Art Kaleidoscope

A walking cat photo (left), which has become the Internet meme and sculpture of walking cat (right). Japanese artist Meetissai Internet Meme sculptures

Japanese artist Meetissai Internet Meme sculptures
Undoubtedly, the Internet loves memes, especially when the focus is on funny animals. From time to time, scrolling through the pages of your social networks, you can find a viral image that seems to defy the limits of reality.
Traditionally, made for entertainment purposes, Internet memes spread through social networks, the blogosphere and forums. However, later memes can go beyond the Internet, for example, becoming material and inspiration for artists. One of them is a talented Japanese sculptor known as Meetissai. An enthusiast of sculpting, he decided to implement the popular memes of animals. Cats, dogs, raccoons and hares, photographed in very unusual, but at the same time funny situations, inspired the artist. He began to spend his free time making funny and realistic sculptures that he found in the dark depths of the Internet.
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Wassily Kandinsky. Blue Rider Impressionist artists 1911-1914. Almanac cover

Blue Rider Impressionist artists
Artistic Association “Blue Rider” – one of the most stellar and rapid, bold and short-lived in the XX century. It existed only 3 years (1911 – 1914). Initially with enthusiastic whisper, and later in a loud voice, talked about the synthesis of all the arts and non-objective paintings. Here talked about the value of the painting of crazy and children, about colors and shapes, self-sufficiency and spiritual content of painting. Meanwhile, it united the unique versatile artists working equally brilliantly with brush and pen. Besides, the best representatives of the “new art” wrote revolutionary almanac “Blue Rider”, and without requiring fees and promotions.
Recalling the three years before the First World War, Kandinsky said: “The Blue Rider” is the two of us, Franz Marc and me.”
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Cafe Terrace at Night, 1888. Yellow color for Vincent Van Gogh

Yellow color for Vincent Van Gogh

In fact, Yellow was a favorite color of Vincent Van Gogh. Indeed, the color lives in most of his paintings – sunflowers, wheat ears, landscapes at harvest time, and in the light of the sun. Since the stay in Arles, the yellow color is becoming increasingly important in the paintings of the artist. On the one hand, he was assigned to it by the nature of southern France. But on the other hand, he was an eccentric artist. In Arles, Van Gogh rented a small house that he wanted, and in reality painted in yellow.
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Vintage “Chorus Line” oval brooch. Gold tone jewelry alloy, porcelain, enamels. 6 cm. Patricia Buckley Moss porcelain brooches

Patricia Buckley Moss porcelain brooches
Talented American artist Patricia Buckley Moss has created a whole gallery of paintings, brooches, and Christmas-tree decorations that you cannot confuse with any others. Country landscapes, people, animals, children, and, of course, her unique geese – they are so wonderful!
Patricia Buckley Moss began to produce brooches in limited quantities for her foundation engaged in helping children with learning difficulties. Each year, she produced one or two kinds of brooches, and each of them has a serial number.
Born on May 20, 1933 in New York, Patricia Buckley Moss attended the fine arts school in Manhattan. Diagnosed with dyslexia and having difficulty communicating and teaching in high school, she struggled with both diagnosis and problems. Shortly after graduating from college in 1955, she married a chemical engineer Jack Moss and moved with her family to Virginia. By the way, she and her husband have six children.
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Birth. Pendant. Materials – silver, gold, opal. Work by Russian artist jeweler Alexey Semanin

Russian artist jeweler Alexey Semanin
Born in 1975, Alexey Semanin graduated from the Suzdal Art and Restoration School, and worked at the Ulyanovsk Art Museum as a restorer. He spent several years in Stockholm, working as a designer, but not forgetting the jewelry art. Then he settled in Moscow.
Alexey, as a professional restorer, owns both old-fashioned and modern technologies. He is able to work with the most diverse materials – metal, stones, wood, including painting, gold leaf, and plastic. With an ingenious mixture of various materials and techniques, he creates unprecedented complex textures and color effects, and with their help, archetypical images filled with philosophical content. Main motifs – Angels, birds, women, and animals. Strange archaic, but not ethnic, things that must not only be worn, but also examined, thought about them, endow them with meanings, and associate memories with them. In short, the genre of his works – Amulets.
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Angel with a trumpet. XIX century. Sherya village. Unique art of Perm wooden sculpture

Unique art of Perm wooden sculpture
The age of a wooden man is a little longer than a human and much shorter than a century of its bronze and stone counterparts. Although equally threatened by fire and dampness, but on the other hand, it travels more easily, transforms, and renews. Besides, it is egalitarian, because wood is inexpensive and affordable, and anyone can learn the skills of a carver.
But Perm wooden sculpture is still a riddle. This unusually expressive art has no youth, neither is it ever old. It appeared at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries as a mature phenomenon. It quickly absorbs a lot of styles, tries a lot of various techniques. Also, it shows itself in all its splendor and bloom and disappears, not having had time to exhaust its possibilities. It has no canons, more precisely, it uses different canons, but as a whim, and not as a dogma.
Noteworthy, Perm wooden sculpture almost did not save the names of their masters, but in every detail bears the imprint of their individuality. Common features can be traced, even with ease – and disappear with the same ease. The only undoubtedly common feature for all works is non comformism. Rules exist to violate them. Aliens from the White Sea, immigrants from Polish churches, monochrome replicates of high classicism are accepted into this silent wooden fraternity without objection. But let’s start from the threshold and further: deep down and up.
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Crocuses. 2004. Amethyst, citrine, nephrite, chalcedony, metal. Work by Ural stone cutter Viktor Vasiliev

Ural stone cutter Viktor Vasiliev
Born 10 April 1954, Viktor Vasilyev is a talented artist-stone cutter, master of stone cutting art, who works mainly in the genre of floristics. A former geologist, head of the Vasilyev Stone-cutting Workshop. Awarded the Order of Denisov-Uralsky.
According to the master, the world of stone is familiar to him since childhood, because Nizhny Tagil and its surroundings are a real natural treasure. Participation in the work of the club “Polyus”, classes in the geological club and art studio helped Victor understand the scientific and aesthetic value of minerals. And further study in the geological technical school and at the Geological Faculty of Perm University is quite natural.
Professional miner Vasiliev worked in mines and lovingly collected minerals. To discover and show the beauty of minerals, for example, variegated jasper, it was required to master the methods of its processing, which he later applied in the decorative composition “The island of Buyan” (1995)
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