Super Freaking Dirty Awesome Vehicle Saturdays

Before we begin this week's Super Amazingly Special Awesome Saturday (and by "this week's" I mean "randomly placed" and by "Saturday" I mean "Sunday, Monday, or even possibly Tuesday"), I just want to give a big Thank You to my cohort, JK, for really stepping up recently and diligently posting some very hilarious things. The last month or so my job saving disabled orphaned kittens from the war-torn ravages of lower Kent (and the Greater London area) has really been spreading me thin, and I haven't had much time left over for anything even mildly amusing. So laughing at fat children all afternoon has been out as well.

I know. I sacrifice so much.


Anyway, this week I'm featuring an artist named Scott Wade, a painter who's medium is car windows. Well, dirty car windows. Well, just dirt, really. He paints in dirt, everyone. And he's fantastic at it.

Living down a mile and a half of dirt road, the "dirt" comprised mostly of limestone dust, gravel, and clay, Scott has a permanent (or impermanent, rather) canvas waiting for him at the end of every shopping trip and beer-run. Monet would be impressed.

Using paint brushes, erasers, popsicle sticks, fingers, and, I have no doubt, any other pointy-ended and dust-removing random objects, Scott painstakingly recreates many famous artworks, as well as his own designs, into the back windows of, well, extremely dirty vehicles.

Scott has even managed to perfect the ultimate dirty window, using oil, bags of earth and a hairdryer. I would cry cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater if his works weren't so amazing and unusual. And if he weren't bigger than me.

The sheer impermanence and intricacy of his artwork really makes a distinct, if not intended, comment about the nature of art, and the worthiness of art for art's sake, not just for any extended acclaim granted to an artist by a permanent audience, which is, naturally, what most artists would only strive to achieve.

And look! It's dogs! Playing poker! Lol1!

And there it is, everybody. Scott Wade. One helluva dirty car painter. Although, to his credit to be sure, I have noticed this pioneering art form already extending into and being interpreted by the local pop-art culture if the back-ends of inter-state trucking is any indication. Although it still seems to be in its infantile stages.

Ooohhh! Lastly! Before I forget: I finally went ahead and bought homemadehilarity.com! So no more faffing about with this dot-blogspot anymore! Tada! I'm awesome.

****UPDATE****

Scott sent me a wonderful note!

"Hey JuliaD, very cool. Thanks for your interest in my dirty pictures! All the best -S"

Thanks Scott!

Super Incredible Excellent Saturdays (Sundays. or Mondays. Whatever)

So I should just give up already and name this weekly bit Wonderful-Weekends or Super-Late-Saturdays or You'll-Be-Lucky-If-You-Get-It-By-Monday-Although-It's-Supposed-To-Be-Out-On-Saturdays-Sundays.

I especially like that last one. It has a nice ring to it.

Anyway, this weeks' Awesome-Art-That-You're-Lucky-If-You-Get-At-All-Saturdays (Sundays) is devoted to an artist that I came across when I google-searched "amazing art" for shits and giggles. I kid you not. She came up 1st on google for amazing art, so I'm going to take a hint from my internet overlords and roll with it.

London Calling, The Clash

Her name is Erika Iris Simmons, or iri5 for those of you in the know. And, clearly, she and cassette tapes make beautiful music together (see what I did right there? See it? I'm hilarious.)

Jimi Hendrix

This cluster of works is entitled Ghosts In The Machine, a reference, evidently, to past philosophical arguments pertaining to Ryle's theories of the relationship between a person's body housing their soul. "I imagine we are all like cassettes," she writes, "thoughts wrapped up in awkward packaging." Which I can almost identify with: the awkward packaging? Check. Thoughts? Not so much.

Jim Morrison, The Doors

She has also been quoted as saying that she got the idea for these portraits while waitressing at The Hard Rock Cafe, while simultaneously owning both cassette tapes and glue. Which is pretty handy, really, when you make portraits of famous musicians using only cassette tapes and glue.

Obviously, though, she's managed to take this new art form to a highly sophisticated level resulting in some pretty amazing and thought-provoking images.

Bob Dylan

And she lives in Georgia.

(What can I say - there isn't exactly a wealth of information available on homegirl.)

The Beatles

Anyway, if you want to see more of iri5's work, including some truly amazing collage-portraits, click here to see a full selection of photos and here to visit her website. Really neat stuff all around.

****UPDATE
Thanks to iri5 for sending a very nice response email! Glad you enjoyed the post, Erika!

Super Excellent Special Saturday (Sunday)!

Welcome back to Super Fucking Unbelieveably Awesome Freaking Saturdays (Sundays, really, at this point, let's call a spade a spade) everyone! This week's undeniably amazing and superhumanly talented individual is Peter Callesen, paper-sculpter extraordinaire.

The Short Distance Between Time And Shadow (2006)

Born in 1967 in Denmark (famous for Vikings, Legos, and bacons), Mr. Callesen (Or The Petester, as I refer to him) began his artistic career staring at a blank sheet of paper. And not a whole lot has changed since.

The Core of Everything (2006)

Each of the pieces that Petey-Boy creates are made from a single sheet of A-4 paper, obviously cut up to a certain extent, and then the removed bits reformed to create the 3-dimensional parts of the sculptures.

Traces in Snow (2005)

So, effectively, each one of these artworks that the Petemeister puts together is from the simplest, most ubiquitous and familiar medium possible: a solitary sheet of white paper.

Snowballs (2005)

P-train's artwork touches on the use of negative space, effectively transforming it into visual interpretations of a between-the-lines kind of suggestion that would otherwise be unverified yet assumed within other mediums.

Snowballs detail (2005)

These scultpures that P-dubs creates, then, can manage to tell a story on three distinctly different levels: The obvious story that is shown in the image, the sub-linear suggestions of what is missing in the voids cut out, and the further meaning within the knowledge that it is all, at its essence, one uncompromised sheet of paper.

