Butterfly Art

Remember when Gossip Girl was on TV and actually good? I have to admit sometimes I would hate watch it towards the end when it was really awful. Well, awful except for the shows consistency to showcase great artists. 

The first time I saw this piece I stopped everything (including watching the show) because I just had to find out who was behind Serena's butterfly wall.

It was Paul Villinski. He likes to make a statement. I think its pretty incredible that he makes the exotic looking butterflies from old beer cans on the street of New York. Also, kudos to Gossip Girl for trying to remain true to it's location in by using material from New York. 

From his website:

I am drawn to humble, yet evocative materials; in this case, crushed beer cans from the streets of New York - every one of them once raised to someone’s lips. My process of “recycling” them into images of butterflies is a quiet physical meditation, a yoga of tin snips and files and fingers. As the butterflies alight on the walls of my studio, they lead into an exploration of formal, painterly issues. Often, they want to gather into a certain shape, or fly off on a particular tangent, and I let them. They function both as marks in these abstract, three-dimensional “paintings,” and as actors in curious narratives. Some pieces develop a quirky, magic-realist quality, as if a strange child has trained the insects to perform some ritual dance we are not usually privy to. Finally, the butterflies operate symbolically, and I try to develop a conceptual unity between materials, process, and imagery: metamorphosing littered beer cans into flocks of butterflies mirrors the act of transformation and rebirth that butterflies symbolize across all cultures.