Artists have been trying to capture the Grand Canyon on canvas for more than a century. Contemporary artists carry on the tradition, especially during the annual Celebration of Art. Its 15th year kicks off September 1 with a silent auction. The main event is a week of “en plein air” (outside on location) painting, where 24 artists will be working at the canyon’s South Rim.
Not only is it fun for visitors to see artists painting the canyon in real-time, but the event is also an important fundraiser for the Grand Canyon Conservancy, the canyon’s official nonprofit partner. The conservancy funds historic building preservation, trail maintenance, educational programs, and wildlife protection projects.
Look forward to these five events at this year’s Celebration of Art.
Yellowstone National Park on Saturday shared an impressive artwork created recently by a 12-year-old visitor named Kylie.
Yellowstone National Park on Saturday shared an impressive artwork created recently by a 12-year-old visitor named Kylie.
“How amazing is this?!” the park asked followers via Facebook. “Thank you, Kylie, for finding inspiration in Yellowstone and making us smile!”
Kylie showed the drawings to a ranger, who shared them with park staff. The drawings are rich with color and detail and show that you do not always need a camera to document your Yellowstone experience.
The Facebook post had generated nearly 500 comments by the time of this post.
“Wow, Kylie, your picture of our nature is amazing!” one follower observed.
Kylie brings to life the iconic bison, a grizzly bear, a moose, and a pronghorn family.
Also featured, a howling wolf, an osprey spreading its wings, a baby Canada goose chatting with mom, mountain goats and bighorn sheep.
“The osprey is my favorite! I want this on a shirt. Wouldn’t that be so cute?” one follower chimed in.
“Suitable for framing!” another comment reads. “Excellent work, Kylie.”
But some were as impressed by Kylie’s love of the outdoors as they were with her artistic talent.
Reads another comment: “Love to see that this young person truly appreciated the beauty she saw in nature.”
World Ocean Day is June 8, and the coastal city of Townsville in Northeastern Queensland, Australia, is doing something special to celebrate. The Museum of Underwater Art (MOUA) will be opening its new Ocean Sentinel snorkel trail.
The MOUA aims to inspire reef conservation by providing underwater experiences that engage people in cultural stories of the land and sea. The new snorkel trail consists of eight sculptures. These hybrids of human and natural marine forms represent marine conservationists — the ocean sentinels in the installation’s title. Most of the sentinels depicted are Australian.
“The stylised marine forms that surround and envelop them represent their particular field of study and expertise,” sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor explained in a statement. “The artworks aim to create an educational and informative introduction to Great Barrier Reef, celebrating its rich history and its connection to some of the world’s leading marine science institutions and its strong links to indigenous cultures and traditions.”
Workers move one of the sentinels. / Photo courtesy of MOUA
The artist is also an environmentalist and professional underwater photographer. Most of his work explores submerged and tidal marine environments.
deCaires Taylor sculpted the sentinels from a new high-grade, low-carbon concrete reinforced with marine stainless steel. Each sculpture is about 7 feet tall and weighs up to 2.8 tonnes. A low center of gravity helps each piece resist the ocean’s pull. The submerged sculptures will be set on barren stretches of the Great Barrier Reef off Townsville. deCaires Taylor hopes that, over time, marine life such as corals and sponges will colonize the artworks.
“Like the Great Barrier Reef itself, they will become a living and evolving part of the ecosystem, emphasising both its fragility and its endurance.”
The new Ocean Sentinel installation is MOUA’s third art project installation around Townsville. Ocean Siren, the first MOUA project, is not underwater but stands alongside Townsville’s Strand Jetty. The sculpture changes color in response to water temperature variations. Divers and snorkelers can also visit deCaires Taylor’s Coral Greenhouse, about a two-hour boat ride off the coast from Townsville.
deCaires Taylor stands beside one of his sentinels. / Photo courtesy of MOUA
We round up cakes that look like paintings and sculptures from artists like Picasso, Warhol, and Van Gogh. Just look at #everythingiscake or #isitcake.
Cake inspired by art is having a moment.
True, it’s never been hard to find ambitious pastry projects on TikTok or Instagram, but these are more often than not confections shaped like familiar objects: a watermelon, a camera, a pot of pasta, a kettle. (All are represented in a single video at Tuba Geckil’s TikTok account, @redrosecake_tubageckil). But there seems to be a new focus in 2022 on cake as objet d’art.
The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, for example, recently hosted its Great Blanton Bake-Off; 16 bakers recreated works of art found in the museum’s collection (21,000 works to choose from) in the hopes of winning gift cards from local pastry shops and Blanton membership packages — plus bragging rights, of course.
Blythe Johnson, the winner of the amateur category, re-created Mac Wells’ Untitled piece (see images below). Her cake had layers of blueberry almond sponge, lemon curd and whipped cream, according to Smithsonian Magazine. She made the joconde many times to find the perfect colors to match the artwork — stopping and starting over a two-week period — to complete the cake.
Georgia Chido, a 15-year old who won the under-18 division, reproduced a textile work by Venezuelan artist Luis Montiel (see actual item under the cake version below). She made the fondant on her own and then did all the color-matching to make sure that the cake’s hues were accurate.
