Mommy-Four-Legs by Zoetica, part of the Monster show in LA

Calling all Angel City residents! This Saturday, Corpo Nason gallery in Santa Monica is hosting Monster?, a group art exhibit curated by artist and Issue 01 contributor Travis Louie. The show includes several Coilhouse featured artists and friends. The lineup includes the following:

Jessica Joslin, Molly Crabapple, Audrey Kawasaki, Kris Kuksi, Ron English, Zoetica Ebb, Jordu Schell, Femke Hiemstra, Tessar Lo, Martin Wittfooth, Chet Zar, Amanda Visell, Ana Bagayan, Annie Owens, Attaboy, Bill Basso, Bob Eggleton, Brandt Peters, Brian Despain, Brom, Chris Ryniak, Dan Quintana, Ekundayo, Dave Chung, Dave DeVries, Davey Wong, Deseo, Dice Tsutsumi, Donato Giancola, Francesco LoCastro, Fred Harper, Heidi Taillefer, Isabel Samaras, James Zar, Jason D’Aquino, Kirk Reinert, Kris Lewis, David Stoupakis, Lola, Mari Inukai, Mark Texiera, Mark Garro, Mike Lee, Mike Knapp, Miles Teves, Nash Dunnigan, Nouar, Peter Nguyen, Robert Mackenzie, Stephen Hickman, Steve Ellis, Steve Price, Vince Natale, Tim O’Brien, Tristan Elwell, Vincent DiFate, Willie Real, Vincent Nguyen and Xiaoqing Ding.

Travis Louie told Erratic Phenomena that many of the artists he chose for the show come from a background of production design- creators whose work is often not recognized the same way that most people can readily identify fine artists. Louie told EP, “we usually see their names in the closing credits of a motion picture, but don’t really know what they actually did for the film we were watching – or as illustrators, we see their work as book cover illustrations, or in magazines like Rolling Stone, Time, Playboy, etc., but the beauty of what they’ve done is taken for granted.”

As an added bonus, the elusive and legendary Kogi taco truck will be there to represent! You may even receive a sneak glimpse of Issue 03 if you find us at the event (and it will be unveiled on this site sometime in the next 10 days). The reception will go from 8 to 11:30pm. Copro Nason is located at the Bergamot Arts Complex, 2525 Michigan Ave T5, Santa Monica, CA 90404. See you there!

De Halskette, 1999

First off, I want to say thank you again to everyone who commented on my home decorating post. I haven’t found time to properly respond to all the helpful comments because I’ve been finalizing the move into that dream apartment I mentioned in the post. What I didn’t mention is that this dream apartment is actually in whole different country. More details on that to come! Incidentally, Mer is also moving to a another country on the other side of the world this summer. Coilhouse will soon be not just international, but TRI-CONTINENTAL. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, a short post about the lost photography of Dima Smelyantsev. Very little is known about him online. What I know of him, I’ve pieced together from what my cousin told me. He was originally from Russia, but lived in New York. He published one book, Untressed. The book contained vulnerable, fetishistic black-and-white portraits of women who had just shaved their heads (though, she notes, Dima himself had long, wild hair). My cousin appeared in the book, though she never signed a release. Sometime later, he died at a relatively young age – his heart just stopped. And with his death, the book gradually disappeared. The only traces remain on used book sites (on Amazon, a lone copy sells for $127) and on the graphic designer’s site. Thanks to the ever-useful Wayback Machine, I was able to find the original publisher’s page for the book, but that’s pretty much it. And that’s a shame, because I really enjoy the photo above. So admire it for what it is – a relic, your only glimpse of something that’s been lost to time.

I know nothing about making a home look beautiful or cozy. Decorating was not a family value. When we first moved to America, my parents were too busy and poor to worry about picking out shower curtains, and by time a little decor became financially feasible, years of thrifty practicality had turned shabby–not-so-chic into a permanent household motif: for example, all throughout my teens, our living room furniture consisted of two car seats taken from a minivan. “Why, these are just as comfy as any regular armchair!” my dad assured me. As the pace of life slowed down, my parents began to decorate, but it was too late for me to learn from them and their adorable garden gnomes.

A glorious decoupaged ceiling, courtesy of a DIY tutorial on Apartment Therapy. Probably outside my current skill level.

