Looking at the beautiful landscapes of Matthew Albanese, you couldn’t even imagine they are made with objects you yourself have around the house.
Matthew’s career as a landscape creator began about three years ago, just when he had become bored with his job as a visual merchandiser and was looking for an outlet. One day, he knocked over an entire tub of paprika, and as he was struggling to clean up the mess, the shade of the spice got him dreaming. It reminded him of Mars and what an exotic yet unreachable place it was. That’s when he decided that if couldn’t go to the Red Planet, he would bring it to him. He rushed out and bought five kilograms of paprika and created his very first household landscape – Paprika Mars.
Since then he has created over 15 other impressive landscapes, including a volcanic eruption, a tornado and even the moon surface. He takes his inspiration from movies, musical lyrics and everyday life and uses various common mediums to put together the fruits of his imagination. Once his mind is set on a certain landscape, he will search for every bit of information he needs to make a certain surface or effect look as realistic as possible.
He sometimes spends months working on a single landscape model, until he gets it just right, then takes about 500 photographs of it from various angles and experiments with different size prints, to make sure the result is “as authentic as possible.” What’s even more impressive about Matthew Albanese’s work is that even though some of his models are under 1 meter (3 feet) long, they look endless, thanks to the perfect shooting angle.
Albanese’s works sell for around $1,000 a piece, which is not that much considering how time consuming making these impressive landscapes really is. You can contact the artist about his works on his Facebook fan page and the Behance Network.
“Tornado” – made of steel wool, cotton, ground parsley and moss
“Icebreaker” – 25 pounds of sugar cooked at varying temperatures (hard crack & pulled sugar recipes) It’s basically made out of candy. salt, egg whites, corn syrup, cream of tartar, powdered sugar, blue food coloring, india ink & flour. Three days of cooking, and two weeks of building.
“Paprika Mars” – made out of 12 pounds paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder and charcoal
“Fields, After the Storm” – made out of faux fur(fields), cotton (clouds) and sifted tile grout(mountains). The lighting effect was created by simply shifting the white balance.
“Salt Water Falls” – made out of glass, plexiglass, tile grout, moss, twigs, salt, painted canvas & dry ice. The waterfall was created from a time exposure of falling table salt.
“Breaking Point” – made out of tile grout, cotton, phosphorous ink. this model volcano was illuminated from within by 6-60 watt light bulbs.
“Everything We Ever Were” – The darker rocks are made of mixed tile grout, flag crumpled paper & wire. The Earth is a video still projected onto the wall. Inspired by the Apollo 11 mission.
