The Amazing Stuff

This kind of art really grows on you. Well, actually, it grows in a petri dish — and the strange, swirling, colorful forms you’ll see here were actually carefully cultivated by microbiologists for a competition.

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) hosted its first ASM Agar Art Contest. Yep, that’s a thing!

Contestants grew various microbes in agar, a gel-like substance, and “painted” with them to form images.

This is the competition’s winner, Neurons. It’s a collaborative work by Mehmet Berkmen of New England Biolabs and artist Maria Penil.

The contestants chose their microbes, let them incubate, and guided them into various forms. Some people used multiple dishes.

This is the runner-up, called NYC Biome MAP. The work, by Christine Marizzi and her team, makes use of multiple petri dishes full of E. coli bacteria and glowing proteins to make a miniature map of Manhattan.

If you didn’t know, you would think this was created with thick oil paints — not a species of yeast.

The second runner up, Harvest, by Maria Eugenia Inda of Cold Spring Harbor Labs, looks like a Van Gogh painting.

Contestant Melanie Sullivan took the Van Gogh inspiration a step further with this petri dish recreation of Starry Night.

Mehmet Berkmen and Maria Penil, whose other entry won the contest, also submitted Cell to Cell, which used a similar color scheme.

With careful planning and guidance, some pretty amazing shapes can be made from microbes.

Lizah van der Aart used a skull-shaped container for her piece, Hunger Games.

This is Jellyfish, by Mehmet Berkmen and Maria Penil.

Some pieces took on more nebulous forms, like this one, which looks like a night sky.

This piece is Joseph Sallmen’s Streptomyces Sky.

And some are astounding in their detail. The Violet Louis Pasteur, byDharshika Jayasuriya, shows a portrait of the famous scientist.

(via Hyperallergic, Mental Floss)

If you never thought you’d find artwork in a petri dish, think again! This contest shows us that beauty can be found in the weirdest places. We hope that this becomes a yearly contest, because it’s pretty darn cool.

Artists usually tend to gravitate toward certain methods, whether it’s painting, sculpture, or anything else. Of course, there are plenty of artists who prefer to pass up the more traditional art forms in favor of choosing less conventional techniques and materials.

One such artist is Stephan Brusche, who has chosen an atypical canvas: the humble banana.

To be fair, drawing on a banana peel is incredibly satisfying.

But Brusche doesn’t just draw on them. He also cuts the peels into a variety of shapes for a three-dimensional effect, and adds some paint for full-color compositions.

The artist draws inspiration from famous masterpieces.

And in this one, another fruit even makes an appearance.

He also creates panoramic views of his home city of Rotterdam.

And he’s also very inspired by pop culture.

Sometimes, the creations are all his own, featuring characters on a variety of potassium-rich adventures.

And as this picture shows, they don’t have to be complex to be effective.

(via Elite Daily)

Bananas aren’t Brusche’s only focus, and you can see the rest of his work on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If there’s one thing that calls to mind the memory of summer days, schoolyard politics, and the days when candy was fraught with emotional as well as gustatory meaning, it’s bubblegum. With its surreal comic wrappers, distinctive smell, and bright pink hue, it’s tied to childhood. Or is it?

That’s what Italian artist and sculptor Maurizio Savini attempts to explore with his sculptures, which are created using an average of 3,000 pieces of bubblegum per piece. But don’t worry — it’s not chewed.

To create these sculptures, Savini and his two assistants collect thousands of pieces of bubble gum squares. Half are pink and half are white. Once unwrapped, heat is applied to make the gum malleable and able to be cut easily with a knife. The softened gum is then applied to a plaster mold.

These sculptures are not solid gum; if they were, they’d be extremely heavy and unstable, and would end up collapsing on themselves. (Savini learned this the hard way, and had to refund sold pieces as a result.) Once the piece is complete, it’s then treated with formaldehyde and antibiotics, preserving it indefinitely. That’s right — these are not edible.

So why bubblegum, of all materials? Several reasons, actually. For one thing, Savini is fascinated by the bright, slightly sickening pink color. “Pink represents artificiality,” he explains. “When you see it, you associate it with a fake world.” Gum is associated with sugar and candy, and “bubblegum” is used to describe anything sweet, popular, and harmless.

(via Beautiful/Decay, Laughing Squid)

Savini’s work is currently being exhibited in his native Italy at the Emmanuel Fremin Gallery, which also houses works by many other artists. Savini’s pieces are coming to the U.S. this summer via the Art Southampton festival on Long Island, New York.

If you need more unsettling sculpture in your life, you’ll want to see these:

There’s a delicious-looking slice of pizza on a plate. There’s a burger hanging out on another, and a bag of chips on the one after that. And on the fourth…Morgan Freeman?

If this sounds familiar to you, you’ve probably already seen Jacqueline Poirier’s work. Her painting style is traditional, but her canvas is anything but. That’s because she likes to paint on ceramic dinner plates.

Poirier describes herself as a lifelong artist, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that she discovered her true love of painting on ceramic and porcelain. And what better way to share her art with the public than to put it on something everyone uses?

That’s how her plate art, which she jokingly calls “plart,” was born. Today, she paints everything from food to celebrity portraits on these kitchen staples. She sometimes takes up the whole plate, and other times, she plays with the form of the plate itself to create a trompe l’oeil effect.

Poirier’s plates can be found on display in TOCA, which is the restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto, where she’s on staff as the resident artist. Yes, that’s a real job. She’s charged with creating clever plates for the hotel’s affluent clientele, which includes celebrities.

So if you thought that painting on plates couldn’t possibly be a real job, Poirier is happy to prove you wrong. But she’s really just excited about sharing her art with the world.

(via BoredPanda)

You can see much more of Poirier’s plart on her website and Instagram, since she regularly adds pieces to her already large collection. She’s also on Twitter, so you can keep up with her latest projects there, as well.

Think canvas is the only thing you can paint on? Then you need to see what these artists are using: