Emmylou Cakehead and the band The Futureheads collaborated on a tasty art installation unveiled at the charity exhibit Cake Britain (“The world’s first entirely edible art exhibition“) last weekend in London. The piece consists of the lyrics to The Futureheads song “The Chaos” spelled out in vanilla cookies! Cakehead, the cookie bakers, and the band spent a total of 200 hours on the artwork, which was consumed by patrons in a quite a bit less time. Their efforts raised thousands of dollars for St. Oswald’s house, a hospice in the band’s hometown of Newcastle. See more pictures of the cookies and the consumption at Cakehead Loves Evil. Link

Deviant Art member Joep Gerrits created 100 simplified but clever renderings of movie characters from 68 classic films. Can you name them? See all 100 and a list of movies at the gallery. Link -via Gorilla Mask

Sculpture

Sculptor Bathsheba Grossman creates metal and crystal artworks of forms found in math, physics, biology, and astronomy. Grossmen shows us Borromean rings, hypercubes, gyroids, fractals, Calabi-Yau spaces, and interlaced sculptures based on the five Platonic solids. I particularly like this Voronoi network wrapped onto a Möbius toroid, sculpted in white glass.

Grossman created this beautiful lamp from one of her Ora series sculptures. Available in several lamp styles from Materialise.

Jewelry

The Julia set is a fractal equation that produces a series of rather pleasing spirals. Designer Marc Newson took that fractal shape and designed a necklace of 2,000 diamonds and sapphires that took jewelry craftsmen 1,500 hours to put together. Note that the necklace is not symmetrical, but still has a sense of balance. See how the jeweler, Boucheron, advertises the necklace.

Drawing

Probably the best known artist to use math concepts in his works is M.C. Escher. Many of his 2-dimensional drawings turned 3-dimensional geometry on its head. The lithograph titled Waterfall illustrates the concept of the Penrose triangle, also called the impossible triangle. Escher also explored tessellations in many of his drawings.

Computer Imaging

Paul Nylander was one of the developers of the Mandelbulb that we saw in a previous math post. He is a computer engineer and an artist who renders math and science concepts into colorful images including animated .gifs to help us visualize their 3- or 4-dimensional structures. Shown is a Dodeca-Spidroball, a variation on the spidron, which was invented by Daniel Erdely in 1979.

Belgian mechanical engineer Jos Leys renders and animates all kinds of math concepts into beautiful forms that boggle the mind. His artworks include fractals, Kleinian groups, inversive geometry, recursions, tessellations, knots, and tilings in both images and video renderings to show 3- and 4-dimensional effects. The image above is called Indra200, an example of “Kleinian jewelry“.

Other artists rendering math images worth checking out include Torolf Sauermann, Brian Johnston, Mehrdad Garousi, and the late Titia Van Beugen.

Video

(YouTube link)

Creating visual representations of math concepts became easier with computer rendering software and digital video capabilities. That doesn’t mean it is simple. Homporgo, the artist who created this video of a Mandelbox zoom said in a comment:

Believe me Bill, I wanted to go further too, but at the end part a single frame took 18 minutes to render, and the whole 1:27 minute video needed 12 days nonstop rendering. I felt thats more than enough at the time.

Twelve days! The result looks worth it to me. How about you? See more fractals on video in this post.

Previously at Neatorama: A Non-Math Look at Math Objects and A Non-Math Look at Math Shapes.

Illustration: Derek Riggs

Gunaxin has a comprehensive roundup of all things Eddie, the long-standing mascot of Britain’s heavy metal kings, Iron Maiden. About the only thing missing is this illustration of the song “2 Minutes to Midnight.” Check out all aspects of Rock n’ Roll’s most recognized character, but beware… he’s a scary figure.

Link – via Digg

If you or your children are tired of supermarket coloring books and their generic designs, or if you yourself like to doodle with color, try something a little more interesting. Illustrator Carlton Hibbert has a collection of artistic patterns that you can download, print, and color. Quite a few artists and illustrators have contributed to the collection, and all patterns are licensed under Creative Commons, which means you can use them freely. Link

(YouTube Link)

Located in a Japanese mall called Canal City, this fountain is programmed immaculately to “paint” the air with falling water.

