Oddity Central |
- Innovative Artist Creates Beautiful Dust Paintings
- Aggravure III – A Unique Mural Made with 450,000 Staples
- Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Brings Sexy Back into Art
- Eating Carrots Causes Kid to Turn Orange
| Innovative Artist Creates Beautiful Dust Paintings Posted: 09 Mar 2012 02:11 AM PST
Los Angeles-based artist Allison Cortson collects dust from her art-subjects’s homes and uses it to paint the background of their portraits. She started her series of “dusty” artworks, called Dust Paintings, several years ago, but she’s only just now getting the online exposure she so rightfully deserves. Dust paintings…Now here’s something you don’t see every day, right? Well, actually, just a month ago we posted a story about Alessandro Ricci, an Italian artist who paints with dust collected from historical buildings in Florence. But while his dust creations are more like environmental statements against the pollution in his home city, Allison Cortson’s paintings are much more elaborate, and have a completely different purpose. Through her dust paintings, the artist tries to emphasize the fact that “matter is mostly empty space” and it’s only through interactivity with living beings that they provide any value. That’s why, in all of her Dust Paintings artworks the human subjects are painted in color, while the background is recreated with dust. What’s even more amazing is that Allison actually collects dust from each of her subject’s living space. Because some of her paintings are around 70-inches in size, the dust collecting process usually takes her a few months. As you can expect, she goes through people’s vacuums a lot… Once she has gathered enough dust, she renders the human subject in oil paint, and moves on to the bland background. ”I sprinkle the dust on the canvas and manipulate with a brush. When finished the dust is coated with an acrylic sealer", Allison explains.
Innovative Artist Creates Beautiful Dust Paintings was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Aggravure III – A Unique Mural Made with 450,000 Staples Posted: 09 Mar 2012 12:58 AM PST
In all the years I’d stapled posters on my wall, I never gave it a second thought, let alone consider it an art form. But an artist has painstakingly created a series of beautiful murals made from nothing but staples tacked onto a wall. The pictures you're looking at are the works of French artist Baptiste Debombourg, and a part of a collection named Aggravure. His last artwork, Aggravure III, took him 340 hours to complete and consists of over half a million staples. The collection itself is inspired by engravers of the Renaissance period, Jan Harmensz, Cherubino Alberti and Hendrick Goltzius. It's amazing what an artist can do with a boring, everyday, office supply like the staple. But hey, if people can make art out of packing tape, maybe staple-art is not so surprising after all.
Aggravure III – A Unique Mural Made with 450,000 Staples was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Brings Sexy Back into Art Posted: 09 Mar 2012 12:46 AM PST
Serious artists are bound to find Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School rather blasphemous, but the more lighthearted ones obviously think it's a lot of fun. How else would you explain a Dr. Sketchy's branch in 100 cities spread over 5 continents, merely 6 years after the first class was held in a dive bar in Brooklyn? It's hard to call the place an 'art school', as it looks more like a pub where artists come to hang out, socialize and have a good time. But they do make a lot of drawings while they're at it. And the major attractions are the 'subjects' that they get to sketch. Founders A.V. Phibes and Molly Crabapple make sure to find the most beautiful burlesque dancers, the most rippling hunks of men and the most bizarre circus freaks, who pose for artists every other Saturday for three whole hours. An artist herself, Crabapple decided to create an alternative drawing school to counter the conventional restrictions of mainstream art. She asked a simple question: why can't drawing naked people be sexy? And this unique anti-art school was her attempt at an answer. So Dr. Sketchy, a fictional corrupt Viennese doctor, was born. On their official website, the school is described as 'the world's premier alternative drawing movement'. Photo by James Mundie The students, called 'art monkeys', gather with a lot of enthusiasm at Dr. Sketchy's. They come from all walks of life: there are galley artists, art students, tattoo artists, illustrators and even non-professional artists. While the more serious ones turn up with their own materials, complimentary art supplies are provided to the amateurs. However, there are no erasers allowed, because "there's no such thing as a mistake at Dr. Sketchy's." After warming up with 1, 2 and 5 minute poses, there are 10 and 20 minute poses to allow artists to focus on detail. To make the whole experience even more fun they hold all kinds of wacky competitions such as 'best eyelashes' or 'best comic strip'. Prizes include booze, graphic novels and gift certificates to tattoo parlors. It's surprising to note that, according to Crabapple, Dr. Sketchy’s art monkeys number more women than men. Now this is an art school I wouldn’t mind attending myself… I don’t have an artistic bone in my body, so I guess I’d be perfect.
via Amusing Planet Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Brings Sexy Back into Art was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Eating Carrots Causes Kid to Turn Orange Posted: 09 Mar 2012 12:19 AM PST
"Violet, you're turning violet!" That's the classic line from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, spoken by a dad to his naughty daughter who eats blueberry candy and ends up looking exactly like one. It's funny in the movie, but it's hardly something anyone would expect to happen in real life. But as it turns out it can and it has. There's this 4-year-old kid in the UK, Leo Barnett, who turns a bright shade of orange when he eats carrots. Leo actually suffers from a condition called hyper-beta carotenemia. This means that his body lacks the necessary enzymes to digest carotene, the substance that provides the orange color to carrots and other foods. So carotene just builds up in his body, turning him orange over time. Leo's mother Angie says the boy is now on a diet devoid of any food containing the substance. The only vegetable that he's allowed to eat is cauliflower. According to Angie, the problem was first noticed when he was 6 months old and suffered from pneumonia. His kidneys and liver were failing so they had mistaken the color to be a symptom from the disease. But a month after recovery, he was still orange and that's when they discovered his allergy to carotene. When a normal person eats carrots or other foods that contain carotene, it is digested and converted to Vitamin A. But with Leo, that just doesn't happen. When he had last turned orange, there was such a large build up of un-digested carotene in his body that the color wouldn't fade even though he had stopped eating the substance-containing foods. As a substitute, the boy is now given Vitamin A drops to meet his daily dietary requirements. Angie says that apart from this bizarre condition, Leo is a normal and active child. She jokes that when he grows older, he might just eat a lot of carrots to show off to his friends how orange he can get. Now, that's a neat trick! Photo by clayirving I bet every kid in the world would actually be jealous of Leo, since unlike them, the boy doesn’t have to eat all his veggies. via Daily Mail Eating Carrots Causes Kid to Turn Orange was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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