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OH BOY!!!!! Tomorrow is the 43rd Annual Humboldt County Kinetic Grand Championship...the "triathlon of the art world". I'll be serving as an art judge again this year. The madness is building. CNN just posted a lovely slideshow and article about the Grand Championship on their wbsite.
Join me in Arcata for the pageantry and brake testing, which starts at 10:00 AM on Saturday. At noon, the whistle will sound and the racers will be off! The racers will descend DEAD MAN'S DROP later on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, you can watch the racers enter the water from Eureka's public marina, or you can hang out along the Eureka waterfront to see the racers pass by. On Monday afternoon, you can visit historic Ferndale to watch the racers gloriously limp across the finish line.
Stay tuned tomorrow for fresh photos of the kinetic vehicles. I'll be posting 'em on Flickr and Extreme Craft.
You can also watch the race LIVE or SEMI-LIVE on the Kinetic Grand Championship website HERE.
For the Glory!
I'm about to head off to my favorite event of the year...Maker Faire! Fortunately this year, I'll be combining Maker Faire with my love of my second favorite event, which is the Humboldt County Kinetic Grand Championship. I'll be delivering a short, sassy 20-minute lecture on the race on the center stage at 11:00 on Sunday.
As something of a nOOb to the kinetic sculpture world, I was smart enough to get help from some established kinetic masters. I couldn't have put this together without the help of Randall Frost, a veteran kinetic sculptor who has a treasure trove of images dating back to the earliest days of the race in the late '60s. In fact, the photo above dates from the early days, when the race wasn't held on Ferndale's main street. The city race made it easier for racers to build wackier machines that didn't have engineering requirements as specific as today's racer. This photo shows the "Farmer-Go-Round", which was an antique farm cart powered by three strapping farmers running on a merry-go-round.
I'm also totally indebted to Elliot Naess, who put together a "How to Build a Kinetic Sculpture" booklet that you can download from Kinetic Baltimore's website. Rather than being a strict "how-to", the booklet gives you some rough ideas for building your own kinetic sculpture--whether you're going to be lashing a couple of 10-speeds together or custom-engineering your version of the kinetic holy grail--a perfect transmission that will allow you to ace the course.
I'm also deeply honored (and maybe a little bit intimidated) to join a bevy of my crafty compadres at a "Crafting Your Online Presence" workshop put together by the inimitable Sister Diane. Check out the extraordinary lineup HERE. We'll be chatting about the things we did to get our work out there in the cluttered world of the interwebs. Truly...if I can do it, anybody can. The panels will be Saturday AND Sunday at noon in the CRAFT magazine area.
See you at Maker Faire!
Hey everybody! If you're going to be in San Francisco this weekend, drop by ArtMRKT. The show will be up from May 19-22. Ferrin will have roughly a dozen of my "Orientation" teapots that I made in China last summer on display. If you head over to the Ferrin Gallery Facebook page, you can even get COMP TICKETS! See you there!
I figure that since one of the last things I posted was about hats, that I should probably put this up on Extreme Craft. This is supposedly NOT PHOTOSHOP! Check out the awesome zipper and money chapeau that has been applied to this gentleman's head. The Louis Vuitton hair clipping is pretty amazing by itself. Put the two together, and MAGIC! Here's hoping Phillip Treacey learns a lesson and starts marketing these to the royal family.
LINK via BoingBoing
I usually bypass the "T" Magazine in the New York Times, even though there's usually something awesome lurking between the fashion shoots for unwearable clothing and overpriced furniture. Today, though, they had the good sense to put an image on the cover that is catnip for geeks. The cover article is about the Majorca house of Alexandre De Betak, who apparently makes his money by putting on big P.R. spectacles for fashion world folks.
I've always thought that big events like De Betak's shindig for the release of J-Lo's perfume that featured a fireworks display that spelled out her name were just wasteful spectacles... but if the money generated by them can go to build a Tatooine-esque "man cave" like this one, I'm all in! The whole house, which is constructed from mostly local eco-sensitive materials doesn't have a right angle in it. What it DOES have is a treasure trove of bootleg Star Wars carvings and pottery made by Majorcan craftsmen.
I can't stop thinking of the fluid Philip Guston meets Peter Voulkos lines and beautiful carving on that R2-D2 ashtray. Does anyone want to help set up an import-export business? I volunteer for the long, hard trip to Majorca to track down the craftsmen responsible. Seriously.