Canal City (Wiki)  via Bits and Pieces

One tree + four mirrors = an entire forest! Step into a small booth and experience an infinite number of trees. This installation by DUS Architects was shown to folks in Oosterdokskade, Amsterdam last month. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credits: Pieter Kers)

I love the motto on the poster for this year’s Jell-O Mold Competition from the Gowanus Studio Space: “Keep Calm and Wobble On.” The 2010 winners have been selected! The grand prize was awarded to sculptor Shelly Sabel for her creation Aspic Ascension–Tastes Like Heaven. See all the winners at the contest site. Link -via Nag on the Lake

The work of art is called dimply, “Eye.” The sculptor is Tony Tasset, who modeled it on his own eye. Folks in Chicago get to see this 30-foot-tall eyeball until the end of October. Watch it being built in a video at Laughing Squid. Link

At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry. I’m informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: “It’s more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov.” I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition.

Today he reversed his position. NeatoGeek has more. Link

(Image credit: Taylor Evans)

Have you been to the Neatorama Art Blog lately? Our latest addition to the gallery is Claire Hardman, an artist and sheep grazier from Australia. She works in several media, paint, clay, textiles, even computer graphics. Hardman also climbs rocks, flies remote control helicopters, and is learning Klingon! This is one of her gargoyle egg cups; see more whimsical works at the Art Blog. Link

The Bakemono Zukushi scroll was painted in Japan sometime in the 18-19th centuries by an unknown artist. There are 24 legendary Japanese monsters depicted on the scroll. Pink Tentacle has scans of them, including the Rokurokubi (a long-necked woman) and the Inugami (dog spirit) shown here. Link

(Vimeo link)

This is the 8500 year history of Istanbul projected onto the beautiful Haydarpasa Train Station.

The connection between middle east to west has been provided by Istanbul and Haydarpasa since 1906. In the 50’s it served as a door for millions of internal emigrants who have triggered the chaos in Istanbul’s dialectical daily life scenes.The project’s conceptual, political and geographical positioning, the location’s depth of field and the fact that the entire show can be watched from Kadiköy coast; make “Yekpare” a dramatic presentation.

Art Direction & Visuals:
Deniz Kader – Candas Sisman

Music & Sound Design:
Görkem Sen

Project Management:
Erdem Dilbaz

Via Notcot

The gas station turns up in photos as late as 1940. Nighthawks is dated 1942. So perhaps the gas station was demolished and replaced with a diner in 1941. The city’s taxmen photographed the corner again in 1980. In that photo, there is still no diner and no remnants of it, though the Esso station buildings were still standing there, graffitied and abandoned beneath a painted advertisement for London’s Hard Rock Cafe.

Link - Via Violins and Starships

Advertisements painted by hand directly onto the brickwork of buildings were once a common sight in cities, towns and villages across the country. The rise of printed billboards soon led to their decline but many still survive, often faded, clinging to the walls that host them. These ‘Ghostsigns’ provide a window into the past and evidence of the craftsmanship that once went into their production. However, they are disappearing fast, often due to weathering but also as a result of property development and demolition.

This U.K. archive originated by Sam Roberts features 600 signs showcasing old time products hand painted by craftsmen. They don’t make them like that any more.

Link – via Londonist

“His cut and slash mash-ups of subway platform billboards only exist in New York City, but Poster Boy’s artful and funny appropriations of advertising have gotten him attention the world over. The New York Times dubbed him an “anti-consumerist Zorro with a razor blade, a sense of humor and a talent for collage”; the Guardian UK said of his work, it “is witty, web-savvy and economical…and the only materials it requires are chutzpah, imagination and a 50 cent blade.”

A new book featuring Poster Boy’s works called Poster Boy: The War of Art will be published next month. Neatorama has a preview with a sampling of the art today at the Spotlight blog. Link

We welcomed The Nag to Neatorama, as in Marilyn Bellamy, who many of you know as the Nag on the Lake. Since we spent years finding neat links on her site, she has now taken on duties as our newest contributing author!

You Call That Art? listed some strange art projects that go way beyond painting and sculpting and even macrame, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

From mental_floss, we did The MacGyver Fact-Check, to see the 80s TV hero pull some of his most outlandish stunts and find out how plausible they are in the real world.

