Escaping reality with whimsical button pictures

IN this age of machines, do clothes manufacturers - even the top fashion brands - have human tailors sewing on buttons in their apparel anymore?

If not, there is Korean artist Ran Hwang, who gets into this humble practice in her art - not that she sews. It's more that she hammers her raw materials - buttons and pins - into where they need to go, sometimes into Plexiglas.

She was inspired to get into this medium by a pile of discarded buttons she saw lying in a corner a decade ago, when she was still working in fashion.