These are just out of this world. Jen­nifer Maestre’s pen­cil sculp­tures are just crazy cool. It is just hard to believe how much time and plan­ning it took to get all these pen­cils togeth­er to make some­thing this cre­ative and mem­o­rable.

My sculp­tures were orig­i­nal­ly inspired by the form and func­tion of the sea urchin. The spines of the urchin, so dan­ger­ous yet beau­ti­ful, serve as an explic­it warn­ing against con­tact. The allur­ing tex­ture of the spines draws the touch in spite of the pos­si­ble con­se­quences. The ten­sion unveiled, we feel push and pull, desire and repul­sion. The sec­tions of pen­cils present aspects of sharp and smooth for two very dif­fer­ent tex­tur­al and aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ences. Para­dox and sur­prise are inte­gral in my choice of mate­ri­als. Quan­ti­ties of indus­tri­al­ly man­u­fac­tured objects are used to cre­ate flex­i­ble forms rem­i­nis­cent of the organ­ic shapes of ani­mals and nature. Pen­cils are com­mon objects, here, these anony­mous objects become the struc­ture. There is true a fragili­ty to the some­times bru­tal aspect of the sculp­tures, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that is belied by the fear­some tex­ture…

For more infor­ma­tion about Jen­nifer Maestre and to see more unbe­liev­able pen­cil sculp­tures, check out jennifermaestre.com