Blow
To promote their exhibition, “Exploring the Pleasures of Oral Sex,” the New York City Museum of Sex handed out dirty party favors imprinted with the exhibit name, museum address, and this expressive cartoon [above]. But perhaps the best visual is the one conveyed by copyranter of this comic…relief: “Yeah, cartoon man is smiling now, but wait until she pinches, stretches, ties off, and snaps his stem.”
And Gilding wonders the same, where is the cunnilingus balloon? Why has it always got to be about the public demonstration of girls blowing things. Why don’t guys get the same subjugation. Gilding totally wants to see random men with their mouths wrapped around balloons at her local museum exhibit, dammit!
Via: copyranter
Grotto the New Kitsch of a Hometown By the Sea?
Remember Gilding mentioning that she lives in the land of horrible beach kitsch. Not that glamorous sophisitcated rustic style of Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons, not the quaint and comfortably aged feel of some beachside Maine, New Hampshire, or Connecticut community. No, she lives in the epicenter of tacky beach kitsch hell. Think of every horrible design feature in any seaside hotel you’ve ever been in, every eye blistering color, every painted palm tree, sea shell and wicker framed piece of furniture that left you wretching and guess what, that’s a product of Gilding’s hometown’s design contribution. Even its sophisticated beach kitsch is hideous. Now don’t take this as an oath of ill thoughts of her own hometown, for as insane as it may be, Gilding is quite attached to the little place and reveres it for the comforts it provided her childhood and all the things that she sees it could become — provided that all its current county legislators were excommunicated to some other towns problem and set anew were people with progressive ideas — driven on something other than corporate capitalism — a sense of community, an ability to think fairly, objectively, and with heart, and speaking of heart….oh, well you get where she’s going with this. Its what we all want of our legislators.
But what does this post of her hometown’s idea of beach chic all lead up to. Why, Gilding’s discovery of a furniture style naughtily called “Grotto” and encompassing all the lines and curves of water, beach woods, plants, and grasses and the gifts of the Sea and her maiden jewels of shells. Ok, so you may be rolling your eyes at Gilding for only just now discovering this, but remember, for all her big words and haughty ideals, she is but a spring chicken in this world; still new to all its discoveries and not yet completely jaded, but able to still be awed and surprised every once in a while.
Boy, Gilding has been on quite a roll of gilding the lily of late hasn’t she. Oh well, you love her or else you woudn’t still be reading this…you are still reading this…aren’t you?
What first brought Gilding to the discovery of this Grotto design was this chair [above] by designer Michael Von Jakubowski, found on Moss Daily New. This particular chair is hand-carved of wood and silvered poliment.
According to Moss, there is no record of exactly when the first Grotto furniture was created, however, furniture with similar decorative elements were popular in the Renaissance period, and were designed for the artificial grottos of Royal palace gardens. These pieces of furniture had Mediterranean themed carved features: shells shaping the chair seats and backs or table surfaces, dolphin shaped legs, sea horses, algae, coral, sea snakes all made their presence in the form. Even mythical creatures such as winged horses and small dragons appeared. Usually the wood would be stained a rich walnut color or would be covered with a poliment silvering, with gold and brown painted highlights.
Records of Grotto furniture production in Venice do exist starting from 1890, until production ceased in 1930, and many of those pieces can be found in museums and private collections as covetous Venetian masterpieces.
Now see, that’s the kind of beach kitsch Gilding’s home town could sport — since ridding itself of that would simply be unthinkable for this town for fear of losing any personal cultural identity that it may be able to claim, if on that alone. It could be argued as tacky, but there is something so regal in its design and the simulated lines of things natural and organic solidifying the feel of always being by the ocean that is so important to inhabitants and visitors of this land of sugar beach sand and gently crashing waves.
And just for fun, here’s some more Grotto furniture that Gilding found in her search:
Images [above] from Newel.
Classic Shapes in Fashionista Lines
Think of that favorite soft wool or cotton sweater of yours that just screams wear me, cuddle me, take out for unabashed gluttonous attention of the fashionista ilk. And now imagine all that fashionable gorgenousness under your ass. What!? It’s only logical that at some point we are to pamper our derriere the same way we do our bust. It is but our best friend in times of lazing about and our worst enemy when those times of indulgent laziness have stacked onto — in abundant proportions — those things called legs.
Desinger Fredrik Färg has taken on with his new furniture pieces the social responsibility of going green with that of fashion inspired design and created reupholstered chairs that are beautifully reminiscint of their old forms and now wear a form that is oddly familiar in many of the fashion industries favorite coat and sweater designs of late.
Removing the backrest of thrift store found chairs, Färg replaces it with a new textile dress-like structure made of moldable, 100% recyclable, polyester felt. The pieces are a refletion of the beauty and timeless lines and shapes of both fashion and furniture design.
Via re-nest
Stamp Me, Brand Me, Doggy Bag Me
Ahahahahaa…are you both annoyed and at the same time insanely and narcissistically jealous at Paris Hilton’s penchant for creating ridiculous and irksome fads; such as carrying dog’s in her purse. Ok, so that was a habit of socialite alite for some time, but it serves notice that big designers really began making whole seasonal lines of bags dedicated to this one purpose around the same time that Paris decided she couldn’t live without her muts. Frankly the only star that should be allowed to carry their dog out in public in such annoying fashion is Pink — and that’s because she named her dog Fucker and that’s just friggin hilarious! Had children not been present during Hamtardo’s naming ceremony, she may very well have suffered the same fate.
Then comes artist Meryl Smith’s interpretation of the doggy bag. A couple of days ago, Mr. Gilding sent Gilding a pic of this but there was no information attached — which meant, as with most random stuff he sends her, she has to do a bit of research…and on that note, she’s been sitting on it. So in a spark of bored inspiration this morning she went about searching for this Louis Vuitton Doggy Bag, which took longer than it should, but one supposes that would be because she kept looking for a pig and kept coming up with Wim Delvoye’s Louis Vuitton tatted up pigs. Don’t ask Gilding why she thought it was a pig — it so obviously doesn’t look like a pig — but in her head it was a pig, and we all know what sick and warped dark places lurk in dark recesses of her mind, so don’t go there.
Anyhoo, entitled “Excess Baggage”, Smith’s bag was the outcome of her creative spontaneity when she was asked by Honey Space in New York to create a sculpture for an exhibition whose dimensions were suited to hold international carry-on luggage. The piece is a hilarious social statement of our propensity for fadalistic label-whoring. Several blogs have bashed the artist for this creation, calling it everything from over-indulgent to childish, to “done before”, but perhaps that’s a bit of the message. Its hard to have an “original thought” in this world, and evry artist faces this. With advances in technology and the expansion of the world wide web, the once vast space of the the Earth is now covered by a few miliseconds of high speed internet. But perhaps its a collective thought; a prevailing message that in your creative mind’s eye is a new piece, but on a universal level shares a collective thought, reason, or concern that to some extent many share. Maybe if its been done before, that’s because we didn’t get it the first time, and each artist is simply seeking their way of getting our attention. Its not unfathomable to think that some just don’t get the message while other still never see it.
And with that said, Gilding wants one…ok, maybe two. I have a great pair of taupe flats that a nice buttery caramel color would go great with.
Images via Fashionphile
Oh, Bestill a Girl’s Baroque and Pop Graphic Loving Heart!
Gilding is so coveting the furniture collections of Australian designer Noel Duigan. Their elegant old world lines combined with pop graphic patterns and vibrant colors present themselves as a full circle movement of style and sophisitcation spanning the global generations of Baroque and Modern. Gilding would kill and momma and her baby of some sordid unwanted species to have even just one of these chairs in her home…too drastic? Nah, you won’t think so once you see Duigan’s portfolio.
Via: Apartment Therapy
Stranglehold on Water Conservation
Designer Elisabeth Buecher’s My Shower Curtain is a Green Warrior [above] uses innovative materials and inflatable technology to slowly trap you while you shower, leaving you only a few showering moments to take care of bathing necessities before it comes closing in around you. Buecher explains:
My approach to design can sometimes appear shockingly radical but I have got different reasons to legitimise that. An alarm clock is not what we can call a pleasurable object. It is often even painful to be awoken by it. However it is a necessary object, which regulates our lives and the society. Thats what I call the design for pain and for our own good. Some of my designs seem to constrain people, acting like an alarm clock, awaking people to the consciousness of their behaviour and giving them limits. People often need an external signal to behave more. In France the government added thousands of new radars on the roads to fight excessive speed. And it worked: there are far less people killed on the roads of France today. I call it design of threat and punishment and I use it as an educational tool.
Hmmm….strangled to death or poked to death in the name of water conservation…or, you could just use an alarm clock to tell you when to get the hell out. But one supposes the lack of impending death wouldn’t be nearly as fun, then would it.
Via: MOCOLOCO
Stripper Cricket in Andrea’s Angsty High School Walls
This is brilliant. Gilding hates to admit that she’s old enough that her own highschool reunion has just past — she just won’t tell you which one it was though. But as you Lilies have probably already perceived, Gilding didn’t go. Truthfully, there was no point in going. Thanks to the dismal size of Gilding’s own home town, she’s never more than one public place away from running into one of her old classmates, and (as what proved true with the umpteen posted pictures on the interent of that night) the reunion would have been no different than any other Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday Saturday night — and/or Sunday afternoon — of keg standing and overall drunken debauchery for her classmates of yore. Yes, Tuesday is the day of rest for these perpetual Spring Breakers of our Redneck Riviera. Factor in online communities like Myspace and Facebook and there’s no such thing as hiding anymore.