When I moved out, my underdeveloped sense of decorating received little nourishment in the college dorms or in my first apartment, a leaky two-bedroom North Philly. My roommate slapped up ’80s beer posters with chicks in gold lamé suits; I cut my favorite images out of a Werner Pawklok book, put them into $3 frames from CVS, and hung them lopsidedly nearby. My first “real” apartment never reached its full potential; I was too busy with my first “real” job. In LA, an array of confusing and bizarre living situations left little room for creativity. My first housemate on the West Coast turned out to be an animal abuser: I’d often come home to find her watching reality TV, surrounded by steaming piles of turds littered throughout the living room and kitchen, left there by her sickly animals, which were often dressed in ridiculous gowns that covered up oozing lesions. Decorating that place was the last thing on my mind. When that living room situation reached its inevitable meltdown, I started bouncing around from one sublet to another, moving from shoebox to shoebox until finally, through a set of circumstances that would take too long to describe here, I ended up living in a closet. Not figuratively – literally. It was there that I finished Issue 02.

Stuff I’d like to decorate with, in theory. Laura Zindel & Dylan Kehde Roelofs

But this post isn’t a solicitation for pity, dear reader. I’m writing to seek advice! For my luck has finally changed. The dream apartment has fallen into my lap: hardwood floors, a little garden, a bay window. Having a lair that delights the senses is all about inspiration and self-respect, and I don’t want to let this opportunity pass me by. Except – I know nothing about decorating. Walking into a person’s nicely-arranged space feels like wandering into a museum, full of wondrous objects mystically aligned through a studied science that takes years to master. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know where to start.

So I thought I’d start by asking you guys. What tips do you have for someone who has never decorated before? I don’t the first thing about painting a wall or figuring out where to hang a picture. What home decor blogs do you like? What cute Etsy sellers do you reccomend? But more importantly than that, I’m curious to hear about people’s decorating experience. How did you approach the problem of decorating your very own space, for the very first time?

Dear Chris Cunningham: please come back to us. The commercial you recently created for Gucci Flora is hypnotic, and we’d never dream of calling you a sellout because we know that you need to make rent, just like us. We know that the music industry is not what it used to be, and that the budgets you had to make your legendary music videos (Bjork’s All is Full of Love, Madonna’s Frozen, Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker) aren’t easy to come by these days. Still, we implore you: come back to us. Make something new, something weird!

Any Cunningham-inspired tidbit helps the withdrawal. Your incredible shoot with Grace Jones for Dazed and Confused, a Nubian companion to your character Rubber Johnny, certainly helps to ease the longing. More images (NSWF) at Dazed Digital, the original Rubber Johnny below, and some Chris Cunningham classics after the cut.

• Chris Cunningham – Criterion DVD
• Previously on Coilhouse: Grace Jones – Corporate Cannibal

The enigmatic Fever Ray have released a brand-new video for their third single, Triangle Walks. A new remix of the song by Rex the Dog was also released last week – click here to listen. Fever Ray is the first solo project of Karin Dreijer Andersson, known previously for her work as part of electronic brother-sister duo The Knife. If you haven’t heard the band yet, check out the video for their first single, If I Had a Heart – an atmospheric clip inspired by Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man. Below is their other great video, titled When I Grow Up:

These stunning images are part of Teen and Transgender Comparative Study, an art installation by Charlie White at the Hammer Museum in LA (update: exhibition is over). Andrew Womack describes the series over at The Morning News:

In the images in White’s series, both figures are blossoming into womanhood, though each along a different path. As observers, however, we have been taught to view the subjects in much the same way: with sheer terror.

For just as the original 1950s Invasion of the Body Snatchers warned of Communism’s impending doom, and stories of men with hooks were concocted to frighten young girls from riding in cars with boys, so often have Hollywood summer comedies acted as cautionary tales for the male who would cast his desire toward either the pubescent or transgender woman. Because in the right skirt or the right application of makeup, each has proved alluring to our hero—or more frequently, his best man, whose idea it was to move the bachelor party to Tijuana.

So while, socially speaking, White’s subjects may represent a threat to our libido, his photos present only their innocence, and hint very strongly at a sense of our own “guilt.”

The photos are extremely clinical (reminiscent of images from the 19th century of various “ethnic types,” with perhaps slight a nod to Muybridge) but the gazes of their subjects overflow with emotion: earnestness, vulnerability, and haunting self-awareness. They are looking at the journey ahead.

Over at Sociological Images, commenter EGhead loves the images, but critiques Womack’s writeup:

I much prefer the intent of the artist– to show the process of entering (physical) womanhood… although even that is problematic– to the commentary that sees these depictions of girls and women as threats to men. I’m tired of men having to enter into everything, but if we’re going to throw them into the mix, it should at least be in acknowledging how threatening THEY are to teens and trans women. This last point was touched on, but only in passing.

This analysis also neglects that society insistently refuses to acknowledge transgendered women as women, even though they are, while insistently acknowledging girls as women, even though they aren’t.

