Graphite drawings, charcoal portraits, and landscape paintings are a few examples of common art pieces you might see. Digital art especially is becoming very popular right now, particularly on social media sites like Instagram. One of the beautiful things about art, however, is that there are very few rules. Artists can depict anything they want, use any media they want, and can sometimes create art anywhere they want. Some people have been inspired to go unconventional and use unexpected items for their canvases and media. While many artists have chosen unusual and wacky media, below are three artists I find quite interesting and impressive.
Toast is a delicious food usually enjoyed in the mornings. For most people, toasting bread means that they are probably hungry, but for Maurice Bennett, bread combined with heat means art.
Maurice Bennett Self Portrait
During a barbeque, Bennett started messing around with toast on the floor. After listening to his friends make lots of puns and dad jokes about what he was doing, the idea for using toast to create art was born. Some of his pieces are rather small, but others can be up to twenty-three feet tall.
Marilyn Monroe Portrait in Shanghai
Bennett, now known as “The Toastman,” doesn’t stick to one type of bread. Depending on the portrait, he will use anything from fancy cocktail bread to Wonder Bread. He also occasionally creates pieces other than portraits, such as abstract or a depiction of a toaster.
Bennett stretched his creativity for one piece in particular. As a sort of play on words, he created the rapper Eminem out of over one thousand M&M candies.
Bennett earned a world record after completing a portrait of former mayor Mark Blumsky using 2,724 slices of toast. However, the very day it was set up a massive storm hit, seagulls came and ate the bread away, and by the time everything had blown over the toast portrait was gone. From that point forward all Bennett’s completed masterpieces were coated in polyurethane for preservation.
In the year 2000 he was informed that he would only have five years left to live. However, even knowing that the end of his life was near, he was content, saying, “We’re all going to die…It’s not about seeing every place in the world, it’s about enjoying what you’ve got.” Maurice Bennett passed away on June 6, 2016 of cancer, eleven years later than the day he was told he would die. Despite Bennett’s unfortunate death, “The Toastman’s” art will still be admired for generations to come.
Graphite is the most commonly used medium for traditional art. Pencils are great for quick thumbnail drawings, rough sketches, finished masterpieces, and creating values. Salavat Fidai takes graphite art to a whole other level. While Fidai dabbles in multiple forms of miniature art, such as replicating Vincent van Gogh’s paintings on matchboxes and seeds, he is most known for taking pencils and carving into the tips, creating micro-sculptures.
These sculptures don’t even reach an inch in height. Fidai uses an X-ACTO knife to carve into carpenter pencils or art pencils with thick leads, like B pencils. 
No matter what kind of pencil he chooses he has to be extremely careful. As easy as it is to snap a pencil tip while writing, carving into the lead drastically weakens it and it can easily break, washing all his hard work down the drain.
While Salavat Fidai may seem limited in his creative choices, he finds ways to stretch his creative ability and change things up. For example, he occasionally carves into the middle of pencils instead of the tip and other times he chooses colored pencils instead of graphite.
Guy Laramée, a Canadian artist, carves into books to create incredible landscapes and old buildings. But before the book lovers start getting indignant, Laramée only uses worn down encyclopedias and dictionaries, saving them from the trash.
During a moment of pure curiosity at work, Laramée placed a book he happened to be carrying inside a sand blaster. He created a few holes through the book and realized how beautiful it looked. The sandblasted pages created fascinating layers. And the rest is history. He has learned how to create stunning pieces of art and improve his craft day by day.
He creates these paragons of creativity with individual charm. He might use one book or multiple books bound together, carve into the direct center, only the top, or down the entire front. Sometimes he stacks books precariously on top of each other or spreads them out like cards. He finds very creative ways to add something new to each piece.
Laramée is truly an impressive artist and no two sculptures of his are alike. I definitely recommend checking out more of his work if you find these interesting.
Artists cannot be placed neatly inside a box. In fact, some of the most beautiful artworks come from artists who thought outside of said box. Afterall, who knew toast could become artwork? Artists who use traditional media like acrylic paint, pen, watercolor, etc. are still very talented in their own right. But sometimes it can be a lot of fun to look at an artist’s work who has developed skills in a very specific, random, and uncommon medium.
Works Cited:
Manson, Bess. “Life Story: Maurice Bennett’s Artwork was the Toast of the Town.” Stuff, June 8, 2016, www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/80816431/life-story-maurice-bennetts-artwork-was-the-toast-of-the-town.
“White or Whole Wheat? Maurice Bennett, ‘The Toastman,’ Crafts Portraits in Toast (White, Actually).” The Nibble, www.thenibble.com/fun/more/silly/toast-portraits.asp, Accessed December 14, 2021.
Jobson, Christopher. “Delicate Pencil Lead Sculptures Carved by Salavat Fidai,” Colossal, July 4, 2015, www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/07/delicate-pencil-lead-carvings-by-salavat-fidai/.
“Russian Artist Salavat Fidai Creates Incredible Tiny Works of Art.” Awesome Inventions, www.awesomeinventions.com/tiny-artworks-salavat-fidai/, Accessed December 14, 2021.
Ebert, Grace. “By Carving Into a Text, Artist Guy Laramée Finds a New Way to Excavate Meaning.” Colossal, January 17, 2020, www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/01/guy-laramee-carved-books/.
Image Credits:
www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/12/adieu-guy-laramee/
www.trendhunter.com/trends/maurice-bennett
en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/11713282
mauricebennett.co.nz/toast-portraits/show/223
www.siennafineart.com/salavat-fidai
www.lessoeursanglaises.com/blog/2017/11/12/one-thing-leads-to-another
www.boredpanda.com/miniature-pencil-sculptures-salavat-fidai/
www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/01/guy-laramee-carved-books/
www.artsy.net/artwork/guy-laramee-humanities
www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/06/new-carved-book-landscapes-by-guy-laramee/