Bill Zeman of Tiny Art Director guest posted at NeatoBambino in At the Met with the Tiny Art Director. We had a contest, too- congratulations to commenter Maceo24, who won a custom original Zeman artwork (which you can see here) and and to Wendy, CheeseThief, TheRhube, and nepomuk who all won copies of Zeman’s book.

Have you been to the Neatorama Art Blog lately? We are adding new artists to the gallery all the time. Just this week, we posted works by mixed media artist Jason LaFerrera, printmaker Mark Hosford, and cut paper artist Lorraine Nam.

In more art news, the four-year run for The Vader Project is coming to a close. The decorated Darth Vader helmets will be auctioned off this summer, but you can see some of The 100 Helmets of THE VADER PROJECT at the Spotlight Blog.

At NeatoGeek, John posted a collection of his favorite Geek Love Songs in video form. Then many of you suggested lots more songs in the comments! Oh yeah, NeatoGeek also featured a lot of fan art this week.

Individual prize winners from the Quiz Play Day promotion were announced. Even though Boing Boing won the friendly blog competition by raising the most money for charity, the Grand Prize winning player is a Neatorama reader! Vanessa won an iPad from Neatorama and will appear on the Game Show Network to talk about her favorite charity.

You’re invited to join in the fun at our Facebook page and keep up with even more neat links with our Twitter feed!

If you were to see some of the tacky stuff that adorns the walls here at the BRI, you may not think we are qualified to comment on what anyone else considers art. Well, we say: if dogs can play poker, anything is possible.

(Image credit: Kathy Keatley Garvey/UC Davis photo)

Artist: Rebecca O’Flaherty, the Monet of Maggots

This is Art? When making her paintings, O’Flaherty kind of cheats-she lets the maggots do the work for her. An entomology doctoral student at the University of California at Davis, O’Flaherty is fascinated with the larvae of flies. She dips the maggots in nontoxic paint, then lets them writhe around on the canvas (a piece of white copier paper). Result: unique trails of color and form. O’Flaherty displays her maggot paintings at gallery exhibits and even holds maggot-art workshops for kids. She also teaches forensic officers how to collect maggots at a crime scene for evidence and uses the maggot art as an “icebreaker” to get them used to dealing with the squirmy creatures.

Artist statement: “The activity usually begins with some measure of skepticism or disdain, but the maggots are quick to win over the critics.”

Artist: Jessica May, the Rembrandt of Roadkill

This is Art? May, a 24-year-old graduate art student at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, decided that the roadkill lying on the roadside in and around her Midwestern town needed a little sprucing up. So she dressed dead raccoons in baby clothes, put nail polish on the claws of dead possums, and gave a deer carcass a coat of gold spray paint. May wears gloves when she works on her art, because when she finds the animals, they’re “pretty far gone”.

Artist statement: “I think of this as my way of paying homage to these animals.”

(Image credit: Herald Sun)

Artist: Colin Douglas Barnett, the Picasso of Publicity

This is Art? Frustrated that his art wasn’t getting the attention he thought it deserved, Burnett, 46, decided to scare up some publicity in Melbourne, Australia. In October 2005, he sculpted a vase out of clay and put it on the sidewalk in front of the National Gallery of Victoria. Labeling it “The Peace Bomb”, he called police and reported a suspicious package outside of the building. The gallery was evacuated, the surrounding roads closed, and the bomb squad was called in. Burnett received the press he was looking for, but it came in the form of news stories reporting his arrest. The artist was ordered to pay for the police investigation and sentenced to three months in jail.

Artist statement: “I’m totally embarrassed.”

Artist: Wenda Gu, the Kandinsky of Coiffure

This is Art? The Chinese artist was commissioned by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, to create two installations on their campus. First project: “The Green House,” an 80-foot banner made from 420 pounds of human hair. All that hair came from Hanover barbershops, who collected the clippings from 42,000 haircuts and shipped it to Wenda’s Shanghai studio, where his workers dyed it bright colors. Wenda then wove the strands together, creating the colorful banner that now hangs in the college library. Second project: “United Nations, United Colors,” a seven-and-a-half-mile-long braid (begun in 1993) made from leftover hair donated by wig factories in China and India.

