When Highways Are Art
Edmonton highway photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country Massive highways and bridges are often ugly structures; normally the furthest thing from art. On a recent flight home from an Edmonton business trip, the highways were lit up and the reflection of the street lights blurred from the snow looked almost magical out of ...
Sit-up Bicycle Art 2
Bicycle Art Drawing part two – screenshot from YouTube video by Mike Rubbo Last September we held an exclusive contest here on The Urban Country to win a bicycle art painting by our friend Mike Rubbo. To win the painting, all you had to do was send a photo of yourself on your bike, and ...
Floating Bicycle Commuters 8
“Floating” series – by Zhao Huasen (photos posted with permission) Riding a bicycle after a couple glasses of wine might make you feel as though you are floating. But until now I had never imagined what it might look like to actually float while riding a bicycle. Chinese photographer/artist Zhao Huasen’s “Floating” exhibit shows exactly ...
Alain Delorme’s Totems Series 5
Series Totems 2010 © Alain Delorme In May 2010 I visited Shanghai, spending a great deal of time observing how migrant Chinese workers use bicycles for utilitarian purposes. I was astonished by the capacity of goods that can be transported by bicycle and intrigued by the gap between these workers and the wealth that surrounds ...
Creating Grace & Beauty Through The Bicycle 7
Drawing of Bicycling Advocate James Schwartz by Michael Rubbo Riding an upright bicycle (or sit-up bicycle) is the key to spreading urban bicycling. That’s what Mike Rubbo believes anyway, and we here at The Urban Country have to agree that the style of bicycle one chooses is as important as anything else to making urban ...
Phil Hansen’s Art 1
Today I came across the extremely talented artist Phil Hansen on www.philinthecircle.com. I think Phil’s technique is unique and fascinating, but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Hanson uses the technique of Pointillism to create a larger image of smaller images of different shades or colours. His art skills also include being a performer, as ...
What are you thinking right now? 2
When I was in Whistler BC a few weeks back, we stayed for two nights with some friends of Tim’s from Toronto. One of them told me about a building a couple blocks from my place that had a disturbing sign on it. Intrigued by this discovery, I had to get the full story behind ...
My second painting 1
Back in March I was looking to decorate the loft, so I painted my first painting. My sister Kelly loves to bug me about it because it looks like a 5 year old drew it. Anyway, I painted my second painting today; this time it’s a painting of Han. It looks like a kid painting ...
My first painting 4
When I was moving into the new place, I was going through some of my personal stuff and I found some drawings that I did back in 1994 when I was 14 years-old. I haven’t really done any drawings since then, so I figured a good way to decorate the new place would be to ...