Alice Beckington was a founder and president of the American Society of Miniature Painters, and an award-winning miniaturist. Her prizes included a medal at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, in Buffalo, New York, and another at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. She was also part of a cosmopolitan group of women artists trained in New York and Paris, who created a summer colony in the small fishing town of Scituate, Massachusetts. This group followed the example of the first important summer art colony in the United States, established in Shinnecock, Long Island, by William Merritt Chase.
Miniature Enclosure & Exacting Detail – Charles Matton
Charles Matton was a multi-talented French artist who died in 2008. Perhaps best known for “The Boxes” from the 1970’s, a series of painstakingly detailed miniature interiors. His work and experience as a painter, photographer, screen writer, and director are evident in these hauntingly movie like interiors. The lighting and depth of space in each piece lends them unique characteristics. Matton described himself as a “image maker” and it’s evident in these beautiful works.
NASAblad
Ofra Lapid
The series Broken houses is based on photographs of abandoned structures neglected by man and destroyed by the weather. The photos are found in the web while pursuing an amateur photographer from North Dakota who obsessively documents the decaying process of these houses. His photographs are used to create small scale models. Afterward, in the studio, the models are photographed again, omitted from their background and placed in gray.
Exquisite Nano Vivariums – An Enclosed World of Moss and Orchids
These exquisite nano vivariums are from two flicker users showing their collections and experiments. I am not sure what, in this case, distinguishes these as vivariums vs terrariums, beyond recreating typically higher humidity environments. But the use of terracotta pipe as the growth surface creates and opportunity for beautifully condensed ecosystems. Off the surface of the pipe is a mixture of various of mosses and orchids. The scale and texture it creates is unique to any vivarium or terrarium i have ever seen.
My nanovivarium today after being in use for approx. 2 years. Some plants were added a year ago (Platystele umbellata, Pleurothallis grobyi, P. sonderana, Cyrtorchis crassifolia, Dendrobium cyanocentrum), and some this spring (Ceratochilus biglandulosus, Lepanthes calodictyon, Trisetella hoeijeri, Masdevallia wendlandiana and Diodonopsis erinacea). The pipe is sealed at the bottom with a glass lid using aquarium silicone. I fill the pipe with pure water (rain, RO) and no fertilizer is given (very rarely a weak organic fertilizer as foliar feed). Any salts will seal the pores of the pipe making it useless. A plastic hood is fitted over the pipe that has four 20W >halogen spots (see other picture).
My pipe is not porous enough which is why it is not totally covered with moss. I can only mount orchids were enough water seeps through. I plan to try a few other pipes within a few months and hopefully I will find one that is better. Fortunately my mother in law has a few pipes laying around on her property from previous drainage work.