Some choice images from Flickr user Sagbottom‘s gorgeous set of “Paper Moon” portrait photographs, accompanied by the First Lady of Jazz, Ella Fitzgerald:
I never feel a thing is real
When I’m away from you
Out of your embrace
The world’s a temporary parking place…
Anastasia by Inez van lamsweerde.
It’s Mask Day at Coilhouse! A personal favorite topic, and research at the moment. As always, you’re welcome to submit your own additions to the theme.
We previously blogged about Paddy Hartley’s Project Facade, cialis a uniform-sculpture exploration of wartime trauma and facial reconstruction. But before Hartley became known for Project Facade, ambulance he received international acclaim for another project – a series of face corsets focused on exploring attitudes towards plastic surgery and ideals of facial beauty.
The bioglass and cinching invoke Botox, collagen, implants and other techniques that stretch and compress our faces into their ideal shape – but only temporarily. Hartley elaborates on these ideas and more in an excellent interview over at We Make Money not Art.
Any man who puts pictures like this of himself on the internet in order to make an artistic point has our respect forever.
More face corsets after the jump!
Kissmask, originally uploaded by Coilhouse.
From artist Jill Magid’s site: The Kissmask is designed to be worn by two women. The connecting tube isolates the womens’ mouth and nose creating a heated space between them. A microphone sewn into the connecting tube records the conversation, breathing, and kissing that occurs inside. A CD of these recordings is exhibited with the mask.
—
Is the idea of this object to satisfy heterosexual curiosity about the lesbian experience by essentially bottling its essence, or is it there to protect the moment while preserving its memory, perhaps without getting too close? I love the photos themselves – fragile and wistful. And the obstruction is, well, hot.
—
More on this and Jill’s other work here.
“Blind Love” is one of my favorite pieces ever by artist Paul Komoda. The piece features Courtney Claveloux, sales one of the main characters in Paul’s stories. I don’t want to give too much away about what kind of person Courtney is or what she and her friends get up to, but you can tell she likes the tentacle action. She also likes fuzzy stuffed animals. More on Courtney soon.
An illustration from a 1974 Penthouse for the first paragraph of Crash by J.G. Ballard. If you’re somewhat depraved and not familiar with Crash, or have only seen the [excellent] Cronenberg film based on the book, I suggest you look into it.
Over the profiles of her body now poised the metallized excitements of our shared dreams of technology.
Of note:
“Birth” by Bernie Wrightson, originally uploaded by Coilhouse.
I met one of my heroes at the October Shadows gallery opening in Glendale last weekend: artist Bernie Wrightson. My boyfriend (who has a fantastic piece of his own the show) had to literally drag me over, I was so nervous. Thankfully, Wrightson and his wife Liz are kind-hearted folks, so they humored me.
Wrightson spent seven long years drawing these meticulously detailed pen-and-ink pages to accompany his illustrated edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Each and every one is a masterpiece.
This poster, buy viagra along with over a hundred others, nurse was commissioned in the 1920s by the Chicago Transit Company in order to encourage people to use rapid transit. My heart skips a beat at the stylized depiction of North Michigan Avenue and the surrounding metropolis. I only lived in Chicago for a year but I love it all the same.
More posters from this project at Chicago-L.org
On the morning of Sunday 7th May the little girl giant woke up at Horseguards Parade in London, took a shower from the time-traveling elephant and wandered off to play in the park…
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/qBXr15K2uSc" width="400" height="330" wmode="transparent" /]
Watching this immense puppet filled me with all the awe that watching the awkward rubbery Japanese androids never could. She is absolutely alive, curious and..hungry. What’s interesting is that both the Little Girl Giant and the skinjobs are essentially human-operated, though the robots are programmed beforehand. Wearing pseudo futuristic outfits, some of them even eerily emulate human expressions with facial “muscles”, while the little girl can only blink and open her huge accordion mouth. To me it’s almost disappointing – I want amazing robots! I want technology sophisticated enough to impress me with its humanoids! I know the day this happens can’t be too far off [right?], but until then this Little Girl Giant PWNS.
*media, originally uploaded by Coilhouse.
By far the most charming place I visited during my recent Japan-o-dventure was the Jusaburo puppet museum.
Nestled between bigger buildings in Ningyocho [literally translated to City of Dolls], a less busy district in Tokyo, this place is something of a landmark – signs and maps point to its location starting at the train station. Jusaburo Tsujimura’s early life story reads like a novel – he was born to a geisha mother from an unknown father and spent his childhood in a geisha house surrounded by the colorful rustling silk which inspires him to this day. Today, after a lifetime of achievement he is one of many puppeteers living in Ningyocho, his atelier-museum and impressive gamut of work attracting recognition since its opening in 1996.
Entering the place I was instantly entranced. We seemed to be the only visitors at first. A helpful employee led us past cabinets filled with tiny figurines, past a small work area with dolls and puppets in varying levels of completion to the back room where an assortment of cabaret music played and an elaborate set took up the entirety of the back wall. An homage to Moulin Rouge, a miniature multi-tiered stage illuminated by a twinkling color light show and adorned by several rows of chorus girls, with their gorgeous blue-feathered Prima Donna at the forefront. By the time i took it all in my jaw had begun its decent.