Artist statement: “The banner is a comment on education and capitalism, an the braid represents a utopian vision of unity among nations.” (Image credit: Kawakahi Amina)

Artist: Ian Thorley, the Degas of Doormats

This is Art? In October 2006, Thorley, a British performance artist, received a £1,600 grant ($3,176) from the Wansbeck and Blyth Valley town councils for his weeklong art project “Utilitarian Utopia.” The project: Thorley wore a badge that said “Government Doormat tester” and stood on a doormat in the middle of a sidewalk for a week. The councils were widely criticized for spending taxpayer money on the art. But they defended their actions, saying that Thorley “provides viewers with a thought-provoking experience.”

Artist statement: “It’s about drawing attention to, and invoking some sense of, the absurdity of existence and the things that we do.”

____________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Proving that some things do get better with age, the 20th annivesary Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with 600 pages of fascinating trivia, forgotten history, strange lawsuits and other neat articles.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Two experts in neuroanatomy are convinced that Michelangelo’s depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel contains a secret message found in the bumps on the Almighty’s neck: a map of the human brain (meant to represent human intelligence). It seems to me that an expert in vegetables would see a bell pepper, and an expert in clouds would see a cumulonimbus, but their argument is nothing if not exhaustive.

There are plenty of other easter eggs hidden in masterpieces, so maybe it’s true.

Link via 3QuarksDaily

When most of us think of someone riding a bomb, the image of Slim Pickens in the movie Dr. Strangelove comes up. But he was far from the first character to do so, as you’ll see in this collection of photographs and art at Oobject. Link -via Jason Kottke

Korean designer SungKug Kim made this bicycle and a couple of others which incorporate the shapes of antlers and horns and named the art project Bi-King. Link | Artist’s site -via Chris Tackett

Google Books has full text available of a wonderfully beautiful collection of scans from 16th, 17th, and 18th century works displaying the amazing penmanship of those centuries. The flourishes are amazing, bringing to mind a time when writing was an art.

From Penmanship of the XVI, XVII and XVIIIth Century by Lewis. F. Day:

The book begins with some examples of the various Chancery hands, and these are followed by specimens of Old English, German, Roman, and other more or less formal types of penmanship. The rather restrained running hands come next, followed, in their turn, by writing characterized by more or less heavy blobs of ink at the end of the letters. The current hands in which flourishes are predominant, bring to an end the examples chosen simply as writing.

Link – via ministryoftype

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Martin Refsal created this whimsical artwork in honor of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary. This will make it easier to recognize a Pac-Man ghost when you see one! Link -via Holy Kaw!

Artist Erik Guzman has just installed a very cool art concept in New York City’s World Financial Plaza. The installation is a concoction of “moving gears and flashing lights” that is constantly changing based on weather data. As the weather changes, the art responds, changing in its own interpretive way, creating neat designs and patterns.

But how? This weather data is received via radio waves, which then get turned into visual representations of spring breezes, winter winds, and we’re guessing that lovely NYC summer humidity (warm garbage smell not included).

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

The gem castle was made in Italy and contains over 2000 semi precious stones including jade, agate, rose quartz, tiger’s eye, and malachite. The castle was once owned by the founder of Ethan Allen, Nat Ancell. It had been lost for years until it turned up in an old Ethan Allen warehouse in 1994.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

The Reincarnated Salvador Dali?

The Dali we all recognize was actually the third Salvador Dali in his family. His father also had the name and his parents had another son that was also named Salvador, but he died nine months before Dali was born. For this reason, Dali’s parents always believed that he was the reincarnation of his brother, a belief the artist also held throughout his life. In many of his writings, he claimed that he felt deep stress from the pressures of living as both himself and his dead brother.

Humble, But Flashy Beginnings

Dali’s family was decidedly middle class and his mother was incredibly supportive of his work…until she died when he was only 16. The next year, he moved to the student housing at an arts school in Madrid and he immediately started to stand out through his eccentric methods of dress. The young student enjoyed wearing knee breeches with sideburns and long hair, similar to something Oscar Wilde would have worn forty years earlier.

