Installation Artist Ana Serrano Makes Cities, Men Out Of Cardboard

LA-based artist Ana Serrano makes everything from sexy cowboy men (or Silver Lake hipsters?), to sprawling villages out of cardboard with a keen attention to detail. Her “cartonlandia” installation, for example, includes tiny, candy-colored houses, picket fences, lamp poles, walkways and even miniature trees and shrubs that are all reminiscent of those little stucco and wrought iron homes our grandmother had decorating the walls of her kitchen.

Ana is a first generation Mexican American whose work, according to her bio, “bears reference to those in low socio-economic positions, with particular interest in their customs and beliefs, as well as the architecture, fashion, and informal economies, present within this segment of society.”

The latest issues she is seeking to tackle through her work are the predominance of drug trafficking and the “branding and acceptance” of the lifestyle led by drug lords. So would that make her “chalino” sculpture a cocaine cowboy?

Ana is also adept at creating truly beautiful typography:

…and even made a book - the aptly-named Lost in the Festival of Color:

So, she is pretty much just all-around talented and awesome. For more on Ana, make sure to keep up with her blog, “Ok Bye,” where you can also find things for purchase and lament over your own inability to make so much as a bird feeder out of toilet paper tubes.

Ana Serrano [Official Site]