But as one High school reunioner dreaded her upcoming evening of recalled teenage torture, she decided to one-up the snots that humiliated her all while proving that high school wasn’t a stage for cliche fakeness that was at once replaced with sudden maturity of the adult world upon the day of graduating its cinder block halls. No…it is merely a breeding ground meant for perfecting what will become a lifetime of snobby fakes and their world of conformed one-upping.
In this six-minute short, “I Remember Andrea,” once angsty nerd now angsty adult nerd emphasizes the snobbishness of her high school. Beginning with a trip through the parking lot full of BMW’s, Benzes, and Hummers, the real action begins with Andrea’s hired stripper doppelganger — tatted up and fishnet wearing — does what she does best while playing Andrea…with a bit of a backstory for the known shy girl of her high school classmates, now this vision of Suicide Girl after a trip down amnesia lane and some plastic surgery.
The hilarity of this video isn’t just how accurate it shows the snobbishness that perpetuates after high school, but its how it comes about as the doppelganger Andrea plays quick on her feet, pretending to know these classmates of the real Andrea while egging on their sad pathetic lives of conformity within the veneer of their cliched roles defined in high school. Enjoy.
Bureaucracy kills
“In nature’s death sentence, execution occurs while waiting for a decision. Bureaucracy kills nature. Demand approval for preservation laws of the rain forest.”
from the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation: Stamps campaign
Via: Ads of the World
Feeding the Receissionary Soul with Free Art
Jen Wallace, of Indie Fixx blog, has created this virtual artist co-op, Feed Your Soul, designed to spread the art lovin’ with free art. Each month, artists are invited to participate and contribute a print which will be made available on the Free Art Project website for free download. The project’s mission is to feed the soul of the masses with art in these recessionary times and help artists promote their work.
Via: Creature Comforts
As it is, or as we see it…
i.anton has Gilding feeling spring and thinking of Europe…and wallpaper. God, Gilding would love to have some of these photographs blown up as large panels of wallpaper to cover her taupe colored apartment walls.
Racebending
So Mr. Gilding is particularly up in arms about this newest cinema development, and even Gilding has to agree that his outrage isn’t the ramblings of a crazed artist, but is in fact justified.
M Night Shyamalan has taken up filming the wildly popular animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, originally a Nickelodeon show. The show, of which Shyamalan’s film is based, featured Asian characters in a fantasy setting inspired by and following some cultural aspects of a variety of Asian cultures. The characters fight with East Asian martial arts style, have Asian features, dress in clothing from Asian cultures, and write with Chinese characters. In short, it was an inspiring cartoon for many Asian American children as it broke from the predominantly white American media. The Gilded Duo’s own niece and nephews found a particular kinship with the animated series being that the characters looked like them and held to many of the Asian traditions that they themselves grow up in, even living in America.
But on December 9th, 2008 the lead roles were cast for Shyamalan’s upcoming film The Last Airbender and all of them were cast as white actors. That started a barrage of protests, from the creation of websites like RACEBENDING.COM to outraged blog posts like the one written by Margaret Cho.
And to add insult to injury, here’s some comparison pics for you:
Above, the characters from the animated series: Katara and Sokka, siblings from the peaceful and oppressed Water Tribe; and Zuko, prince of the tyrannical and genocidal Fire Fire Nation.
Above, the most recent casting form the film: Nicola Peltz as Katara, Jackson Rathbone as Sokka, and Dev Patel as Zuko (though originally the role of Zuko was cast as Jesse McCartney, a blond haired, blue-eyed pop singer).
Gilding has to agree with the ensuing protests. Movie houses have been notoriously spoken of in Asian communities for their inaccuracy in casting Asian specific roles with any ole Asian culture — such as casting Korean of Thai extras to play the parts of Vietnamese actors in Vietnam War era films — you know, because hiring locals of the film’s location is so much easier than actually hiring Vietnamese people, showing no understanding of the cultural relativeness that they are all different peoples and don’t look as much alike as they think they do. While this is most certainly a slight, casting white for Asian is a serious offense.
Efforts to stop or delay the film’s production until casting is changed to accurately reflect the culturally relevant necessity of casting Asians for Asian roles is underway. Petitions are circulating; even one available at RACEBENDING.COM. Paramount, and other movie houses, need to understand that perpetuating stereotypes and denying the cultures of the world are not acceptable. The message being sent is that being Asian isn’t OK, it’s somehow less. That’s not the message Gilding wants sent to her niece and nephews.