While he made friends with a number of students at the school, he was not an ideal student and was expelled shortly before he completed his courses after he refused to be tested by anyone in the faculty, saying, “I am very sorry, but I am infinitely more intelligent than these three professors, and I therefore refuse to be examined by them.”

It wasn’t long after this that his unique painting style, which seamlessly blended classic influences like Raphael with modern avant garde styles like those of Joan Miro, started to garner him quite a bit of attention in the art community. Not to be outdone by his own artwork, Dali promptly started to grow his trademark moustache, which was influenced by the seventeenth-century painter Diego Velazquez.

His Wife Was a Bit of a Groupie

When Dali met his future wife, Gala, in 1929, she was already married to a prominent French poet. She soon left this artist for Dali, who was ten years her junior, but after their 1934 marriage, she continued to have many other affairs with young artists and even a rockstar in the 70s –all with Dali’s permission of course. While Dali was said to have a terrible fear of the female genitalia (part of the reason he was so accepting of her affairs was because he preferred to watch, but not partake in the activities), he was still unquestionably in love with Gala all the way up until his death. “Without Gala,” he said, “Divine Dalí would be insane.”

When To Make An Apology…And When Not To

Dali was a prominent player in the surrealist movement, but many of the surrealists actually disliked him. This was for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest issues was the fact that surrealists did not believe that anyone should ever apologize for their art.

To some extent, Dali did agree with this sentiment and when his father demanded an apology for a painting the young artist made that bore the words “Sometimes, I spit with pleasure on my mother’s portrait.” While it seems unlikely that Dali actually even meant it about his own mother because he adored her, he still refused to tell his father he was sorry, which resulted in his being thrown out of his childhood home, written out of his father’s will and being threatened by his pop that he should never step foot in Cadaquès again.

When Dali and Gala caused a serious scandal in America, shortly after his work was introduced into the country, though, he quickly changed his tune. The incident in question involved the couple showing up to a masquerade party in New York dressed as the Lindbergh baby and his kidnapper. After facing great outrage on the part of the American press, he apologized, but he only ended up facing more outrage from the surrealist group he was a member of when he returned home. Of course, they were furious about the apology, not the act.

Political Abstinence

Around this same time, the majority of surrealists began to lean to leftist politics, but Dali further incensed them by always maintaining an ambiguous position on the matters. Dali disagreed with the idea that surrealism should involve politics and at the same time that he refused to support fascism, he also refused to denounce it. Eventually he was subject to a mock trial in his surrealist group and was expelled largely for his absence of political beliefs.

His politics didn’t just bother the surrealists. Dali moved to France at the outbreak of war and only moved back after World War II ended. George Orwell denounced him for this, stating, “When the European War approaches he has one preoccupation only: how to find a place which has good cookery and from which he can make a quick bolt if danger comes too near.”

All About The Benjamins

Another major problem the surrealists had with Dali was his apparent willingness to sell his soul for money. As some started referring to him in the past tense, although he was dead, others preferred the nickname “Avida Dollars,” which is more than just an anagram for his name, it also sounds the same as avide à dollar, which can be translated as “eager for dollars.”

More Surreal Than The Surreal

Dali is famous for quipping, “the only difference between me and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist,” but perhaps even that was a bit of an understatement, as he developed many of his best known works by connecting with his subconscious not through drugs, but through sleep manipulation. He claims he would sit in a chair with a metal spoon in his hand, directly above a metal pan. When he started to fall into deep sleep, he would drop the spoon, the clang of the spoon hitting the pan would wake him up. Perhaps this method is what he used to create his most enduring surrealist works, the lobster telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa.

Deeper Meanings of Dali

The surreal nature of his works should never be taken as a sign that Dali’s work was without meaning though. In fact, Dali was a huge fan of Freud and believed in a much deeper meaning of dreams, which is widely demonstrated in his artwork. Here are a few interesting symbolisms to look for next time you enjoy some of his artworks:

• Melting clocks. These are probably the most famous of all Dali’s symbolisms and they represent the changing nature of time and eternity. Interestingly, he got the idea for these classic representations when he was looking at a melting piece of Camembert cheese on a hot summer day.
• Absurdly tall elephants. Other classic images of Dali’s are the long-legged and multi-jointed elephants carrying huge obelisks on their back. These are used largely to represent men struggling to reach new heights while burdened with the weight of reality.
• Drawers. Many of his human subjects are made up of a number of drawers, which are representative of the secrets of the soul and the hidden sins of the individual.
• Eggs. If you’ve ever seen the Dali Theater-Museum in Spain, you probably noticed the massive eggs adorning the building’s roof. While it is easy to realize that these represent maternity, femininity and the prenatal, they also, in turn, are used to indicate hope and love.

