Allan Pachino Wallace is a young, talented artist from Nassau, the Bahamas, who recently rose to internet fame with a series of amazing celebrity portraits made only with salt, coffee or baking soda.

Wallace works with all kinds of mediums, from common oil paint and spray paint, to tree leaves and cereal. A quick look at his social media profiles on Facebook or Instagram reveals the versatility and talent of this young artist, but the internet only learned about it after he shared a salt portrait of actor/comedian Kevin Hart on his Facebook page. People loved it and got shared so much that Kevin Hart himself saw it and publicly congratulated Allan on his work.

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Croatian artist Dino Tomic usually works with conventional materials like pencils and paper, but his latest project has him spreading kitchen salt on a black background to create insanely detailed portraits and Indian mandalas.

The Norway-based salt wizard, who works as an art teacher and tattoo artist, starts off with a large black canvas and uses a plastic bottle or a paper cone to painstakingly squeeze out the grainy mineral until he completes his mindblowing masterpieces. Believe it or not, Tomic just recently started working with salt, as a way of keeping busy while relaxing his wrist, which had started to hurt from too much hand-drawing.

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A true artist doesn’t really need expensive tools and materials to produce something beautiful, and San Antonio artist Rob Ferrel is the perfect example. For months, he has been treating his Instagram followers with  highly realist portraits that he creates using nothing but salt, a few brushes, and a piece of cardstock.

Ferrel begins by pouring salt on a table and then moves it around with brushes until recognizable features begin to emerge. He also uses cardstock for clean, sharp lines. Once the portrait is ready, he photographs it and posts it to Instagram, and then gathers up all the salt to make his next masterpiece.

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Meet Aisa Mijeno, a Filipino architect and scientist who invented a revolutionary lamp that runs on a glass of saltwater instead of batteries. Her vision in creating the SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting) lamp was to “light up the rest of the Philippines sustainably,” by finding an environment-friendly alternative light source suitable for people in coastal areas. She came up with the idea after spending time with the locals of the Butbut tribe in the Kalinga Province of Philippines, who had no access to electricity.  

The lamp can apparently run for eight hours on just two tablespoons of salt and a glass of water. “It is made of tediously experimented and improved chemical compounds, catalysts, and metal alloys that when submerged in electrolytes will generate electricity,” Mijeno explained. The idea behind it is the chemical conversion of energy, but while it works on the scientific principle of the galvanic cell, it makes use of a harmless, non-toxic saline solution instead of hazardous electrolytes. 

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They say it’s back luck to spill salt, but Toronto-based Bashir Sultani clearly has little regard for superstition, as he has no problem spilling the seasoning and shaping its fine crystals into detailed portraits of modern icons.

After spilling salt onto a black background, Afghan-born Sultani uses basic tools, like a razor blade and Q-tips to manipulate the grains into portraits of actors, singers, popular movie characters and other icons. He makes it all look easy in his videos, but it’s obvious you need a great deal of patience and skill to create such original masterpieces.

Be sure to check his YouTube channel for more making-of videos of his amazing salt portraits.

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A former dockyard worker, Motoi Yamamoto is now one of Japan’s most talented artists, known all over the world for his intricate artworks, made of salt.

His working with this unusual medium was caused by the death of his younger sister, back in 1994. Mr. Yamamoto says that by working with free-form salt he is able to touch precious memories from the time his sister was alive, something he just can’t do by simply looking at pictures or reading a diary.

Some of his most amazing works are the intricate salt labyrinths. When he’s creating them, Motoi Yamamoto feels like he is following a trace of his memory that he can only reach when the work is completed. He stands in a cross-leg position for hours-on0end carefully laying the lines of salt, until he reaches the essential point in his memories.

Salt plays an important role in many cultures Like Hinduism or Japanese Shinto. Motoi Yamamoto uses salt as a life-giving substance, so after his art installations are no longer exhibited, he insists the salt be thrown back into the ocean so it can continue its path.

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