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(via Pink Tentacle)

The 2009 crop circle ’season’ started with abundance and now looks set to bring a summer of circles to Britain’s fields.

Whether made by human hands or an altogether different life form, no less than 20 formations have been spotted since the season began in April. This week alone two huge designs have mysteriously surfaced.

An intricate 150ft dragonfly appeared in a barley field near Yatesbury, Wiltshire, just days after a jellyfish design was cut into crops in Oxfordshire.

Daily Mail: Jellyfish, dragonflies and peace symbols: The summer of crop circles is just getting started

(via Electric Children)

Ray Carney, Joe Matheny, and Nemo in conversation, only at the GSpot.

See also: Technoccult TV interview with Nemo

The art of Chen Fei

(via Coilhouse)

The project is called the Unaddressed and it focuses on the under-housed, giving voice to their personal opinions. Over the course of 3 months I met with 18 individuals who are currently or have recently been homeless. Through meeting, talking about their lives and discussing issues that were important to them, they developed their announcements and created a cardboard sign to reveal them. By photographing homeless and formerly homeless individuals holding cardboard signs that announce their concerns, the hope is challenge preconceived notions of homelessness and make the passers-by realize how serious the situation is and that everybody deserves the same basic necessities of life and to be treated the same way. Basically do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Wooster Collective: Catchin’ Up With Dan Bergeron

Jordan Seiler’s incrediblely ambitious “New York Street Advertising Takeover” became a reality yesterday, when over 120 illegal billboards throughout the city were white washed by dozens of volunteers.

NYSAT was organized as a reaction to the hundreds of billboards that are not registered with the city, and therefore are illegal. While illegal, these violations are not being prosecuted by the City of New York, allowing the billboard companies to garner huge profits by cluttering our outdoor space with intrusive and ugly ads.

After the illegal spots were white washed, late in the day yesterday over eighty artists transformed these spaces into personal pieces of art.

Here’s some of the initial photos that are coming in.

Wooster Collective: “New York Street Advertising Takeover” Brings Art to Over 120 Illegal Billboards in NYC

Asha Beta Industries

(via Coilhouse)

See Also: Alex CF

Photography by Jason Nocito.

Rod Stanley: You’ve just shown me that arrest warrant on the wall, but there’s so many other amazing objects in here. How long have you been collecting these items?

Joe Coleman: Only since my 20s. The collection is so much a part of my work that it can also reflect the way I work. The overall experience of the room is like my paintings – you look at a painting from a distance, but then if you get close to any of the details, each one has a whole story behind it. I can just grab… here, this is my favorite autograph – it’s William Marwood. He was a famous hangman, who discovered that if you weight the body and measure the distance of the drop, you could cause someone to die instantly. This is his calling card – if you turn the autograph around… here – you will see that it is his calling card.

Dazed: Inside the Odditorium of Joe Coleman

(via Richard Metzger)

“Fairy tales and legends” is the theme of this year’s World Sand Sculpture Festival now underway at the Tottori Sand Dunes in Tottori prefecture. On display (until May 31) are 19 massive works crafted by world-class sculptors from ten nations. The artists used around 2,700 tons of sand and took about two weeks to complete their works. Can you identify the fairy tales and legends depicted in these sand sculptures?

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My work is the product of the convergence of the instantaneous practice of invention and the slow craft of art

I have always believed that my period of most complete expression and appreciation would be my late future and beyond, in Time Phase X, the final phase of Modernism in the Western world. Time Phase X began on September 11, 2001, and will continue for the next one hundred years. My term for this period is “The Bauharoque.” It combines the heroic Modernism of the German Bauhaus, with its aspiration toward a technological Utopia, and the exalted theatricality of the Italian Baroque, in which an exuberance of form and illusion serve to express the mystical union of art and life.

Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: Paul Laffoley

(via Richard Metzger)

Fernando Vicente - look under Novedades for the set the image above is a part of.

(via Coilhouse)

The art of Dave Huckins

(via Nemo)

Tickets and further information

(Thanks Trevor)

The Art of Joao Ruas

(via Ectomo)

I’m missing David Mack at Floating World tonight for Bogville. Sometimes Portland is so awesome it sucks.

WHO: David Mack
WHAT: Art exhibit, slide show discussion, Q&A with the artist
WHEN: Thursday, April 2nd, 6-10pm
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave #101

JASON LEIVIAN: Kabuki: The Alchemy talks about a new beginning. Everything that came before (Volumes 1-6) was childhood. Maybe one way of putting it, when I was younger there was a developmental stage where I immersed myself in books and ideas that I was interested in. But then at some point there was a breakthrough and things got crazy. It’s like it all became real and my life became some science fiction novel. When I was younger read things in books, but now my life is these things. What was metaphor, now seems like platonic truth, even realer than this reality, which seems like maya by comparison. Let’s talk about the spiritual journey of David Mack as it’s expressed through your art. In Kabuki you see the work as a self fulfilling prophecy. Can you discuss that a bit?

DAVID MACK: I think I understand what you are describing. What you focus on has a tendency to change you, affect you. When you are passionate about something and active in working on it, it can seem like you hit a point when your real life seems to operate on dream-logic: You think it and then it materializes.

Creating on a regular basis is a great practice for that. It clues you in, trains you, to realize how malleable the material world is - that you can have an immediate effect on it based on your thoughts and actions. When you write or draw everyday, you start with a blank, and then you make something- an idea suddenly exists in the three dimensional material world. Just by writing it down, drawing it, you take this thing that only existed in your head, and then suddenly it exists in three dimensional physical reality. Practicing that everyday, starts to reveal to you that things work that way. You experience that transition everyday and it becomes larger than the page or the work you are doing. It has a ripple effect in people that experience your work and their response to it.

