Chris Jones’s large-scale sculptural work looks fragile even though his subject matter often focuses on objects we presume to be tough, stable — even nearly unbreakable. In his current show at Mark Straus Gallery in New York City, a sports car melts and unravels before our eyes. A motorcycle tempts us to scratch and peel away its layers. Houses disintegrate into heaps of deteriorating objects. Jones works with abandoned and disused materials — old magazines, books, encyclopedias, paper ephemera and even trash — to create papier mache pieces that destabilize our view of the world around us. We create our environments through the accumulation of objects and materials. Jones’s latest body of work pulls us back, reminding us how ephemeral and artificial these things are. It’s a bleak reminder that material objects and the world we’ve built will not stand the test of time.
Chris Jones’s solo show is on view through June 22. Images courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery.
Before the cyanotype was popularized by artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Derges and Florian Neusüss in the 1960s, it was used by architects, astronomers and botanists. It is therefore fitting that contemporary artist 
Every year in Niigata, Japan, artists take the leftover straw from their annual rice harvest and turn it into works of art. Called Wara art, or Rice-straw art, aspiring young artist Amy Goda has been creating such works since 2013. Her latest series featuring giant animals was completed last week and has already gone viral. Measuring 16 feet tall, they are her largest to date, fashioned after a roaring T-rex and tricerotops, and other animals like a coiled cobra, a crab clapping its claws, and even a rubber ducky.
Tennessee based sculptor