Diorama

I havent posted in so loooong! But just so you cant say I've been slacking, I've brought some art with me to show you.
Here is a diorama room I created in october as a special commission for a friend...

It took many hours of work and lots of fun. The creation of rich contained worlds has been a passion and pursuit of mine for many years now.
Here is a "behind the scenes" image of the photoshoot which took place inside my "Moss Bed Valley", an indoors moss bed in my home studio.

I like to build a world in detail. I enjoy it so much. I am fascinated by the layers of depth that can emerge from a world or space or environment once you look at it at close range and pick appart its possibilities. And so in this project I added many layers of details, so that there would be mini artworks contained within the artwork; worlds within worlds.

For example, I made this abstract mixed media painting to hang in the back wall:



here's a detail:



And in the library I added cool things, like this replica of his kid's drawing...



...and this portrait done in pencil from a wedding picture.



But one of the funnest details to add, was this hidden miniature book...





I call this book "Illustrated Imaginary History of Energy and Matter"





Thanks a lot for visiting my little world, hope you enjoyed!



AA11

Paper Boat Dreams

To entice you:
The scale of some of the featured objects in the videos that I'm about to show you:

(if you dislike contemplating little tiny things, might as well quit now.)

I made two videos this weekend that I am pretty happy with. In a way, they are preliminary sketches on something I am building upon, but they also work in their own way.
In my last blog, I was talking about entryways into a dimension that is very much parallel (and same) to our own, yet hidden. I also said that I enter such places through my work.
It is my hope with these videos to share an example -of sorts- of how this might work. It has to do with zooming into things up close, things or events that are simple, that go unnoticed and are usually taken for granted. These things and events are everywhere (they are everything), and because of this is that we ignore them. In the worlds that I make, rules of reason and behavior are "different" (hence Other Space), hoping to highlight the fragility of our judgment when perceiving reality.

Paper Boat Dream 1 from Alberto J. Almarza on Vimeo.

Paper Boat Dream 2 from Alberto J. Almarza on Vimeo.

The videos and related work are also a revision of my usual exploration of worlds, and worlds within worlds. For my Art Out of the Box residency, I am planning to do something similar, making mini scenes and secretly encasing them within crevices of the South Side.
(This should be really fun, stayed tuned on that project, which has already completed one residency...)
Thanks for haging out and watching the vids!
See you next time.


AA11

Terrarium Creatures

Did you know that there are mini-beasts that inhabit and roam the vast landscapes of my small terrariums?







Yesterday, a big rout of earth-snails hatched..




They are about the size of grains of sand.








...but there are larger and stranger creatures that rule these lands...

Check out a clip I made of some of
my terrarium creatures.

And if you like that video, here is an earlier one featuring a mysterious microworld with amazing plants that respond to water.
Both of these somewhat experimental videos have "music" that I made in 2006. I am planning to make a third video with my sea-snail footage.




Special thanks to my wife Sarah for gifting me a macro lens!

...and thanks to you for stopping by.


AA1o