Lorenzo Manuel Durán is an artist from Cáceres, Spain. It wasn’t until 2005, at the age of 36, that Durán would fully pursue his passion for art and nature. Starting with more traditional oil paintings, he found himself inspired one day by a caterpillar eating a leaf. The moment propelled him to try cutting a leaf with a scalpel. That was 200,8 and the rest is history.
Through a lengthy process of trial and error, Durán has developed his own leaf-cutting technique, taking great care not to ‘spoil’ the leaf during the cutting process. His main tools are a surgical scalpel and dental-pointed device that helps him remove the cut parts from the leaf. Most of his ‘canvases’ are collected from areas right around where he lives/works.
Having completed both group and solo exhibits in the last few years, Lorenzo shares his work on his own website as well as Facebook. Below you will find a small selection of his intriguing artwork.
Ceramic artist Kathleen Dustin is widely recognized as one of the world's leading polymer clay artists, a pioneer, an educato. Her exquisite evening bags have been celebrated for their emotional images of women, translucent depth of surface, and vibrant colors. Her most recent purses and art jewelry pay attention to the natural forms she finds in the woods of New Hampshire. Kathleen Dustin has been working with polymer clay since the early 1980s, developing many of her own techniques because it was a material with no history as a fine art or fine craft medium. She is a member and juror of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, the oldest professional craft organization in the United States, and has been a juror for numerous national shows.
Peggy Bjerkan’s artful masks(15 PICS)
Californian artist Peggy Bjerkan started making masks a few years ago as a result of her fascination with masks as ritual objects. This interest continues to grow and evolve as time goes on. The masks have become for her a commentary on life and the human condition. For creating a mask the sculptor needs earthenware clay, firing, colored gessoes, acrylics, Prismacolor pencils, hand-painted silk cords, bits of wire, leather, driftwood, river stones. Although Peggy's masks are not wearable and, therefore, not used in traditional ways, they have the power to communicate ideas. She likes to emphasize humor, wit and irony in the pieces, the masks are able to speak for themselves.
