On Saturday, LA townsfolk will be able to feed their Twin Peaks obsession at Clifton’s Brookdale, a cafeteria extraordinaire brought to you by Andrew Meieran – the very man who birthed our beloved Edison. Curated by Good Apple in celebration of Twin Peaks’ 20th anniversary, In the Trees will feature art by Coilhouse friend and contributor, Jessica Joslin, who created a a beautiful owl of brass and bone named “Cooper” for the occasion.
Cooper will be shown alongside the work of Glenn Barr, Tim Biskup, Scott Campbell, Amy Casey, Paul Chatem, Ryan Heshka, Stella Im Hultberg, Alice Lodge, Chris Mars, Elizabeth McGrath, Margaret Meyer, Brooke Weston, Eric White, and Ashley Wood. Get all that? Good. Additionally, the show will include art by Grace Zabriskie (Sarah Palmer) and Richard Beymer (Benjamin Horne), as well as a map of Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch himself.
The recently-reopenedClifton’s, known for its comfort food and strange, woodsy interior, is the absolutely ideal location for this event. “It’s reminiscent of the show’s creative universe and captures the spirit of the show perfectly”, says developer Meieran of his new baby, which makes this recently-initiated Twin Peaks fiend anticipate In the Trees with even more vigor. I bet there will be coffee and pie!
FYI: this exhibition only runs from Saturday, February 12 to Sunday, February 13 – don’t miss it!
Asian cities and communities the world over rang in the Chinese New Year today — or yesterday depending on your time zone — ushering in the Year of the Rabbit, 4708 on the Chinese calender. The celebration will go on for 14 more days, making the Western New Year’s tradition of one alcohol fueled night of shame look truly pathetic in comparison. To celebrate the occasion and honor the passing of the Year of the Tiger the duo of Benji Davies and Jim Field, a.k.a. Frater, put together a short, beautifully animated New Year card, almost like a moving woodcut.
Jost Haas is, as the title of Tomas Leach’s short film The Story of the Last Glass Eye Maker in Britain states, the last glass eye maker in Britain. Whether he is the last to make ocular prostheses by hand or at all is not specified but I think it would be safe to assume the former (though, I suppose, it could very well be both). In fact, due to either the brevity of the film or the reticence of Mr. Haas there is not a great deal of information to be gleaned here. And yet, it is still a captivating five minutes not only because we get to see a brief glimpse of the delicate process of making these prosthetic orbs but because the soft-spoken Haas is so dedicated, not to his craft per se, but to those who benefit from it. No doubt this humble attitude does the most for making this such a great interview.
On an altered yet recognizable version of our neighbouring planet, we find a world populated solely with two women. We do not learn their names nor how and when they came to Mars, but we observe their wanderings in a desolate landscape which they attempt make navigable and habitable with an amalgam of high-tech components retrofitted to found artifacts and monuments that appear to be the remnants of a long-gone civilization. The remains of massive stone listening devices are littered about the landscape, leading us to wonder: is this a colony that has collapsed and lost touch with earth? How did its occupants become stranded? Or are these the nocturnal imaginings of two post-apocalyptic survivors?
The book can be viewed and purchased on Blurb. The artists write on Tumblr, “the ideal book we designed for the series, 12”x12” hardcover, 80 pages, available now through blurb online only, until a publisher daring enough picks it up. A full preview of it is on the website.” $108 may seem somewhat pricey, but that’s actually because Blurb is expensive for people to use, not because they’re trying to make a huge profit. If a real publisher picked up this book, it would be more affordable. Fingers crossed.
Linda Behar constructs intricate, photo-realistic landscapes, mostly marshes so far, with a needle and thread. It’s hard to believe that the image above is not a photograph or a painting, but embroidery, something that strikes me as akin to constructing a quarter scale replica of the Eiffel Tower out of bellybutton lint — a task I would reserve for only the most eccentric shut-in or obsessive compulsive, neither of which Mrs. Behar appears to be. Her work, which can be seen on her Flickr page, is simply astounding and she achieves this visual fidelity by printing photos onto cloth and then going about her meticulous business.
