For her project Delights in my garden Lola Guerrera makes origami figures, small paper sculptures that simulate animals, plants, flowers and arranges them one by one in natural environments.

Return to the Wild by Kai and Sunny

Will Ryman’s Bird sculpture’s plumage isn’t soft like real feathers. It’s quite literally as hard as nails, a whole bunch of actual and fabricated steel nails. It can currently be seen on display at the Paul Kasmin Gallery along with some other extraordinary works he has built from ordinary and often counterintuitive objects.

From the project Until the Kingdom Comes by Simen Johan

About the project:

In his work, Johan creates tension and blurs the boundaries between opposing forces, such as the familiar and the otherworldly, the natural and the artificial, the serene and the eerie. In one photograph, two black-beaked flamingos intertwine in an embrace that seems at once affectionate and restricting. In another, two hapless caribou lie glazed with ice, frozen in a scene that is both tranquil and brutal. Exploring the paradoxical nature of existence, the artist situates his images between an ideal paradise and a reality complicated by desires, fears and darker instincts.

While some photographs in the series reference Biblical motifs, Johan says that his choice of title, Until the Kingdom Comes, “refers less to religious or natural kingdoms and more to the human fantasy that one day, in some way, life will come to a blissful resolution. …In a reality where understanding is not finite and in all probability never will be, I depict ‘living’ as an emotion-fueled experience, engulfed in uncertainty, desire and illusion.”

Claire Brewster creates these beautifully intricate cutout birds from outdated maps and atlases. 

About her work:

Nature is ever present even in the most urban of environments, taking over wherever we neglect, living in separate yet parallel universe. Affected by our actions yet unconscious of them. Claire takes here inspiration from this envrionment, creating entomological installations of flora and fauna from imagined locations. Her birds, insects and flowers transcend borders and pass freely between countries with scant regard for rules of immigration or the effects of biodiversity.

Paula Swisher has taken doodling in the margins of textbooks to a whole new level.

Frank Gonzalez puts a refreshing new spin on nature illustration

Gonzales on his work:

My work is about taking forms in nature and making them my own. What I do is nothing new, but by using the language of color, composition, fragmentation, and representation my aim is to speak about these known elements and present them from a different perspective.