sin in Buddhism but they certainly don’t have any issues with building temples from beer bottles. In the north-east of Thailand, is a temple built from more than 1.5 million recycled beer bottles.

Sometimes known as Wat Lan Kuad, or Temple Of A Million Bottles, the temple uses the discarded bottles to construct everything from the crematorium to the toilets. Recycling doesn't stop at building the temple's buildings - mosaics around the temple, predominantly of Buddha, are made out of bottle caps. Besides being ego-friendly, the disused bottles don't fade, provide good lighting and are easy to clean.

The resident Buddhist monks at the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew complex even encourage local authorities to deposit any used bottles at the temple which they then use to build new structures. 

Magnificent Egg Mosaics

Oksana Mas is a skillful Ukrainian artist who makes beautiful portraits without using your standard canvas and paint brushes. Instead, she uses hand-painted wooden eggs to assemble incredible mosaics that are sure to take your breath away. Just recently, Mas created several Easter egg mosaics for the Venice Biennale. She was inspired by the old Ukrainian folk custom krashenki, where wooden eggs were covered in traditional Ukrainian designs to celebrate Easter.

Striking Perfume Bottles

The success of any fragrance should be based on its scent alone. But it is not a rule.  Take a tip from these products, and wrap your eau de cologne in a crazy/creative bottle!

 

Adults Acting Like Children

All of us are staying small children deep inside our hearts even though we have grown up. Let's play a bit!

 

The Invisible Man Strikes Again

Chinese artist Liu Bolin knows how to hide a person in the best way. You can call him “the invisible man”. He really knows how to melt in with the environment, like a chameleon that changes colors to match the background.

 

Examples of 3D Graffiti

While walking around the city you can notice some wonderful 3D pictures.  Here are some modern-day examples of this kind of art — often with passers-by interacting with the artwork in just the way you’d expect.

 

Adrenaline Photography – Fight or Flight Situations

It increases heart rate, constricts blood vessel and dilates air passages in order to deliver more blood to the muscles and more air to the lungs and thus help a human survive in a dangerous or unexpected situation. This is the mechanism of action of a hormone, called adrenaline or epinephrine. The word “adrenaline” today is, perhaps, the only example of a medical term, known and used widely beyond medical sphere. It has become a synonym for excitement, passion, adventure, and risk, and it is now closely associated with extreme activities, such as mountaineering, jumping, and challenging sports, such as racing, parachuting, or skiing. We have devoted our today’s gallery of photographs to all kind of activities, where adrenaline plays the leading role, being at the same time the aim and the means of achieving that aim.

Why do people do such seemingly crazy and obviously dangerous things, as jumping from high rocks into the sea, participating in rodeo, or feeding wild animals with bare hands? Of course, the reasons are multiple and different: from love to the wild nature to excitement of the free fall, but in every situation you will find the similar component – adrenaline. This hormone puts a human body into such a unique physiological state, which is both dangerous and cherished simultaneously. The one, who once experienced the influence of adrenaline charge, will definitely urge for the same experience again in the future. That is why, drivers usually return to racing even after the most dreadful accidents, and people of all ages return to the ferris wheel or roller coaster even if they were frightened to death, visiting those attractions earlier. Obviously, people love adrenaline… Some of the ways to get it are described on the pictures below, but, please, do not take this post as the guideline or direct motivation towards specific actions!

*** by Evgeny Vasenev