A cabinet knob has a front, an edge, a stem, and a shadow. Seen from across a room, those parts may merge into a small point of metal. Up close, they become a form that the hand can explore. Designers considering high-end cabinet knobs can approach the choice with that change in scale in mind. Hand-cast bronze gives the object a surface and weight worth seeing in person. The interest comes from how the shape fills its small space and serves the door it belongs to.
The Side View Reveals the Form
A front view can make two knobs look almost alike. Turn them to the side and the difference becomes clear. One may have a shallow face on a narrow stem; another may swell into a rounded body. Each casts its own shadow on the door. That space between the face and the wood gives the object depth. It also affects how a hand approaches the grip. Continue reading What Makes a Cabinet Knob Feel Like a Small Piece of Sculpture?→
In France in 1975, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was collaborating with Director Alejandro Jodorowsky on an adaptation of Frank Herbert‘s 1965 novel, Dune, when he met the artist HR Giger. Jodorowsky had been introduced to Giger’s work by Salvador Dali, and had brought him on to create designs for the film.
While the feature ultimately fell through, O’Bannon couldn’t get Giger’s drawings out of his head. The screenwriter recalled “ending up writing a script about a Giger monster,” which would eventually become the influential franchise Alien. Continue reading Eye On Design: HR Giger’s Necronom 2005 (Alien 3 Model)→
What if you could actually see what was going on inside someone’s head? Erwin Wurm offers his own wonderfully strange answer with It’s Not Me, It’s Not You (Mind Bubbles), a 2025 sculpture that was part of the artist’s Double Dream exhibit at Lehmann Maupin.
To me, the sculpture looks like a character from some surreal cartoon: A cloud head / body perched atop pair of extremely long, skinny legs that bend awkwardly beneath the enormous, amorphous form. The entire figure is rendered in a soft, dreamy pale blue right down to its little lace-up boots. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Erwin Wurm, It’s Not Me, It’s Not You (Mind Bubbles)→
While wandering through the Chelsea Gallery district recently, I stopped by Pace Gallery on West 25th Street and headed up to the outdoor terrace. There, overlooking the eastern skyline with the Hudson River just beyond, I encountered a remarkable sculpture of two young men standing together in a close embrace, while each man wears a virtual reality headst. Call this a different kind of public art!
Entitled Close, this 2025 sculpture is by the Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, and it is carved entirely from white marble. At more than five feet tall, the figures are life-size enough to feel like actual people sharing an intimate moment, which makes the VR headsets all the more intriguing.
Identity has always been at the center of British artist Gillian Wearing’s work, and My Charms (2021) distills that lifelong fascination into an oversized charm bracelet displayed on a monumental scale. A close look reveals that its dangling charms aren’t tiny hearts, keys, or lucky horseshoes — they are deeply personal 3D-printed fragments of the artist herself.