Described as “a David Lynchian fever dream on Beatrix Potter terrain”, Christiane Cegavske’s exquisitely-crafted stop motion tale Blood Tea and Red String is a macabre delight and a labor of love that was 13 years in the making. The film, a dialogue-free, avant garde “fairy tale for adults” follows two groups of anthropomorphic creatures in fancy costumes -the aristocratic White Mice and the rustic Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak – and the “struggle over the doll of their heart’s desire.” This struggle, notes one critic, is so fascinating because the actions and emotions of these bizarre creatures “so uncannily resemble warts-and-all human behavior”. We find a “disturbing comfort” in these unconventional characters, and we see ourselves in this magic world that Cegavske creates.
This beguiling, nightmarish, deceptively whimsical world extends far beyond the phantasmagoric fable that is Blood Tea and Red String. Cegavske, also responsible for the animation in Asia Argento’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, began dabbling in film making and animation at an early age (5th grade!) with an oddly satisfying-sounding claymation short about trick-or-treaters whose candy is stolen. Not only is she an extraordinary film maker, but a talented artist in several mediums and a self professed “Creator of Many Things” with an Etsy shop full of delightful oddities as well.
See below the cut for our recent tête-à-tête with Christiane in which we parley on the subjects of muses and myths, future dreamscapes, and fancy edibles.
I feel like I’ve seen dozens of videos like this one: images and sound diced and then spliced together in order to form short, musical compositions. This familiarity does little to dampen my enthusiasm for them. I find myself often hypnotized by sounds; transfixed by sounds. Sounds are sexy. I suspect Mr. Zdziebko would probably understand what I mean. His piece “Sampled Room” is, you may be unsurprised to learn, a collection of sounds from some common household objects — a roll of tape, a wine glass, a camera — spliced together to form a short, musical composition. It’s fantastic. Some things, I suppose, just never get old.
Recently, the French photography/arts blog,La boite verte, posted a breathtaking series of vintage photographs of dusty, down-on-their-luck Antipodeans passing reproachfully through their country’s penal system back in the day.
They’re pictures from the Sydney Justice & Police Museum archives. Some of the documented lawbreakers seem sad, ashamed, or a bit mentally unhinged. Other portrait subjects remain defiantly cheerful– chins up and shoulders back as if to say “So it goes. I do what I have to do.” All of these images are a mule-kick to the heart.
Many more after the jump. Peruse the full series here. Via m1k3y, thanks.
EDIT/ADDENDUM: The original text of this post has been corrected. These are “photographs of commitment” from the Syndey J&P Museum’s archive (1912 – 1964). “The portraits were taken on glass plate negatives and analyzed with high resolution to show the quality of the photograph of the police.” [via]
Polish designer Katarzyna Konieczka first made an appearance on Coilhouse this past July, but these newer photos of her medical fashion are too wonderfully twisted not to share. Above is a new image of her previously-featured Elephant Man-inspired ensemble, shot by Maciej Boryna. After the jump, two dreamlike masks, photographed by Marcin Twardowski. Definitely one to watch.
Anouk Wipprecht creates garments that move, breathe, and react to the environment around them. Wipprecht started with a background of fashion, theater and dance, but a growing interest in interaction design and electrical engineering inspired her to develop clothing that appeals as much to the DIY/tech crowd as it does to fans of haute couture. “Instead of the body having to give a purpose to a design” Wipprecht said in a recent interview with Fashioning Tech, she’s interested in developing “design [that] gives a purpose to the body.”
Wipprecht has crafted projects such as Intimacy, a set of garments that become transparent when in proximity of each other, Fragilis, a dress that evokes the heart and veins through lighting and motion, and Daredroid, a cocktail-making robot dress equipped with IR sensors that administers booze through pneumatic control valves. More projects can be found on her site. Here she is discussing Pseudomorphs, her self-painting dresses:
