io9: Sculpture

Dr. Seuss taxidermy is equal parts disturbing and charming

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:00:00 PST

Sculptor Carl Turner has created a series of half-realistic, half-fantastical mounted animal heads that were seemingly poached out of a Dr. Seuss book. According to Turner's back story for this project, these extinct specimens were acquired by zoologist Erasmus P. Jiggins and Sir Bartholomew Scoffer during an 1863 expedition to a lost island somewhere in the Pacific: More »

This Optimus Prime snowman is the size of an apartment building

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:30:01 PST

Since early January, a crew at Hokkaido, Japan's Asahikawa Winter Festival has been carving out this 53-foot-tall bust of Optimus Prime peering over a wall. Given all that effort, it will be somewhat depressing to witness him inevitably transform into a grey puddle. More »

Watch sculptors build Xiphactinus, the 14-foot-long fish that terrorized the Cretaceous

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:00:16 PST

Nebraska's Hastings Museum recently commissioned Staab Studios to build a model of a bony prehistoric predator from the genus Xiphactinus. Staab helpfully recorded their progress sculpting this beast in silent repose. If you ever need to build an extinct underwater horror for your rumpus room, this video is a good place to start. More »

In a South Korean mall, you can see The Incredible Hulk using the bathroom

Cyriaque Lamar — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:40:00 PST

Apparently there's a mall in Seoul where shoppers can ponder the biomechanics of The Incredible Hulk relieving himself, an act that requires a seismologist, an eight-person hazmat squad, and a charm of soothing from Dr. Strange. Add this to the list of unsanctioned superhero public art around the globe. More »

Lord of The Rings LEGO sets turn Gollum into precious plastic

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:30:00 PST

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We've seen some pretty spectacular LEGO brick recreations of The Lord of The Rings, and it looks like the toy manufacturer has noticed these fan dioramas as well. To coincide with the upcoming release of The Hobbit, LEGO is releasing a series of LOTR playsets this summer. More »

Meet the woman who builds housemates out of wax

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:55:00 PST

We've been loving The Midnight Archive's ghoulishly chipper web shorts (previously: 1, 2, 3). Their latest episode takes us to the studio of artist Sigrid Sarda, who specializes in creating wax mannequins. Says the show's producers, "The charmingly perverse Sarda has taught herself the ancient art of sculpting in wax and it is every bit as creepy and interesting as you might expect." For more of Sarda's malleable humanoids, see her website. More »

A One-Ton Metal Mammoth Made from Old Farm Equipment

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:05:28 PST

Drop what you're doing — this is more important. Oregon sculptor Jud Turner has built a life-sized model of a Columbia mammoth skeleton, he's done it with 95% recycled materials (mostly old farming equipment and agricultural tools), and it's probably the most jaw-droppingly bad-ass thing I've ever laid my eyes on. More »

The Most Phallic Places On The Planet

Cyriaque Lamar — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:05:00 PST

All across the globe, there are monuments and tourist attractions that transform our otherwise boring reality into a gleefully tumescent fantasia. Here are the world's most otherworldly phallic vacation destinations. More »

For $13,000, you can buy your very own fiberglass mastodon

Cyriaque Lamar — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:45:00 PST

Impulse buy alert! We here at io9 have a thing for creepy fiberglass dinosaur sculptures (as seen at destinations like these). So we were visibly jazzed when tipster Laura informed us that someone was selling a 10-foot-tall, three-toed-sloth sculpture for a bargain $4000. More »

Man builds 19-foot-tall model of Apollo 11 out of 120,000 LEGO bricks

Cyriaque Lamar — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:20:00 PST

Every now and again the internet has the capacity to blow our dinky craniums to smithereens — this happens to be one of those moments. Some unplaceable Herculean conviction drove LEGO architect Ryan McNaught to build a 5.76-meter-tall recreation of the Saturn V rocket used for Apollo 11 out of 120,000 plastic bricks. More »

This Alien versus Predator chessboard was built for chessboxing

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:30:00 PST

Alien vs. Predator was by no means brain candy, but that doesn't mean you and an opponent can't settle your differences using this natty Xenomorph versus Yautja chessboard. Hell, go the extra mile and indulge in some chessboxing. Emulate AVP's hammy fight scenes! More »

Ancient African sculpture discovered after 2,000 years in the mud

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:00:00 PST

Many incredible works of art have been made using terracotta, including the world famous Terracotta Army created for the first emperor of China. But because terracotta is often simply unglazed clay, many of the finest works were lost long ago. More »

A vision of flower gardens after the eco-apocalypse

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:40:00 PST

How will we remember flowers in a world where they've gone extinct? Perhaps we'll recreate them from textbooks, carefully cutting them out of a thin layer of steel. Here is one artist's look at a flower bed of the future. More »

The biggest Serenity model ever built has been unearthed (UPDATED)

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:35:15 PST

Famous movie spaceships can have a rough time once the camera stops rolling. For instance, the Nostromo from Alien was discovered with a dead possum inside. The eponymous spaceship from Serenity had been consigned to a similarly undistinguished fate...until recently.

