Diminutive Fakes

The miniature castle was built by a sculptor named Charles Simonds in 1982 as part of a piece of “living art”. One of the people who helped build it said, “A big part of the philosophy behind Simonds work is the element of discovery. When you happen upon one of his works in the middle of nowhere, it has the same effect on the viewer as discovering the ruins of a lost civilization.”

 

 

The 354 Photographers collective out of Belgium’s ongoing project Box shows darkly bizarre dioramas built into cardboard boxes. Each was built in two to three days around the perspective of the camera to ensure the scenes have the right angle and depth. As the team begins construction, they set the camera on a tripod and are constantly looking through the viewfinder to make sure the camera can accurately capture the scene they have in their heads.

 

 

 

 

The Prince Of Wales is beheaded by a mob during the student fees protests in a miniature artwork by Jimmy Cauty, who found fame as half of chart pranksters KLF. The artwork shows Prince Charles being attacked beside his royal car, blending fact and fiction – Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall were caught up in student protests last year as they headed to the Royal Variety Performance.

Another of Cauty’s artworks – which he calls “small world re-enactments” – shows Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg being executed by an angry mob who were furious at the Lib Dem leader’s U-turn on tuition fees.

Another work depicts an aging Banksy about to be killed by a policeman as he paints two kissing officers.

 

 

This D&D tabletop diorama setup was posted by Amazing Tabletop Terrain over the weekend. It belongs to (and was built by) Ryan Devoto, featuring the detailed and almost lifelike ocean work of Micheal Tiskus from Terranscapes.

 

 

A vintage diorama – a souvenir from Carlsbad Caverns apparently. The box is designed to allow a light source (a flashlight) to brilliantly illuminate the scene.

 

 

Is It Physically Possible For Jerry Seinfeld’s Apartment Hallway To Actually Exist? (No.) Redditor u/PixelMagic shared an aerial illustrated view of what the interior of Jerry’s home contains, essentially leaving out anything that was never visually confirmed, like his bedroom—OR THE HALLWAY. As you can see, the extended green lines etched over the drawing show that a hallway would not physically connect in the traditional way given the design of his kitchen.

 

In the late 90s, artist Randy Hage began photographing the cast iron facades in the SoHo area of New York as possible subjects for future art projects. His interest soon moved to the unique street level Mom & Pop storefronts with their hand painted signs, layers of architecture, wonderful patinas and intriguing history.

As he continued to photograph these storefronts, it became clear to him that this was becoming more than an art project, it was becoming a documentary project as well. These neighborhood storefronts were closing at an alarming rate, falling victim to large scale redevelopment that was exceeding a normal pace for neighborhood change.

Hage’s scale model dioramas not only seek to preserve a vision of the past, but also to call attention to the loss of established and diverse neighborhoods as urban renewal and gentrification displace the store owners and the area residents who make up the tapestry of these communities. Over the past 14 years, Hage has photographed more than 450 storefronts and in that time, more than 60% of those have closed or have been torn down.

 

 

Glitched is a series of tiny worlds of imperfection, where everything is not as it seems. Artist, Mathieu Schmitt prints his models using 3D files that have been corrupted. In Glitched #1 – Surburban House, “The house is a 3D print of a 3D file having been corrupted. The original file of a classic suburban house has been forced to go through several stages of interpretation of the data, passing through various voluntarily inappropriate software, causing data corruption.”

 

 

Showa Ginza Diorama from Bandai

 

 

He started creating environments for his action figures as a kid, after a few years and after earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography at the State University of New York, Matthew Albanese (New Jersey, 1983) is taking pictures of amazing landscape that he actually makes with his own hands. This volcano is actually tile grout and a lot of cotton. Lighting comes from phosphorus ink and 60-watt light bulbs.

 

 

When Steve Jackson, known on Reddit as CapJax, posted 13 images to the site under the headline “My Wife Makes Dioramas” a few weeks ago, the response was overwhelming: thousands of pageviews and hundreds of comments within the first day. And the deluge continues, as the pictures have been viewed almost 5 million times. The feedback could be sorted into two groups, said Abby Goldman, the wife in question. “At first it was, ‘dude you’re wife’s messed up.’ Then, ‘I’m in love with your wife,’” she said. “We have a very happy marriage.”

