Little Hugs Left Behind
Talk about a cry-fest. Even Gilding cried like a ninny when she read this one.
Diagnosed with brain cancer, 6-year old Elena Desserich was given 135 days to live–she lived 255 (2007). After her passing, Elena’s parents began finding hundreds of notes hidden in any nook and cranny throughout their home, all of them from their daughter. What must have been an exhaustive feat during her illness, Elena created these little love notes, a few of which are shown here:
…these notes were found tucked in backpacks, dresser drawers, between bookshelves and CD cases.
Elena’s parents have had these notes published in a book entitled Notes Left Behind to fund the non-profit organization The Cure Starts Now, dedicated to fighting pediatric brain cancer. Visit Notes Left Behind for the full story and details on where you can purchase the book.
Now if you’ll escuse this deviant; she has to go take care of this blasted heart that has suddenly grown two sizes too big. No body likes a nice Gilding.
Via: neatorama
Structural Sapling
Gilding once told her Dad, she didn’t want a tree house unless it was made out of a tree. Guess what, she never got a tree house. But there is just something so magical about literally being inside of a tree.
These installations by artist Patrick Dougherty bring all those whimsical dreams back.
Spinoffs, Decordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusettes, 1990. Ph: George Vasquez.
Crossing Over, American Craft Museum, New York, New York, 1996. Ph: Dennis Cowley.
Trailheads, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, 2005.
Ph: Courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Around the Corner, University of Southern Indiana, New Harmony Gallery, New Harmony, IN, 2003. Ph: Doyle Dean.
Call of the Wild, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA, 2002. Ph: Duncan Price.
The Summer Palace, Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2009. Ph: Rob Cardillo.
With his skills in carpentry and a love of nature, Dougherty began studying primitive techniques of building. From there he began to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. His first work, MapleBodyWrap, built in 1982, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artist’s Exhibition. By the following year, he had his first one person show. Since then he has build over 150 works throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. The above works are just a sampling — Gilding’s favorites, so to speak. Trust when she says, it was hard to narrow it down to these. More of his works can be seen on Patrick Dougherty’s site.
Axis Mundi Unveils Design for New MoMA
This Jenga puzzle of a building is the proposed design of John Beckmann and his firm, Axis Mundi, for the much-discussed 53 W. 53rd site for the New York City’s Museum of Modern Art planned expansion. The building’s design is an homage to the works of art that will be housed in the new building, its concept a way of outward expression as well as a method for organizing the tall building as a sort of “Vertical Neighborhood.” As inhabitat explains Vertical Neighborhoods, imagine taking a row of several city blocks, rip them off their foundation, turn them on their sides, stack, and voila.
Unlike the traditional school of thought of a stand alone museum, Axis Mundi’s MoMA Vertical Neighborhood mixes and mingles museum space, offices, brownstones, apartment buildings, hotels, restaurants, shops, green spaces, and clubs. In essence a person could live on one floor, which just happens sit above a gallery of priceless works of art, and in the morning, walk the open air corridors and vista bridges to another floor or few to their office, and that even make their way to, say, the third floor to buy groceries to take home — all without ever having to leave the building.
But unlike similar designs — designs such as this are popular in Japan and exist in Manhattan — and their otherwise conventionally industrial, slick design meant to reflect uniformity and cohesion, Axis Mundi’s design reflects the cultural diversity of the city and its inhabitants.
Because of the jenga block-like construction, calld “Smart Blocks,” a myriad of configurations are possible. Meaning single units can exist next to duplexes while holding up triplexes. The units can shift in and out. And each block can be constructed with its own unique surface texture — think floor to ceiling windows spanning three floors in one, next to a single floor unit in wood slatting, underneath a duplex with a concrete veneer, parallel to a living vertical garden.
Keep in mind, this is just one of the designs being considered for the MoMA expansion. Architect Jean Nouvel has also created a design, of which can be seen here as well. [Via inhabitat]
Lights Interrupted
Gilding has a fascination for bird cages, stemming from God knows where, but she can’t ‘help but to adore the ornate little things. The more ornate and organic and homey the better. Recently she bought a handful of these wooden birdcages that were rather pretty with their Danish inspired design and peekaboo cutouts and it still takes some very hard earned restraint to keep herself from putting holes in the walls of her rentals to mount them on the wall over the couch as she envisions every time she looks at them. It does mollify her some that they currently sit atop matching painted candle pillars that just a little touch of sophistication and whimsy.
