Entries Tagged 'Art' ↓

I don’t believe in reincarnation. But if there was such a thing, could you think of a more deserved next life for coke-shoveling crime boss Tony “Scarface” Montana, above, than to spend  his days as a sales call-answering schlub?

Neither can UK artist GsG Scar. That’s why, in “Callface,” his hand-signed and -numbered, limited-edition-of-50 print, Tony doesn’t invite you to SIE ALLO TUH MAH LEEDOH FRAH!! No, as played by the diminutive Al Pacino, he is your little friend, pulling up your order of 8-950s, rotor pumps, or whatever it is people who wear headsets at desks do all day.

Eight-color screenprint on acid-free 300 gm paper, 19 3/4 inches by 27 1/2 inches,  $156.50, incl. s/h from the Kingdom.

[via posterwhore.com]

For years, conceptual designer Syd Mead has been the man to whom companies go when they need to advance an audacious vision of the impending future.

Sydney Jay Mead was born in 1933, in Saint Paul, MN, to a Baptist minister and his wife. After graduating from the Art Center in Los Angeles in 1959, he worked at Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Center in Dearborn, MI for two years. He then spent part of the next decade rendering now legendary concept illustration for U.S. Steel, above. “He painted,” one Mead fan site notes, “using a slick, detailed method that made the future seem fresh, clean, and thrilling.” He started Syd Mead, Inc. in 1970.

Soon, Hollywood came calling with movies that required his ultra-hard, visually authentic and tactile designs. (Mead lists his favorite metal as “chrome,” and his favorite color is, gulp, “Cherenkov radiation blue.”) His indelible technological notions were then emblazoned on sci-fi like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Aliens, and Tron. (Indeed, some would argue that his US Steel snow walker, above right, obviously influenced another one in a galaxy far, far away, below right.)

But it was Blade Runner, right, Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, on which Mead’s dystopic gigalopolis, both below right, most sears every frame. “In essence,” says author Paul Sammon (Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner), “what you’re seeing in many shots are almost three-dimensional representations of Syd Mead’s art.”

Sammon, Mead, director Steven Lisberger (Tron) and other industry vets testify in director Joaquin Montalvan’s 2005 documentary, Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead. The film tells Mead’s story from his own perspective, as well as from that of the people with whom he’s worked. It’s a rich document about a little-known man, but one whose whose ideas are deeply and widely embedded in American popular culture.

Joaquin Montalvan is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 21, at 2 pm ET.

But first we’ll speak to Jason Del Gandio, author of Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for 21st Century Activist, a guide for the ultra-political on how to effectively communicate. “Here’s the underlying logic” of his book, Del Gandio says:

• Change the rhetoric and you change the communication.

• Change the communication and you change the experience.

• Change the experience and you change a person’s orientation to the world.

• Change that orientation and you create conditions for profound social change.

You can hear Jason Del Gandio’s and Joaquin Montalvan’s ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

In high school, Etsy craftsmaker VulvaLoveLovely says she “was more than an outcast, I was an untouchable.” Hurting desperately to connect with someone, she tried to drown her pain in meaningless sex, but only ended up getting abused, assaulted, and despising herself more.

It wasn’t until she saw a performance of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues that she began to peel away the layers of self-denigration that she’d built up.

And how. Today, the artist not only fashions pieces like this 2-inch pudenda-positive polymer clay pendant, right, but also creates massively hysterical works like the huggable “Utera Maxima,” above.

“Utera” is 20 inches tall, 29 inches wide, with a fallopial tube “wing span” of 69 inches. The piece is

crafted out of fuchsia fleece. The detailing is done in dark pink, light pink, and white candy striped detailing.

“Utera Maxima” should look great in your car, riding shotgun, flickin’ the finger to drivers who get too close; draped across your bed, where fortunate boudoir visitors can pay due homage; or seated in a place of esteem on your living room couch when you serve tea. Plus, the next time some nosey kid asks you where babies come from, you can just point. Vagina Pendant Necklace, $17 + $1.99 s/h. Utera Maxima, $45 + $12-$25 s/h, depending on country of destination.

[via thingamababy.com]

When I noticed a lot of my fellow Twitterers sporting stylish, 1960s-style customized avatars, I asked how they were doing this.

I was quickly turned on to MadMen Yourself. It’s a promotional site for MadMen, AMC’s hit series about randy ad execs in JFK’s America. (Season 3 of the award-winning drama starts August 16.)

