I’ve always found it fascinating how J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth continues to captivate generations of artists around the world. TheOneRing.net has proudly produced 6 art shows over the years, shining a spotlight on both professional and fan artists alike. I was delighted to attend the opening reception of “Out of the Shire”, a new gallery exhibit in tribute to Tolkien and his inspiring work.
Nucleus is an art gallery and store located at 210 East Main Street in Alhambra, California. It’s a charming space that sells various art books, crafts, t-shirts and more. The gallery side is perfectly set up for exhibits with fantastic lighting. The artwork was laid out in such a way that it allows each piece to stand on its own to be admired. And there is some truly incredible artwork on display!
Over 30 artists are on exhibit, showing a wide variety of styles – from paintings to illustrations, paper craft to sculptures, and more. I especially loved pieces that were original interpretations of beloved characters, not inspired by images from the Peter Jackson movies. You could see how the artist interpreted a character based on the writing of Tolkien himself, just as you do in your mind’s eye when you read “The Hobbit” or “The Lord of the Rings”.
Stand outs include the whimsical watercolors of Justin Gerard, an incredible fossilized Balrog by Tohru Patrick Awa, the lovely paintings by Caroline Hadilaksono, and a charming acrylic of Bilbo meeting Gandalf by Erik Krenz to name just a few. A special treat is the gorgeous artwork on display by TORn favorites Donato Giancola and Ted Nasmith. Keith Noordzy, who took part in our “An Unexpected Art Show” last February, is also part of the exhibit.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area, I’d highly recommend you check out this special exhibit in person. It’s well worth a visit. “Out of the Shire” is free and runs until January 12, 2014.
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At last October’s BrickCon in Seattle, a new collaborative LEGO creation was unveiled to the world. Alice Finch, the same talented artist who created the largest LEGO Hogwarts ever built, teamed up with fellow creator David Frank to build their own version of Middle-earth’s Rivendell. There have been other impressive versions built before but this may dwarf them all. I was fortunate enough to see this in person and it was truly spectacular! It really captured the hearts of the public attendees at BrickCon where it picked up the People’s Choice Award. LEGO blog The Brothers Brick has a great interview with Alice and David, that goes into how and why they came to build this amazing version of Lord Elrond’s domain. The photos show all the detail inspired by “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “An Unexpected Journey” as well as the massive size. It even lights up!
You can enjoy more images on Flickr. Congratulations to Alice and David on a beautiful version of Rivendell!
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Tolkien fans come from all walks of life and most of us can’t resist sharing our passion for Middle-earth. Amid the excitement of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug‘s release, the creative Natalie Grigson at the real estate blog Movoto has come up with something charming. Looks like Erebor wasn’t all Thorin hoped it would be and he’s selling it to unsuspecting buyers… or could it be that this is all a ploy to have a stranger test the dragon for him?! [See the Listing]
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Our favourite Mirkwood bird has reached an impressive milestone this week, racking up her 1 millionth view of her wonderful Oakentoons.
All of us here at theonering.net want to say a big Congratulations Peckish Owl, here’s to the next 1,000,000 and more and more Oakentoons/stills/crossovers!
Continue reading “Oakentoons reach 1,000,000 views”
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In this guest post, Henry Herz interviews Emil Johansson about his website LOTRproject and their recent collaboration Six Degrees of Sauron. Emil (@LOTRproject) maintains LOTRproject.com, through which he shares creative projects related to Tolkien’s works. Henry (@Nimpentoad) and his young sons write fantasy and science fiction books for kids. Their blog is henryherz.com. Continue reading “Six degrees of Sauron: discovering the character connections between The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
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You might recall that we’ve previously profiled the incredible Middle-earth LEGO dioramas of Blake Baer here on TheOneRing.net.
Now he’s back with his biggest piece yet — a 56-inch-tall model of Erebor made from 80,000 pieces of LEGO that weighs close to 200 pounds! This time he’s working with fellow LEGO aficionado Jack Bittner.
When we saw the first movie last year, we loved it too much not to build a scene from it. Of course, we couldn’t build any thing less than the iconic dwarf city. So here it is, our third and latest collaboration (our first was Amon Hen, our second was Rivendell). We chose Erebor for many reasons, not the least of which was that we love building mountains [sarcasm]. This build was a ton of fun, and we hope you enjoy it. And now, it is our pleasure to present Erebor, the dwarven hall of kings.
We had the chance to ask Blake a few questions about his and Jack’s Erebor diorama. Here’s what he had to say:
TORn: How big is it? Is it your biggest yet?
Blake: It most certainly is our biggest yet at 56″ tall, and close to 80,000 pieces totaling close to 200 pounds of LEGO.
TORn: How long did it take?
Blake: It took my friend Jack Bittner and I close to 400 combined hours to get the model designed, built, photographed, edited, and uploaded.
TORn: How difficult was conceptualizing the design?
Blake: We had the movie to rely upon for reference, so a lot of the design stages was just us watching the movie, haha. It obviously isn’t an exact replica, but it captures the essence of Erebor. We had the general layout of where we wanted Dale, the rivers, the mountains, etc. to be, but much of that changed as we built. We didn’t work off of any blueprints, so we were converting directly from imaginations to bricks, so many changes occurred.
TORn: What inspired the concept?
Blake: Large amounts were drawn from the movie portrayal of the Hobbit. The style of the facade of the gates of Erebor, for example, were drawn from the movie. In addition, representing Dale as a Sicilian-style city with terracotta roofs was drawn from the movie.
TORn: Will you be showcasing it anywhere?
Blake: We currently don’t have any plans to put it on display, but we hope to keep it together for a while so that we can possibly take advantage of any possibilities that may arise. The public unveiling was at Brickfair, VA, earlier this summer, but Erebor hasn’t seen any action To get an idea of the scale, check out the photo below that Blake supplied us. Amazing!
You can see even more photos of Erebor by Blake and Jack on their Flickr account.
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