But this installation just may inspire some gilded copying. The outdoor installation of bird cages caught on the lines of fishing rods leaning over the rails of the city’s main bridge, belongs to Madrid’s Luzinterruptus as part of a street festival in Maubeuge, in the North of France.
By the way, that’s not birds caught in the cages. Its light. Its light caught in gilded bird cages reeled up on the lines of fishing rods perched against a bridge — can it get more whimsical and magical than that! [Via ArtMoCo]
Link: luzinterruptus
Look at all the little people!
Ummm….talk about living for your art. This is seriously insane, but then again, memorable…and punchy…and…just and…
So two brothers in Brazil are living on the outside of a building in Rio de Janeiro’s Old Center. Since May, 27-year old Tiago Primo and his 20-year old brother Gabriel, have been sleeping, eating, and working in their art installation on the side of a building that has them suspended 33 feet up in the air for 12 hours out of every day. They plan to continue this display on August.
And other than pointing out the specifics of the installation (that it features a bed, a hammock, a cabinet, a sofa, and a table) and that the colors that essentially break the “room” up into its designated parts, no one’s really written on what the hell the installation is supposed to convey.
Oh well, its pretty lunatic in process so its probably a pretty lunatic message as well. Just goes to show, perhaps some things are just meant to be gawked at and that’s about as deep as it goes.
Now watch, someone will read this and make Gilding look like a jackass but illuminating us on the deep and insightful meaning behind the installation ;p
[Via Cakehead Loves Evil; images from Liekcool]
Like Mixing Tea for Coffee
Created by artist Tsang Cheung Shing of Hong Kong, the sculpture, named Yuanyang II, was created for a pottery exhibition of “YingYeung” — a popular local drink mixture of coffee and tea. This piece is now part of the collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and is currently on display at the Central Concourse of Hong Kong International Airport. Yuanyang II is sculpted in a distinctive form of two faces locked in an indulgent kiss; their heads supporting the upturned elegant mugs which have allowed them to escape. The concept of the piece follows the theme of the popular drink, “Yuanyang”, its mixing of coffee and tea a metaphorical representation of love and marriage. [Via moillusions]
Gustaf Tenggren’s Grimm’s Fairy Tales
It’s interesting how some of the illustrations can be so hit and miss for Gilding, yet they are produced by the same artist. These illustrations by Gustaf Tenggren come from an extremely rare 1923 edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
These, of course, are Gilding’s favorites, but a whole library of these illustrations as well as several other libraries of Tenggren’s illustrations from other books can be seen here on ASIFA Hollywood. [Via Ectoplasmosis]
Stark and Emotive, if a little strange
Artist Christopher Sickel uses puppets to create stark and emotive, if a little strange, 3D illustrations which have appeared in numerous magazines, books, newspapers, and advertisements.
The desire to illustrate was what he pursued in college, but even as a child, Sickle ruminates in an interview with Don’t Panic, he enjoyed taking things apart from around his household and making toys from them. His ineterest in puppets grew after college and it was then that he developed a way to combine both his loves of illustration and puppet building.
Even if stark, there is a budding innocence about the 3D illustrations that Sickel creates, a demur restraint that’s found in the details and a world that is ultimately created in the end product that transports and enfolds.
Charles Dickens. Cover for READ Magazine.
Troll Bridge. A spread for Deliver Magazine
Henry. The antique actor from the cast of The Fantasticks, a puppet performance of the long running musical.
[Via Ectoplasmosis]
Revisiting an Infatuation with Gustave Doré
Gilding is feeling the love for Gustave Doré’s illustrations. Always a favorite, its nice to visit the classics — their attention to detail and divine quality, the story telling their illustrations contain that is fairly unique to the period. Doré’s illustrations are a completed story; a tale that tells even if words weren’t present.
Having his first illustration published at the age of fifteen, a 19th century illustrator, Doré illustrated over 200 books, some with more than 400 plates, but he is primarily known for his illustrations to The Divin Comedy, particularly The Inerno, Don Quixote, and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven.
Red Riding Hood 2, illustrations to Perrault’s Fairy Tales and Fables de la Fontaine and others.
The Grasshopper and the Ant, illustration to Perrault’s Fairy Tales and Fables de la Fontaine and others.
