Of course, there are more types of art than just painting, and in all art forms the artists want to share their creativity. One such artist that did that very thing was Henri Matisse. He was a French born painter well known for the colors used in his Fauvism works. Find out more about Matisse in the video below.

In Minnesota you will find that art therapy is used often as a treatment and preventative for illness and disease.  The Minnesota Art Therapy Association is an organization that aims to offer assistance for those in the art therapy field looking for a job and those looking to seek art therapy as a constructive form of therapy. There are many different ways to check out the Minnesota Art Therapy Association. My Minnesota television provider even has a local channel that lists some of the association’s events in the upcoming events.

If you are interested in finding out more about art therapy, how and why it works there is a video included below.  It can help inform you of some of the reasons art therapy is used and how it can transform lives of those who seek it as a form of treatment.  Have a look…

I love when I see something that is typically very plain and boring taken to a whole new level because of someone’s creativity.  Let’s face it, without creative and artistic minds out there, we would live in a very dull world.  Luckily, everyone has their own talents and can offer up their own take and perspective on certain things.  One of my new favorite things is bird houses.  Not the same old boring ones that you would see at a big box store, but the ones that come from a vivid imagination.

I met the man who runs Porter’s Tavern Woodworks at a local craft fair.  His bird house and bird feeder designs are so incredible and range from fancy to almost silly, in a good way of course.  There are cedar feeders designed to look like a resort for birdies.  There are brightly painted houses with a colorful bouncy ball for the peg.  You can even find double-decker bird apartments.  How does this guy come up with this stuff?  Luckily, Boris Lurie Art Foundation (BLAF) asked so you could know.

BLAF:  How did you get started designing houses for birds?

PTWW:  Before I began building furniture and homes for birds I worked for a company that designed modular home plans.  I got to work with people looking to buy modular homes and customize these houses for people.  After I was laid off due to the economy, I decided that I could make some cash by creating houses.  Only this time they were for birds.  My seven year old son also helps come up with ideas that are really imaginative as well.

BLAF:  Where do you get your inspiration?

PTWW:  That varies.  It could be something as simple as a golf ball, or some kind of house my son drew on a piece of paper.  If I find old kitchen cabinet knobs around I can design a house around those.  Inspiration is everywhere.

This guy’s work is really phenomenal.  Check out some of his houses below or at his website:  porterstavernwoodworks.com

Yes, those are little stained glass windows in a bird house!  Impressive, right?

Gotta love those bright colors and copper roofs.

Simple and rustic.

In the following video, you can watch an expert barista creating several designs.  Notice the way he pours the cream and gently shakes the pitcher as he does so.  The patterns are simply stunning.  Even though this is the work of a trained and skilled artist, don’t be afraid to try these designs at home.  You could really impress your friends by learning these skills:

I am so glad that arts and craft shows have found their way into the small town where I live.  There was even a senior citizens art fair over the weekend that I attended, and I could not believe all of the people that came out to support the event and participate.  There is always so much to see when you go to one of these things.  If you are thinking about setting up shop at an arts and craft fair, then you will need to do a little prep work.

Planning your booth can be fairly easy, and selling your goods might not be as difficult as you might would think.  Check out this video I found that offers tips on selling at arts and craft shows.

The most important thing about practicing with sand art is knowing that there is no right or wrong way to do it.  Unlike expensive oil paints and acrylics that must be mixed precisely to achieve the desired shades, then applied to the somewhat unforgiving canvass, sand is a bit touchier to work with because once it blends, you can’t easily separate the grains and get back to a color you wanted to work with.  On the other hand, colored sand is a lot less expensive than paint, and if you mess it up, you can always start over again.

Many artists enjoy going off by themselves and securing their studios with adt security while they spend quiet hours improving their skills and exploring new methods of artistic expression.  Enjoy the following video, relax to the calming music, and dream of some sand art of your own.

Many master sommeliers actually put themselves in the same categories of lawyers and medieval knights.  The thing is, to become a medieval knight, it takes some serious and mad art skills.  When swords and other things like that are involved, you definitely need to be an artist.  Therefore, if a medieval knight is an artist then a sommelier is an artist.  With that deduction, I found something that you can use to be your own little artist, and almost sommelier.  The art of understanding wine is not easy for simpletons, but now you can use the infographic that I found get some more information about good wines on a budget.  Click it to see it larger.

I had never thought that it was possible to create art inside of coffee. Yeah, you can put things on top of it that look pretty and taste good but this is taking it to a whole new level! This coffee art is where they take a late and add cream to the top of it. Then they take a tool and dip it into both the cream and the late to create an image. Some of the designs even have multiple images depending on the way that you look at them. The things that you can create from a blob of cream in a cup of coffee is truly amazing. But making art out of cream wasn’t enough for this artist, then they added chocolate to the mix.

I have never thought anything about adding cream and chocolate to my coffee, now I am ready to give it a try! This goes to show that there are many definitions of an artist and the kinds of art that they create.

This video showed the process of creating an image with a paintball gun on a large canvas. I thought it was really interesting how cool it looked from just shooting the canvas with different colors at certain places. When you play paintball, most people will be decorated with colorful spots of paint. When that happens most people aren’t very happy. On the other hand when you are shooting a canvas no one will get mad or have bruises from being hit.

Paintball art is fascinating. It also shows how creative artists are and that new techniques of art are being created all the time. I have never played paintball for the fear of being hit. After seeing this video I want to go out and buy a paintball gun so I can attempt to make a paintball picture of my own! Even for those that aren’t that into art, this requires the best of aim to create your picture; meaning that it is perfect for target practice.

A good friend of mine feels very strongly about environmental causes and also happens to be a very crafty woman.  Now when many art critics and professionals here the word ‘crafty’, they tend to think of a Martha Stewart like creation involving a bird house or a cottage in the woods that lacks any contemporary edge.  However, this is not the case with her art.  She has managed to successfully scale down the size of most gallery pieces of this nature in order to accommodate her smaller home setting.  One of my favorite pieces that she has created is made from a wood pallet that she found in the trash at a home improvement store.  She used the pallet as an impromptu canvas and proceeded to tightly seal black trash bags around the entire item so that the individual boards and shape of the pallet could still be detected.  She then used leftover paints from some other projects that she would have otherwise thrown away to do some splatter painting over her shiny black background.  Because of the slick texture of the plastic, the paint dripped just a hint, making it seem as if paint were raining down in the night sky.

I was blown away by the edginess of this artwork and the use of items that would normally be trashed without a second glance.  She utilizes everything from tree branches to metal pipe, creating pieces of furniture and accenting existing pieces as well.  I applaud this type of gallery style put into everyday life.  We can all go to the museum and see installations like this, but what the artists truly want us to see is the beauty in everyday objects.  Masking tape doesn’t just have to be practical.  Burnt out light bulbs aren’t necessarily trash.  This type of vision and creativity isn’t reserved solely for professional artists.  We can learn and make our own contemporary masterpieces, remembering that waste is only what we make it out to be and not what society tells us it has to be.