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Art is often thought about from the perspective of the viewer. It makes sense, because viewership is the practice of many, and creation is the practice of relatively few. But let’s take a step back and consider the fact that creative work lives a long, unseen life before it ends up in front of us. In many ways, what goes into the creation of a piece is far more profound than anything we could possibly take away from it.

Artist Stephanie Calvert is more than a little bit familiar with that experience. Her latest series, which is an ongoing endeavor called the Shame to Pride Project, has evolved into something that is both restorative and revelatory.

Calvert’s mission started after an unexpected and painful homecoming.

Growing up in an abandoned schoolhouse in rural Colorado proved to be an isolating experience for the artist. “I lived there for six years without plumbing, central heat, or full electricity. Disconnected from the community, my mother’s hoarding took over a lot of the space. It was a strange and challenging place to grow up.”

Once her parents left the space, it was abandoned once again. Calvert only returned when tragedy struck.

Her mother sustained brain injuries in a horrible bike accident, so the artist began spending more time in her hometown to lend a helping hand. Shame to Pride was born when she stepped back in time to the schoolhouse that held so many convoluted memories.

Because the old schoolhouse sat exactly as they’d left it so many years ago, the fruits of her mother’s hoarding remained. Instead of discarding it in shame, Calvert vowed to repurpose it all into a testament to family and the nature of memory.

“I used the experience of transforming physical materials as a way to transform my relationship to my story,” she writes. The more time she spent surrounded by her family history, the more comfortable she became with the idea of embracing her past with honesty.

“Revisiting my past,” she continues, “brought a lot up to the surface for me, and in sharing things about my mom’s accident, I started sharing more about my past as well.”

What started as an introspective project soon became something of an outreach mission.

“At first, I started Shame to Pride very much for my own mental and emotional wellbeing,” she writes. “When I started sharing my art with friends, I started to see the potential for connection to others through this work.”

According to the artist, “Through sharing with others and having them bear witness to our stories, we start to heal and accept ourselves just as we are, no matter where we come from.”

The effect that Shame to Pride has had on Calvert is nothing short of transformative.

“Once I started looking at things creatively,” she writes, “I was able to see the value not just in these physical things, but in my past, my family, and my experiences. It’s not what happens to us that defines us. It’s how we respond to it, and the intentions we have in moving forward.”

She now wants to invite others to share in this experience in a way that helps them confront their own pasts and begin the healing process.

She’s even started an Indiegogo campaign so that she can raise enough money to bring this project to New York and extend the reach of her process far beyond the borders of her hometown.

In her words, “I have gained so much freedom from how I used to think and feel. I feel so much lighter. I see how special and beautiful my upbringing was, and how it helped shape me into the creative and unique person I am today. I feel gratitude where I used to feel shame.”

(via Indiegogo)

And now we return to the viewer’s experience. What Calvert wants us to take away from the Shame to Pride Project is simple: “I want people to take away the importance of sharing — especially when it comes to the things we feel shame, guilt, and sadness over.”

If you want to lend Stephanie Calvert a helping hand, be sure to check out her Indiegogo page. For more of her incredible work, pay a visit to her website.

In an age when digital art reigns supreme, some artists prefer to keep it simple and classic when it comes to technique. Artist Ray Cicin knows a thing or two about that. When one of his designer friends voiced her disdain for “cheap, creepy” ballpoint pens, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

On a mission to create something stunning (and prove his nay-saying friends wrong in the process), Cicin asked people in his circle to scour their homes for discarded ballpoint pens. With them, he produced something truly incredible.

“I received more benign ridicule than pens,” he jokes, but eventually, he had enough pens with varying degrees of color payoff to begin the project.

Cicin’s mission was to “refute the bias and find redemption for the lowly ballpoint.”

While he was waiting on his friends to supply him with pens, he came across a collection of Ernst Haeckel prints that were inspired by the natural world. One portrait of an octopus really stood out to him. With that in mind, he got to work.

The key in achieving these stunning values was using pens that were, in the artist’s words, “in various states of function.” Basically, older pens helped him add dimension to lighter areas, and newer pens allowed him to create deep, dark shadows.