Red as a Rose is the Bride, illustrations to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.
A whole gallery of Doré ’s illustrations can be found here at Art Passions.
A Monstrously Gilded Beetle
Gilding has been in a bit of a nostaligic mood, having recently gone through some stored away photoboxes of her grandmother’s filled to the brim with photos, lost away in her mother’s storage room. Sadly, Gilding’s mother had to throw away hundreds of her grandmother’s pictures after they were water damaged in one of Florida’s regular summer storms (don’t ask; the reason behind how they got to that predicament still has Gilding a bit pissed). So Gilding rescued the photoboxes and made a weekend of scanning the photos into a digital format. But that was just the beginning. Gilding went scan happy again last night, this time going through her own — well stored — photoboxes; intrigued, delighted, and sometimes surprised to find out what photos she had tucked away.
And then she came across this picture:
It is a picture of Gilding’s Grandmother washing her powder blue Volkswagen Beetle. Having bought it in 1970 or so, Gilding’s grandmother kept this car till around 1985 or so when she bought her first ever luxury car — the one she promised herself she would get if she ever had enough money…it was a Thunderbird. Laugh now — and probably later — but Gilding’s grandmother had an infatuation with the Thunderbird since its first construction when she was a mere teenager. The Beetle was gone but not forgotten.
Truthfully, the photo probably interests no one but Gilding, but this will, and Gilding found it interesting that this happened to be the first thing she stumbled upon this afternoon after having just found this picture. This afternoon Gilding stumbled upon this:
The “Monstrous Car” by artist Rich Page. Not much to tell on this except that he didn’t have a sketchpad that night so he decided to custom outfit this ride instead. [Rich Page on [U me]
Digital Landscapes
This is totally trippy and exactly what Gilding wants the rooms in her home to look like when she grows up to be an eccentric artist, complete with one brooding daughter who loathes her mother in that love-hate-mostly love…hate- sort of way and commits acts of sexual debauchery at a young and shameful age in groups larger than the whole of her parents friend base, and a son that wears black, sleeps in a cave of a room, quotes philosophers with names too long to be pronounced and ideas too large to be comprehended in anything more than a debased, primal, animalistic understanding but loves his parents with that they-gave-me-birth-and-are-kinda-cute sorta way. Yeah, Gilding has nuclear family dreams in the most colorful of ways.
These installations of gilded home dreams come from Toronto artist, Alex McLeod. McLeod’s digital worlds of large balloon-like clouds and uninhbited landscapes in 3D renderings combines slick and glossy bulbous forms that can look like voluminous smoke stacks or creamy cumulus nimbus clouds, like barren trees stripped of life save their candy coated color or thick and woody and supporting some other equally poppy and graphic woodland animal. There’s even reedy grass stalks. Overall, they inspire dreams of a childrens world with a hint of something ominous seething below the hard candy cover.
The rest of Alexander McLeod’s Digital Landscape installation can be seen here, alxclub.com. [Via Art MOCO]
Swallowing Winter
Diggin this illustration, entitled “Flower Invasion,” by artist Kiersten Essenpreis — not so much the other half of the illustration [shown below] and not so much the other illustrations in the series wither. But really diggin this one — part.
The illustration is quirky — bold and melancholy, a bit mysterious and punchy. In this illustration in particular, a floral virus steals into a winter scene. Its a bit rebellious and ironic. In the completed scene, the floral virus takes over the children, swallowing them whole in its floral maul and then running away with their bodies for some snowy play. [Via Art MOCO]
Chaff ‘n’ Skaffs: Mai and the lost Moskivvy
Chaff’n'Skaffs: Mai and the lost Moskivvy, may be written for children ages 4-8, but the illustrations created by well-known artist and animator on the California scene Luke Feldman, is sure to have it appearing in many big kids book collection as well.
Written by Amanda Chin, the story is of a pretty girl, and unidentifiable and faithful friend and a dapper lost mosquito (Moskivvy), as the trio set out on an incredible journey to escort Moskivvy home. The world they embark on is vibrantly colorful and uniquely whimsical.
You can check out more of Luke Feldman’s work at skaffs. There you can also follow the link to the book’s product page. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page where you can click and print free coloring pages of the 3 heroes from the book.
By the way, how utterly fucking cute is this toy of Mai from the story:
[Via Art MOCO]
