Art: The Making of Ephemicropolos

Very interesting piece of art. It's a city made with 100,000 staples.

Comments and links to other videos by Peter Root, the artist, are here.

The making of Ephemicropolis from Peter Root on Vimeo.

Art: The Making of Ephemicropolos

Quote du jour

"Modern Art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea." - John Ciardi

Quote du jour

Are you troubled by infestations of artists?

I happened to see something today that rang funny. The city of Paducah, KY (a perfectly nice place, I understand), is trying to encourage a measure of revitalization of the downtown area. They want more artists to come to the downtown area and make it more scenic, more interesting, and generally more colorful. It's pretty cool, too: artists from all over the country have come to the town. The city is trying to create an atmosphere of an artists colony and, from the look of it, they're doing a good job.

All this is well and good. I like the idea very much, honestly.

The part that comes off a little strange to me is the name: the Artist Relocation Program.

It just sounds like they're trapping artists in the city when they get too close to human populations to safely interact and then they're transporting them 50 miles out into the country to release them into the wild to make a new home.

I know, I know, it's just me....

Are you troubled by infestations of artists?

Male narcissism

No, the title of this blog entry isn't a redundancy. These prints go rather beyond that, I'd say. (And they are rather amusing, particularly if you're fond of Japanese prints, as I am.)

In the mid-1840s, ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) created a number of woodblock prints showing legendary tanuki (raccoon dogs) using their humorously large scrota in creative ways.

This series of comic prints alludes to the supposed ability of raccoon dogs to voluntarily enlarge their scrotums. It is listed as 209 in Kuniyoshi by Basil William Robinson (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1961). Robinson translated tanuki as ‘badgers’, but ‘raccoon dogs’ seems to be more correct. The images are each about 7 by 10 inches (18 by 25 centimeters), a size known as chûban. Two images were printed on a sheet of paper about 14 by 10 inches (36 by 25 centimeters), a size known as ôban.

Better copies of the prints can be found here and here.

Male narcissism

DIY Jackson Pollock art

Patricia posted this on FaceBook. It's the winner of the Webby Awards this year. It's a do-it-yourself website for creating your own Jackson Pollock style painting. (Click your left mouse button to change the color.)

DIY Jackson Pollock art

Fun trivia: James Whistler

Why was artist James A. McNeill Whistler kicked out of the West Point Military Academy as a young man?

Answer: For misconduct. Assigned to draw a bridge in an engineering class, he drew two little boys fishing from it. Ordered to remove them, he drew the boys fishing from the riverbank. Again ordered to remove them, he drew two little headstones near the river.

Fun trivia: James Whistler

Paper cuts

There's a fascinating blog from Vietnam that you need to look at. Go look, I'll wait. You don't have to read Vietnamese to appreciate what they're doing with paper.

Paper cuts

Artwork from your DNA

All right, there are strange things in this post-modern world of ours and this one's nowhere near the strangest... but it's the strangest one I've seen so far today.  Here's a website for creating artwork from your DNA, so whatever you get is going to be truly unique. 

Mind you, I do like the blue and gold one very much but I'm enjoying the colors as much as anything else. 

Artwork from your DNA

Latté art

I'm putting together a big post with lots of pictures from our weekend up in Tacoma visiting family, but I wanted to add something very cool that I just saw this evening.

As y'all know, Seattlites and former Seattlites are very into their coffee. Starbuck's is definitely the lowest common denominator of good coffee but there's an awful lot that's better. This is a page of latté art that's done by pouring the steamed milk and occasionally teasing it with a spoon. This is ART, damnit, and it makes a hedonistic experience cool on a whole 'nother level.

Latté art