Extreme Craft

Paintball by Numbers

As a newly minted paintball artist, I'm interested in my forefathers....my "permission givers" as it were.  Surprisingly, paintball is an underutilized method of applying paint to surfaces.  One group that paved the way for paintball artists is New York City art collective "The Amateurs".  The Amateurs' motto is "Art is too important to be left to professionals", and they proudly proclaim that they have no idea what they are doing.  Past events include painting with an air cannon that hurls containers of paint hundreds of feet, and their piece d' resistance, "Paintball by Numbers".  Paintball by Numbers is simple and direct--a huge paint-by-numbers landscape is painted on the side of a building, and crowds of people armed with paintball guns proceed to apply color to the image by shooting different colored paintballs at the wall.

The results of 10,000 paintballs?  Glorious and anarchic.  This time lapse video on YouTube shows the results, which literally drip with artistic expression.   Hats off to the Amateurs, who, Robin Hood like, liberate art from the hands of the elite and put it back where it belongs:  in the hands of paintball-loving patriots everywhere.

LINK

Roman Knows

While I'm dorking out about the Corning Museum of Art and Glass, I noticed that they are currently displaying a show that I saw last year at the Getty Villa in Malibu.  Entitled "Reflecting Modernity", the show focuses on modern work that is inspired by Roman Glass.  The Romans' approach to glasswork was every bit as evolved as their approach to debauchery.  In many cases, Roman techniques have been lost to time, and modern craftspeople have to put on their Sherlock Holmes hats to figure them out. 

I was stunned by the Roman "cage cups", which are glass cups and lamps that are so intricately carved that the exterior appears to be a delicate latticework.  That examples of these cups have survived since antiquity is amazing.  If you're going to be traveling through Central New York, make a detour to see this show.  If not, you can check out the Museum's Reflecting Antiquity mini-site.  As is their custom, the museum has posted many audio and video samples to give you more information. 

Art of Glass

I went to graduate school in upstate New York.  Aside from the (seemingly) nine month winters, there were a lot of perks.  We had a blueberry farm on a nearby mountain where we could pick blueberries for 99 cents a pound in the late summer, plus, the isolation in the winter made it a great place to focus on your work.  One thing I missed, though, was our proximity to the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.  The museum was fabulous, with tons of examples of Roman and Egyptian glass, crazy German drinking vessels, and mind-numbingly beautiful Bavarian crystal.

When I saw this video on BoingBoing today, it all came flooding back.  This video about the "Prince Rupert's Drop" phenomenon is a perfect mixture of art, science.... and SMASHING THINGS!  Did you know that if you dropped a piece of molten glass into a bucket of water, you would be unable to crush the thick part of the glass with pliers or a hammer?  Once you snap off the thin tail of the glass drop, though, the whole thing crumbles into dust.  There's a metaphor lurking not too far below that surface.

My hat is off once again to the museum for creating a lovely channel on YouTube for all things glass.  If you're feeling glassy, you can dig through the FIFTY-FOUR (!) how-to videos that the museum has posted.  Learn about everything from slumping and fusing to casting and sandblasting!  Fire!  Fire!

LINK via BoingBoing.

That Felt.....Uncomfortable.

By the way, the above video is somewhat NSFW, depending on how you feel about geriatric nookie rendered in glorious felt!

It's been a while since I posted anything I felt was truly....on the edge.  I just found out about Alaska-based artist Kay Petal, who has transformed needle felting into....well....something else.  Petal is driven to create felted characters that practically come to life.  She also brings her figures into the real world by creating short videos like the one above.  The old man dancing in his Superman Underoos is weird enough on his own, but when he dances to the song "Boogie" by John Hartford, the weird factor is exponentially increased.  You can check out Kay's YouTube video channel HERE and her website HERE.  I think the reason his character resonates so much is that we all know him all too well.

Monster Madness!

Yay!  The new issue of CRAFT just hit the newsstands, and it's the best issue yet!  I'm not just saying that because I wrote a profile of the ever brilliant Didi Dunphy...Craft just keeps topping itself.  This issue is based around the topic of "Play" and features Extreme Craft luminaries like Margarita Cabrera and my new favorite, Dario Escobar.  To celebrate the release of the new issue, Claire and I headed up to the Handmade Gallery in Van Nuys. 

Our hosts at the event were the irrepressible Jenny Ryan (of Felt Club fame) and Cathy of California.  We got to create our own felt monsters based on a project in the magazine, and Jenny even posted some photos to her FLICKR site.  I even won a door prize!  Cathy of California donated a great pin cushion kit (that I'm going to rock for my dear wife).  Other door prizes included treats from Sublime Stitching and a few box sets containing all four issues from the first year of CRAFT.  Get your CRAFT on!

A License to Print Munny!

Customized vinyl figures may be the new black, but not many can step to the level of excellence that black velvet artist Tony Shore achieves with his trompe l'oeil Elvis figurine.  First, the Munny:  Why is KidRobot so darn smart?  in addition to making great vinyl figures of their own (and figures for artists like Frank Kozik), they rouse the geek masses by encouraging good old fashioned tinkering, remixing and defacing.  Finer stores near you are all climbing over each other to sponsor KidRobot contests that encourage you to repaint a "Munny" figurine.  The current Easter Munny contest is being sponsored by Shoparooni in Cleveland.

Back to Tony Shore.  His chosen medium is....Black Velvet!  His paintings would make even the most jaded Tijuana black velvet painter abandon their profitable trade in Elvis and dogs playing poker and move to urban Baltimore, where Shore finds his muse.  Shore's paintings exploit the natural beauty of black velvet as a material.  Black Velvet is actually BLACKER than paper, paint or canvas ever can be.  Shore exploits this by choosing subjects illuminated by porchlights, buglights, lanterns and other unsexy light sources.  He captures the ambience of hanging out on a summer night on a porch or patio in a muggy place like Baltimore.  The paintings don't exactly avoid the kitsch territory of the traditional black velvet painting, but neither does he mine them for his ideas.  Instead, Tony Shore makes us take a second look at the possibilities inherent in black velvet....the promise that black velvet holds.

LINK