Cool Hunting

Spiral Jetty
There was a great story in the NY Times earlier this week on Robert Smithson's 34 year old sculpture at the bottom of the Great Salt Lake. Spiral Jetty has eroded over time from exposure to the elements. The Dia Art Foundation is proposing to restore the piece. But debate has risen about whether earth art should be restored or simply allowed to change...

Joseph Conforti
Joseph Conforti is a master of repetition. A raku ceramicist based in New York City, he creates hypnotic wall sculptures comprised of individual panels, each of which contains hundreds of ceramic pieces. Raku, for those unversed in ceramic speak, is a traditional form of Japanese pottery dating back to the 16th Century. It involves low temperature kiln firing, followed by a combustible immersion that...

Mark Andreas: Reactive Sculpture Series
After exhibiting up and down the eastern seaboard, Brooklyn-based sculptor Mark Andreas has crossed the East River to make his Manhattan debut. Andreas' Reactive Sculpture Series includes the hulking 400-pound Seed Spreader (pictured), an intimidating machine equipped with three-foot spinning blades. It brilliantly expresses the fear associated with the industrialization of mass food production that, in the words of the artist, “conceptually speaks to...

Drinkpee
We've all heard of people drinking their own urine to survive out in the wild when there is no access to water. Though urine is sterile and (usually) safe to drink, using it as plant fertilizer may be more palatable option to most. The smart folks at EAWAG Aquatic Research in Switzerland have developed a way to extract the phosphorus and nitrogen from urine...

Barnaby Barford: Private Lives
On 11 March 2008, the irreverent ceramic artist Barnaby Barford will be exhibiting a new series of subversive objects at David Gill Galleries in London. The latest collection, "Private Lives," shows Barford treading into uncharted territory, repositioning figures from pop culture and cartoons for his witty mises-en-scènes. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in 2002, Barford has been working with found ceramics...

Jim Denevan
Santa Cruz, CA-based artist Jim Denevan makes freehand drawings in sand, laboring up to seven hours and walking for as many as 30 miles to create artwork using no measuring aids whatsoever. (Click images for detail.) From above, the drawings are abstract patterns. But when looked at from the ground level, they take on a new form, challenging ideas of distance and perspective. Then,...