With over 500 million cars on the road, China is now the largest auto market in the world. In an effort to help the environment and encourage people to walk more and drive less, the DDB China and the China Environmental Protection Foundation decided to make an artful statement. They covered a main pedestrian crossing with a large leafless tree canvas, with two large inkpads on either side of the crosswalk containing environmentally friendly ink. As people walked through the intersection, their footprints permanently placed leaf-like images all over the branches, reminding them that by walking they could create a difference.

The Green Pedestrian Crossing was carried out in 7 main streets of Shanghai and later expanded to 132 roads in 15 cities across China. A total number of pedestrians that participated exceeded 3,920,000 people.

This is so cool. There is something so beautiful about how nature and man combine to create an audible and visual piece of art. From Here to Ear (v. 13) is the thirteenth iteration of an installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. 40 finches were set loose upon a room filled with hundreds of metal hangers. The vibrations of the finches movements on the hangers mixed with their songs create a lovely setting to get lost in thought.

Yayoi Kusama‘s had some fun coming up with this installation, Obliteration Room! What a brilliant piece of public art it turned out to be. Part of The Queensland Gallery of Modern Art was set up as a room painted completely white. Over the course of two weeks, children were given thousands of colored stickers and set loose on the gallery space. The result is only what you could imagine, pure delight and caus turned into art.

Photos // Mark Sherwood

Part anti-pollution campaign, part guerilla stunt, Luzinterruptus has done it again. In creating Mutant Weeds, Luzinterruptus is making a statement about the fact that illuminated signs, like this pharmacy one in Madrid, are allowed to stay illuminated at all times of the night. Using fluorescent sticks formed into blades of grass, Luzinterruptus planted a garden of the near future, where a new, photosensitive species grows up from the sidewalks, nourished by the lights.

via // Moco

Artist Motoi Yamamoto is known for creating intricate lace insallations. He creates these beautiful innovations working with the medium salt. Inspired by the cultural symbol for mourning and purity of salt, Yamamoto makes on-site installations of tranquility and beauty that I could stare at for hours. Watch the video below for more on his labor of love.

Montreal-based photographer Benoit Paillé has been staging his own series of landscapes using a different kind of lighting method involving a suspended glowing square. None of these images are photoshopped, the 1×1 meter light is instead hung in the center of each photograph and the resulting image shows his experiment with light illumination. Paillé says his goal is to redefine what a landscape photograph is by questioning its reality, creating a kind of poetic moment in space and time.

Photos // via flickr

Korean artist Yun-Woo Choi creates sculptures from resin and rolled up paper. His work is inspired by the unanswered questions of space and time. The physical vrs the intangible.

He says this about his work (via the Anderson Ranch Arts Center Blog)

Yun-Woo: My big subject matter is the concept of something beyond languages and something beyond images. That’s why I use magazines or text. Languages and images are all symbolic things, it points at something, but language itself is not the thing. Many people just think the symbol is real, but I’m looking beyond that. I want to somehow point myself at the real, but still use those symbols and images to create it. All the text and image in my work is kind of denied the ability to use those symbols.

Artist Kate McQuire lives and works in England. I ran across her beautifully crafted and conceptual art recently and couldn’t help but keep searching the internet for more. It’s intriguing, erie, melancholy, whimsical, and beautiful all at the same time. Each feather seems so delicately placed, you can tell that Kate has a passion for her work.

Evacuate, 2010
Photo // Jonty Wilde

(more…)

I found these great photos of a light installation by Peter Erskine. The artist’s work is firmly anchored in the architecture and context of each locality in which he is. He uses sun as his source for color and subject creating illuminating displays of happiness on architecture both young and old. His technique consists of using prisms and mirrors to direct the sun at his subject. Each day and hour is a different discovery as the earth moves around the sun.

“New Light on Rome 2000″. Spectrum sunlight on Aula stairs.

via DevidSketchbook

(more…)

The ultimate in church going folk, can visit this man, Horace Burgess, up his “Stairway to Heaven” in his treehouse of the Lord. An incredible feat. Over the course of 12 years, and still going, this minister has built the world’s largest treehouse complete with a basketball hoop, chapel and flower garden in Crossville, TN.

Photos // Kristin Sweeting

Photo // Roger Smith via flickr

Photos // Kristin Sweeting