Extreme Craft

BLING IT ON!

I get a little bit sad now and then when I hear somebody say that they feel like they belong in a different era...that they just weren't made for these times. Truth is, I always feel a little bit of pity for them, because I know that I was made EXACTLY for these times. When I'm perusing the internets, I am often reminded why I belong in the year 2005, and this morning, I ran across the most recent and potent example. www.blingitontv.com just makes me happy to be alive. I used to spend hours and hours breathing toxic fumes while gluing hundreds of rhinestones to my iPod, but now, "Bling it On" makes it a snap! Just peel off the adhesive backing, and make your iPod or cell phone into an objet d'art.

LINK

More BBQ Signs!

Kate (of the aforementioned BBQ post) just alerted me to a Flickr photo group, started by Austin musician Edith Frost. This photo group is a bit more eclectic, broadening its scope to pretty much any kind of food that is happy to eat itself.

Link

Put the Taste of the South in your Mouth!

My friends Cliff and Kate live in Starkville, Mississippi. It can be a tad stifling in Starkville, culturallly speaking, so they have to go on road trips to preserve their sanity. They just posted a great picture of a happy BBQ pig chef, which reminded me of one of my favorite sign genres....the Barbecue sign! There is an art to creating a happy BBQ pig chef--it has to look pleased to be cooking/eating itself. Back in my vegetarian days, I created a great mascot for a Lincoln, NE rib shack--a smiling pig tucking into a huge, dripping rack of ribs. So I started poking around on the internet to see if anyone had created an online gallery of barbecue sign images. Do you know the meaning of the word DUH? Allan Baker wrote a great online article for www.fiery-foods.com which serves a compendium of great Southern BBQ signs. My favorite sign is pictured above:

Could this be any more grisly? A skeleton, wearing doctors' clothes, keeping the pig alive with an I.V. while sharpening his cleaver, as the pig looks on--one could safely say--with a bit of apprehension! I looked at the menu...there's your standard fare-- chicken, ribs, chicken and ribs, and of course pork--but prepared in so many different ways, that it's not just a meal, but 'fun' for the whole family. Sandwiches, pulled pork, chopped pork, and the Dr. Bones "claim-to-fame,"tortured pork!!

LINK

Let's be Frank

Thank goodness for bookmarks. I was sifting through the archive of wacky bookmarks that I had set aside on my web browser, and ran into this chestnut for Austrian sculptor Karin Frank. Karin Frank carves wood (with occasional mixed media such as fun fur and felt) to make sculptures of people engaging in human activities such as lovemaking, defecating, and ejaculating. The sculptures balance ecological messages with commentary on human nature. LINK

Paul Simon flips Ghana the Bird!

This morning, BoingBoing posted a link to an article from a Ghanaian website that discussed a copyright bill that is being reviewed by the legislature there. This law would make it a crime for artists in Ghana to use THEIR OWN folkloric culture without a LICENSE from the government! As ludicrous as it sounds, the law has been kicking around for several years now. I started digging a little deeper, and I found out that like many terrible things in this world, it can be traced back to PAUL SIMON! The Paul Simon that is busy making demon babies with Edie Brickell...the same person who inflicted the musical "The Capeman" on us a few years ago (not the dead bowtie wearing Senator). It seems that when Simon was making his 1991 followup to "Graceland", "The Rhythm of the Saints", he cribbed from a Ghanaian folk song. Being a well-intentioned human, he paid the Ghanaian copyright board $16,000 in royalties.

This got the government thinking....if we can make $16,000 from Mr. "Get on the Bus, Gus", then imagine all of the money that's slipping through our fingers as native Ghanaians mine THEIR OWN CULTURE! They immediately established a copyright board to look into the possibility of licensing the use of folklore to their own people, culminating in the law that is before the legislature right now. The articles that I have found have mainly dealt with musical issues, but they do raise the example of Kente cloth, which is a huge part of Ghanaian folk culture, but also belongs to the surrounding nations on the Gold Coast.

Here is a link to a paper written by John Collins, who sat on the original copyright board. He explains the background (and Paul Simon connection!) and controversy surrounding the proposed law.

