Artist Watch: Tien-Min Liao

Tien-Min Liao, a graphic designer from Taipei, Taiwan, discovered a lovely alphabet hidden in plain sight Grand Central Station in New York City. You can see the full alphabet book and Tien-Min's other projects here. Her work has been featured on Colossal, Adweek, and other websites.

-- Becca

Artist Watch: Theo Jansen

One of the reasons I decided to become an engineer was because I realized that engineering and art are not exactly opposites, as the course load for each would suggest, but rather one can greatly influence the other.  One artist that I found that walks the line between the two is Theo Jansen with his Strandbeests.  The Strandbeests are mechanical animals that live on the beach and are self-propelled by the wind.  Theo Jansen is able to take the engineering principals that would make a machine like this move, and apply his artistic vision to make it move and look like a real animal.  Since discovering Theo Jansen, pop-ups have only reinforced this notion of combining paper-engineering with art to create a movable masterpiece!  You can find out more about Theo Jansen and his work at http://www.strandbeest.com/

Here's a video of one of his pieces:




--Matt

Artist Watch: Gemma Correll

Gemma Correll is an illustrator from the United Kingdom.  Her style is simple, quirky, and quite comical in my opinion.  I love her line work and the one to two spots of color she uses.  Check out more of her work on her website and her blog!

-- Jess

What's Popped Up: Movable Book Society Conference

Three reasons this summer is awesome: I got to work in the studio and learn how to make pop-ups, the Olympics were amazing, and the Movable Book Society is about to have its 9th biennial conference in Salt Lake City!!

The Movable Book Society was founded in 1993 as a way for collectors, artists, curators, booksellers, book producers, and anybody who loves pop-up and movable books to get together and share their enthusiasm for the art.  This year’s conference should not disappoint with presentations from Chuck Fischer, Andrew Baron, Robert Sabuda, and a whole lot more!  There will also be workshops and demonstrations where visitors have the opportunity to get their hands dirty and make some of their own pop-ups as well as a tour of local book studios and a pop-up exhibit from the collection of Ann Montanaro Staples.

So if you want to meet a bunch of awesome people who love pop-ups as much as you, you can find all of the information you need and a registration form at the Movable Book Society conference website, but act fast because early registration for the conference ends on Wednesday, August 22nd!

-- Matt