So much to say about the photos, and so many different possible interpretations. These portraits could be about the different roads people take to arrive at the same destination. They could be a meditation on the fact that what comes so easily to some has to be fought for by others. Or perhaps they’re a confrontation of one’s unwarranted assumptions: we know that the people on the right desire to identify as female, but what the desires of the people on the left, and how our world shapes their desires?

Whoooooo’s that laaaady?

This bust is the first in Paul Komoda’s highly-anticipated “Human Pathology” series. Paul, who previously brought you this cauliflower-tastic take on the Elephant Man, recently completed this sculpture of a woman suffering from Tertiary Syphilis (more images of the sculpt here). These busts were originally commissioned from Paul by the U. S. Department of Education – one for every classroom, placed squarely atop each health teacher’s desk, to scare students into finally taking the subject matter seriously. Unfortunately, the piece came out more garish than they expected, and the Department refused the final product. Well, their loss is your gain! Castings of this fine piece, titled La Pestilencia, are available from Artist Proof Studio for $160 a pop. What a fine thing to place on top of your piano, where you can serenade it every night – or perhaps you’d want place it on your bookshelf, betwixt your most rare leather-bound medical textbooks. It could greet guests at the dinner table, or look up at visitors mournfully from your office cubicle.

I’ve been watching Paul sculpt this thing for the past couple of months, and it still gives me the willies every time I see it up close. Paul chose to photograph the bust with some some light illuminating it from below, which I feel is a mistake. The harsh tales-around-the-campfire lighting makes the face look even more monstrous than it needs to be, and fails to show the humanity and sadness that Paul so carefully instilled into its features. For this isn’t some Hollywood ghoul – it’s a real person, based on this tragic and completely NSFL photo taken in 1973 of a syphilis patient. What a piercing photo – you can tell, by the eyes, by the cheekbones, the shape of the jaw – that this was once a beautiful woman, similar in appearance, perhaps, to Winona Ryder, but ruined by an unlucky life. She could still be alive today.

Image from the Tree House ‘s opening night by John Manyjohns.

OK, so you all know about the Steampunk Tree House, right? Towering at 30 feet, the house, constructed of wood, metal and recycled construction materials, debuted in Black Rock City in 2007. Nested between the tree’s rusted-looking metallic branches is a cozy, Myst-inspired interior room full of paintings, books, and all sorts of mysterious gadgets, puzzles, cranks, gears and dials.  The brainchild of 60+ Bay Area artists, the Steampunk Tree House was brought into the world through a labor of love as well as the help of art lovers who donated funds to its construction from around the world.

A projection of where the Rocketship will be.

Now, the same team that built the Tree House is tackling an ambitious new project: the Raygun Gothic Rocketship. The Rocketship will surpass in height even the Tree House, the tallest element being 40′. Aesthetically, the project will be designed “in a rococo retro-futurist vernacular between yesterday’s tomorrow and the future that never was, a critical kitsch somewhere between The Moons of Mongo & Manga Nouveau. ” And they need help. I think it’s a cause that all of us can get behind!

Tonight in San Francisco, the creators of the Rocketship are throwing a Galactic Gala: a future-noir fundraising party featuring talented artists and performers from the Bay Area. Among them will be our very own Meredith Yayanos, performing under her Theremina moniker! Additionally, patrons of the event will be graced by a performance cellist extrordinaire Zoe Keating. If you are in the Bay Area, this event is not to be missed.

Actor Richard Beymer, who played Benjamin Horne in Twin Peaks, has a gallery of hauntingly beautiful  black-and-white photos from his time behind the scenes on the David Lynch show. Even if you never watched the whole series (as – full disclosure – I still haven’t had the opportunity to!) – the photos stand alone as an enthralling glimpse at the synergy that evolves around any special production between the cast and the crew. The photos read almost as family portraits, permeated by a sense of camaraderie and playfulness. Lynch himself is always a wonderful photographic subject – this portrait of Lynch and Isabella Rossellini by Helmut Newton is one of my favorite images of all time. In the Beymer photos, Lynch looks genuinely happy to be working on the series with the equipment and people around him. The grainy processing of the film adds another layer of nostalgia over every shot. See all 49 images here. [via Flesh World – nswf]

A few months ago, Mer posted some incredibly strange remixed ST:TNG episodes made by Jan Van Den Hemel and Andrew Hussie.  Since that time, many more little episodes have popped up on Gazorra, Van Den Hemel’s YouTube channel. Recently, the two creators were interviewed by MassLive.

The hits keep coming, and the new episodes are too good not to repost! Here are two performance-themed clips, with some more favorites after the jump, and still more new ones up on YouTube, the latest one having appeared just last week.