Awesome Sculptures

A series of handmade basketball rings with stained glass backboards, gold-plated rims and bejewelled nets. Victor Solomon’s Literally Balling started out as a joke, but has turned into a commentary on rich and powerful sports stars.

José Manuel Hermo Barreiro aka Patelo spent over 2,500 hours to make this miniature hydraulic 32-piston W engine. It’s so balanced and its 850 pieces fit together so precisely that it barely shudders when it runs.

Kanemaki Yoshitoshi makes life-size wooden sculptures that confront and visualize the dichotomies of existence: life and death, conflicting emotions and multiple identities. See more of his work on Behance.

Satoshi Araki loves to create unbelievably detailed scale models and miniature dioramas, featuring both real world and fictional elements. Spoon & Tamago says he mainly uses styrofoam boards for his sculptures. More here.

Artist Michael Grab creates beautiful, yet temporary sculptures by precariously balancing found stones upon one another. In this soothing and hypnotic video, he revisits some of the sculptures he created in 2014.

Jeff de Boer makes medieval armor for cats and mice using bronze, silver, copper and leather. He doesn’t make duplicates, but he’s willing to make similar items on commission. He also has a photo book of his armor.

Christophe Guinet aka Monsieur Plant loves to use plants in his works, such as turning sneakers into flower pots. One of his newest works is this beautiful skateboard made of a single plank of wood with its bark intact.

A group of scientists study a demon frog in a towering laboratory as its fellow creatures look on in this stunning award-winning diorama by Cristoph Blumenthal. Check out his gallery to see just how detailed and alive it looks.

Boeing’s Custom Hangar limited editions store offers sculptures, furniture and other decorative items made of old airplane parts, including ones from the 747, 727, DC9, P-51 Mustang, F-4 Phantom and B-29 Superfortress.

Designed by Alex Chinneck, Take My Lightning But Don’t Steal My Thunder appears to be a stone building with its upper half suspended in mid-air. The polystyrene structure is actually supported by a thin steel frame at its corners.

Mixed media artist Thomas Medicus created this extraordinary sculpture from 160 individual hand-painted glass strips. As you move around the anamorphic object, it transforms into four completely different images. More on Colossal.

In 2012 DDB Shanghai made this awareness campaign about Internet and computer addiction. The ad agency made a keyboard-shaped sculpture showing the likenesses of addicts and their loved ones trapped in the keys.

Roxy Paine’s collection of highly-detailed wooden sculptures based on machinery – the literal and the intangible ones. They rebel against control and uniformity, concepts that have become associated with machines. More here.

82-year-old Montana artist Gary Tallman gathers firewood each spring and stacks it into intricate mosaics based on size, shape and color. He seems to especially love owls. Head to Bored Panda to check out more work from other wood pile artists.

If Greg Klassen’s glass and wood furniture evoke rivers and lakes, Ben Young’s glass and concrete sculptures evoke oceans. Ben cuts and crafts each sculpture by hand, layer by layer. He also makes pure glass sculptures.

Artist Maico Akiba turns Safari Ltd.’s beautiful animal figurines into walking sekai – the Japanese term for “world.” According to Colossal, Maico uses accessories from model train sets to create the amazing miniature worlds.

Fueled by his lifelong fascination for stone architecture, historian Matthew Simmonds trained to become a stone carver. Some of his sculptures are miniatures of classical structures carved out of single chunks of marble.

Sandy’s CanCars takes the art of aluminum can sculpture to a whole new level. His intricate cars are handmade from dozens of cans, along with balsa and custom metal parts. The models sell for thousands, Sandy sells DIY plans for just $10.

Urban artist Shaun Hughes makes hobo nickels – bas reliefs carved on nickels and other coins. His sculptures often feature skulls, but he also uses pop culture references from time to time. You can find some of his pieces on eBay.

Believe it or not, these objects are actually made from wood. Artist Tom Pfannerstill found some discarded and worn out packaging of everyday things and painstakingly recreated them out of basswood and paint.

Gaming Heads’ officially-licensed diorama recreates the famous Doom box cover art. It’s finished and painted by hand and has removable bullet effects. The Exclusive Edition has pulsing lights in its base. Standard version here.

The Museum of Modern Art partnered with the irreverent Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan to release small replicas of L.O.V.E., his infamous anti-Fascist sculpture. Available as a snow globe and as a rotating music box.

For his River Collection, furniture maker Greg Klassen took discarded wood and then cut blue glass by hand to make them fit the contours of the wood. The resulting tables and sculptures look like rivers or lakes.