Photograph by Yifeng Song If you happen to be living in rural Bolivia, building a water pump isn’t going to include a visit to the local hardware store. Nor can you assume being able to plug into a power grid to operate your machine. So how do you get water? Essentially, this was the challenge […]
Photography by Sam Alvar Bob Dylan was born in his hometown, but Duluth TankPodDrum’s shell is a hollow, 6″-diameter, performance artist Tim Kaiser has a different musical 14″-tall stainless steel vessel that Kaiser scored for hero: Harry Partch (1901-1974), an underappreciated 70 cents at a salvage yard. In his home studio, he composer who invented […]
The idea of building with bottles isn’t new, but most existing bottle buildings have fallen into disrepair. It’s rare to find such a perfect and intact edifice as the bottle chapel built by restaurant owner and folk artist Martin Sanchez. Sanchez has created an urban oasis, a Garden of Eden, hidden behind shrubs, trees, and […]
Photograph by Max Maruszewski Learning to use an oxyacetylene torch was just the spark Max Maruszewski needed to set his interest in building things afire. Now, when he’s not working on a school play or racing around a parking lot in the “wheelchair” he and a buddy made out of a shopping cart, this 16-year-old’s […]
Photograph by Tom Kennedy Riding a red double-decker bus in London is all about the view. The yellow Topsy-Turvy School Bus, currently touring the United States, is all about point of view. Usually, when Tom Kennedy builds and drives art cars, he’s taking his own artistic vision for a spin. This time, the driving forces […]
Photograph by Jonathan Jamieson Jonathan Jamieson of Dumfries, Scotland, did more than whittle away his vacation in the summer of 2006. While on a break from school, he turned common bamboo barbecue skewers into a delicate sculpture that gracefully delivers a rolling metal ball bearing down a series of chutes and turns. Jamieson built the […]
Photography by Maurizio Lamponi Leopardi If the headlamp on a classic Vespa or Lambretta scooter can illuminate a twisting Italian roadway at night, why couldn’t it light up a desk? In the hands of Milanese artisan Maurizio Lamponi Leopardi, the polished chrome, handlebars, and headlights of the iconic 1960s motorbikes now find new uses in […]