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Vincent Bousserez’s Plastic Life series of photos puts tiny figurines against normal-sized human implements—ashtrays, door pulls, etc.—and, as above, body parts. As the micros apparently contemplate their environments, and the impossibilities of the obstacles they face, they render wry, albeit silent, commentaries on the futility of the human condition. I dunno, but there’s something about the sight of three men, determinedly working to reach the pinnacle of a female breast, that seems sum up everything.

[via ffffound.com]

Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni is not just one of the world’s greatest poets, with a legacy of profound and funky work, but a scholar with deep community interests and focuses. As a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg VA since 1987, she trains future leaders in the literature of the mother tongue. As the author of over 30 books, she shares the beauty of poetic language with readers far and wide, having done so for over four decades. The above photo is drawn from the session for her first volume of work, Black Feeling, Black Talk, published in 1968, the year she turned twenty-five.

Unlike many poets, however, Giovanni, right, has long had an interest in reaching children. Her first book of verse for them, Spin a Soft Black Song, was published a mere three years after her first volume, in 1971, two short years after giving birth to her only child, Thomas Watson Giovanni.

Her latest work, which she edited, continues her aim of making poetry come alive for young listeners and readers, albeit in a contemporary way. Hip-Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat presents compositions by rap artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, the Sugarhill Gang, and Stetsasonic along with classics by Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Maya Angelou, and, of course, Nikki Giovanni. Children can read along in the profusely illustrated text while an accompanying CD presents most of the pieces in audio form, some of them read by the original poet. For me, the highlight had to be hearing Langston Hughes, performing his own poems, like “Dream Boogie” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”

Nikki Giovanni has had a long and varied career, appropriately honored with accolades from admirers as diverse as TV host Oprah Winfrey, whose hailed her as one of twenty-five “Living Legends”; to singer Teena Marie, who name-checked Giovanni on her 1981 hit, “Square Biz”; to biologist Robert Baker who, in 2004—no joke—named a West Ecuadoran bat he discovered, three years earlier, after her. Micronycteris giovanniae, which means meaning “Giovanni’s small night flyer,”looks much like the cuddly fellow above. “I enjoy reading her poetry and I come from the Deep South, so I really can appreciate what she has done for race relations and equality,” the professor explains.

Nikki Giovanni is the guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, July 31st, at 2 pm ET.

You can hear her ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

Canadian artist Jeff de Boer fashions ultra-finely crafted fantasy cat-and-mouse battle gear as a form of art, like this 2008 piece, Tournament Cat, above, created from nickel, aluminum, leather, brass, and wood.

In essence, the works seem to re-imagine the conflicts enjoined by knights and samurai as played out, instead, between felines and rodents. Like, if Tom had worn this one, above, against Jerry, or Scratchy against Itchy. History could have been different.

[via jim rossignol]

For his book Flight Attendants, documentary photographer Brian Finke spent two years flying the friendly skies, with airline carriers from all over the world, in order to record the work, leisure time, and home lives of his volume’s titular employees. For example, this woman, Roshayati, above, was giving a safety demo before her Air Asia flight’s departure.

Rachel Papo‘s Serial No. 3817131 goes inside the days and nights of young women in Israel’s Defense Forces, for whom service is mandatory, as it is for all young people in the that country. (The book’s title was Papo’s own i.d. number during her military stint in the late ’80s.) As the body language and expression on the face of the soldier, above, makes clear, not only is war long stretches of boredom spiked my moments of sheer terror, preparing for it, apparently, is also.

What’s truly interesting, though, is that while these women’s occupations seem to be as different as they get, they share more than might immediately be apparent. Safety, training, freedom, even boredom all weigh heavily as issues in their respective fields. That became clear to me, at least, when I had the chance to talk to Papo and Finke about their own work.

Both artists are guests today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 5, at 2 pm ET.

You can hear their ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

Vancouver-based technical artist James Provost possesses a smooth, accurate style that renders complex technology visually straightforward and, thus, comprehensible. What attracted me to his work was this gorgeous image of a deadly taser, but what kept me there was this vision of the BigDog robotic pack mule, above, done for Boston Dynamics. Scanning his portfolio’s dramatic cutaways reveals a gift for variety that marks Provost’s as a talent to watch.

[via behance.net]

That, above, is the startling cover for colleague Ray Winbush’s new book, Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I wrote a blurb for the book.) Jerome Thompson, a staff artist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, fashioned the kiloword-saving graphic, no doubt inspired by this famed photo of a Maryland slave, below right.

Belinda was an 18th century African woman, kept captive as a slave on the Ten Hills Plantation in Medford, Massachusetts. In 1782, explains Winbush, she

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