Looking Back (2006)

And look! It's a skeleton!

Impenetrable Castle (2005)

Some of the more architectural of the P-Love's works I find terribly interesting for the graphic layout of the individual pieces needed to create a specific castle, for example. I suppose it's a bit like taking the total surface area of a building and transforming it into a flat-pack design. IKEA on LSD, if you will.

Impenetrable Castle detail (2005)

It kind of makes me think of all the varied combinations of buildings and sculptures that would be possible with those specific pre-made pieces, which only stands to make it all the more amazing what P-to-the-E-to-the-T-E-R is able to construct out of them. I, personally, would end up with a crinkled white ball of mutilated impatient-ness, I know that much.

Heaven and Hell(2006)

Some of Peter-Peter-Pumpkin-Eater's latest works have included the use of paint, which adds another, more aesthetically distinct quality to the work, and allows him to take a few more liberties with the concepts he's aiming to convey.

White Hand (2007)

So there we are again, everyone, at the end of another Super Amazingly Freaking Unbelieveably Awesome Saturday (Sunday)! Hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to go to PeterCallesen.com to see all of his works, as he also does many much larger installation pieces and floating castles and whatnot. See you lot tomorrow!

Happy Super Freaking Amazing Saturday!

Happy Super Freaking Amazing Saturdays everyone! It's that time of the week again, when I take off my snarky hat of self-possessed and deep-rooted ridicule of all crafts hideous and put on my technicolour bonnet of unending envy of all artists talented. And boy, do I have a talented artist for you all today to openly adore and secretly resent. Her name is Liza Lou, and she covers things in beads. Don't underestimate what I mean, though: homegirl seriously covers things in beads. Millions of beads. Pallets of beads. Like, lots and lots of beads.

For example, one of her earliest works was an installation piece she called Kitchen (1995), which is really quite a shrewd description of, well, a kitchen. An entirely bead-coated kitchen. And here it is:
I implore you - dare you, even - to contemplate the fact that every single inch of this kitchen is entirely covered in beads. And if your head starts to implode just trying to understand the magnitude of what this implies, don't worry: that is the correct response.

Let's take a closer look, shall we? Here is the fridge:
And here is the broom and dust bin:
In fact, Liza Lou used so many beads in the construction of this 168 square-foot kitchen she won the Guinness World Record for the Largest Bead Art, by incorporating at least 40 million glass beads, which, if strung together, would reach from L.A. to San Francisco.
Indeed, just completing this piece left Liza undernourished and with acute tendonitis in her hands. Which I could have told her beforehand, let's be honest, if she had let me know that she planned on covering an entire kitchen in 40 million glass beads individually using only glue and a pair of tweezers.


After completing Kitchen, Liza Lou began work on, and subsequently finished, a piece called, imaginatively, Backyard (1999). And, as with Kitchen, it doesn't make any false promises. It truly is a 525-square-foot backyard covered entirely in beads:
With a beaded lawnmower:And beaded sandwiches with beaded bites beaded out of them:
And beaded Budweisers laying amidst a beaded full-size suburban lawn composed of 250,000 individually beaded blades of grass.
You get the point.
While you and I might deign to call this extraordinary level of craftsmanship "rather thorough", "manically obsessive" even, Lou evidently resents the implication and explains, "What's far more frightening for people is to consider the possibility that I'm completely aware of what I'm doing." And she has a point. That really is far more frightening. But, and rightly so, she added at a later date, “It’s summing up someone’s lifework as a mental oddity,” which is clearly something I would never aim to do.
< /sarcasm >


The last piece of hers that I would like to highlight is a piece called Security Fence I, which, in a way, I actually admire more than some of her more vibrant pieces, as the sheer cathartic monotony within the production of this installation is a bit staggering.
As with the other pieces, this item is entirely coated in millions of silver beads, glued on individually, effectively transforming this imposing symbol of imprisonment and restraint into a shimmering, surreal symbol of luxurious excesses and unrestrained indulgences. And look! It's shiny!
Her work, described as "Pop suffused shrine," began in 1989 as a nod to Andy Warhol, but she also notes that part of her motivation is an interest in "rescuing things in some way". And naturally, by "rescuing" she means "covering in fuckloads of beads", and by "things" she means "massive chain-link structures and/or rooms in the house".
And that's about it, everyone! If you're interested in seeing more of Liza Lou's work, such as her beaded portraits of all the presidents, or her beaded trailer, or any of her smaller beaded sculptures, I suggest using this newfangled internet tool called "google.com". It's wicked.

Super Saturday!! OMG!!11

So I've been getting lots of emails on the internets about this specific crafter on ETSY, and I have to be honest, I've been reticent to do a post about this item because 1. it's made in a totally ironic and self-acknowledged manner, 2. it's decidedly quite well made, and 3. I actually really like it. I think it's hilarious. I mean, it's a handmade beard for women, for fucks sake. AWESOME. So, I've decided, in honor of The Beard, I've started a new amazingly-awesome theme: SUPER SATURDAYS!!

I've decided that from here on out, every Saturday will be spent showcasing some most excellent craft that I adore, and I'm starting with this beard. Yes, I know its already been featured on almost every craft blog ever written, but it doesn't matter. I don't care. I'm a fucking rebel. I love The Beard, and I don't care who knows it. IT'S AWESOME. Don't lie; you think it's awesome too. So there. That's what it is. On Saturdays, prepare for an awesome crapft, and there's nothing you can do about it. Except, if you find an awesome, or an awesomely hilarious crapft, email me at mizzdrake@hotmail.com, and I'll try to write about it. If you have a problem with it email Heather at HeatherCherry. It's her fault.