Most of us played with building blocks to create our own make believe buildings and cities. Fortunately, not all of us outgrew this habit. Here are some cityscape artworks made from unusual objects like egg, cookware, and Jell-O. Yes. Jell-O.
Unreal Scene (2008) by Liu Jianhua
Chinese artist Liu Jianhua created this cityscape of Shanghai out of poker chips and dice. You can fill in the part about the metaphor of a city's growth and economic development to risk taking, gambling, and chance all by yourself. Part of a solo exhibition at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy.
San Francisco in Jell-O by Liz Hickok
Bay Bridge (2005), San Francisco in Jell-O by Liz Hickok
The City (2005), San Francisco in Jell-O by Liz Hickok
Liz Hickok and her Twin Peaks in Jell-O, complete with "fog."
San Francisco may be prone to earthquakes, but things never seem so jiggly as when artist Liz Hickok made a cityscape of Baghdad-by-the-Bay out of ... Jell-O!
San Francisco Cityscape with Cookware
On Gold Mountain: Sculptures from the Sierra by Zhang Wang
Egg City
Biscuit City by Sang Dong
In his installation titled "Eating the City," Chinese artist Sang Dong used about 72,000 biscuits, including "digestives, chocolate digestives, rich tea, hobnobs, caramels and fruit shortcake."
When his assistant remarked that she wanted to have a biscuit or two after the exhibition was completed but worried whether the biscuits would be stale, Dong had a sage advice: "Go for the ones at the bottom."
Atlantis Cityscape
Artist Gayle Chong Kwan used hundreds of old plastic bottles and food packagings to create a cityscape of the lost city of Atlantis.
Colour Reading and Contexture by Jacob Dahlgren
At first I thought Jacob Dahlgren used books to create this virtual cityscape installation called "Colour Reading and Contexture," but those are actually colored tiles and wooden blocks. Still it's pretty cool!
Urville by Gilles Tréhin
Urville is an island off Côte d'Azur, between Cannes and St. Tropez. If you've never heard of it, that's because it exists only in the mind of a savant named Gilles Tréhin.
Gilles started building Urville, named after Durmont d'Urville, a French scientific base in the Antarctic, when he was 12. Now, he has hundreds of detailed drawings, as well as a "historical" narrative on the founding of the city.
Cityscape II by Grace Grothaus
For her exhibition titled "Uncharted Terrain," Grace Grothous made an imaginary topographic landscale out of discarded circuit boards. The little buildings are the circuitries that are part of the boards!
Jerusalem Sphere by Frank Meisler
Jerusalem Sphere, replica of "Jerusalem Fountain" by Frank Meisler
Inspired by ancient maps showing Jerusalem as a circular city, Frank Meisler created this sculpture of the city in the form of a sphere. It is a replica of the Jerusalem Fountain, commissioned by the King Solomon Hotel.
RPM-1200 "Junk City" by Enoki Chu
Japanese artist Enoki Chu created his futuristic cityscape out of polished old drill bits and machine parts.
