As I "warned" you on Wednesday, I've got lots and lots of really great links this week (I broke my baby toe and metatarsal last Thursday so I had a couple of days in bed) - so I'm just gonna jump right in with them!

Li Hongbo’s stunning, stretchable, paper sculptures, inspired by both traditional folk art and his time as a student learning to sculpt, challenge our perceptions. With a technique influenced by his fascination with traditional Chinese decorations known as paper gourds—made from glued layers of paper—Li Hongbo applies a honeycomb-like structure to form remarkably flexible sculptures.

The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference. I have given substance to this mutualism with the installation project exploring the binaries of public and private, light and shadow, and static and dynamic. This installation project relies on the purity and inner symmetry of geometric design, the interpretation of the cast shadows and the viewer’s presence with in a public space.

I was a lazy girl the past couple of days and did absolutely nothing! lol

So I thought I'd catch you up on the lunchtime projects - above is the week before last's offering (Week 8) which has a spelling mistake so I'll either have to take out the stitching, or leave it as is - it's supposed to ephemera after all, and exhibit the flotsam and jetsam of life, so I'm kind of leaning towards leaving the spelling mistake.



And here is Week 9 - unfinished, which is good for a WIP Wednesday, except *ahem*, I'm meant to be working on Week 10 this week. So I guess I'd better hop to it!  (That, among other things, lol, because I've been chatting and having fun with my work chum instead of working too!)

I'll see on Friday with the links - I'm really looking forward to sharing them with you this week - some really interesting stuff! Are you enjoying my Friday links posts?

See you then!

There's a lot to cover today, so let's just jump right in!

Textile Artist has done a review of "The Fine Art of Crochet" HERE



Illustration Friday has done a tutorial on how to use the colour wheel HERE and also offers nine ways to run a smart creative business HERE

Altoon Sultan blogs about her transition from landscapes to smaller, abstract works HERE
(If you click on no other link, I HIGHLY recommend you click on this one.  Really interesting stuff about the "burden of content".)

Contemporary Art Daily has done an review of the work of Michaela Meise HERE "If there is a common ground to the exhibited objects – a book, furniture, ceramics – it would be the notion of the grotesque" (The "grotesque" as a literary device was something I was very interested in when I was at uni, so its use in art is also interesting to me.)

And in a meta moment, I'm linking to Art Propelled's link post of some her favourite textile artists HERE
Textile Artist has done an interview with Raija Jokinen, a really interesting figurative textile artist HERE

Over at Thought Form, they've done a well-written review of  Marianne Gagnier's paintings HERE

Arts in Bushwick does a review of an outsider artists group show called "Outside In" (on display at Life on Mars Gallery in Brooklyn through March 1st). You can read about that HERE (wish I could go and see it!)

And finally, Clive Hicks-Jensen has a guest artist post by Peter Slight, who says:

In this recent post Clive talked about the importance of negative space and placement within an image. In the comments I mentioned the illustrator George Him who I feel displays a mastery of these skills. 

and then goes on to further discuss and illustrate that HERE. Good use of negative space is something we could all learn from!

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And totally off-topic, but since you all know how much I love fairies, I couldn't resist adding this :  Icelanders are protesting the building of a road because it will disturb the elves.

No seriously! A study in 1998 showed that 54.4% of people in Iceland believe in Fairies, and another paper in 2000 showed the same belief in elves.  I should move to Iceland! Yes/no? ;)

Have a great weekend!

A little hand stitching...



 a little paint...
It's coming along. :)