Inspired by the works of Stan Herd and the famous Nazca Lines of Peru, American artist Daniel Dancer creates unique paintings made of latex paint and a lot of people.

66-year-old Daniel Dancer has spent the last ten years of his life traveling the world over and creating unique artworks, choreographed and immortalized from way up in the sky. Upon discovering the mysterious Nazca Lines, in South America, he wanted to create his own artistry, so he bought some paint, gathered 800 school children and made a giant salmon, in Oregon.

So far, the Kansas-based artist has created hundreds of human paintings and has convinced thousands of people to participate in his Art of the Sky project. His artworks include a bald eagle made with the help of 1,400 people and a portrait of Barrack Obama.

To properly choreograph the participants in the Art of the Sky project, Daniel Dancer climbs in hot air balloons or large cranes. When everyone is in place, he asks the people to lie on their hands and knees, so the largest amount of color is exposed.

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A few months ago, I received an email from a contributor, about an art project called “Presidential Ham“. I was to busy to read it, at the time, and then forgot all about it. Yesterday, while tidying up my inbox, I stumbled upon it again, and finally checked it out.

The Presidential Ham is an original art project that depicts American presidents holding a big piece of (you guessed it) ham. It doesn’t make much sense, I know, but that’s the main reason I thought it was perfect for OC. Bijijoo, the artist behind Presidential Ham, has always wanted to paint the presidents holding a ham, and 2010 is the year he finally realized his dream. The portraits are oil painted on prepared board, and you can check them all out on PresidentialHam.com.

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British artist Bruce Murno made use of hundreds of thousands of CDs to fulfill a childhood fantasy and create a real CD sea.

Named CDSea (original, I know) the adventurous art project was set up on Long Knoll field, near Kilmington. To realizes his dream, the famous artist appealed to the general public, through the UK press and BBC radio, and asked everyone to send him any unwanted CDs they may have lying around. He received a massive response, and thousands of CDs began arriving from as far as California or Brazil.

Last weekend, the natural ‘canvas” at Long Knoll field was mowed and the time consuming task of arranging every CD by hand, got under way. With the help of 140 friends and colleagues from the art world, Murno created his inland sea out of 600,000 old CDs.

CDSea is just the first of a series of self-funded art installations made from discarded and recyclable materials, and will be available for public view over the next two months. Aftre that, all CDs will be sent at a recycling plant.

If yo happen to be in the area, don’t miss the chance to see the mirror-like CDSea reflect the sunshine and moonlight.

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The printed press may be dying, but Tucson based artist Nick Georgiou has found a way of breathing new life into old newspapers.

Nick’s art is inspired by the death of the printed world, economic crisis, and political and environmental uncertainty. He states “Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. Whatever we used to read off paper, we’re now reading off digital screens. Our way of interacting with text is changing. My work is not only about the decline of the printed word in today’s society but its rebirth as art.”

Nick Georgiou uses old newspapers, collected by him or donated by others, tears them into folds and stitches them into various creatures. His works have been exhibited in various shows and galleries, bot in the US and abroad.

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A giant Nokia mobile phone has appeared in one of the biggest squares in Cluj, Romania, as part of the Planet Report Environmental and Film Festival.

Cluj is probably the most beautiful city in Romania, and I’m glad I finally get the chance to mention it in one of my posts. The first edition of the Planet Report Environmental and Film Festival aims to point out today’s environmental issues, and get the public and local authorities to take them more seriously.

As part of this eco-festival, local artists were asked to create various artworks out of waste. The most popular piece, so far, was a giant Nokia mobile phone, make of dozens of recycled mobiles, old keyboards and other computer parts.

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Painter Chris Trueman, from Claremont, California, has created a unique painting by using 200,000 dead ants instead of paint.

The painting Chris calls “Self Portrait With a Gun” actually features his younger brother, dressed as a cowboy, holding his dad’s rifle. From afar this unusual artwork looks more like an old yellowed photo, but as you approach it, you realize it’s actually something completely different – a painting made of ants.

To the artist, this bizarre ant painting represents how humans learn about things abstractly, only to have their impressions changed as they get closer to them. But actually completing his masterpiece wasn’t the simplest task, mostly because he hated killing the creatures he perceives to be ” right on the line of what I consider intelligent life.” When he first began the project, he decided to catch the ants himself, but the ants in San Francisco, where he was living at the time, were too small. So he decided to order them online, from a guy who was breeding and selling them as food for lizards.