With this Bones McCoy teapot, keep your oolong in the Enterprise's medical officer's head

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:20:00 PST

Like any reasonable person, you've thought to yourself, "Self, I truly would love to store some Earl Grey in the likeness of DeForest Kelley's cranium." Well, sculptor Mark Nathan Stafford has acted on this notion and crafted this "Doctor Bones" teapot out of Leonard McCoy's knowledge-filled head. This was created for the Ossuaries project, and the water comes out of his left ear. Anyone up for making a Karl Urban model?

On the border of China and Mongolia, you can find two dinosaurs french-kissing

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 08:30:00 PST

The greatest sculpture of all time? Perhaps! Outside of the 20,000-person Chinese town of Erlian on the Mongolian border, you can find this statue of two amorous sauropods making out for all the world to see. Built to showcase the region's reputation as a fossil hotspot, this reptile snog session instead is a stark reminder that if you build a tourist trap, it's never guaranteed that anyone will show. More »

The most beautiful literary mystery in Edinburgh

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:00:00 PST

Over the past year, Edinburgh, Scotland has witnessed the unfolding of a lovely and enigmatic homage to the written word. In libraries, theaters, and literary community centers, people began finding gorgeous, anonymously-created book sculptures. Each of these detailed artworks depicts a scene inspired by the books they're crafted from. Above you can see a T-Rex fighting tiny soldiers, all bursting from the ribboned pages of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. There are ten sculptures in all, and each is more incredible than the last. More »

The disturbing carvings that Cthulhu-worshipers left behind

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:54:45 PST

David Clayton James Gassaway has created some of the most incredibly haunting Cthulhu Mythos images I've seen in a long time. These are showcased in his 2012 Cthulhu Mythos calendar, and you can see a few in the gallery here. More »

Meet the Guardian of the Hole, a mechanical mythical creature

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:30:00 PDT

This here is Custos Cavum ("The Guardian of the Hole"), a fantastically weird robotic sculpture by artist U-Ram Choe on display at New York City's Asia Society until December 31, 2011. The piece was inspired by the 10th-century Indian sculpture, Shiva as Lord of Dance. From Choe's synopsis of the project: More »

Who wants to stay in a play fort shaped like a mushroom cloud?

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:10:00 PDT

Sculptor Dietrich Wegner specializes in playhouses in the form of nuclear blasts. Some of them are more inviting to guests than others — for example, I wouldn't recommend scurrying up this 20-foot-tall sculpture Playhouse anytime soon. More »

Doctor Who Ponies are four-legged terrors

Lauren Davis — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 08:30:00 PDT

Artist EatToast transforms sweet, innocent ponies into Doctor Who aliens — the malevolent Cybermen, the creepy Silence, the tentacle-faced Ood. You'll never look at pastel ponies quite the same way. [deviantART via Neatorama] More »

Here's a reason not to go spelunking in the Helsinki train tunnels

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 09:30:00 PDT

You might run into this 12-meter-long dragon and have to do that cartwheel-legged, Scooby Doo run off the premises. This sculpture was constructed by Valve, a Finnish LARPing group who built (and left) it there last month. Between this and the Wizard Quest in Wisconsin, we have a good case for building more dragons in random geographical locales. More »

Oh look, a creepy sleeping woman made entirely out of candles

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:30:00 PDT

For the Arnhem Mode Biennale 2011 fashion show earlier this summer, Lenn Cox built this lugubrious lady lying in a fetal position on a bed, where she presumably melted into a pile of forlorn wax. A pity, I think she'd get along rather swimmingly with the Smithsonian Soap Man. More »

The Junkbots have landed!

