Art can be found in anything depending how you perceive it. Artists have explored their creative sides to share their visions since prehistoric men painted on cave walls with berries. Many modern artists have produced some incredible pieces using atypical and unusual media and presented here is just a small sampling of some of their works. I encourage everyone to explore further as there are more to be found. Perhaps nothing is more subjective than art so the list is in no particular order. Should you know of other interesting works please post them as I am sure many would be interested in checking them out.
Artist’s Medium: tires.
This woman from New York makes some amazing sculptures out of rubber tires and also makes some tire sculptures that are wearable and she is known for wearing them to art shows.
Artist’s Medium: computer pieces.
A Korean artist residing in New Zealand, he has made an interesting sculpture out of computer keyboards and mice.
Artist’s Medium: holography.
A British woman living in Australia, she has spent several years making numerous incredible holographic images.
Artist’s Medium: bread.
This Thai baker specializes in making gruesome body part sculptures out of bread. Warning although they are bread these images look like props from the latest slasher movie.
Artist’s Medium: coat hangers.
This British artist makes sculptures out of a variety of common objects such as car tires, bricks and coat hangers.
Artist’s Medium: colored pencils.
This American artist uses the more traditional medium in a new way as she makes sculptures out of colored pencils.
Artist’s Medium: chalk.
This British artist is known as the Pavement Picasso and makes amazing works of art on sidewalks with chalk.
Artist’s Medium: human hands.
This Italian artist takes bodypainting to a new level with the paintings he does on human hands.
Artist’s Medium: Lego.
This American artist has been featured on The Colbert Report. He is known for some amazing sculptures done with Lego blocks.
Artist’s Medium: Etch-A-Sketch.
This American artist specializes in lifelike portraits of top athletes and celebrities, the skill he displays working in such a fragile media is remarkable.
Artist’s Medium: bubble gum.
Ever wondered what an artist can create out of bubblegum? Check out some of the works created by this Italian artist.
Contributor: Clantargh
Cool list! Check out Tim Noble’s shadow art here. Very impressive and kudos for him using rubbish to cast the shadows.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/06/shadow_art.html
How cool!
This is a good list, it me want to follow up and explore their galleries.
Thanks
lol 1st!!
pretty crazy list dude.
Crap.
Here’s another…
Marzipan babies
http://www3.telus.net/camilleallen/camilleallen/id17.htm
WOW these are amazing. I am blown away by most of them but that one out of bread is creepy
Awesome!
Oops, nevermind.. after reading more and looking them up in snopes it says that they are made from polymer clay… not an unusual medium by anyone’s standards
Lynn I dont think chalk is that unusual either but thats my favorite one. Fabo list, some people are just so clever!
Kittiwat Unarrom, april fools day genius
I have seen some of Julian Beever’s works, and they are incredible. So life like. Great list
A good Kiwi bloke’s medium – corrogated iron!
http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issue100/thomson.htm
What about that guy who put up those orange drapes in Central Park a few years ago?
One of my favourites is body painting. I’ve seen some excellent examples, some of which you would hardly recognise as a body. There are numerous websites for anyone interested.
Here’s a few:
Jennifer Angus works with insects and arranges them so well on the wall that they look like patterned wallpaper.
There’s a lot of land/earth artists out there, one of the finest is Andy Goldsworthy. What this man does with leaves, stones and sticks is unreal.
Scott Blake is of the bar code art aggregate…he’s more visible then many and does some fine stuff.
Brian Jungen makes killer masks from running shoes and other found materials. This sort of art seems to be on the rise…recycled and found material. Keeps the tradition that Duchamp was in on alive.
beautiful, i love that hand art! great list.
here’s some more contributions;
Peter Callesen paper master
http://www.petercallesen.com/index/A4PAPERCUT_000.htm
and Willard Wigan microscopic artist
http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp
Re list item no 1: How does he blow that out of his mouth in that shape? Imagine attending careers counselling at high school. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” “I want to make amazing shapes out of bubble gum.” “No, when you grow up!”
