Oil on canvas, oil on loose change. Jacqueline Lou Skaggs has created several tiny masterpieces in her “Tondi Observations” collection, miniature oil paintings made on old Lincoln pennies. ‘Tondi’ refers to a classic circular form of art, though, admittedly, they’re typically much larger than the head of a coin.

From Skaggs:

Initially these coins were going to be spent- nestled with other coins in an exchange of goods. Or tossed back to the sidewalks from whence they came. Nice thoughts. However, these works remain hoarded as art rather than currency or discarded, valueless copper.

The artist uses pennies, the most common and ubiquitous coin, to explore the “binding ideologies that define our family, religious, social and political worlds.” An interesting paradox presents itself here, as Skaggs’ act of art increases the coin’s original value exponentially, while systematically destroying its technical face value as a piece of currency. 

See more of Skaggs’ work on her website, here.

- Maggie

Photographer Ulric Collette explores familial similarity in his Split Face collection, released in 2011. By combining photographs of his subjects, head-on images fused at the middle in a beautiful effort of blending, Collette has created a genetics-based series of visual portmanteaus.

It’s amazing; Collette’s photos lay out every physical likeness and dissimilarity in both the small and large scale sense of appearance, and he’s almost clinical in his exploration: against a white backdrop, his subjects exist in a vacuum with no hints as to who they may be. And even so, there’s so much personality here, a split spectral sense of it in each raised eyebrow and hesitant smile. They make me imagine a colossal web of every tiny difference in personality, choice, thought and action - all manifesting outward for two very different lives lived. 

“Genetic Portraits” will be on display at Centaur Theatre’s Seagram Art Gallery in Montreal through October, and you can see more of his work here. 

- Maggie

Buffalo’s grain silos, beautifully lit and exalted for all of this creative city to see. City of Night organizer Dana Saylor, and I’m sure an army of volunteers, has a lot to be proud of.

You can read and watch more about what City of Night was, but all you have to see are these images of light, color, vision and creativity. This event was successful because of all the art, vendors and activism, but more importantly, because it literally shed light on what we have to work with, and what we can create with it.

Good work, all around. Let’s do it again. Where else?

-Ben

Vintage inspired prints from English illustrator Merrick Angle: Le Soleil, La Mer, La Lune.

- Maggie

WHAT? ON EARTH!

ibride, who/whatever that is, kills it with these animal-human-unsure portraits. Lewis Carroll would kill for these on his mantle, I’m sure.

-Ben

It’s near impossible to navigate New York City without one or two or three of the city’s bright yellow metro cards. Everyone’s got one, and everyone’s lost one. WIth that in mind, New York artist Nina Boesch has re-imagined the New York landscape using only discarded metrocards, chopping up the cards to best utilize their limited color palettes (yellow, blue, black and white) for her metrocard collages. Between the cityscape perspectives and some pitch perfect recreations of iconic New York faces, Boesch is on a roll with an incredible effort of artistic reuse.

- Maggie

I went to an apartment art party last night. It was an art show in an apartment. An ap-art-ment party. An ap-art-ment p-art-y. Very vogue. Very pomo. Very smelly. Heat + art bodies = Febreeze.

Cool idea, and a cool space to boot. What you think is the kitchen is really a bathroom, with a huge tub. And what you think is a straight, normal wall is really a curved wall. Surprises all around.

I appreciate seeing art in unexpected places, even places that normally might have art. (Even the most gallery-like apartments don’t open their doors to the public.) Organizers infused an empty second-floor living space with the work of a half-dozen or so local artists, plus a killer film-painting-sax-improv piece by one Mr. Pat Cain.

The apartment was sweet, too. The landlord, who lives downstairs, says a new tenant is moving in upstairs, so who knows if this night will happen again anytime soon, but it should. Also, there’s teeth (or flames?) on the crown molding, and the new tenant makes honey, so there’s that.

Thanks for the unexpected, ap-art-ment peo-ple.

-Ben

Art is dangerous.

-Ben

Chicago designer Thomas Quinn explores the endless illusions of reality with his work in anamorphic typography. As Quinn employed a simple light projector to guide his painting across the uneven wall canvas, his words may only be clearly read from one single sweet spot of perspective - all other positions distort his words. While one may generally still get the gist of it, his message falls into place only when one faces it head on from the point of view of its projector origin. Awesome! Plus, on a slanty-walled-rooms-that-are-tough-to-decorate note, what a cool method to add some personality when conventional art can’t do the job.

- Maggie

Just one of the 12,000 astounding exhibits of the London 2012 Festival, the aMAZEme installation by Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo has had little trouble standing out. Constructed with over 250,000 books, the installation takes the shape of a fingerprint from Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, a famous lover of literary labyrinthes. aMAZEme is on display at the Southbank Centre Clore Ballroom of London until August 26, while the London 2012 Festival continues through September 9.

- Maggie

[We love books.]

Artist Kumi Yamashita is a master of shadow play, manipulating materials like creased paper and building blocks to bring to life her own small menagerie of shadow characters.

- Maggie

Illustrator Jason Ratliff delights in the mundane, as his Walking Shadow series turns every day drudgery into a secret world of color. Nothing exists but form and shadow, allowing for Ratliff’s use of mosaic silhouettes to take center stage. As Ratliff’s characters become vessels of light and color, they feel very much in line with the artist’s self-proclaimed penchant for “a light dose of whimsy.”

Prints of Ratliff’s work are available here, while increasing requests have pushed the illustrator into an attractive series of iPhone and iPad cases marked by his more popular prints.

- Maggie