Extreme Craft

All Atwitter!

So I recently went against all I had previously decided was holy and signed up for a TWITTER account.  One of the main reasons was a New York Times Magazine article that claimed I would cull deep, subliminal information about the lives of my twittering friends.  The other reason was J.S. van Buskirk, an Atlanta poet, writer and recovering lawyer.  She hopped on the Twitter train early, and gave me a nudge to do the same.  I've got to say...I've enjoyed Twittering (wait...should that bee "tweeting"), even though I'm doubtful that the world is really that interested in my posts, which usually revolve around what food I'm cooking or eating (it's vegetables in puff pastry today, by the way).

J.S. instantly grasped the artistic potential that Twitter's limits gave her, and she started tweeting teeny tiny bedtime stories to Ze Frank's @bedtime project.  The results are breathtaking--tiny little 200 character jewels of bedtime pathos and profound inanity that van Buskirk has compiled into a new book, Tiny Bedtime Stories:

A young man is only slightly disappointed upon meeting his childhood hero.  The hero is pleased to find out he still "has it".

J.S. has always had the ability to boil concepts down to their gelatinous essences, and this book is a perfect vehicle for her talents.

You should put Pandora's Skull, which is J.S. van Buskirk's blog, on your daily reading list.  It's always full of thoughtful diversions.  Also, check out "Just Got no Hustle", her first collection of poetry.  van Buskirk puts extreme craftsmanship into every line of her writing, and I hear that she's working on a huge multimedia collaboration that is due next year.  You'll have to get a copy of Tiny Bedtime Stories to tide you over.

LINK

Squirrelly Artists

Halloween is long gone, but I can't stop posting Halloween things this year.  Go figure.  One of my major artistic interests in life is collaboration with others.  On Extreme Craft, I've written about drawing trees, printmaking cars and paintball paint-by-numbers, but I've never covered art made by squirrels.

Until now.  Last year, one of the bloggers behind the excellent Pygmalion in a Blanket noticed that squirrels crave pumpkin flesh like Dick Cheney craves mortal souls.  This year, he channeled all of that squirrel energy into a collaborative pumpkin project.  He started with a $4.99 Safeway pumpkin, which he carved into a basic shape, then left it outside along with some breadcrumbs to tempt furry artists.

He awoke the next morning to find a couple of hardworking squirrels gnawing away at his pumpkin.  I've got to say, the final results border on genius.  Somebody hire these squirrels to do the character design for the next Pixar movie!  Happy belated Halloween, everyone!

LINK via Neatorama

The Hot Dog of Dorian Gray

Superdawg
Originally uploaded by vzonabaxter

I'm currently kicking back and working on some lesson plans to the relaxing strains of a hot dog documentary on the Travel Channel. I sat bolt upright and put down what I was doing when they started talking about , a Chicago hot dog legend. The roof is decorated these sassy hot dog portraits of the owners. That's some banana hammock on the husband! Suck on that, Weiner's Circle!

This Dinner Rocks!

Check out this amazing dinner table covered with food entirely made from rocks, gems and minerals!  We spotted it this weekend at the annual Eureka Gem Show at the Redwood Acres fairground.  I couldn't believe the show had something better than fossilized dinosaur poop!

Check out the awesome pancake breakfast!  Watch out for that butter!  The eggs are also looking a little bit overcooked.

Mmmmm.  Steak.

Pork chop, anyone?  They cheated on the parsley, by the way.

One Sketchy Halloween Costume

I was obsessed with my Etch-A-Sketch as a kid.  I was OCD enough that I enjoyed slowly blacking out the screen to see the inner workings rather than letting my inner-Picasso shine through (is anyone surprised?).  Witness one of the most amazing Halloween costumes I've ever seen--a WORKING Etch-a-Sketch costume by Instructables user mazinbenny.  I'll repeat that....It's a WORKING costume.  Instead of enclosing his body in a big box of static-clingy death-powder, he's using a dry erase marker.  If you had the knob-twiddling skills, you could write "Thug Life" on his tummy in Olde English script!

LINK via Gizmodo

Claire Choice!

Holy crap!  After two or three years of making plans and taking tentative stabs at making a website for Claire, she took the bull by the horns and made her own website last week.  I'm incredibly proud of her--now the world can finally get their bellyfull of glitter at Clairejoyce.com.  The above piece, "A Monologue Concerning Fashion and Place" consists of 20 individual wood panels and measures nearly seven feet on each side.