Drive-Thru Chic

While not strictly "crafty" in the lace doily and bedazzler way, these Carrie Scott handbags are certainly crafty in the "I'm a smart design geek, suck on my toes" kind of way. Carrie Scott created this line of handbags out of pneumatic tubes that you're probably familiar with from the drive-through window at the bank. The handbags come in different models -- "Fresh", "Wet", "Ripe", "Blast", "Lucky", "Rebel", and "Fire".
GET YOURS HERE!

Taking Cellular to the Next Level

I guess I have to take BoingBoing's word for it, since I can't read Russian, but here is a link to a page of hand-carved wooden cell-phones from Russian primitivist artist Andrei Kozlov. He apparently hand-carves the phones, and includes functional details like clocks and displays, and also whimisical soviet-era details. Put these in your seven year plan. BoingBoing also provides a link to a picture of wooden cell phones from a market in Helsinki, Finland.
LINK

"Trash" Baskets

I just learned about a very crafty bit of craft from South Africa, Zulu telephone wire baskets! The baskets in this link are carried by Indigo Arts in Philadelphia, a craft gallery known for its assortment of traditional and unusual handmade items from around the world.

For centuries South Africa's Zulu people have been famous for the sturdy and beautiful baskets they weave from grasses and palm leaf. The weaving was so tight that the best ukhamba baskets were actually used to store beer! Today these baskets are still woven in the countryside, but the Zulus living in urban area have invented a new kind of basket, the imbenge basket woven entirely of recycled telephone wire. The baskets are as bright and colorful as the telephone wire, and very sturdy. They are also completely washable! In recent years people in craft cooperatives in the the neighboring nation of Zimbabwe have developed their own distinct style of telephone wire basket, which we are also offering here.

LINK

Goin' to the Chapeau of Love

On Saturday, my fair lady Claire and I attended the Atlanta Steeplechase. We were blessed with perfect weather, a bountiful picnic basket, and Divertisements like terrier and pig races. The racing was cool and all (Claire picked the winners in two of the three races we saw), but the main event had to be the famous Ladies Hat Contest. I would have to say that around 100 women competed, vying for top honors in the "best hat" and "most whimsical" categories. Far and away, my favorite hats were these tributes to "Desperate Housewives". Each hat was decorated with a picket fence, a character from the show, and various decorations central to that character's vices (I particularly loved Gabrielle's garden implements). I apologize for losing one of my close-up
photos, but you can see the other three HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Superheroes of Craft!

Every once in a while, an artist comes along that is definitively "Extreme Craft". Today, I was introduced to the wonders of Mark Newport, an Arizona artist who, like football player Rosie Grier, proves his masculinity through working in a craft idiom. His most recent body of work consists of Hand-Knit Costumes and Embroidered Comic Book Cover Samplers.

"Newport works in and around an arena which, no matter how hip, still must be considered under the particular jurisdiction of the adolescent male: comics and the comic-book hero. However, he subverts the obvious appeal of violent conflict between forces for good and evil by accenting the decorative aspect of comic work via embroidery…over select faces and details…and through descriptions of a kinder, gentler alternate hero…The artist's use of needle craft, typically considered well within the realm of "women's work," establishes a challenging relationship between the young man implied by these works, the voice of popular culture/media, and a father's voice."

This work seems very compassionate, and appears to be coming from a genuine place. I would venture to say that the craft aspect adds an element of vulnerability and humanity to the obsession shared by fans of superheroes and craft alike. Aside from the obvious humor evoked by the costumes and samplers, they have a devotional quality. As I write this, fans of the Backstreet Boys are lining up across the street from where I work for a comeback concert. My sister used to work for a company that opened (The horror!) fan mail for N-Sync and the Backstreet Boys. She told me about some of the handmade devotional objects that would come in, including a fantastic quilt that one woman made for her favorite Backstreet Boy. I can imagine Nick Carter snuggled up with that quilt dreaming sweet Paris Hilton dreams... but that's just me.
LINK via BoingBoing