What makes her dioramas, typically boring, miniature recreations of historical events better left to museums, so fascinating? Goldman’s sense of humor is fairly twisted. After finding some sites dedicated to model train scenes, Goldman decided to pervert these wholesome scenes of a family at a carnival or tourists taking pictures by making her own miniatures. She began ordering sets of figurines from mostly German companies and frequenting Home Depot to buy an increasingly elaborate set of tools —a giant saw to cut foam, goggles with magnification —to construct tiny blood-drenched murder scenes.

 

 

Switzerland-based photographers Jojakim Curtis and Adrian Sonderegger have an interesting side project: they build small scale models recreating famous historical photos. The pair meticulously recreate each scene into miniature dioramas using paper, cotton balls, plastic and, of course, plenty of time. Some models take a few days to finish, others a few weeks. They call the project Iconen because the original photos are iconic ones that can be easily recognized by almost anybody.

 

 

These Monster Scenes model kits from Aurora Plastics — first introduced in early 1971 — made such a, well, scene that they spurred a nationwide controversy that became a very public black eye for one of the country’s most recognizable brands. Nabisco, the cookie and cracker conglomerate that bought Aurora soon after these kits were released, found itself in a world of pain after horrified parents, op-ed writers, and boisterous protesters decried the toys as misogynistic and grotesque — and wholly inappropriate for kids. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the torture-toy scandal, during which public outcry led to not only the discontinuation of an outrageously successful toy line, but also to the passage of legislation that would keep similarly objectionable toys off store shelves

 

 

Ross Bleckner

Barnaby Furnas

Tom Friedman

Jackson Pollock

Ryan McGinness

Laurie Simmons

Eric Fischl

Roxy Paine

Chuck Close

Originally hailing from Seaford, New York, Joe Fig creates incredibly detailed miniatures of artists and their studios, as well as the “table” sculptures showcasing the respective artists’ art space based off of actual photos taken by Fig himself or off of older photos accounts for artists who have passed.

 

 

Japanese artist Satoshi Araki creates amazingly detailed miniature street diorama art. His attention to detail is so great that the photographs without any reference to scale can be mistaken for those of real streets. Many of his street dioramas portray derelict scenes.

 

 

 

 

Lori Nix considers herself a “faux landscape photographer,” and her work is influenced by extreme weather and disaster films. She works without digital manipulation, using miniatures and models to create surreal scenes and landscapes, building dioramas that range from 20 inches to six feet in diameter. They take several months to build, and two to three weeks to photograph. For many years Nix used a large format 8 × 10 film camera but in 2015 she started photographing her dioramas with a Canon 5Ds d-SLR camera. Nix works with her partner Kathleen Gerber, constructing most of the scenery by hand from scratch, using “foam and glue and paint and anything else handy.” After the final photograph is made, Nix harvests the diorama for pieces for future use and then destroys it.

 

 

Mark Powell: My dioramas exaggerate and distort nature’s violent biological processes of degeneration and regeneration, parasitism, and the cannibalistic recycling of flesh which enables myriad life forms to evolve ever more complex perceptual and locomotive functions.

 

 

The whole thing is hand made and painted, by Hiroshi Tagawa. This piece took him over a year to make.

 

 

 

 

‘Here’s some work by a friend of mine in high school. It’s surprising that nobody on the net has laid eyes on the quality of his work, but even more surprising that boy in his second year high school made all of these.’

 

 

Bill Finger is an artist who constructs miniature dioramas which he then photographs. The images that he creates deal with the veracity of memory as well as the veracity of photography.

 

 

Thomas Doyle: My work mines the debris of memory through the creation of intricate worlds sculpted in 1:43 scale and smaller. The works depict the remnants of things past—whether major, transformational experiences, or the quieter moments that resonate loudly throughout a life. In much the way the mind recalls events through the fog of time, the works distort reality through a warped lens.

 

 

The action takes place in the Cu Chi tunnels, Vietnam, 1968 Figures Bravo 6. Reason – gypsum. Everything is painted with acrylic paints Andrea and Vallejo, pigments MIG.

 

 

From the functionalist panelák estates to the otherworldly concrete grand designs, the charm of the former Eastern Bloc architecture is certainly brutal,” say the designers. “’Brutal East’ by Zupagrafika is a kit of illustrated paper cut-out models celebrating post-war architecture of Central and Eastern Europe that allows you to playfully explore and reconstruct some of the most controversial edificies erected behidn the Iron Curtain.

 

 

Today the Public Museum of Grand Rapids can be found in a modern state of the art facility on the banks of the Grand River, but some of its former inhabitants weren’t invited to come along. Its current home built in 1994, the first museum opened in 1854, making it one of America’s oldest history museums still operating, despite relocation. Between 1940 and 1994, the museum was located in a lovely art deco building on Jefferson Avenue.

