Hilarious inappropriate VD cards

I love calling Valentine’s Day VD. Artist Mitch O’Connell has quite a collection:

 

Titanic violin

Oh whoa. The violin that Wallace Hartley was playing Nearer my God to Thee on while the Titanic was sinking has been found. After the ship sunk, he used it to float on. The violin was discovered only by chance when the son of an amateur musician found it in his attic. It was given to his mother by her violin teacher and was left gathering dust.

 

 

Vanishing Spirits: The Dried Remains of Single Malt Scotch

Macallan 101

If you’ve ever met me, you know I love Scotch. And I love photography and what weird things photographers come up with to keep the medium new and fresh. So I love Ernie Button‘s photographic experiments with Scotch residue–he’s shining different colored light through it, photographing the residue, and on and on. They’re gorgeous. Like seascapes! Listen on NPR!

Aberlour 108

Michael Pajon

 

 

Michael Pajon has a show at New Orleans’ Jonathan Ferrera Gallery through the end of May. It’s titled O Bury Me Not from a Depression-era cowboy ballad, and has collages that I could spend all day looking at. Check it out, lucky ones in Nola!

 

Extinct Photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

I’m talking at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts about the work I did for their photography Art Cart. It’s sort of like a petting zoo for the history of photography–I made 12 images in 12 different historic photo process–cyanotype, Van Dyke, tintype, color slide, silver gelatin, direct positive paper, calotype (paper negative), albumen carte de visite (with Gocco printed personalized photographer’s back…yessssssss), salted paper, stereographs, Polaroid, and digital image. The Art Cart will be out so you can hold a tintype or look at a 3D stereoscope picture. And we’ll look at new daguerreotypes! Here is the MIA’s description of the evening:

Listen as some of our cities’ most interesting artists give us the back stories about their work in this series of on-stage narratives.

In 2011, the MIA commissioned photographer Lacey Prpic Hedtke to document the museum’s collection using archaic photographic techniques, such as tintypes, collotypes, and stereograms. She commenced upon an intensive exploration of history, representation, and visual interpretation, resulting in a kind of photographic archaeology that unearthed new connections and fresh interpretations of familiar artworks.

Prpic Hedtke will discuss this project, the history of photography, and how she decided to pair certain art works with particular archaic photographic techniques.

$10; $5 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online.

Heineken’s World Brick

Come on manufacturers! We can do this! In the 1960s Heineken and Dutch architect John Habraken collaborated to create the “World Bottle”–a beer bottle that can be used as building material. After Alfred Heineken saw Heineken beer bottles wash up on a Caribbean beach, he was inspired to produce 100,000 World Bottles.

Why can’t we do this now? I love double- or triple-duty items. Bring the World Bottle back, Heineken! We could build fences, garages, houses–you name it. And we could cut down on trash. Brilliant.

Adrienne Slane

Wow, I wasn’t expecting to insert all those images, but enjoy! So Adrienne Slane is an Ohio artist (LOVE Ohio) who uses vintage illustrations “Inspired by the history of the curiosity cabinet and the myth of Eden.”

Usually when I see collagey work, I think, eh, it’s just a bunch of stuff glued down. But Slane is onto something great! I hope she has an endless stream of vintage magazines to cut up! Come to Mpls, Adrienne, and go to Hunt & Gather!