What attracted Cicin to focusing on the humble octopus was that the frame of the tentacles around the animal’s large, prominent eyes has a way of drawing viewers in.

The end result is multifaceted, dynamic, and the embodiment of what all great art hopes to achieve by reaching out to the observer.

Deep Blue, Octopus — Ballpoint pen on archival Bee Rag paper, 62 by 64 inches.

What’s really incredible about this piece (aside from the fact that it’s obviously beautiful) is that it took almost a year to create. According to the artist, “It was a demon that I was psyched (and at times tormented) to work on.” While it’s amazing when pieces have profound effects on viewers, there’s something moving about art that becomes part of the creator. The process is at times even more important than the product.

To see more of Ray Cicin’s work, be sure to check out his website. If you want to take a closer look into his creative process, follow him on Instagram, too.

We’re all familiar with what a nickel looks like, right?

But what about a “Hobo Nickel”?

What, you might ask, is a “Hobo Nickel”? Because of the softness of the metals used in nickels (copper and nickel), people have been carving the money up for decades.

Since the 1700s, people have been creatively modifying the faces of coins.

Nickels are popular, but other denominations, such as pennies and quarters, have also been transformed.

Because of the low cost and small nature of the coins, homeless men and women have come to use them for currency, hence the name!

Nowadays, people uses the coins for more artistic purposes, like this necklace.

Designs range from intricately delicate to creepy-cool.

Before you complain that this is illegal, it should be noted that these pieces are made just for artistic enjoyment, so defacing the coins, in this case at least, will not land you any jail time.

If you’d like to try your hand at making your own “Hobo Nickel,” check out this cool tutorial.

Have you ever found yourself needing to distract yourself while waiting for a train, an appointment, or a friend? Nowadays, most people rely on their smartphones or tablets to cure impatient boredom. Gone are the days of carrying around a good book. People often play games or surf the Internet while trying to kill time…but one company in France is trying to change that.

The start-up in Grenoble, France, created something called the Short Edition. It’s a vending machine, conceived by Christophe Sibieude, that doesn’t dispense junk food…but short stories.

The next time you have time to kill, don’t stare at your cell phone.

Instead, you could be finding a brilliant short story to read!

So far, only eight machines have been installed in one French city.

You select how much time you have to kill (1, 3, or 5 minutes) and then it prints out a story for you.

The stories themselves are written by the Short Edition community. There are poems, short stories, and comic strips that anyone can browse.

Short Edition prints the stories out on narrow, receipt-like paper.

The recyclable paper is easy to read, store, and share with others.

If you’d like to know more about this genius project, visit the Short Edition website. They have FAQs and videos that explain the vending machine and community (although the site is, admittedly, in French).

(via This Is Colossal)

Smartphones are insanely useful, but sometimes it’s good to find a reason not to stare at a little screen like a technology-obsessed zombie.

Artists are amazing for a number of reasons. For one, they can use basic materials to create extraordinary pieces. They’re also incredible because their work doesn’t just change their lives — it changes those of everyone who comes into contact with it. Creators just approach life differently. That’s why it’s so interesting to see how artistry weaves its way into their everyday lives.

One artist by the name of Sath, for example, used his work to ask a very, very important question.

Before starting this project, Sath had to find the perfect canvas. After he found one to his liking, he got to work on creating a colorful mural.

In fact, this unique artist is known for bringing his expansive knowledge of painting and design to unlikely surfaces.

But this undertaking was unlike anything he’d ever done before.

That’s because his audience for this work was not a group of passersby. It was meant for only one person — and that person was very special.

Sath had been wanting to propose to his girlfriend for a while, and because they were separated for professional reasons, he had plenty of time to come up with the perfect plan.

But he didn’t choose to propose through a painting to stroke his own ego. The truth is actually much simpler. “I communicate better through my paintings than through my words,” he writes, “and this special occasion wasn’t an exception.”

He chose to title the piece Anillave in reference to the Spanish words for ring (anillo) and key (llave).

Here is the final product. When they were finally reunited, Sath blindfolded his girlfriend, led her to the mural, and let the painting speak for itself. Fortunately for this talented guy, she said yes!