Each of Claire's glitter paintings are made with painstaking detail out of nothing more than glitter and glue on a wood panel.  It takes her at least two months two complete each piece, slowly dabbing glue onto the panel with a tiny brush and sprinkling the glitter on top.  Enjoy Claire's new web presence, but nothing compares to standing in front of the real thing.  For those of you in the Los Angeles area, you'll be able to see one of her pieces in January at the "Raised in Craftivity" exhibition curated by Maria Elena Buszek at the Wignall museum at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga.

Her website also has examples of her mad skills at sewing, sketchbooking, installationing and drawing.  Go there now!

LINK

Pottery's Gay!

I've known about the song "Pottery's Gay" (by a band whose name I won't print here) since grad school.  I actually know quite a few gay potters, and I've always given me a subversive thrill that the band don't even know how close they are to being right.  Ceramic artists like Howard Kottler, Mark Burns, Matt Nolen, Richard Milette, Paul Mathieu, Leopold Foulem and countless others delight in smashing heteronormative stereotypes like veritable bulls in a china shop.

If you google "Queer Ceramics", though, one name quickly bubbles to the surface:  Eric Scollon.  Scollon, who recently got his MFA in ceramics (plus an MA in visual culture) from the California College for the Arts, is a relative newcomer whose "take no prisoners" approach to ceramics is translating to success in the broader art world.  Scollon isn't just interested in making pretty things--he's fundamentally interested in how objects function in the world.  He creates sexually charged porcelain objects that he releases into the world like weather balloons to measure human foibles and proclivities.

Function is an interesting concept...anyone who has attended a craft fair (or manned a booth) knows that function is different for different people.  One of the advantages of using handmade objects in your daily life is the opportunity to mesh with idiosyncratic functional elements on a daily basis.  Scollon's approach to function borders on genius....he creates cockrings, buttplugs and other erotically charged objects (plus the occasional drinking vessel or enigmatic bit of tableware) then sometimes gives them away in exchange for documentation of their use.  For the recent "Bay Area Now" show at the Yerba Buena Center, Scollon gave away dozens of objects, then created a social networking site for the recipients of the objects to share their use with the maker.  He got back some racy pictures of some of his objects, plus others, like the fetching cockring bacelet above, in addition several earplug organizers, a toothpick holder, an urban treasure hunt and a tortoise companion were submitted.

Face it....galleries are boring.  There's no better way to suck the fun out of an object than to slap it in a frame or on a pedestal and showcase it in an antiseptic white room.  For a 2007 show at the Eagle Tavern in San Francisco entitled "Walls of Glory", Scollon actually installed porcelain sculptures into the urinals in the men's room.  There is a great photo of the above figurine, entitled "Piss Tub" in use (or rather after use.  Delight, revulsion, pleasure and function are all wrapped up in one tangled ball. 

Scollon speaks the languages of form, history and function fluently.  This allows him to fold in additional layers as he sees fit.  If you'd like to own your own Scollon, you're in luck!  The Look boutique has several beautiful blue and white porcelain objects for you to use for their intended purpose, or even your own repurposed purpose. 

LINK thanks Lyndsy!

I Voted Today!

This gigantic rainbow was waiting for me as I finished voting this morning.

TV Party

OMG! I've been looking for a digital clip of this video since I first saw it on an old VHS tape from Bjork's old band, the Sugarcubes.  This isn't strictly Extreme Craft.....it's more "philosophy of technology", but I think we could all benefit from Bjork's insights about the "nature" of television.  If she was the Finance Minister of Iceland, I'll bet they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now.

LINK via Gizmodo

Doo Right!

I'm as body positive as the next guy.  I'll fight for your right to climb, half-naked onto a statue of William McKinley in the Arcata plaza to hump it into submission on Halloween night (as you might have guessed, this is something I witnessed firsthand).  I also recognize the right of people around you to be taken aback by affronts to their sensibility.  Most of us have a dog or cat in our lives who delights in parading their (prominent and sometimes unsightly) backsides through the streets of town.  Sure--some of our brothers and sisters can't help it that their tails stick straight up.

Into the breach steps Meg Roberts, an ingenious Virginia Commonwealth student who decided that enough was enough.  Her roommate's dog, Pearl had just such an unsightly backside, so rather than resort to inhumane measures like a cork or duct tape, she lovingly fashioned a butthole cover out of enameled copper.  Now Pearl has a lovely accessory that will have the other puppies sitting up to take notice.  By the way--the butthole cover is hinged so that gravity can help nature take its course.

That's what I call problem solving!