Valerie Hegarty

Valerie Hegarty is a New York artist working with the power of nature. Her art falls apart, decomposes and is eaten away.

Lunar New Year

Oh look, I’m back to show you the work of New York street artist Lunar New Year. Take a gander:

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!

 

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!

Survival Research Institute of Canada

There is a Survival Research Institute of Canada (SRIC) in Winnipeg that is giving a free talk on table levitation phenomena. Who wouldn’t go to this? For F-R-E-E?!  The SRIC’s mission is “to investigate whether some part of human consciousness or personality survives physical death and whether that surviving “spirit” is able to communicate with the living.”

They seem to be a good resource of all things spiritualist if you’re in Canada.  Plus they have a library and books that you can buy that you prolly can’t find anywhere else. I have totally forgone the use of the word “probably” for prolly and I’m ok with it.
I like that they use terms like “bodily death”.

They also just did a lecture about ectoplasm that is the same lecture that’s been done since 1922 which is weird. The ectoplasm presentation accompanies Irish artist Susan MacWilliam‘s exhibit of her “Flammarion” installation based upon the 10 June 1931 ectoplasm photographed by Dr. T.G. Hamilton. She researched at the T. G. Hamilton archives at the University of Manitoba, which has digitized over 700 images and 1300 notes from seances. Want to watch hours of video about T. G. Hamilton and the work he did around voice mediumship, wax fingerprints, and ectoplasmic phenomena? Here are seven videos.

Here MacWilliam is talking about her work at the Venice Biennale.

Also, did you happen to see Helen Duncan in that article? She was the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act in 1944. She was a Scottish spiritualist.

The whole thing is just so thrilling. Susan MacWilliam wins artist of the century! Even if just for effort and intrigue.

Bloom

The Massachusetts Mental Health Center (formerly the Boston Psychopathic Hospital) closed in 2003, and was slated for demolition. Artist Anna Schuleit was commissioned to create a site-specific project where she installed 28,000 flowers in the building. The public was invited to view the installation for a four-day period. There are some Q&As with the artist on Colossal.

The Collective Tarot

I LOOOVE this. It’s the tarot, updated for queers of today! Two dozen artists created a deck of 78 cards, updating the imagery for contemporary wants. They changed the Major arcana to found objects: bones, feathers, bottles and keys. Here’s what one of the creators, Annie Murphy says about the project:

We set out on this project because we wanted to access the ancient tradition of the Tarot, but were unable to relate to what we saw as archaic Christian, Euro- and hetero-centricities of modern decks available on the market. With the Collective Tarot, people can expect to see beings and bodies of size and of color represented, as well as differently-abled, multi-gendered and multi-generational characters. Tarot itself is Euro-Centric, originating (arguably) in 15th-century Italy. It is folk-art-magic that has amazingly survived through centuries of repression. We wanted to be able to use the Tarot as a tool while making the images relevant to ourselves and our communities.

You can order one today!

 

Berndnaut Smilde’s indoor clouds

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde makes clouds indoors! Inside of doors! He uses a smoke machine and the right lighting to make magic.  See a video of him doing it at the Washington Post. Just another example of why artists need to learn science. Cause they might need it someday.

Hand cookies

Oh my. Look at these hand cookies made by patissier Ayako Kurokawa of Kuroiwa Patisserie in Brooklyn. Wow! Check out their website–they make all kinds of kooky pastries. I want one of these cookies so I can sneak up behind people and stroke their shoulders with these manicured hands.