The top prize among pro bakers went to Hannah Erwin, founder of HC Confections and a business administration and marketing student at Texas A&M University. Her cakes looked exactly like six different works of art from the Blanton collections — including geometric, abstract and pop-art works (see actual items below at left and cake versions below at right).
This apparently kickstarted the meme #everythingiscake, which continues to thrive and has more than 12,000 examples. You might have also noticed that Netflix launched an engaging new show, Is It Cake? in March of this year based on the idea that good bakers can make cake look like anything. That hashtag — #isitcake — also has thousands of examples now.
The New York Times noticed the trend twice in 2021 with articles dedicated to trompe l’oeil cakes and whimsical cakes. Further research, however, confirms that people have been gawking at cakes as art for years, even decades. Bored Panda compiled some noteworthy works of edible art in 2020 and an article in the now-defunct Flavorwire is titled “Amazing Cakes Inspired by Art,” but none of the pictures come through (both their Instagram and website seemed to have come to a halt in 2019).
The blogger-baker-graphic designer at Sweet Fancy Cakes — Kristen from North Salt Lake,Utah — published a post with her rendition of a Mondrian in cake form in 2015 (it’s the Mondrian at the top of the article) but unlike the painting, it probably smelled and tasted as good as it looks. Earlier examples of cakes-that-look-like-art probably stretch all the way back to the 1600s — the era when round cakes were first baked in Europe, according to FoodTimeline.Org. But no one had TikTok back then….
Pinterest Boards of Art as Cake
Of course, there are always Pinterest boards dedicated to the topic as well as Instagram accounts by cake makers who could easily get into the forgery business — like this Russian company (Tortik Annushka) that has over a million followers.
Below are more snapshots of art as cake from Pinterest.
And finally, if you want to see a demonstration of someone making a cake that looks like a painting (and frame!), check out Rosanna Pansino‘s “Cake or Fake / Painting on Cake” video below.
It is my pleasure to introduce you to your new favorite account on Twitter and Instagram: Art But Make It Sports.
If you’re not yet indoctrinated, it is my singular pleasure to introduce you to your new favorite account on Twitter and Instagram: Art But Make It Sports.
Listen, the rhetoric about sports online can get boring. Everyone is making the same jokes. The hot takes are predictably outlandish. A fresh perspective is welcome. That’s one of the reasons why LJ Rader, a product manager at a sports data company, created the account.
Unfortunately, the art world doesn’t intersect with the sports world as often as I’d like. But when it does, it can be beautiful, and I aim to help amplify the message.
I have a soft spot for art about sports. I wrote a long feature about Tyrrell Winston, a visual artist who literally uses basketballs as a medium for his work. I caught up with Andrew Kuo, another visual artist who hosts the NBA podcast Cookies Hoops. I spoke with Efdot as he painted a basketball mural in Brooklyn.
Rader isn’t creating the art himself. However, he does have an astonishing knowledge of the sports world and the art world, and his ability to blend the two together is unparalleled. It’s a fun account to follow, and who knows, maybe you’ll come away from it feeling a bit more like an art scholar with a stronger sense of visual literacy.
We caught up with Rader, the creator of the account, to learn more about this wonderful and welcome breath of fresh air in the sports media universe.
The authors of ‘The Joy of Basketball’ explain how their friendship helped them see the NBA in such a unique way.
NEW YORK — Ben Detrick and Andrew Kuo have a friendship built on the love of basketball and when you listen to them or even read their words, they make you remember why you started following the sport.
Detrick is a sportswriter who reported the infamous Burnergate story about former Philadelphia 76ers executive Bryan Colangelo. He is a contributor for The Ringer and has also written for the styles section of the New York Times. Kuo is an excellent visual artist who was also a longtime DJ in NYC.
They host the “world’s most influential” basketball podcast, Cookies Hoops, which is where all of your coolest friends get their basketball takes. If none of your friends are listening to Cookies yet, you can quickly become the hip sports fan in your circle by subscribing.
Detrick and Kuo linked up with For The Win to discuss their book, THE JOY OF BASKETBALL: An Encyclopedia of the Modern Game (which could make for a great holiday gift!) at Scarr’s Pizza in the Lower East Side. After Scarr’s started blasting Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem so loud that transcribing our conversation would become impossible, we moved locations to Clandestino, the Canal Street bar near Dimes Square.
The two enter the room at Clandestino with comfort and confidence that is typically reserved for the fictional bar in Cheers, a comparison they would hate due to their self-administered rivalry with all things Boston.
There, we covered as many topics vaguely adjacent to hoops as we could while enjoying “an beer” — a running bit they have on their podcast about drinking precisely one beverage.
Who in the NBA is legitimately cool and why is the only answer LaMelo Ball? What should we make of the narrative surrounding Ben Simmons and Kyrie Irving and how does it relate to populism? What is it about their Cookies Hoops podcast that draws so many artists, models, influencers, musicians and other media personalities to their events?
These are questions that only Detrick and Kuo could answer, so For The Win picked their brain for as long as possible before the two would have to make their way to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