• Ants. Ants are seen in a number of his works, even those where you don’t immediately notice them. These insects are used to show death and decay.
• Grasshoppers and locusts. These two critters are used for both fear and waste. (An interesting side note: Dali was terrified of grasshoppers as a child and the other kids would throw them at him to scare him.)
• Crutches. While the obvious symbolism behind crutches is to show handicaps and man’s weakness, he also used them regularly to show man’s ability to overcome these problems in a feat of ingenuity.

Image via Kaneda99 [Flickr]

His Portfolio is Massive

Throughout his life, Dali painted over 1,500 works. This number is on top of the many illustrations, lithographs, theater sets, costumes, drawings, photographs, sculptures, films, holographs, and other works he helped to create. He loved to experiment with new mediums and even stepped into the world of high fashion, designing a few outfits for Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior. He also created the rainbow-colored Chupa Chups logo.

Even more amazing is the fact that his portfolio only recently expanded to include his completed Disney animation, Destino. While he started it with Walt in 1946, the pair soon found themselves out of money for the project. It was instead completed in 2003 by Roy Disney and Baker Bloodworth.

That wasn’t his only film contribution though. He also worked on the famous surreal art piece Un Chien Andalou, worked on a dream sequence for Hitchcock’s Spellbound, and narrated about a search for magic mushrooms in Impressions of Upper Mongolia.

Image via pecaenrique [Flickr]

Dedicating A Museum to Himself

As a matter of fact, Dali was one of only a few artists to actually play an active role in the museum dedicated to his works. His Theater and Museum in Figueres goes beyond showcasing his paintings, it is in its own way, another work of his. It’s hardly surprising that a self-obsessed creator like Dali would make a museum for himself, after all, he was famous for once saying, “every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.”

He started working on the building in 1960 and he continued adding to it all the way through the mid-80’s.These days, it houses the largest collection of his works, followed by the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The most interesting place for his work to be displayed though was the Rikers Island jail in New York. Dali donated a crucifixion drawing to the warden and it was hung in the dining room for years before officials decided to move it into the lobby so it could be kept safe. Humorously, after spending 16 years in a jail dining room, the painting wasn’t lost or damaged until it was moved to the lobby, where it was stolen in 2003. It is still missing to this day.

The Death of an Immortal

When Dali went on 60 Minutes in the 70’s, he told Mike Wallace that, “Dalí is immortal and will not die.” Unfortunately, like all self-proclaimed immortals, he was wrong. In 1980, his health started to fade and when Gala started dosing him with unprescribed medicine, it only made things worse as her drug cocktail damaged his nervous system.

In 1982, Gala passed away and this made Dali’s health fade away even faster as he lost his will to live. He started dehydrating himself and a few years later a fire broke out in his bedroom. Both acts may have been accidents or he may have been trying to commit suicide, no one knows for sure. After the fire though, he started living in his museum until the end of his life.

In 1989, Dali died of a heart failure, shortly after King Juan Carlos visited him on his deathbed and confessed his lifelong adoration of Dali’s works. Dali quickly sketched a drawing for the king and it turned out to be the last artwork ever done by the artist.

I love Dali, so I was really excited to write this article, but I must admit, he was a bit of a freak. There is so much information about him, particularly his crazy stunts, that I couldn’t even begin to describe them all here. So, instead I leave them to you. What are your favorite Dali tales?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, Artcyclopedia, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC News, Salvador Dali Museum, and Neatorama

An incident in Detroit raises several questions about street art. Renowned British graffiti artist Banksy visited a crumbling factory in the city and painted a wall.

