Non-Prophet

Andy Goldsworthy

I just watched "Rivers and Tides", a documentary of the work of environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. It was fantastic. He has genuine enthusiasm and appreciation for the natural wold, like a child but with the attention span and patience if a senior. Check it out. It's great stuff.

Wikipedia:

Andy Goldsworthy (born July 26, 1956) is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland who produces site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects, to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment.

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Bringin' some sexy to Non-Prophet land!

An old classic by Boris Vallejo, master of erotic fantasy painting. Click on the image to examine the incredible detail. [Posted by Klayton Elliot Kendall]

The Art of AlexCF

AlexCF has a gallery of his artwork online and it is truly something to behold. He creates artifacts from the Victorian past that never was. With my affection for steampunk and Lovecraft in place, this was love at first sight. Check out his blog here and his gallery here. Of particular interest are the "research case" artifacts. They're like something you'd find in your grandfather's attic in New England.

Theo Jansens's Strandbeest

Jansen's art behaves in a manner that is strikingly organic while being relatively simple in the technology it employs. Looking at it you'd think that it was composed of a collection of motors, microprocessors and sensors, but this is not the case. It is made of simple mechanical joints and it is wind powered.

3D Modeling With Blender

Looking for a new hobby? Every wished you owned a copy of one of those really cool 3D graphics and animation packages such as Maya or 3D Studio Max? Back in the day I played at great length with whatever I could get my hands on for free, such as POVRAY but I was always left wanting something fully featured and having an advanced IDE. I never had an extra $5K - $50K to plunk down though. A few years ago my dreams were answered in the form of an open source application called Blender. The initial learning curve is certainly steep, but with all of the tutorials and documentation that is available on the web any serious minded amateur modeller or animator could be up any making things in no time.

This stuff is totally fun, runs on any system and is free. Check out the image and movie gallery here.

Blender is, without any doubt, the coolest piece of software that has ever been created. ;)

Timeline of Art History

Today was cold and rainy in New York City. I flew the red-eye with my kid, landed at 6am and we hopped a bunch of subway trains out of Queens, across Brooklyn and rode into uptown Manhattan to go the the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had about 14 hours to spend in NYC and even now I'm sitting in JFK airport killing the last 2 over a beer and some free internet. If you are ever lucky enough to make it to the Metropolitan you are indeed lucky. The sheer scope of the place makes other art museums want to buy big Dodge Ram trucks for compensation. I hadn't been there in perhaps 15 years and I was, once again, blown away. The Egyptian section alone is too large to really seriously view in one day. I love this stuff. I got a bunch of pictures of my kid looking introspective and existential while scratching her chin and gazing at Dali, Pollock and Picasso. Friggin' hilarious. Their armor and armory exhibit, which includes conquistadors, medieval plate armor and even fully outfitted samuri was really fascinating to my kid. This place is world class. Nothing is a repro, and you're constantly looking at stuff you already know and have seen a thousand times because it is quintessential. Awesome. It is history in your face. The thing that really stuck me most is how across all times and cultures art seeks to reproduce the ecstatic experience. They all want you to see the big moment, the larger than life happening, the uber-life big-time. It is entertaining.

"Do they have real swords Dada?"
"Looks like a bunch of rooms full of real, really old swords... um, yep."

Here is a tiny taste of the place with a fraction of their 2 million pieces displayed in an uber-hip art history timeline.

Body Worlds

I went to see Body Worlds on Saturday and it was.. well, kinda icky. Ya know, it's real people preserved and chopped up for your viewing pleasure. I was really surprised at how fake everything looked. That certainly made the whole experience a bit easier to stomach, but the memory of the event has left me a bit queasy. Walking throught the exhibit in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science things got progressively weirder. Once you reach the point where Gunther von Hagens is displaying artistic, even humorous statements with real chopped up people it all gets a little bit unsettling. That said, it is a stroll in the land of weird and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Catch it until 7/23.

You're Gonna Make It Joe.

Here is some delayed flight blogging from JFK. Ned just sent me a link to a gigantic article in the NY Times about Daniel Johnston being featured in the Whitney Biennial. This is surely the biggest thing to happen in the Daniel Johnston mythos in a while, and is probably going to have a larger impact than the recent documentary about him that scored kudos at Sundance last year. Most importantly, Daniel's work is getting serious attention these days. This is the biggest and juiciest article I'm seen written about him in a news source this large ever. This guy makes me feel a knot in my stomach that hasn't faded for almost 20 years.

From the NY Times

In their crusade to take the pulse of contemporary art every two years, the curators of the Whitney Biennial often stray from the art world's beaten paths. But rarely have they strayed quite as far as this small farming town near Houston, along a road that leads to a beige-brick ranch house where a middle-aged man named Daniel Johnston lives with his elderly parents.

Don't Be Jealous Of My Wax Hands

Okay kids, today I'm going to tell you all about one of my latest projects: How to cast parts of the human body with plaster.

Total Cost: ~$10 USD
Time Spent: ~ 2-1/2 Hours

Things you'll need: 2 lbs plaster, deep aluminum foil dish, wax, crayons, vaseline, dremel, butter knife.

I went into this more or less cold and without looking up any instructions at all. Things have gone very well and all of my friends are totally jealous when I taunt them with my beautiful, spooky and terribly mysterious wax hands.

1. Mix up some plaster and pour ~3" into the dish. Make sure it is pretty think, like cake icing.
2. Press your hand down about half way into the plaster, don't submerse it but try to get your hand just a bit over half way in, right up to your wrist.

3. After about 15 minutes it will harden. Remove your hand. Let it dry overnight.
4. Use the Dremel tool to go around the edges of your hand imprint and make sure that nowhere does the imprint have more than half of your hand stuck into it. Think that you're going to have to pull a wax piece straight up and out of this thing, and if to has more than 180 degrees of curve the wax won't be able to some out. Ideally you want to have the mold cover exactly 1/2 of the hand (the bottom half) at all places in the mold. You are trying to end up with a centerline between the two mold halves. It should look like this:

5. Next, smear vaseline all over the entire surface of the mold and don't miss even one tiny spot. Make sure it is thin everywhere. Smear your hand with vaseline too, don't miss any spots at all.
6. Make more plaster. Put your hand into the bottom part of the mold and have someone pour 2" of plaster on top of your hand.
7. Wait. If your hand starts to burn badly free it from the mold by smashing the whole thing against a wall or fireplace.
8. If you make it through, flip the whole thing, remove the foil dish and then use the knife to separate the two halves. Reclaim your hand. The top should look like this:

You should have two halves that fit together like this:

9. Wait another day (I know... I know) and melt some wax. Use a pan you don't ever want to cook in again and keep the heat low. Add in a crayon for color.
10. Tie the mold closed with some string or rubber bands, prop it up somehow. Carefully pour the wax into the closed mold. It will take a few hours to cool, add some liquid wax to fill in for the shrinkage.
11. Separate the mold, pop out the hand, wash it gently with dish soap in cold water, trim the edges witht a pen knife. Trim the bottom so it stands up on its own.

Voila! Now go taunt your friends and family, making them squirm with jealousy over your cool wax hand. Your mold can be used over and over again, increasing the envy and admiration.