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This really should have been posted last night, while the running theme was coffee, but better late than never. Artist Gwyneth Leech paints paper coffee cups. Over 700 of the finished cups are on display in an exhibit titled “Hypergraphia: Gwyneth Leech, the Cup Drawings, Studio in the Prow” at the Sprint Flatiron Prow Artspace in New York City. Leech herself is on exhibit, too, as she sits in the window with her cups and paints more cups five days a week from 10AM to 2PM through February 18th. Link -via Laughing Squid
Not just “a” raven, but “the” raven that inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write the poem The Raven, is on display now at the Free Library of Philadelphia as part of their Dickens collection. The bird, named Grip, was author Charles Dickens’ pet, and was enshrined in more than one classic work of literature.
The raven appeared as a minor character in Dickens’ book Barnaby Rudge, which Poe reviewed and criticised for the bird’s small role.
Four years later, in 1845, he penned his immortal and haunting poem The Raven.
It told of a talking raven visiting a distraught man whose lover had just died, arriving ‘as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door’. The paragraphs then trace the man’s slow descent into madness.
The carefully preserved and stuffed raven is one of the more unusual items in the Philadelphia library’s valuable Dickens collection.
Link -via The Daily What
The Free Library of Philadelphia is celebrating Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday all year long. Link
Fifty years after slavery was abolished, the Bronx Zoo had an exhibit in which they displayed a man in a cage. His name was Ota Benga, a member of a pygmy Mbuti tribe from the Belgian Congo.
Ota Benga’s life was tragic from early on. He was a member of the Mbuti people who lived in the area then known as the Belgian Congo. Forces under the control of King Leopold of Belgium killed Benga’s wife and two children during a massacre – part of the drive to control rubber trees in the region. Benga escaped death because he was on a hunting trip when the slaughter occurred.
Benga was later captured by slavers, then sold to missionary Samuel Verner for a bolt of cloth and a pound of salt. Verner had been contracted by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (otherwise known as Saint Louis World’s Fair) to find some pygmies for the fair. Four other Batwa or pygmy people and five non-pygmies eventually agreed to come on the trip.
After the World’s Fair, Benga was displayed at the Museum of Natural History in New York and the Bronx Zoo. Read his story at Environmental Graffiti. Link
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The South Park Art 15th Anniversary Art Exhibition will open March 28th at the Opera Gallery in New York City and run through April 10th. Scott Beale of Laughing Squid got a sneak preview and quite a few interesting photographs. The work shown here is “Cartman Kaiju Death by Trustocorp.” Link
(Image credit: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)
It is fitting location for artist Jennifer Angus to show her work. Nestled within the Ballentine House, Angus has taken two rooms, the former rooms of the two Ballentine children, and covered them in insects. From a distance it looks like wallpaper, but upon closer inspection, the walls have been covered in thousands of precisely pinned bugs. Giant pink grasshoppers, perfect replicas of leaves and iridescent jewel beetles all swarm the walls in orderly geometric patterns.
Curious Expeditions visited the exhibit, and interviewed the taxidermy-inspired artist. Link
London artists now have a solution to the dilemma of renting expensive studio space to work in. Furniture designer Auro Foxcraft purchased four old Underground subway cars for 200 pounds each and mounted them to a rooftop, creating some unique, affordable office space.
Located atop a warehouse in Shoreditch, London, Village Underground as it’s called, only costs artists 15 pounds a week. And while the roof is a work area for artists the warehouse below is used to exhibit their work.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by whitespace.