Discovered last weekend, the stenciled work shows a forlorn boy holding a can of red paint next to the words “I remember when all this was trees.” But by Tuesday, artists from the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios, a feisty grassroots group, had excavated the 7-by-8-foot, 1,500-pound cinder block wall with a masonry saw and forklift and moved the piece to their grounds near the foot of the Ambassador Bridge in southwest Detroit.

The move — a guerilla act on top of Banksy’s initial guerilla act — has sparked an intense debate about the nature of graffiti art, including complicated questions of meaning, legality, value and ownership. Some say the work should be protected and preserved at all costs. Others say that no one had a right to move it — and that the power and meaning of graffiti art is so intrinsic to its location that to relocate it is to kill it.

The gallery defends its action by pointing out that the artwork would have been destroyed soon along with the building. Others respond that Banksy may have intended for that to happen. And then there’s the fact that the context gave the painting it meaning in the first place. One could say that while Banksy broke laws against trespassing and vandalism, the gallery is guilty of theft. The property owner hasn’t said anything about it yet. No one yet knows who, if anyone, stands to profit from the incident. Link -via Metafilter

(Image source: Banksy)

Adam Gontier, lead singer of the band Three Days Grace, commissioned artist Chris Conte to make him a microphone stand. What he got is something straight out of The Terminator! Link -via The Daily What

(image credit: Dennis Blachut)

Artist Kelly Coats created a phenakistiscope that follows the life of Michael Jackson. Spin the wheel and see him change. It looks like this:

Link -via Dangerous Minds

James Hance is a Jacksonville-based artist who paints fabulous Star Wars-themed paintings. Check him out!

I’m inspired by television and movies from my childhood. It’s funny how you watch some of those things today and wonder why you were so obsessed with them at the time. I remember the Fonz being SO much cooler than he actually was. My paintings are basically just placards screaming ‘Childhood! It was amazing! I want it forever, please!’ I paint mainly in my pajamas, watching the Muppet Show and eating cereal. I’d like to think it shows.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geeksaresexy.

The four different patterns and markings are repeated and believed to convey ownership or purpose and to differentiate the eggs from each other.

The researchers led by Pierre-Jean Texier, of the University of Bordeaux, said that before this discovery, the first signs of art, writing or ‘culture’ was thought to have been first shown in the late Stone Age between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago.

It included cave paintings dating back to 30,000 years BC, thought to be some of the earliest examples of decorative art or written communication.

But this latest discovery, which is much older, showed “collective identities and individual expressions” that were the beginning of modern civilised behaviour, they said.

In other words, writing. Or at least a form or communication that led to writing. The researchers examined 270 fragments of ostrich eggs found in South Africa. Link -via Scribal Terror

I define art — and specifically good art — as the effective outward expression of an inward conception of an ideal condition. If a person thinks of a story, and can express that story fully in text, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of a sound and can fully express that sound in music, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of a movement and can fully express that movement in dance, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of an image and can fully express that image in paint, that person is an artist and has produced art.

If a person can envision a video and gather a team together that can accurately express that inner vision, that person is an artist and has produced art.

What do you think? Link

The piece is entitled “Nossa Senhora” (“Our Lady”).  It is a stylistic representation of the Virgin Mary – most evident from the small cross incised near the base of the figure.  Even if your family is not religious, one would have to think that a piece of art like this would be a wonderful conversation starter at parties.

Link, via Oregon Expat.

Timothy Miller does wonderful stained glass windows in designs you’d never expect, including super hero logos and Transformers. Here you see his version of Bumblebee. See more in his gallery at Deviant Art. Link -via The Zeray Gazette

Watch as Oliver the otter creates a masterpiece to be auctioned off for the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa. -via Unique Daily

Josh Millard turned a little idea into a flier which turned into a meme. Deservedly so, don’t you think? Other people are now putting them up in far-flung places. Link -via Metafilter

Update: Josh has started a blog to document these useless fliers.

“To the best of our knowledge it is the largest re-creation of a Van Gogh work of art in any medium,” he said. The re-creation – made with blue, purple, red, green, yellow and brown cereals – was displayed in a gym at Sky View.

As he looked at the completed project Saturday, Geddes said, “I think it’s better than we even expected or dreamed that it could be.” He thinks Van Gogh would be happy with the re-creation, too.

