Kate Rohde creates colorful sculptures and installations that hover somewhere between taxidermy and rainbow colored kitsch.
I’m not always one for bright colors, but I love the way she coordinates her color schemes in these pieces.
Category: installations
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Brooklyn’s MF Gallery is currently featuring a Halloween group show with some nifty, spooky pieces.
I wish I could have attended the opening (especially to support my friend Kathy Hayes…the awesome setup above is her handiwork).
See the show online here.
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Curtis Killorn creates a very special kind of artistic landscape. The home page begins with a quote that dates back to 1914: “Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to the body and soul.”
“The intent of this enterprise is to create beauty where there is already beauty, highlighting the strengths of a tree already dead or a stone seemingly unimportant is in essence how we are to regard each other. In our busy lives we sometimes forget to notice the splendor of the world around us.”
I truly love the idea of punctuating a landscape with brightness like this. How many people who would never stop to notice a tree might think twice after passing one of these?
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These porcelain skull sculptures by Katsuo Aoki are beautiful…intricately detailed and liquid-like…
The installations are also quite interesting and well crafted.
See more here.
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I’ve been meaning to post about The Elvis Mobile for ages now.
This amazing vehicle is the brainchild and handiwork of two of the coolest people I’ve ever met: Jo David and Marlow Harris, of Unusual Life.
It started as a simple whim (Marlow presented a sketch as a joke…Jo made it happen), and there’s nothing I love more than when whims become reality.
See guys? If you can dream it up…you can do it! It just take a little elbow grease, and the occasional VW van.
This mini museum on wheels is a functional shrine, chapel, and brilliantly executed kitsch masterpiece (available for events upon request!).
Read an article about the museum’s creation here.
You can follow the adventures of the Traveling Elvis Mobile here and see a large photo gallery on facebook.
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Assemblage artist Jocelyn Marsh has some fine found object sculptures made of bones and bits of gaudy delight.
See more here.
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Steve Lambert is quite an interesting artist with a variety of thought provoking projects.
Amazing sign:
We are friends of irony and contradiction here on this blog…
From the artist statement:
For me, art is a bridge that connects uncommon, idealistic, or even radical ideas with everyday life. I carefully craft various conditions where I can discuss these ideas with people and have a mutually meaningful exchange. Often this means working collaboratively with the audience, bringing them into the process or even having them physically complete the work.
I want my art to be relevant to those outside the gallery – say, at the nearest bus stop – to reach them in ways that are engaging and fun. I intend what I do to be funny, but at the core of each piece there is also a solemn critique. It’s important to be able to laugh while actively questioning the various power structures at work in our daily lives.
I may consider using this as a gift packaging technique, to convey the simple sincerity of giving a present.
The ultimate challenge for an introvert like me:
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I love this Playhouse installation by Dietrich Wegner. Somewhere between atomic aftermath and heaven…
When an image stands in limbo, between associations, it occupies a flexible place in our mind. Wegner creates images that are safe and unsettling, abject and beautiful…Often Wegner chooses materials that contradict an aspect of an image while striving towards a realistic depiction of the image.
A mushroom cloud is fluffy like synthetic cotton, yet a Poly-fil mushroom cloud becomes fun and cozy…The ephemeral beauty of a mushroom cloud is frightening, how it floats for a minute, delicate and blooming, yet remains chaotic and utterly destructive. We experience a contradiction between what our eyes enjoy and what our mind knows.
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Thought you’d never see anything about Barbara Streisand on this blog, eh? Me too. I’m just full of surprises.
Usually I’m unimpressed by celebrity displays of ostentation, but at least this one is unique. Instead of storing her things in the basement, Streisand has turned the area into a street of shops.
If you are among the infinitesimal minority of the population unconstrained by time, space and finances, I think this is a creative way to categorize important collections.
I couldn’t look at these images without wondering how I would set up my own “street basement”…
My personal street would be lined with an antique shop, oddities museum, art gallery, fabric store, Halloween/spooky shop, craft center, (large) library and candy store. Throw an old fashioned movie theater in there, too.
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SheWalksSoftly 