Ikea Hacks

Not really a hack, more an Ikea customization. With some painters tape and a lot of old acrylic paint, this table was born. It took about 30 minutes to paint and 30 to dry.

Fristaden Christiania

The Danish High Court will be making a ruling on Christiania in 2011 to determine it's legal status. But before that, http://www.crir.net/opencall2010.html is offering an open call to all artists and academic researchers in Denmark and abroad an opportunity to apply for a small research study to provide outsiders with insight into the Freetown way of life (unique architecture, sustainable environments) as well as the effects of recent changes (closing of the cannabis market and the subsequent violence over the drug trade). Housing is provided, but food and other living costs are not.

Unuseless Inventions

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I lost this book a while ago, and I just recalled it. There were some really great ideas in here like:

The Instant Panoramic Camera

Take a bath without getting wet!

This is not in the book, but is nonetheless hilarious.

More Art I Dug Up

I found all these pictures still stored on my ipod. I've forgotten what I named most of these pieces, but I'll put the names on them if/when I remember.

Ink on vellum.

Trying my hand at pop art. Acrylics on canvas.

Birch Trees

Acrylics on canvas

Masculinity

A lot of people told me this kite was phallic, but I really didn't intend it to be. I'll redo this one day. Watercolor and ink on vellum.

The Painted Bird

This was inspired by the Jerzy Kosinski book of the same name. It looks kind of bland though compared to its basis - all these sparrows or whatever birds they are (I don't like research or ornithology) would respond to the call of their brother but on realizing that he didn't look like one of them, they would rip the painted bird to pieces. I wish I could have gotten that action across in this painting, but it's really hard to make birds look hostile. Oil pastels on black construction paper.

The Yellow Wallpaper

This is my interpretation of the wallpaper featured in the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story of the the same name. I'm pretty sure you can make out the figure if you look closely. It used to be even more hidden but I tweaked it and made it a little more obvious. Watercolors.

Atlas as Woman

This is my most ambitious yet poorest piece.  I ripped the pose right off the cover of Atlas Shrugged. It's more appropriate that it's a woman anyway. I didn't want to rip off the art deco style, but in retrospect, it would have made this piece significantly cooler. The face is straight out of a Matisse painting. I'll give this another go one day. Acrylics on canvas.

I did this of Andrew when he got his new tattoo. He doesn't think this is a very accurate rendering. Acrylic on canvas.

Daruma Doll

I need to get rid of this painting. Everywhere I hang it, it's always falling down right when I walk past it and injuring me. It's incredibly vengeful for being brought into the world, so if you ever need an evil painting, you can have this one. Acrylics on wood.

Moon

I was working on an idea for a fashionable space suit - orange is definitely the best color for them. It could still be more fashionable though. Acrylics on canvas.

Acrylics and ink on watercolor paper.

Funny story about this guy. One of my high school English teachers actually wrote a story based on this painting and gave it to me. Really unexpected. Watercolors.

Andrew helped out with this one. He did the bottom left corner. Watercolors.

So that's my whole portfolio. It wasn't very popular with my art teacher, and I understand why. It's ambitious, but not enough risks taken or opportunities seized. Rubbish.

Rosemaling in the Telemark Style

So after three long years of having this unfinished painting around, I finally completed it yesterday. The craftsmanship is rushed, it's completely asymmetrical, but that's part of its charm. It does brighten up the house, and it reminds me of Norway (I used one of my great-grandmother's designs I found in an old sketchbook). I'm pretty sure it's in the Telemark style, but I'm probably wrong.

Drive back from Orlando at Night

This picture is pretty low quality because it was taken on the highway at around 4 a.m. on Halloween night. I drove while Andrew hung out the side of the car and shot the picture. This cross is huge in actuality, it's all you can see on the horizon once you leave Orlando and there's a huge lake in front of it reflecting the light from the cross and the lights from the town. Spooky.

Takato Yamamoto

Hermaphrodite's Body

Takato Yamamoto

I recently discovered the artist Takato Yamamoto, and I was struck by his style which resembles Klimt very closely, except dark and futuristic. For example, this painting follows the same layout as The Kiss:

The Kiss

Gustav Klimt

Figures are centered, and all you can see of their bodies is their faces. Both have great attention to detail, and simplistic backgrounds.

Takato Yamamoto has a lot of really great pieces you can find on google, but good luck trying to find something hi-res because it's not going to happen. His stuff is very magical (grotesque), very mythological (references to Tarot), and incredibly Japanese (lots of schoolgirls). The style is clean, so all his paintings feel iconic, probably because he also does illustrations and posters instead of straight paintings. Despite all the references to the past, his work seems very futuristic and post-apocalyptic, but maybe that's just the facial expression. Although the gruesome situations are evocative, the figures almost all have the same blank face in every piece, though the few that stand out have intense expressions of pain.

Fearless Freaks

Found this video from the Pompano show in 2007. It doesn't seem that long ago. Not many other videos of this show.

Anyway, on to the topic of this post, I found a documentary of The Flaming Lips up on Hulu the other day called The Fearless Freaks, and I highly recommend it. Although it was a bit lengthy, there were a lot of very funny and very entertaining parts in it. I learned a lot of new things about the band that I wouldn't have known otherwise like they got their band name from some small punk band from Oklahoma City. As far as band documentaries go, I find that they're too often overly dramatic and focus too much on rampant drug addictions and groupie sex rather than music, but this one was very entertaining and real. The making of Christmas on Mars was hysterical, the footage of the band when they were young was great too, especially the show where they brought a motorcycle on stage and just revved the engine until smoke filled the entire tiny club. Overall, the documentary seemed an accurate portrayal in the spirit of The Flaming Lips.

Link: http://www.hulu.com/watch/91177/the-flaming-lips-the-fearless-freaks