Posts by Jessica Stewart

Jessica Stewart

Jessica Stewart is a Staff Editor and Digital Media Specialist for My Modern Met, as well as a curator and art historian. Since 2020, she is also one of the co-hosts of the My Modern Met Top Artist Podcast. She earned her MA in Renaissance Studies from University College London and now lives in Rome, Italy. She cultivated expertise in street art which led to the purchase of her photographic archive by the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia in 2014. When she’s not spending time with her three dogs, she also manages the studio of a successful street artist. In 2013, she authored the book "Street Art Stories Roma" and most recently contributed to "Crossroads: A Glimpse Into the Life of Alice Pasquini." You can follow her adventures online at @romephotoblog.
May 10, 2017

Manga Artist Sketches Incredibly Detailed Urban Backdrops of Japan

Manga artist Kiyohiko Azuma is most well known for Yotsuba&!, his series which follows a young girl humorously moving through life. In that work, Yotsuba is rendered in a cartoonish manner, juxtaposed with her surroundings, which Azuma depicts with realistic detail. The contrast between reality and fantasy is striking, but not unheard of in manga. In fact, Shigeru Mizuki, author of GeGeGe no Kitaro, pioneered the style.

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May 8, 2017

‘220 Mini Metros’ Turns World Transit Networks into Tiny Minimalist Maps

American graphic designer and self-proclaimed “transit nerd” Peter Dovak has come up with an interesting visual concept for international metro maps. His project 220 Mini Metros is a clever reinterpretation of subway maps in cities across the world. Starting several years ago as an iPhone app idea, the self-taught designer later focused on icons for each city. For the challenge, he gave himself strict requirements.

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May 2, 2017

Japanese ‘Bonrama’ Art Turns Beautiful Bonsai into Tiny Countryside Dioramas

Bonsai and trains, these two seemingly disparate things actually come together beautifully in small dioramas called Bonrama. In Japan, train travel is a way of life for many people, which inspired Tetsuo Kawakami, president of the Railway Diorama Studio in Kyoto, to create these tiny art pieces that marry railways with the beloved bonsai. Recently on exhibition in Saitama Prefecture, each diorama is a piece of nostalgia for Japanese people who are connected to train travel.

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April 28, 2017

Guggenheim Museum Releases Over 200 Modern Art Books Online for Free

Modern art lovers rejoice! The Guggenheim Museum in New York has just made more than 200 books about modern art available online. Not only can you read them online, but you can download them in PDF or ePub formats—for free—at the Internet Archive. For over half a decade the museum has been digitizing its exhibition catalogs and art books, placing the results online.

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