Suddenly you realize you have not just created one story, or one work, or a body of work, but you’ve created your own career, and your own life, as your self portrait, and your contexts for your life, and your work has become your passport to a variety of worlds. And there is a point when the dream you were dreaming, and then dared to enact in reality, has become completely real and you live it everyday. And other people can even share it with you.

That is a great lesson to learn. Because once you learn it, you can go about living it very consciously. As consciously as you would craft your work on the page, you realize you are crafting it off the page as well.

Full Story: Arthur

Secret Identity showcases rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminal artist in comics—Superman’s co-creator Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster was down on his luck after trying to reclaim the copyright for Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazines called Nights of Horror, sold under the counter until they were banned by the U.S. Supreme Court. A murder trial, juvenile delinquency, anti-comics crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham, and the neo-Nazi Brooklyn Thrill Killers gang all figure into this sensational story.

The discovery of this artwork and the story behind it by historian Craig Yoe reveals the “secret identity” of this revered comics creator, and is sure to change the way we look at Shuster and his creations—Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Jimmy Olsen—forever.

Secret Identity

(Thanks Blue Collar Illustrator)

So, those were the agendas that we were following then. We thought it would be a great idea if comics could be recognized as the wonderful medium that we secretly knew them to be. And when I say “we,” I’m talking about the 50 actual people who turned up at those early conventions, which was pretty much the sum total of everybody in this country who’d ever heard of American comics. But back then our agenda was this progressive notion that, wouldn’t it be terrific if people were to get involved with comics who could make them more adult, more grown up, to show the kind of themes they were capable of handling? So this was the agenda that, 20 years later, I was still following toward the end of my first DC run. [...]

When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn’t have to follow Watchmen and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route. It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness. I’m not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it’s true, but I do have a sense of humor. With the ABC books I was trying to do comics that would have perhaps appealed to an intelligent 13-year-old, such as I’d been, and would still satisfy the contemporary readership of 40-year-old men who probably should know better. But I wanted to sort of do comics that would be accessible to a much wider range of people, and would still be intelligent even if they were primarily children’s adventure stories, such as the Tom Strong books.

Full Story: Wired

Plus:

Wired interview with Dave Gibbons

Wired interview with Zack Snyder

Disinfo podcast interview with Alan Moore

How to guide at About.com

(Thanks Nova!)

The body of the tower was made by a new technique called “ferrofluid sculpture” that enables artists to create dynamic sculptures with fluid materials. This technique uses one electromagnet, and its iron core is extended and sculpted. The ferrofluid covers the sculpted surface of a three-dimensional iron shape that was made on an electronic NC lathe. The movement of the spikes in the fluid is controlled dynamically on the surface by adjusting the power of the electromagnet. The shape of the iron body is designed as helical so that the fluid can move to the top of the helical tower when the magnetic field is strong enough.

More Info: Sachiko Kodama’s Web Site

(Thanks Ian!)

This project explores the idea of using creative infrastructure projects to “route around” geopolitical agreements in Israel/Palestine.

More Images: BLDBLG

“Looking for a darker twist to candy conversation hearts? This Valentine’s Day, love for art and the occult come together for the historical first showing of 13 hand-selected original illustrations by Anton LaVey, the enigmatic founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible, at Art & Mayhem Gallery in Los Angeles.

A rare glimpse into this private collection, comes courtesy of Anton’s grandson, LA promoter and provocateur, Stanton LaVey. A secret collection, quietly kept by Stanton’s grandmother and Church of Satan co-founder, Diane LaVey for the last 49 years, is likely the most complete of Anton LaVey’s illustrated works.

The show, “Anton LaVey - Art Incarnate – 25 Years Illustrated in Ink” will feature 13 never before seen hand-drawn illustrations meant for the published works The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Witch. The original artwork will only grace the walls of the gallery on opening and closing nights, with prints available for viewing for the remainder of the show. Limited edition prints will also be available for purchase. Since the show announcement, Marilyn Manson acquired an original from LaVey and KORN frontman and collector of all things dark, Jonathan Davis, is perusing the collection.”

Stanton Z. LaVey Presents

“Anton LaVey - Art Incarnate – 25 Years Illustrated in Ink”

February 14th - March 13th, 2009

Opening Night Artist Reception: Feb. 14th, 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Closing Night Artist Reception: Mar. 13th, 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Art & Mayhem Gallery, 3416 Glendale Blvd., L.A., 90039
(323) 666.7731 Gallery Hours: Thurs. - Sat. 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

(Art & Mayhem site. Thanks Sara!)

More pics: Pink Tentacle

(see also: Our first post on Yoichiro Kawaguchi)

More pics

(via Coilhouse)

“Restored and remodeled by the Spanish modernist architect Antoni Gaudi in the years 1905–1907, Casa Batllo is now one the most overlooked buildings by the tourists who visit Barcelona. Although Casa Batllo is a museum now, Gaudi designed it for for a wealthy Barcelona Aristocrat. The local name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), and indeed it does have a visceral, skeletal organic quality.”

(via Unusual Things)

A University of Tokyo research team led by professor/computer graphic artist Yoichiro Kawaguchi is developing robots designed to imitate primitive life forms. Mockups have been put on display at a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, and working versions of the robots are scheduled for completion in two years.

According to the researchers, these robots are being developed as a way to explore artificial life and gain insights into how living things survive in a world governed by the law of the jungle.

Full Story: Pink Tentacle

More pics: Robot Watch

Yoichiro Kawaguchi’s homepage