First he ordered just 1,000 ants, because he didn’t know how many he would need for the right density, but then he started ordering 40,000. They came in peanut-butter jars, and seeing them moving around in there, it was hard for Chris to make a decision. He couldn’t release them, because they weren’t native to that area, and they could start biting people. So he decided to kill the ants himself. It wasn’t easy, and he even took a 1-year-break, but decided to complete his ant masterpiece,  because he didn’t want the first batch to have died in vain.

Some of the ants dried up and were torn to pieces, so Chris Trueman used them in the large parts of the painting, where details weren’t important, saving the full-sized ants for the detailed parts. he would handle them with tweezers, placing them on the Plexiglass canvas and coat them in a painting resin called galkyd.

Chris Trueman‘s ant painting is on display, at an art gallery in San Diego, and is priced at $35,000.

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Using his old Lada Samara Diva as an art medium, artist Nikola Nikolov has built a 2 meter-tall statue, named The Transformer.

The Transformer was created to symbolize the relationship between man and machine. The artist cut up his old Lada Samara Diva into pieces, which he later sculpted and welded together in the shape of a robot. The sculpture’s unusual position denotes the robot is at the moment between knowing what he was and what he has become.

The Transformer sculpture is 2 meters high, 80 meters wide and weight 90 kg.

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51-year-old Alex Queral carves phone-books to create amazing portraits of celebrities such as Clint Eastwood or Kirk Douglas.

‘In carving and painting a head from a phone-book directory, I’m celebrating the individual lost in the anonymous list of thousands of names that describe the size of the community.’ That’s how Alex Queral explains his art, adding that he also enjoys creating an ‘object of longevity’ out of something that otherwise gets discarded every year.

The Philadelphia based artist got the idea of using phone-books as an art medium, 14 years ago, while he was looking for some wood to carve. He spotted a pile of discarded phone-books on the pavement, and the idea just hit him. Since people mostly use the internet, to look for things these days, most phone books just get dumped somewhere, so he sees his art as a way of recycling them.

Alex Queral carves up to two phone-book sculptures a month, then paints them with transparent acrylic paint, to make them durable and give them a glossy finish. So far, Queral has immortalized iconic figures like the Dalai Lama, Barrack Obama, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, and many others.

The artist admits it’s pretty difficult to deal with a careless cut that ruins everything, right when he’s about to finish a piece. But all he can do is start his carving all over again.

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“Abandoned Housing Estate Number N” is a unique miniature city, made entirely from corrugated cardboard.

So far I’ve seen a city made of toothpicks, another one made of staples, but this is the first cardboard city, for me. Created by a Japanese artist whose name eludes me, Housing Estate Number N is an ever-growing project that started back in 2001. The paradox of this art installation is that although it’s mostly abandoned, it keeps growing and evolving, with each passing day.

Some of the rooms in the estate are lit and completely furnished, while others are dark and empty. There are even some eerie characters that look like haunting spirits. Though pretty bizarre, Housing Estate N is an inspiring project that will keep growing as long as its creator desires it.

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Using tens of thousands of matchsticks, David Mach creates detailed models of animals, symbols or historical figures.

53-year-old David Mach, from Scotland, has a passion for art and matchsticks, so he decided to combine them and create unique masterpieces. Using a clay mold he creates a plastic or fiberglass model of whatever he wants to create, and then begins the process of sticking matchsticks on it, one at a time. Most of his creations are made with tens of thousands of colored-tip matchsticks, imported from Japan, and take months to complete.

Along with his wife, who helps him run his art studio, David March has so far created over 350 matchstick artworks. They sell for anywhere between $30,000 and $52,000, but they don’t always make it to the auction, as the duo sometimes set them aflame at art exhibitions. With that many matchsticks involved, you can imagine the effect is truly impressive, though short.

Photos via Denoirmont

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Barney Smith, a former plumber, from Texas, has spent the last 30 years decorating toilet seats and setting up his unique toilet seat art museum.

It all began over 30 years ago, when Barney Smith was looking for a mounting for a set of antlers. Considering his profession, he found a wooden toilet seat worked perfectly. From that moment on he began painting and attaching all sorts of things t this bizarre art medium, and now, he is the proud owner of over 700 toilet seat artworks.

