Hangselm Series 2: Not An Air Freshener!

The first customized Hangselm of the second series, named "Not An Air Freshener", is now online! It is made by Simona Meisser and you can download it on Hangselm's website www.hangselm.com!

This second series is designed to begin to expand the HANGSELM project involving, only initially and upon invitation, artists from south Switzerland or just connected to south Switzerland. Of course it’s also opened to artists from around the world that desire to partecipate. 15 Hangselm are planned for this series and some day ago we sent the invitations to the Swiss artists... and now something begin to arrive!

Simona Meisser was born in Lugano in 1984 and she graduated in 2003 as Textile Creator at the CSIA of Lugano and in 2006 as Illustrator at the IED of Milan. From 2007 she works free lance as illustrator with various publishing houses. She also shows her artworks in touring exhibitions and makes graphic-pictorial activities at the elementary schools. 

Her websites: www.simonameisser.com & simonameisser.blogspot.com

Since we published Hangselm's website we also received many requests from artists from different countries and we're really curious to see the next Hagselms of the second series!

The Hangselm Project!

Apparently it’s only a piece of colored paper cut, folded and pasted… and indeed from many point of view it is. Once ready, however, an Hangselm can play many different roles within the home life, the social life and in several other fields (not excluding astrophysics and marine biology), and could only be so. 

An Hangselm is made to hang on to something or someone and hang out at all kind of places, it can hang together with those who love him or hang on hanging from the handle of the front door (if hung in the kitchen perhaps can even get the hang of cooking!)

We created this project with the first series consisting of five elements (The Dirty Painters Series) that we also painted in Locaro at Villa Balli. One of the ideas of the project is to involve various artists (graphic designers, painters, illustrators, etc…) and that’s why there will be other series.

Visit Hangselm's website: www.HANGSELM.com    ...and also its facebook page!

Visit Hangselm's Website!

...here the painted Hangselms... if you want to see more, just check

the previous post on this blog!

Hangselm & the Dirty Painters!

Here we go with the pictures of the Villa Balli painting in Locarno... but not only!! As already mentioned, in february we made an outdoor painting on the old shop windows of the unhabited Villa Balli in Locarno for the exhibition "Il Definitivo è Trasformazione" (today, the 6th of march 2010, will be the inauguration).

We were free to decide what to do and this work, named "Dirty Painters - Cut + Fold", is our way to interpretate the idea of "transformation" in a funny way and it was the occasion to create something more than a painting.

In fact, we added a 3D element inside one of the shop windows and we planned everything to be a painting, a sculpture and a paper toy at the same time. This is how Hangselm is born.

As you can see in the following pictures, there are four "uncut" charachters on the wall and all of them are painters. The fifth has been cut out and built, and it's free to paint as he likes. 

Hence for the occaision we decided to let you interact with our work and we created a paper-toy to cut and fold, named Hangselm. The Hangselm Dirty Painters Series is at the same time the outcome and the beginning of this work, as well as the first series of our first paper toy. 

You can easily download a printable version of Hangselm here.

Click on the images to enlarge them...

...and here is the Hangselm paper-toy (downloadable here) in some of its favourites activities.

"Have you ever thought that's there's too much empty space on your jacket? That it's missing something before your eyes while driving? That your wardrobe gives a sense of sadness every morning? ...or simply that something unusual around you would be nice?

Well, it's time to build your Hangselm!"

Orpheline!

 

As promised, we start posting one of the works we made during the latest months: the artwork for Orpheline's debut album "Spread my Wings", out in Switzerland from the 26th of february 2010.

Orpheline is singer and songwriter, and she grew up between Europe and USA. This first album is produced by BlackAce and contains the single "Shy Boy" (more on Orpheline's website orphelinemusic.com and BlackAce's website www.blackaceshow.biz).

More specificly we did the graphics for the album, the graphics for the promo single,  the graphic layout for Orpheline's website, some drawings for the musical video of the french version of "Shy Boy" and we gave a hand during its shooting.

The general idea of the graphic concept starts from Etan Genini (communication and prodution manager of BlackAce) and the photographs are taken by Michael Bonito & Gruppo Diffusione; so, in this case, we mainly had to find the right decorations, composition and graphical solutions and of course we made photo editing and some little photomontage.

For the musical video, shooting and editing by Andrea Todaro, we made digital drawings built on levels to permit animation. At the beginning the animation had to be done by us but then,  for ease, it was made by Andrea Todaro too (but we have to thank Yan Hirschbühl, www.yahi.ch,  for the AfterEffects lessons!).

During the shooting of the video we also made some backstage picture. We post some of them below, but for the entire set you can visit Pablo's Flickr page.

Pages from the album booklet:

The Website (link)

Drawings for musical video:

Pictures during the video shooting (more here)

More details about the album:

Executive Producer: BlackAce
Management: BlackAce
Recorded: CaveStudios (Riva San Vitale, Mendrisio) and Joe's Garage Studio (Milan)
Engineered by: Max Elli, Enrico La Falce and Mauro Tondini
Mixed by: Enrico La Falce and Max Elli and Milkshop Studio (Milan) except "Shy Boy" mixed by Alexander Budd and Max Elli at CaveStudios.
Mastered: Sterling Sound NY by Chris Gehringer
Arwork by: Nevercrew