Amandakrumina - Fine Art

Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even. This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t. You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society. Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this.

 Did You Know  (via thisnostalgicheart)

In his series, The Good Badlands, photographer Guy Tal seeks to show us that though it is often hidden, and may only appear briefly, there is delicate and subtle beauty in abundance for any viewer with patience and desire.

Lilium - Joseph Walsh Studio - Oliver Sears Gallery.

Lustik: twitter | pinterest | etsy

Jim Lambie, ‘Voidoid’, Transmission, Glasgow, 1999

Nobuhiro Nakanishi. 

Jewelry in motion: Kinetic architecture for your hands, Dukno Yoon.

Water Imitated by a Wood Automaton by Dean O’Callaghan.

This mesmerizing object is an automaton made by Dean O’Callaghan. It’s designed to look like a drop of rain hitting a pool of water. As he turns the crank, concentric rings of water emanate from the center. O’Callaghan attributes the idea to sculptor Reuben Margolin.

Watch the video:

Early morning painting

  Incredibly Beautiful Glass Sculptures by  Jack Storms            

Incredibly talented and skilled beyond all reason, Jack Storms was destined to be someone really amazing.  Both a tremendous athlete and a motivated student growing up in New Hampshire, it wasn’t until later in life that Jack discovered his passions in contemporary art and graduated at age 30 from Plymouth State University with a BA in Art focusing primarily on studio production.  It was during his junior year there that he happened upon what would eventually become an entryway to his legacy, the studio of a glass artist that was close to his school where he was producing a phenomenally rare style of glass art work combining lead crystal and dichroic glass using a cold-glass process.  The process itself which required weeks and weeks to produce even one completed glass sculpture was incredibly intense and physically challenging, and the number of glass artisans working in this form of fine art could be counted on one hand.  Working side by side with the artisan for over a year, Jack learned every component and facet of this incredibly challenging and rare art form and eventually was a strong enough sculptor to branch out on his own in 2004 and open StormWorks Studio.

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