The work was displayed to the public for four hours on Saturday, then the cereal was collected and given to a farmer to feed his pigs. The Herald Journal details the process of making the recreation. Link to story. Link to time-lapse video.

(image credit: Alan Murray/Herald Journal)

Jason Ruff, who goes by the name Doctor Mobius built this huge spider from LEGO bricks! The creation he calls “Big Hairy Spider” was built for the Battlebugs Creepy Crawlers challenge.

Link – via atcrux

See more LEGO creepy-crawlies in the Flickr group Lego Battle Bugs.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Mebbin.

John Jacobsmeyer has been one of those artists that just slips through the radar cracks (if I may use a mixed metaphor) and his recent wood-themed series is worth a look for its brilliant treatment of industrial wood. Notice how JJ puts this timber into different roles, sometimes the backdrop, sometimes the focus, always the theme.

His photo series, A Piney New World is a nice jump from this:

…which was his previous best, IMHO. And still, behold that wood paneling. (The top painting is called Painter’s Lounge. The bottom one is Bele and Lochi Tie the Knot.) Get it? Knot?

Laz Marquez

There’s a certain familiarity to modernizing and re-envisioning posters for Alfred Hitchcock’s wonderful films, and Laz Marquez has these sizzling contributions. After he did The Birds, he took suggestions from his followers on what else to do.

I sincerely hope you all enjoyed seeing this project come to life as much as I loved creating them. It’s great to see the set together and working as a whole. Thanks again for all the support & keep your eyes peeled for the next set (Starting very, very soon)!

I hear the next set will be Stephen King themed. Link

The unnamed artist, a friend of a reddit member, buys thrift shop art and adds silly details. I have just the place in my home for a painting like this! You’ll find links to other paintings in the comments at reddit. Link

Artist Shauna Richardson produces trophy animals by crochet! She has been commissioned to produce three giant crocheted lions to be displayed at the 2012 Olympic games in London. Link to interview. Link to artist’s site. -via Everlasting Blort

Some of the prisoners liberated from Auschwitz in 1945 recreated the scenes of their lives there in art. An online exhibit places those artworks side-by-side with photographs of Auchwitz taken many years later.

In 1979, The Auschwitz Museum Archive reproduced selected pieces of art and sent them to writer/photographer Alan Jacobs.
After years of related work and many more trips, Jacobs, and his son Jesse, returned to the camps in 1996 to find and photograph the identical scenes depicted in the art. Krysia Jacobs then devised a way to present them as you see here. They are the result of work over a 24 year period.

An explanatory text, which may be disturbing, accompanies each image. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Mieczyslaw Koscielniak/Auschwitz Museum Archive)

Link: Swiss Miss via Fast Company

Designer Steven Heller gives an overview and critique of Olympic pictograms used over the past 74 years for the New York Times. When you only see these every few years, you don’t realize how different they are for each Olympiad. -via the Presurfer

(YouTube Link)

Anyone know who does the music?

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/26/excel-as-illustrator/feed/ 14 http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/16/emergence-night-wind/ http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/16/emergence-night-wind/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:07:24 +0000 Johnny Cat http://www.neatorama.com/?p=29531

Sayaka Kajita Ganz makes sculptures from recycled materials, and here she’s made a dramatic pair of horses from black and white plastic objects.  The installation is called Emergence; you can guess which horse is Night and which is Wind.

My working process is reminiscent of my experiences growing up in several different countries, of being disconnected from the place I was born. Then, I began searching for a new community where I truly belong. I find discarded objects from peoples’ houses and give them a second life, a new home. For my sculptures I use plastic utensils, toys and metal pieces among other things. I only select objects that have been used and discarded. The human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes.  My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist.

Much more fantasticness at her site.

-via Design You Trust | Photo credit:Sayaka Kajita Ganz

Kevin Van Aelst create artworks inspired by biology from a wide variety of mediums. I particularly like this set of chromosomes made from Gummi worms. Link -via The Sciencepunk Blog

James Stowe has a neat collection of Star Wars cards for Valentine’s Day, which is this Sunday.  There are six cards, one for each episode.

Link (Previously on Neatorama: A Very Wrong Star Wars Valentine)