Awesomely different list. These are amazing. I’m constantly shocked by the creativity and brilliance of people.
I have to agree that while Beever’s work is amazing, chalk is hardly an “unusual” medium.
Here’s a couple you could have included.
Tasty…
http://www.daneyalmahmood.com/meataftermeatjoy.html
Gross…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fluids_in_art
Yeah, as Skydiver says, it’s hardly unusual to see people creating huge, astonishing masterpieces on city pavements using chalk… er…. every major artist of the last 500 years started out doing that… umm….
Love the list!
#1, #2, #3 are gods everybody must worship
awesome list!!
#13 Tony, that was a strange agent from France named Christo and his equally odd wife named Jean-Claude who put up doorways made of fabric in Central Park. They seem to have fixated on covering stuff with sheets as they have sold (read “sold” as swindled) a number of Arts Commissions around the world into funding their self described “art”. It illustrates something that George Carlin once said about art: “If you nail two things together that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you.”
That said, this is a great list and the creativity here is real.
great list. I´ve been visiting this site a lot this week and I´ve found it quite entertaining. I really like all the lists even if i disagree with some from time to time keep up the good job
WHOA! What a bunch of edginess!!!!!!!
I mean, That’s just EDGY and OUT THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amazing, simply amazing. The creativity at work here is staggering. Excellent list, great work Clantargh!
p.s. thanks for not including anything disturbing like “body fluids”….I was wary when scrolling that I was going to stumble across something I was never meant to see.
Great List love the creativity in the world.
Nice list. I particularly liked no 1 2 3 and 5.
Why are there no links. I would really like to see more of their work, so a few links would have been great. But hey, there’s always google. Nonetheless, nice list.
I wonder if the dude has to chew all that gum himself
A worthy addition to this list would be the UK artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey: “The artists essentially use grass as a form of photographic paper, projecting a black-and-white negative image onto a patch of grass as it grows in a dark room, and using the natural photosensitive properties of the grass to reproduce photographs.” you can see an example of their work here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/grass-art/
Goodish list but I would have preferred a little more information about the artists and their techniques. Also links would have been much appreciated.
Here’s one of my favorites, Nicholas Jones. He makes sculptures out of old books, either by folding or cutting.
Have a look-see.
http://www.bibliopath.org/photographs.php
the key to art is creativity , not the actual medium used by the artist . Crap art doesn’t become good because it’s made out of something unusual . Look at Tracey Emin . her work is crap and her creativity is zero . Still she makes thousands out of it
It takes creativity to work with unusual mediums, though, and produce something note worthy.
Short, but fun.
http://andresserrano.org/
this should have been included.
I love how the colored pencil one looks like one of those swaying things from the bottom of the sea, beautiful
Great list, seen quite a few of body and sidewalk painting.
Clantargh:
Facinating list. Thank you.
scottrodo:
To characterize Christo as a swindler (using deception or fraud) may equally be said of any artist.
See Mark Rothko’s “Red and Orange” at http://www.kaboodle.com/reviews/moma.org-the-collection-mark-rothko.-red-and-orange.-1955
(BTW, personally I do not see either as a swindler, so please do not start a flame war
)
Good list…. but you definitely can’t forget Willard Wigan, who makes microscopic sculptures out of dust particles!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Wigan
I’ve seen all of these before. Were they all on different lists before? Especially the pencils one. I saw about 10 or 15 of her work somewhere else.
And the Lego guy too. There was a whole bunch and that one was not the coolest.
And I don’t love love love the Cubs anymore. Gotta find a new team to cheer for.
I’m thanking Clantargh in advance for this fantastic list. I noticed that the one made from bubblegum looks like the guy falling in the opening to MAD MEN. Now I’ll go and actually read this thing. Well done!
great list. I have great respect for unusual art, and the brilliant minds behind it. Creative.
