The Duck Pirate

 

Costa Magarakis, a Tel Aviv-based artist also known as The Duck Pirate, specializes in sculpture that uses shoes as the base objects for some of his work. Footwear in his hands can become an animals body, a sailing vessel, or an imagined creature. As a child he spent time looking through his grandfather’s antique encyclopedia and old books.  His results often feel stolen from drawings in children’s books from days gone by, often imitating  Jules Verne or in modern day, Tim Burton.

Costa produces each sculpture thru a long  process in which each shoe must be made suitable for reforming. Once he softens the old shoe, he adds fiberglass resin and a wide variety of materials that might include, glass, wood, metals and paint. Finished sculptures can sell for up to $1200.00.

 

Alexander Jansson Fairytales

Alexander Jansson was born in Uppsala, Sweden. His first drawing was a ghost when he was only two years old. By the time he discovered Star Wars, his world view changed forever. Because of a loss at a young age, abandonment has always been a part of his work.

Alexander runs his own design studio, called Sleeping House. While he specializes in cover art and illustration, he also created his own style called “Greenpunk”. His mixed media technique is a collage of elements from his photos, models, drawings, and paintings that he blends into the same picture. In order to give these digital pictures a natural touch, he spends much of his time adding scratches, dust and brush strokes.

Mr. Jansson influences include a dark and mysterious touch like that of Tim Burton. The artist creates a mystical world full of miniature houses and characters that are into music.

This artist has done work for Disney, Radio Sweden, and the NYC Ballet among others. Alexander Jansson is well worth following, if only for the inspiration from his work .

 

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/15423744″>Ramone Bosco teaser trailer</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user3086663″>Alexander Jansson</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Crayola Crayons

Crayola brand crayons were the first kids crayons ever made, invented by cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. They had already invented a new wax crayon used to mark crates, but it contained carbon and was too toxic for children. This started research into nontoxic drawing tools for kids. They were confident that the safe pigment and wax mixing techniques they had developed could be used for a variety of colors.

The brand’s first box of eight Crayola crayons made its debut in 1903. The crayons were sold for a nickel and the colors were black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, and green.

Some of these photographs were taken by Bryan Derballa, and show the inside of the Crayola factory which produces around 12 million crayons every day.

Today, there over one hundred different types of crayons being made by Crayola including crayons that: sparkle with glitter, glow in the dark, smell like flowers, change colors, and wash off walls and other surfaces and materials.

The modern crayon, originating in Europe, was a man-made cylinder that resembled contemporary sticks.  The word Crayola was created by taking the French words for chalk and oily and combined them. Later, powdered pigments of different colors replaced the charcoal. Later substituting wax for the oil made the sticks sturdier and easier to handle.

Maria Rubinke Extreme Porcelain

Usually when someone works in porcelain, they are trying to follow traditional methods. Artist Maria Rubinke adds a twisted turn to her work pushing what is acceptable in the world of art.

Currently based out of Copenhagen, Denmark, Maria Rubinke blends innocence with grotesque in her work, creating porcelain sculptures with shocking streams of red glaze originating from rips and tears in their bodies. She uses a mixture of cute and surreal to pull people between these extreme opposites.

Most vintage or Victorian porcelain dolls are delicate and beautiful. She doesn’t do that. The children have innocent faces, but are completely twisted. The portrayals in Maria’s sculptures bring to mind the work of Edward Gorey, the American artist and writer known for illustrated books depicting unsettling scenes in Edwardian settings.

She doesn’t yet have her own website, (although it is in progress),  but you can check out more of her work on her Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/rubinke?fref=ts

Burning Man Festival

Originally held in 1986 at San Francisco’s Baker Beach, the week-long Burning Man Festival now takes place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The festival is a week-long event that starts on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September. Up to 68,000 people from around the world gather at the festival and spend a week in the remote desert isolated from the outside world.

The festival gets its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy, which is set ablaze on Saturday evening. The event is considered an experiment in self-expression, art, and self-reliance. It’s become a gathering for hippies, artists, musicians and dancers who can for a week explore artistic expression. Money is never exchanged at the event, instead the participants gift each other to get what they need. The main attractions of Burning Man include massive art installations, all-night dance parties, marathon kite-flying sessions, unconventional fashion shows, and classes where festival goers can learn things like Hula Hooping.