(via Bored Panda)

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum for those who create it. Instead, it permeates everything they do. While that’s pretty amazing in and of itself, it’s even more incredible when that infusion of creativity leaves a lasting impact on the artist’s life. When it comes to Sath and his special lady, something tells me that their marriage will be as stunning and vibrant as the mural that changed their lives forever.

We often downplay just how drastically the weather can affect our state of mind, but some studies suggest that our moods change with the seasons. This could explain why it’s just as hard to imagine being lethargic and irritable on a warm, sunny day as it is to imagine being upbeat and productive when the sky opens up with heavy rain and thunder.

Just ask the people of Seoul, South Korea. Right now, they’re facing the worst part of the year: monsoon season. Needless to say, they know a thing or two about letting the weather get them down. That’s why Pantone — a leading color technology and design firm — decided to team up with creators from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to turn the bustling city’s damp, dreary streets into exuberant works of art.

These creative minds teamed up to bring Seoul and its many residents back to life during monsoon season.

After all, it’d be hard not to smile while swimming with beautiful sea creatures on the way to work and school.

Instead of washing these creations away, however, heavy rainfall activates them!

So how exactly does that work?

Each piece is created with hydrochromatic pigments. They’re applied like regular paints, but they become invisible once they dry. The only thing that can bring them back to life is water.

As is the case in many major cities, life in Seoul revolves around the nearby river.

That’s why artists decided to incorporate marine life into these whimsical images in a way that captures the importance of the Han River to life in Seoul, while still shining a spotlight on the city’s famously vibrant culture.

(via My Modern Met)

It’s tempting to let rain put a literal damper on your day, but it’s important to find beauty at every turn. That being said, it’s probably much easier to do that when talented creators cover your city’s streets with stunning images of whales, fish, and sea turtles. We wish the people of Seoul luck as they endure the final stages of monsoon season, and we hope that this awesome art is helping them get by!

We get that insects and other crawling beasties might not be your favorites. But when they’re made by hand out of glass, they become infinitely more charming. And that’s why we love the work of Nikita Drachuk, who runs Glass Symphony over on Etsy.

The shop sells these adorable, lifelike figurines.

They’re the right amount of creepy-crawly, but they’ll stay put on your shelf.

And if spiders and insects are still too creepy for you, even in glass form, there are plenty of other critters to choose from.

Drachuk uses a technique called lampworking to create his animals.

It involves heating rods of colored glass until they become soft and malleable. Then, using a variety of tools, he bends, stretches, and molds the glass into any shape.

And we do mean any shape.

Differently colored glasses are also used to create stunning patterns and textures.

They’re even more impressive when you consider that most of Drachuk’s pieces are only about two inches long.

And this little rat is even smaller, not counting the tail.

But they don’t have to be complex to be impressive.

(via Colossal)

You can see much more of Drachuk’s work on his Etsy shop, and maybe even pick up a critter of your own!

Email the ViralNova team!

Starting in 2013, the people of Sydney, Australia, began to notice something a bit odd around their city. There were some strange (and often very funny) signs popping up in public spaces. They probably made a lot of people smile, but most people didn’t have a clue who was behind them.

That person is Michael Pederson, and he uses his background in art, film, and music to inspire his funny, conversational signs. Take a look at some of his work and try not to smile.

Okay, this one is a little unsettling.

Because they’re exposed to the elements and to other people, many of Pederson’s pieces don’t last more than a month. But that’s okay, he says. In that time, plenty of people see them, and there’s something nice about the fleeting nature of this public art. It teaches people to look more carefully, but also not to take anything for granted.

With signs like this, half the fun is how official they look. Some people might not have even noticed this!

If you’re feeling stressed, seriously try this. It works! It’s public art and a public service.

So why do all this if the pieces aren’t even going to stay put? For Pederson, it’s more about helping people notice their surroundings. “I think we travel through urban space without really seeing it most of the time,” he explained. “I like the idea of interfering with the overly familiar background blur.”

Admit it. You’ve needed this.

And we’ve all been in situations where we’ve wished for an emergency exit.

(via BoredPanda)

You can see more of Pederson’s work on his website. We recommend looking through the whole thing.

Email the ViralNova team!