Mom424: wow – those book sculptures are amazing! I do cringe a little at the thought of a book being destroyed though
i read before about loads of etch a sketches on display in some place and the had a lil earthquake and all the drawings were ruined because to clear the board u shake it
Not to blow smoke up Jamie’s ass, but you could add him to the list. Visually, this website is a work of art, even the ads have eye appeal.
I’d like to retract, but not delete comment #46. Jamie does not work in an unusual media. You can’t swing a mouse without hitting a web designer.
Thank you, Clantargh, this was a great list! Now I have to go back and find out more about some of these artists and some of those mentioned in the comments. I love it when someone opens my eyes to something new and different and makes me want to explore!
These aren’t really that unusual. Using household and common items is rather strange compared to what we consider “normal” art, but I think that you could have gone further. For instance, Marc Quinn had nine pints of his own blood removed (over time, of course) and made into a life-size frozen sculpture of his head. Or consider the Capuchin monks who dig up their dead fifty years after burial and use their bones to decorate a massive crypt.
This list is good in that the mediums aren’t entirely conventional, and some of them are certainly innovative (I love the coloured pencil sculptures!), but I think that you could dig deeper and make this list even better.
I was blown away by the Etch-a-Sketch guy.Having the talent is one thing; having the PATIENCE to create it is another thing altogether
Guido Danielle reminds of this guy I stumbled across on Flickr. He paints his head with a new picture every day and the results are pretty amazing most of the time.
http://flickr.com/photos/hawhawjames/sets/72157605129258648/
George Vlosich III is amazing!
Back when I was majoring in Art/Photography and my brother was majoring in Fine Arts/Painting, we and our friends would have Etch-A-Sketch play-offs. We’d have to do portraits or landscapes or still-life’s, it didn’t matter as long as it was representational. No abstracts allowed.
We got pretty good, but *this* guy! Manohman! He’d have wiped the floor with all of us combined!
And yes, Phillies, it took patience, patience, patience, and practice, practice, practice (all this while we had real classes to attend to! The competition became fierce, though, and you’d find yourself practicing a sweeping curve while reading for lit. class!).
I was a major fan of the modernists of the late 60′s – mid 70′s. Rothko, Sam Francis, Andy Warhol (before he became “ANDY WARHOL”), Roy Lichtenstein, so many more…
Art is always in the eye of the beholder. What I produce and offer as art might be seen by you as ugly, or nothing special, or amazing. Offering yourself to the world as an artist (whether it’s creating images or stories) is incredibly bold. You open your soul to everyone to be picked over, to be judged, to be (possibly) mocked.
I had to put art on the back burner while I raised 3 children alone, nursed both dying parents, and worked 60 or more hours a week.
Now, with the luxury of time, I can play. I make art every day. I am putting together a portfolio to take to the various art galleries in the Village. I’ll start my 4th major career (with luck!), and be happy with new career, as I was happy with my previous careers.
I loved each and every medium the artists used. They showed joy and life and exhilaration.
They showed art!
Has anyone seen that guy who covers everything in cheese?
http://www.cosimocavallaro.com/html/cheese_room_page.html
Kind of bizzare, but it takes all kinds.
I guess he could be on a cooking list too…
a little art with your wine??
This is awesome!
verryyyyyyyyy cooollll list indeeeeeedd!
I find one quite interesting, my girlfriend’s family owns a company that makes chewing gum base and she has a letter from Salvador Dali to her grandfather, apparently Dali wanted to use chewing gum base as a sculpting medium at one time. He wasn’t satisfied with the results though.
that guy that uses gum hates chewing the stuff, he despises it
What about that guy (think he was Italian) who made meatballs out of his own fat? My boyfriend made some cool sculptures out of paperclips – he made a really cool minotaur kind of thing. It takes a lot of time though so he only made a few.
love this list!
What about Ferro Fluid?