The main attraction of the museum used to be its habitat dioramas—designed similar in style to Carl Akeley’s grand dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Visiting Michiganites could marvel at polar bears, deer and otters in their natural habitat, all under the auspices of a giant whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.

So popular was the museum that with over 120 years of collecting, it soon outgrew its art deco surroundings and the museum moved to it’s new location on the river, leaving the old building empty and abandoned. Today the dioramas lie in disrepair. The glass which once separated the animals from their human observers has gone and peeling paint litters the floor. The crowds may have long gone but the animals remain frozen in time.

 

 

 

 

Slaughter FX is a custom film props company based out of Australia and they have created a Friday The 13th coffee table with Jason Voorhees encapsulated within the table. The table has a base price of $500 without glass and $600 with glass. According to the website, the table is out of stock, but perhaps interested parties could work out a deal to have more made.

 

 

Welcome to a new tutorial Mint Family♥ This time we are going to be doing a miniature tape dispenser tutorial for your dollhouse.

 

 

Citroen has taken a unique stab at commemorating Sebastien Loeb and Daniel Elena’s nine World Rally Championship wins. Rather than work up yet another tired video of the champions expounding on the virtues, trials and and tribulations that come with being the very best for nearly a decade straight, the company whipped up a diorama atop Citroen DS3. The scale model covers nine separate rally terrains, including bits from Rally Finland and the Acropolis Rally.

 

 

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** TomK, Thanks, buddy. Oh, right, teaching. I don’t know why my brain automatically tagged you as a student. Must be your restlessness. Hope you’ve perked up. ** Misanthrope, I kind of figured you were work-trounced. Labor Day, right, I forgot. And, wait, it’s still Labor Day technically. Enjoy, bud. Obviously, high hopes that your mom’s problem and solution are the easiest possible. Next time I see Timothee on the streets of Paris, I’ll give him a big, wet sloppy kiss right on the lips for you. And if there’s WiFi in my jail cell, I’ll let you know how that went. Don’t tell me I never did nothing for you. ** Bill, Hi. Great, I’m so glad it was useful. James Batley had gotten a grant to make a new film, like, two years ago, but I haven’t seen a peep about that since, and he’s almost never on Facebook anymore, which is how I’d know, so who knows. Hope so. I’m a big fan of his too. No real plans to get to SF on the upcoming trip, but it’s certainly not out of the question. I haven’t really seen the Chapmans’s solo stuff. How was Dinos’s portion, if you peeked. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘Ursula’, yeah, nice, I agree. It’s true, right? About the short film <-> horror. Interesting. I hope you’re good, pal. ** John Newton, Hi, John. Happy to have provided. Thanks for the vampire skeleton link. I’ll absorb its news when I’m outta here. It might be possible that I had coffee made in a briki/Cezve on the stove when I was in Greece, but not otherwise as far as I know. Sounds yum. I switch around on my coffees. Right now I’m drinking Ethiopian coffee made by this bio company called Destination. I’ve drank hard French coffee, for sure. I go for stronger the better of whatever origin. Good luck with that home hunt. Sounds complicated. I haven’t had a pet dog or cat or whatever else since I was a teenager. I’m a hardcore bachelor who it comes to animals. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’m not a recluse, but my social circle is small, and I like it that way. It was kind of nice to be in school and have all those potential friends around even if I would only end up friends with a few. I’ve had articles of clothing die and start decomposing for no understandable reason too. Strange. Love shrinking anyone of your choice down to the size of a Euro coin, G. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Very glad you liked it and the post. Tcherkassky probably wasn’t in there because I was trying not to include works by filmmakers I’ve done whole Days about, although I ended up making an exception for Damon Packard because that film was too nuts to not include, I guess. France has regular days where going to the cinema is almost free fairly frequently, but, you know, that’s France. We will complete the film whatever it takes, we just have to figure out the whatever part. Thanks! ** Sypha, Hi. Dude, harsh on Maine people, man. I was only there once as a kid, and I don’t remember anyone, just the locations. I am happy and jealous that you went min-golfing, you bet! Don’t get me started on libertarians. Enjoy your getaway stint, and throw the highlights up here if it suits your schedule. ** Okay. Here’s a post for those of you who are inclined to pay more than the average amount of attention to shrunken replicas, as I seem to have been when I made it. Mind meld? Cool stuff. Not kidding. See you tomorrow.