Here Be Treasures

Secret Messages

Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | art | No Comments

Found via Kottke, French art student Nadine Grenier used more than 500 clocks to construct a giant wall that spells out a time-related message every 12 hours.

Translation:

Times passes,
and every time that time passes,
something fades away.

The Hierarchy of Beards

Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | art | No Comments

Cool, though kinda disturbing poster from Wondermark (An Illustrated Jocularity), entitled The Hierarchy of Beards. You can see an enlarged version here.

The one thing that disturbs me about beards, apart from beards themselves, is that beard anagrams to bread. That’s always bothered me, for some reason.

Mark Khaisman’s Tape Art

Saturday, November 15th, 2008 | art | No Comments

Mark Khaisman makes portraits and studies with packing tape, that brownish tape that is used to seal boxes the world over. This is another example of someone who has more artistic talent in their little finger than I have in my entire body.

A Most Personal Artwork

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | art | No Comments

DNA 11 are the pioneers of truly unique, truly personalised artwork for you. They can make large canvas art based on your DNA, fingerprints, kiss-print. Chair not included.

Secret Wall Tattoos

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | art | No Comments

Have you ever really investigated your hotel room? Made sure the bed is clean, there’s no crap under the bed, the bathroom is sanitary, there’s no art work hidden behind the pictures?

Lego Day—Nathan Sawaya

Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | art | No Comments

Nathan’s work with Lego is truly fantastic when I remember back to my efforts with Lego.

Helen—A Girl Who Fixes Computers

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 | art | No Comments

Helen fascinates me. She’s smart, knows her way around the BASH shell, and is an advisor to the likes of Bill Gates.

The Hyper-Realism of Denis Peterson

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 | art | No Comments

This is not a photo. It’s a painting. Termed ‘hyper-realism’, the paintings of Denis Peterson are more real than real. The painting above, “Neon Lights”, is a 54″ x 34″ piece (acrylics and oils on canvas). Amazing work.

(found via paintalicious)

Two Cardboard Artists

Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | art | No Comments

They’re not made of cardboard, silly. They do work in cardboard.

Mark Langan & Chris Gilmour.

Holy Cow!

Friday, October 17th, 2008 | art | No Comments

There are art exhibitions and there are art exhibitions. Cow Parade is of the latter. According to the website: 

Cow Parade originated in Switzerland in 1998. Cow and bull figures decorated by local artists were displayed on the streets and the event generated so much interest that it attracted sponsors and donations. Since then, Cow Parade has been held in a number of major cities including New York and Paris, drawing phenomenal turnouts each time. 

Yes. Decorated fibreglass cows are placed around the chosen city to entertain and, surely, bemuse the local population. There are many locations every year, one of which is the cow parade in Tokyo. Enjoy!

My favorite is the Emo Cow, pictured above. It’s Moo-ving. Oh, be sure to check out the store. Need I say Moo-re?

The Solar Collector

Friday, October 17th, 2008 | art | No Comments

There is a very unusual project going on in Canada. Called the Solar Collector, it’s a modern sculpture that collects the sun’s energy during the day to put on a light-show performance at dusk. What makes this project special is that there are a set of controls that you can access here. Your settings translate into a sine wave pattern that the Solar Collector will perform that evening (queue permitting).

The performance continues until the batteries run out, which is rather cute. Of course, it would be useless if you couldn’t see the performance. Thoughtfully, they have a webcam and they tell you exactly when your performance will occur.

Found via EnvironMental.

Reverse Graffiti

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | art | No Comments

Who says graffiti needs to involve spray cans?

The Reverse Graffiti Project proves otherwise. Artist Paul Curtis, known as “Moose”, makes his art by cleaning—removing the dirt and pollution from walls, exposing the original surface. Termed “green art”, you could refer to it as selective cleaning.

You can watch a short movie intro on the site in which he takes a section of the Broadway Tunnel in San Francisco, and using stencils, creates a 140 foot long piece of art.

One advantage of this way of working is that it’s hard to prosecute him. Who owns the dirt that he ‘paints’ with?

T-Shirts At DesignGive

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 | art | No Comments

If you’re like me, you want to do more than just hang art on your wall. You want to wear it! Designgive is an online T-Shirt shop with a difference. At designgive artists give a design to the site in return for exposure. The designs are amazing, the prices are very reasonable (about $13 per t-shirt), and a portion of the proceeds from the sale go to the charity of your choice.

The tragedy here is that the designs sell-out very quickly, and there are some great previous designs that are no longer available.

The added bonus is that there is a bio on all the artists who’ve donated, and of course a link to more of their exciting work.

USSR Poster Set

Sunday, October 12th, 2008 | art | No Comments

On Flickr, of course, fast becoming the world’s photo-album…

USSR Poster Set

There are nearly 1,500 posters in this set, covering the period 1917 to 1991. The posters vary from adverts to propaganda, and all have that lovely industrial stoical style. Most of them promote hard work and self-sacrifice, drawn/painted in that indefatigable Soviet Constructivist style.

Put on some rabble-rousing music and spend an afternoon viewing the posters as a slide show!

Banksy’s Pet Shop

Saturday, October 11th, 2008 | art | 1 Comment

The BBC have a set of pictures from inside guerilla-artist Banksy’s latest project. Based in New York, the installation is a faux pet-shop, with the welfare of animals in the giant food-processing industry called into question. As you’d expect from Banksy, this project juxtaposes illusion with reality, and promotes his “subvertive” political and social message.