Above: A close-up from Callesen’s “Alive But Dead” image, seen in full at right.

Peter Callesen is a talented artist and definitely a fellow fanatic at creating magnificent, sometimes bewildering art from paper. His work encompasses beauty and fragility and is truly one of the creators of unique art.

Most recently he has started making white paper cuts/sculptures inspired by fairytales and romanticism exploring the relationship between two and three dimensionality, between image and reality. Callesen states, “I find the materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form as an almost magic process – or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts.”

Below: a Large Scale Papercut Installation entitled, “Erected Ruin.”

In an earlier post we showed some amazing Origami spheres and balls. If you’re hooked on this paper art, you know how easy it is to become an origami fanatic. So this link is for you…dozens and dozens…nay – hundreds of drawings in PDF to help you quench your Origami fever!

One day as I was walking along the 3rd Avenue fair in NYC, my heart stopped for a second when I saw a rug draped over a chair on display. I new immediately it was an antique handmade Shirvan rug.

I walked over to take a closer look and realized that it was a great rug and in excellent condition. I asked the sales person “How much?” and he responded, “USD20.” I moved slowly to bely my enthusiasm and said, “Oh well, I only have USD20, but can I give you USD17 so I can get a pizza?”

He demanded the full $20. I handed over my money and rolled up the rug and put it under my arm. As I began to walk away, the sales person stopped me and said, “I work for NYC Sanitation and whatever I pick up on the sidewalks that I think has value I sell later at street fairs. How much do you think that rug is worth?”

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One interesting medium for street art is the Storm Drain, and you can view a great collection of these paintings at flickr. But it is the Manhole Covers that seem to attract fanatics. “Manhole Graffiti” makes a magnificent table, and the artwork tends to be a trend in Japan.

For more images, check out the Japanese manhole covers at flickr and the results of the 2004 Vancouver BC “Art Underfoot” competition.

For those of you having a fanatic attack about designing manhole covers, you can begin to satisfy your cravings by reading the book, “Designs Underfoot: The Art of Manhole Covers in New York City“; or, you can just buy one to hang it from the New York First Company.