The Finnish artist Jonna Phojalainen carves the oversized pencils from local aspen trunks, resulting in cool street art that’s also an environmental statement.
Show Room by Los Carpinteros
Murals Mistaken as Reality
Several of artist John Pugh’s murals have proven to be a little too realistic:
First Mural: In 1980 Pugh received a commission from his alma mater, California State University, Chico, to paint a mural on the side of Taylor Hall. Shortly after its completion, a woman who worked across the street called the administration to ask when the wall would be repaired.
Second Mural: With his mural Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life at San Jose’s Cafe Espresso, Pugh created a convincing extension of the restaurant’s interior. Everything within the brick proscenium — the alcove, sculpture, painting, stairway, cat, and woman — was painted by hand.
After the mural was completed in February 1997, a male patron tried to introduce himself to the woman and complained to a manager that she was giving him the “silent treatment.”
LMBO
Daniele Buetti - The Venetian Mirror (2005)
spanish artist Lorenzo Duran uses leaves as the canvas for his cutaway art. after washing and drying the leaf, he carefully cuts away segments in a technique akin to those of traditional spanish picado, chinese jianzhi, german scherenschnitte, or swiss papercutting.
(Source: bansheechild)
The Emily Dickinson mural in Amherst is just one of the delights in this collection of bookish murals.
Wj313 (China) - 【王国大逆袭】ST
[more Wj313 | artist found at artcollage & leivos]
Nina Katchadourian - Mended Spiderwebs (1998)
Artist’s statement:
“In the forest and around the house where I was living, I searched for broken spiderwebs which I repaired using red sewing thread. All of the patches were made by inserting segments one at a time directly into the web. I fixed the holes in the web until it was fully repaired, or until it could no longer bear the weight of the thread.
In the process, I often caused further damage when the tweezers got tangled in the web or when my hands brushed up against it by accident.
The morning after the first patch job, I discovered a pile of red threads lying on the ground below the web. At first I assumed the wind had blown them out; on closer inspection it became clear that the spider had repaired the web to perfect condition using its own methods, throwing the threads out in the process.
My repairs were always rejected by the spider and discarded, usually during the course of the night, even in webs which looked abandoned.”
Coffins on the border wall to commemorate those who lost their lives in the desert trying to cross the border.
According to the New York Times:
While…illegal immigration numbers are down overall, migrants are dying in the desert at the same rate that they have been for years (roughly between 150 and 250 deaths a year), according to statistics compiled by the Arizona Recovered Human Remains Project and the human rights group No More Deaths. In the past 10 years alone, some 2,000 migrants — men, women, children and the elderly — have died this way.
Why does this number remain so disturbingly high? Because of the “funnel effect” created by the militarization of the United States-Mexico border: hundreds of miles of physical barriers, high-tech infrastructure, highway checkpoints and other security enhancements have combined to reroute migrants away from highly trafficked and relatively safe urban crossing zones and into remote and perilous stretches of scorching, waterless desert. Fewer migrants may be crossing, but those that do face more treacherous journeys.
Adam Scales, Pierre Barthelomeau & Paul van den Berg - Reframe (2012)
Amazing landscapes meticulously carved out of books.
Blake Fall-Conroy, “Minimum Wage Machine,” 2008-2010
This machine allows anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they like. Turning the crank on the side releases one penny every 4.97 seconds, for a total of $7.25 per hour. This corresponds to minimum wage for a person in New York.
This piece is brilliant on multiple levels, particularly as social commentary. Without a doubt, most people who started operating the machine for fun would quickly grow disheartened and stop when realizing just how little they’re earning by turning this mindless crank. A person would then conceivably realize that this is what nearly two million people in the United States do every day…at much harder jobs than turning a crank. This turns the piece into a simple, yet effective argument for raising the minimum wage.
ah yes totally mentioning this in my paper
DreamWork’s Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) Pencil Test
We’re galloping on out of here like this guy. Have a good night everybody! - Nell
Yolanda M. Lopez: The Virgen de Guadalupe Series
Yolanda Lopez is a scholar, activist and artist whose work reflects great pride in her Mexican heritage. Lopez is best known for her Guadalupe Series—a series of pastel-on-paper pieces in which Lopez merges the important Mexican/Indigenous symbolism of the Virgen de Guadalupe with everyday depictions of Mexican women; (pictured above)
On her ground-breaking and sometimes controversial Virgen de Guadalupe Series Yolanda Lopez says:
I originally did the Virgin de Guadalupe series when I was looking at media. I wanted to look at the images that we have of the Virgin–she was essentially the most ubiquitous female Latina. What was its meaning? So, I did the first one of myself running.
Then I did the image of my mother [as the Virgen] who was working at the Navel Training Center at a sewing machine, so I wanted to show her as a working woman. This is one of the problems with the Virgen de Guadalupe being so ubiquitous, there is no real imagery of Latinas at the work that we do.
The other one was that of my grandmother. The Virgen de Guadalupe is always this beautiful, young thing. Yet there is no depiction of her as an older woman. I was conscious about this and so that‘s why I did my grandmother as an older woman. I see the Virgen de Guadalupe as being the great Aztec goddess and I think that’s one of the reasons why she has such a strong, indefinable hold on Mexicans and women in general. Its more primordial. I think the great Aztec goddess, Cuatlique, depicts the primal forces in nature: life, death and rebirth. (via latinopia)
More on Yolanda M. Lopez:
- Yolanda Lopez (UC Santa Barbara Library)
- Women’s Work Is Never Done (Persimmon Tree}
- Yolanda Lopez (2009, Karen Mary Davalos)
Images courtesy of The Marian Library International Marian Research Institute and can be viewed in full here.