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:35:21 PDT

People like to speculate that the landing of an extraterrestrial ship on Earth could open doors to advances in technology through reverse engineering of alien space-tech. But now the folks over at CyberCraft Robots have gone and done exactly the opposite. More »

There's nothing more artsy than a disassembled Gundam statue

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:45:00 PDT

Remember that 1:1 scale Gundam sculpture in Shizuoka, Japan? Videographer Darwinfish105 (who previously did a time-lapse video of the statue) has now made a similar montage of the statue, now broken into pieces and surrounded by police tape. I'd hate to see the authorities' list of culprits. More »

Italian artist transforms Ronald McDonald into the decapitated head of Medusa

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:30:00 PDT

Oh, pop art. Lately we've seen Communist war memorials turned into superheroes and Batman and Superman channeling Michelangelo. Now Italian sculptor Giuseppe Veneziano (who previously put supes in compromising positions) has clownified Antonio Canova's 19th century sculpture Perseus and the Head of Medusa in Venice. More »

Vegetable Jabba lords over your sushi platter

Lauren Davis — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:30:00 PDT

Sushi chef Okistugu Kado carves vegetable garnishes into Star Wars characters, Pokemon, and superheroes. They're the perfect accompaniment for sushi rolls from both the Light and Dark sides of the Force. More »

8-bit sculptures made the old-fashioned way

Robert T. Gonzalez — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:11:29 PDT

In a time when CGI and special effects are pushing the limits of our abilities to distinguish fantasy from reality, artist Shawn Smith dares to turn our conception of digital simulation on its head. And he's doing it with lots and lots of little wooden blocks. More »

Visit Rome, see the statue of Superman and Batman's foreplay

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 08:30:00 PDT

Here's another smash hit from the annals of the World's Finest Slash Fiction Art. At Rome's Villa Borghese gardens, you can stroll through the arbors and meditate on a sculpture of Batman readying his body for the Last Love of Krypton. I really hope this is viral marketing for the DC relaunch. More »

Beware the cardboard kaiju of Argentina

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 13:15:00 PDT

In August 2006, designer Pablo Curutchet placed a 28-foot-tall, 882-pound cardboard box golem leering at pedestrians in Cordoba, Argentina. Unfortunately for this giant, a steady rain could spell the end of his reign of terror.

A space age arsenal made of glass

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:00:00 PDT

These incredible blown glass rayguns are part of a series called (appropriately enough) Raygunz, created by Canadian master glassblower Jeff Burnette. More »

LEGO Mordor cannot be reached with plastic eagles

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 09:15:00 PDT

It took 50,000 interlocking bricks, but sculptor Kevin J. Walter was able to recreate Sauron's fortress of Barad-dûr out of LEGOs, presumably to keep out some wee DUPLO Hobbits. You can see more photos at Kevin's Flickr page.

Welcome to Singapore's most baffling tourist attraction

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:15:00 PDT

Remember the haunted-hayride depths of Daoist Hell? Well, that was a cakewalk compared to Singapore's Haw Par Villa. At this unique bemusement park, you can tour the annals of Chinese mythology, such as the 10 Courts of Chinese Hell. More »

Life-sized Transformers statues are scrap metal in disguise

Lauren Davis — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:40:00 PDT

Thai sculptor Yumi Modal builds life-sized (and less than life-sized) Transformers statues that look ready to spring to life. Appropriately, each statue is made from discarded car parts and other scraps of machinery and metal. More »

The skeleton of a rare Malaysian dragon - discovered at last!

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:27:16 PDT

Could it be that we finally have proof that dragons once roamed through Asia? More »

In Suriname, you can visit the Mickey Mouse wicker man

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:15:00 PDT

Well, it's not made of wicker and nobody's donning a bee helmet in its presence, but this wooden Mickey effigy in Moengo, Suriname certainly looks like it should be burnt in a fertility ritual, jam-packed with talking forest fauna. More »

Brilliant taxidermied mutants from Dimension X

Lauren Davis — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 09:00:00 PDT

Enrique Gomez De Molina builds impossible hybrid creatures out of fur and beaks and feathers. They imagine a distant universe where animals are at once avian and mammal, and live side by side with intelligent insect tribes. More »

Celebrate Yuri's Night with art inspired by the first human in space

Annalee Newitz and Robert T. Gonzalez — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:06:42 PDT

Tonight, across the world, people will be going to space-themed parties to celebrate Yuri's Night, an annual event honoring Yuri Gagarin - the first person to survive space flight. Here is a gallery of art celebrating his great adventure. More »

“Marlowe the Monster” is a sculpted webcomic of melancholy moments

Lauren Davis — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:30:37 PDT

Marlowe the Monster is an unusual comic, using sculpture and photography as cartooning, and capturing small, often sad moments in the life of a six-eyed, asexually-reproducing monster with a crummy dating history. More »

Meet the steampunk arthropods who will infest your airship

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 11:15:00 PST

Sculptor Tom Hardwidge builds pint-sized clockwork insects and spiders out of defunct ammunition and sundry watch parts. In another universe, these little buggers are climbing in your coal-powered, head-warming derby and spitting axle grease all over your telescopic monocle. More »