They head off one week later, having left no mark whatsoever and wait for the next Burning Man.

http://www.burningman.com/

 

 

Ventriloquist Dummy

Ventriloquism was originally a religious practice that got its start in ancient times, somewhere around the sixth century. The name “ventriloquist” means “belly speaker” in Latin. It supposedly was used to communicate with the dead. The noises made by the stomach were thought to be the voices of the dead, who took up residence in the stomach of the ventriloquist. For a long time, it was viewed negatively by the Christian church.

 

The change from being a sign of spiritual forces to being considered entertainment happened in the eighteenth century at travelling fairs. It came of age as entertainment with the help of vaudeville in the United States.

Ventriloquism is the illusion of creating life, but the fear of ventriloquist’s dummies is called automatonophobia.

http://www.matthewrolston.com/

http://venthavenmuseum.com/

Parisian Cabinet of Curiosities

If the items were really as its name, Tombées du Camion, (items fallen from the back of a truck) suggests, this little shop in Montmartre would never have lasted as long as it has. Tucked away in a forgotten passageway, between chic fashion and the questionable Pigalle area, is found one of the most interesting assortments of salvaged and found items in Paris.

A temporary resting place for unwanted and unclaimed curiosities, Tombées du Camion is like a museum of the odd, all squeezed into under 200 square feet. Everything in excess, from doll parts to police whistles and pill containers on display in wooden crates will hold you in it’s spell. There are French porno banners from the 1970s, rusted mortuary plaques (probably pried from old burial sites), and unused flasks of an opium cure for diarrhea. Most of these items are made in France, and every object has a story.

Much of the stock has been salvaged from attics and corners of old factories in random locations around France, often left after their usefulness seemed to have passed.

http://binged.it/1mzLCbx

Trina Merry – BodyPainting

Trina Merry has the ability to turn human beings into living canvases with her finely detailed paint works. If you ever get to San Francisco, stop and examine the street art and graffiti murals. There is a chance there might be an almost naked person hiding there.

Merry got started when she was asked to get on stage at a concert and get body painted in her underwear. She then apprenticed under the well known body painter Craig Tracy in New Orleans.  She uses non-toxic hypoallergenic paint applied with a brush or airbrush. The painting is temporary, and begins to change texture as soon as she stops painting. For this reason photography is necessary to document the work.

Merry chose the structure of a temple in order to bring awareness to the social business venture “Beyond the Four Walls” in order to empower women in Nepal.

Son Doong Cave, Vietnam

Son Doong Cave the world’s largest, is located in Vietnam. It was originally found by a local man who discovered the entrance in 1991. He was afraid of the 300 foot drop and the roar that came from below. For 18 more years, it stayed unexplored until it was re-discovered in 2009 by British cave explorers. The name Son Doong means “mountain river”. The cave was created 2-5 million years ago by a river whose source is still unknown. The cave is so big it contains a jungle and you could fit a 40 story building inside.

Where the limestone was weak, the ceiling collapsed creating huge skylights. Thousands of “cave pearls” sit untouched in Son Doong. These were formed over hundreds of years when dripping water created layers of calcite that build up around grains of sand.

Vietnam has a very difficult terrain, and the cave is far out of the way. It’s totally covered in jungle, and you can’t locate anything on Google Earth.  A team from the British Cave Research Association, who first explored Son Doong, will be returning to find out more of the cave’s mysteries.

A tour company called Oxalis, is running trial tours of the cave and accepting sign-ups for real six-day tours to take place next year. Ropes and harness are needed to get inside Son Doong, and any visitors will need to rappel 260 feet to reach the cave floor. Tourists will explore the cavern by day and sleep on the cave’s sandy beaches at night.

 

Ed Fairburn – Human Geography

Artist  Ed Fairburn has some very odd habits. Once as a bored 15-year-old, during a long school break, he glued a stamp on a slice of toast and mailed it as a postcard. Since then, he has used the postal system as an alternative gallery space, although his talents have outgrown the mailbox. His most current work has him bringing new life to a series of maps. Fairburn seems to prefer the kind of art that’s easy to fold away, possibly because it makes them easier to put into a mailbox.

Ed Fairburn is a Welsh artist, who has the ability to combine the geography of facial features with the geography of the earth. Combining the two has a completely natural feel. built and natural echo the human form. Like a sculptor, Fairburn uses patterns to cut away unnecessary details showing form in a new way.

Today we’re living in a new age of map making, with interactive, electronic mapping technology that gives us real time detail. But it is nice to be reminded that, despite the benefits of this Google-era reality, maps can speak to more than how to get from one place to another.