After his wife forced him to move them out of the house, Barney’s masterpieces are now stored in his garage. The artist finds inspiration for his work in pretty much everything he’s ever done. Some are inspired by his travels around the world, others by his profession, or his 60-year wedding anniversary. That’s also the reason 89-year-old Barney Smith doesn’t sell any of his artworks – they all mean too much to him.

The toilet seats, made from sawdust and glue, are donated by a local company, and the decorative accessories were donated by various people, by mail. And even though his rapidly approaching 90, old Barney still has a nice supply of blank toilet seats, waiting to be adorned. So if you have any unique items you’d like used in the name of art, don’t hesitate to contact the artist.

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Jurustic Park is the brainchild of Clyde and Nancy Wynia, a couple of artists who create unique creatures, out of various metals, and scatter them through their yard, for the world to see.

This wondrous place was born in 1993, when Clyde decided to sculpt a giant iron bird, and hang it from one of the trees in his backyard. A curious neighbor asked him how he got his hands on something like that and the first thing that came into Clyde’s mind was “I dug it out of the nearby marsh where it inhabited the swamp during the Iron Age.” And That’s how his yard earned the name of Jurustic Park.

Clyde calls himself an amateur paleontologist who excavates and recreates the now extinct creatures that inhabited the large McMillan Marsh, near Marshfield, Winsconsin, during the Iron Age. he explains that these mysterious metal creatures went extinct during the 19th century, when farming and industry moved into the area. Many were used as parts for various machinery, while others were destroyed by the acid rains caused by pollution.

After 17 years of work, Clyde Wynia has managed to decorate his yard with over 250 iron sculptures, from large dragons, to tiny mosquitoes. Whenever he feels the urge to recreate yet another metal creature, he just has some iron delivered to his Jurustic Park, and starts welding.

Over 15,000 people, from all around the United States, and 30 other different countries, visit Jurustic Park, every year, and although Clyde never sells his large metal sculptures, he donates his works to charitable auctions, evey year, and earns about $6,000 for various causes.

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Peter Hennessey, an artist fascinated with science and astronomy, has created a life-size model of the famous Hubble space telescope.

Judging by the artworks featured on his official website, Peter Hennessey has a thing for satellites, Mars rovers and other NASA equipment, but his latest creation, a model of the Hubble telescope, is his most impressive achievement yet. Made entirely from pieces of laser-cut plywood and steel, “My Hubble” accurately follows every detail of the original.

Rather than using 3D computer software to model every part of his plywood model, Hennessey just used 7 photos of the Hubble space telescope and Adobe Illustrator. Creating the giant model took three months, of which 6 weeks were dedicated to cutting the individual plywood pieces, while the rest was taken up by assembling them.

The life-size plywood and steel model of the Hubble space telescope is now on display, on Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbour, as part of the Bienalle of Sydney 2010.

Photos by DesignBoom via DesignBoom

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Ari Krupnik uses dice and various other materials to create intricate pixelated mosaics of celebrities and historical figures.

A Software Engineer, in Silicon Valley, California, Krupnik says he uses dice as an art medium because they offer six different shades of gray, depending on which facet is up. He uses a computer to calculate the size of his mosaics and render several variations of the dice. But that’s the easy part, putting them together, by hand, and finding the right adhesive to glue the dice, those are the tough parts.

Apart from dice, Ari Krupnik has used M&Ms and bullet casings, to create some of his mosaic masterpieces. The bullet casings mosaic depicts Eric S. Raymond, author of “The Art of Unix Programming” and features about seven thousand .40 brass casings.

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Fascinated by art, science, technology, and the link between the three, Devorah Sperber uses thousands of spools of thread to recreate pixelated, inverted images of masterpieces, which look like colorful abstractions, from up close.

You must be wondering why the New York based artist uses inverted images, in her art. As I said before, she is interested in science and art alike, and she is trying to address the way our brain perceives visual information versus the way most of us think we see. By hanging thousands of colorful thread spools upside down, she is referencing that our eye lenses project an inverted image of our surroundings onto the retina, which is then corrected by our brain.

In Devorah Sperber’s art, the brain is represented by a clear acrylic sphere that not only inverts the spool artworks, but also focuses in on them, so they look like sharp reproductions of original paintings. Most of her masterpieces are made out of around 5,000 spools of thread, and take between one and six months to complete.

via Yatzer

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