Art in Micro2
WIN A TRIP FOR TWO TO LE LOUVRE
Sleepover at any Art Series Hotel from 12 April to 31 July, upload your most creative picture to your Instagram account, tag in @artserieshotels, and use the hashtag #artinmicro
To enter the draw, guests must be following @artserieshotels and have stayed overnight at least once during exhibition dates.
Terms and conditions apply. See website for full details.
ART FEATURED BY
Salavat Fidai
The lead of a pencil is the medium of choice for Salavat Fidai, a Russian artist who has been working in the genre of micro art since 2014. Surely one of the most technically skilled pencil sculptors working today, the artist started by creating paintings on matchboxes, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and grains of rice. Using a craft knife and stereo microscope, Fidai now works with lead that measures between 0.5 and 2mm. The time spent on creating the work varies: an average of 6 to 12 hours for a statuette, whilst more intricate works can take up to three days. The subject matter ranges from popular culture icons, such as the Pixar character Wall-E or monuments like the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower to more everyday subjects such as musical instruments or household items. The artist has an international following with a history of exhibitions in St Petersburg, London, Singapore and Los Angeles.
Joshua Smith
Based in Adelaide, Joshua Smith is a self-taught artist with a background in stencil art. He creates miniature dioramas of urban street scenes at a 1:20 scale. In doing so, he draws our attention to the overlooked aspects of the urban environment; the tags, rubbish bins and chipped signs that combine to signal decay. The artist describes how “graffiti culture plays a significant role in my work, many of the buildings I choose to create have been decorated by graffiti artists worldwide.” Because his work often incorporates street writing, he has sought the permission of well-known artists including Merlot, Amuse 126, Speak, Zamar, and Gunz to recreate their work in miniature. For this project, Smith has contributed two different works for each hotel: small spray cans (which even include a tiny ball so that they rattle); and US Postal Service mailboxes. Smith’s work has attracted international interest, with exhibitions in Europe, United States and Asia.
Jon Almeda
Working with ceramics on a miniature scale, Jon Almeda is an adventurous self-taught artist with a diverse background in music, photography and video. Living in Oahu, Hawaii, Almeda describes how he draws inspiration for his pottery pieces from the patterns of nature to be found on the island: the changing cloud formations; the movement of the tides and the local tropical flora. Previously working with ceramics on a much larger scale, the artist has been working with miniature pottery for seventeen years. He describes how an encounter with the 1979 book Creating Ceramic Miniatures dramatically changed his perspective. “He discovered that working small was much harder then he imagined, he tested different clay bodies, made his own tools and tried new techniques to improve the detail of each new piece.” Almeda prefers to work in the outdoors, working directly with his portable pottery wheel to capture the atmosphere of the natural environment.
Varvara Razakova
Based in Moscow, Razakova has worked as an illustrator and graphic designer since 2009. She graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute in 2014. The artist’s passion for miniatures was ignited in 2008 with an encounter of a dollhouse in an Art Nouveau museum in Spain. After subsequent research she realised that she did not have the time nor equipment to make mini-furniture of high-quality. Instead, in 2016 she decided to combine her drawing and painting skills, working in watercolor format. Razakova does not use a magnifying glass when painting micros: she describes how “it’s only naked eye that helps me to feel the scale and form of the future miniature.” The Tiny House series was inspired by an Instagram challenge but then developed into a larger project which combines the artist’s passion for miniatures and her love for architecture. Razakova’s work has been collected widely; her works have found homes in USA, Scotland, Spain, Russia and Australia.
