Art of Takanori Aiba in Stone Voices

Takanori Aiba’s art is featured in the Winter 2012 issue of Stone Voices. He “creates incredibly detailed tiny worlds using craft paper, plastic, plaster, acrylic resin, paint, and other materials. His work is inspired by his early experiences with maze illustration as well as with the Japanese art forms of bonsai (miniature trees) and suiseki (stone appreciation).”

The art is truly amazing and detailed; I only wish I could see the pieces in real life. I’m particularly enraptured with the pieces that incorporate the bonsai tree. “My work comes out of my extraordinary, fantastic, and sometimes even chimerical imagination,” he writes. “People believe that my creations are real buildings and spaces because I depict not only the outline, but also all the elaborate details in each piece. I create the side, back, and even the inside of the buildings.”

I was also taken with Vincent Louis Carella’s column and photography, “The Little People.” He takes photos of miniature plastic people in the environments around him. “Taking these photos has raised for me a thousand questions,” he writes. “How is it exactly that bodies speak? The language of the human form has no vowels, it defies the tongue and teeth. . . These little figurines speak loudly.” Later he says, “What I’ve discovered is that I overlook so much.”

The rest of the issue includes art portfolios by Kristin Reed and Rae Broyles and features Naomi Beth Wakan, M. M. De Voe, Marsha Bailey Andersen, and David Denny.