There are some amazing responses by Asian Americans on Margaret Cho’s blog that Gilding encourages reading.
About Russian Women
A translated source for these images can be found here on English Russia. The original source of the collection is from plasmastik on LiveJournal.
This images is one of the most powerful of photos in a collection from plasmastik. The collection features different Russian women. All from different social strata, ages, and occupations. All having but one thing in common, they are all women that are on the verge of something else, whether it be a strong emotion or of a capitulating moment in their life.
Gilding is feeling particularly responsive to this image, however. The stark contrast between the two women reflectively photographed is both drawing and at the same fights your eyes for the center of attention. Each woman’s face tells a story and the eye vies to see them as one even as it tries valiantly to separate them and see them as the individual women they are. The contrast in their ages is both dark and humbling, and the black and white gradient drives home this otherwise blatant knowledge of mortality that women so desperately rebel against.
Out of Russia
Photographer Valeri Kochergin has traversed the harsh whorl of Kola Peninsula to photograph [above and below] its ice and snow covered terrain. Technically speaking, the photographs aren’t that spectacular, but the content within them is pretty eye goggling.
See the rest of the series of photos here from English Russia
The Kola Peninsula is flanked on the west end with two mountain ranges: the Khibiny Mountains and the Lovozero Tundra. The whole of the peninsula is covered with many fast-moving rivers with rapids, as well as a few major rivers, all of which are important habitats for the Atlantic Salmon. Because the last ice age removed the top sediment layer of the soil, the surface of the peninsula is extremely rich in various ores and minerals.
During the Soviet period, the peninsula’s main port, Murmansk, was a significant submarine production center and remains home to the Russian Northern fleet. But Kola Peninsula as a whole has suffered major ecological damage, mostly as a result from the military — mostly naval — production, as well as from industrial mining of apatite. Today, about 250 nuclear reactors produced by the Soviet military, remain on the peninsula. Though no longer in use, they still generate radiation and leak radioactive waste.
Looking at these pictures, it hard to imagine anyone being able to live in an environment like this. Still, the Sami peoples now heard reindeer across much of the region, and recreational fisheries have developed with remote lodges and camps hosting sport-fisherman throughout the summer months. on Kola Cape, its flanking Hibini mountains have given the region a travel twist offering ski lifts and trails around now abandoned Soviet structures.
And what would a blogging trip into Russia be if we didn’t have at least a small snippet on some bit of Russian architecture. Russia’s churches are unique in that there really aren’t any of the Goth persuasion, unlike their popular brethren in much of Europe. Preferring to stay faithful to their architectural design, many of the Russian Orthodox churches carry elements of Eastern churches from Bysantium — or modern day Turkey — from where the church’s orthodoxy originated.
However, it was on occassion that Russian architects combined elements together with their traditional architecture that were reminiscent of Europes famous gothic cathedrals, resulting in structures, such as the one, above that have so been labeled Pseudo-goth churches. How pretty. (Source)
And this surreal image just had to be posted. According to English Russia, this photo was one of the most famous shots taken by Russian photographers during Worl War II. In the background are the ruins of Stalingrad — the city where most of the heavy city battles took place. It is here that some historians say that the Nazi invasion of Russia broke down.
The monument itself is a bit odd, depicting Russian children dancing around a crocodile. You can see the traces of bullets on the statues, leaving their bodies dappled with holes. And even in black and white, its amazing to be able to see the flames of the burning building in the background.
After the war the momument was rebuilt even before the surrounding buildings. And while Russia has some bizarre statues around and about, Gilding is interested to know what exactly was the meaning behind the composition of this statue. Kids playing Gilding gets. Kids playing around a crocodile, not so much?
Protein Rich Russian Ads
What’s a little female subjugation in advertising when it’s promoting protien rich milk. Seriously! Nothing like cum inspired milk ads to have you saying, “Milk. It does the body good.” Larger version of the images can be seen here. Wonder if it would be inappropriate to frame copies of these to hang up as a decorative backsplash in the kitchen. Hmmmm…
It’s Not a Tumor
Earlier last week, Russian media reported on medical wierdness as a man from the Russian city Izhevsk went to doctors for a medical consultation after experiencing severe pain in his chest. X-rays had doctors believing that the patient had a tumor in his lungs, prompting them to perform surgery. What the tumor revealed when opened was so strange it left the doctor so befuddled he called in his assistant to confirm what his eyes were seeing. “There was a fir tree,” the doctor told russian journalists, “but very little, it was just a few centimeters (about one inch) tall growing through his lungs.”
The tree was removed and sent to labs for tests to determine how the fir could have grown there. (Source)
