Lucha Loco is the artistic result of Venville's quest to find and capture the essence of these masked gladiator-like showmen throughout many different trips to Mexico City in 2005. Venville says, "Lucha Loco represents something that is missing from life in the western world since the disappearance of the circus and vaudeville. There is poetry in its vibrant and expressive style that is lacking from wrestling."

As a child of profoundly deaf parents, Venville is fascinated with the unspoken language and still countenance of the luchadore mask. It is through Venville's tenacity and desire to observe this serious form of expression while revealing the humanity underneath that culminates in the stunning portraiture series Lucha Loco.

Detailed color photos introduce the figure, the name reveals the character, but the quote reveals the mind behind the mask -- ranging from the emotional -- Super Porky who says, "Here in Mexico us wrestlers work every single day. Sorry, do forgive the tears" -- to the humorous -- Coco Verde, "We don't mix the character from free wrestling with sex," -- to the simple -- Las Momias, "We're the mummies, here to serve the people."

In the introduction, Mexican poet, novelist, and literary critic Sandro Cohen, astute to the ironic imagery, observes that "El Solar, strangely, found it necessary to confess that he once wanted to be a lawyer, and in Mexico that still means fighting for the little guy. Real life didn't allow him to be an avenger for the downtrodden, but wrestling did."

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Sculptor Makes 180,000 Clay Figurines

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that sculptor Antony Gormley has created an impressive art installation that includes 180,000 clay figurines that he says are "looking at you."

English sculptor Antony Gormley is no stranger to big things. His best-known work, Angel of the North, is a 20-metre-tall angular angel with a 50-metre wingspan that towers over England's A1 motorway near Newcastle.

For the Biennale, Gormley has shipped out his Asian Field, an installation of 180,000 hand-sized clay figurines. Three hundred and fifty villagers in southern China individually crafted the figurines in just five days from more than 100 tonnes of red clay. Together, the figurines form a vast sea of bodies that dominates the huge upper space of Pier 2/3. Lumpy and almost featureless, they eerily stare out with blank holes for eyes. As Gormley says, "The art is not there to be looked at; it is looking at you."

That's 180,000 more clay figurines then we plan to make this year. Gormley must have a lot of time on his hands. More coverage at Boing Boing, Make and I Make Things. More photographs of the large clay figurine display can be found here on Flickr.

Posted on July 12, 2006
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The Pasadena Chalk Festival

The 2006 Pasadena Chalk Festival, the world's largest street painting festival, is approaching. This year's festival will be held on June 17-18 in Paseo, Colorado. At the festival hundreds of artists will use 25,000 sticks of pastel chalk to draw murals on a stretch of pavement that covers two city blocks. The photograph on the right is one of the murals that was created at last year's festival, which was called the Absolut Chalk Festival. You can see several more photographs on the Pasadena Chalk Festival's website. There are also some great pictures here on Flickr. The festival is a free-of-charge public art event. Last year they had over 70,000 visitors.

Posted on June 3, 2006
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Tremendous Sand Sculptures

This website contains photographs of some very impressive sand sculptures that were created during a tournament last year in Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia, Canada. The sand sculptures portay people, animals, fantasy scenes and massive castles. We would like to offer our thanks to the Harrison Hot Springs security team. We don't know how they did it but they kept the bullies (who must have really been tempted) from kicking over all these wonderful sand creations. If you think you can out sculpt these master sand sculptures there is another competition in September when the 17th Annual World Championships of Sand Sculpture begins. (via Screenhead)

Posted on May 16, 2006
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Britney Finds Sculpture "Hysterical"

Britney Spears has finally commented on that horrible sculpture that artist did representing the pop star giving birth while hanging onto a furry rug.

In her first public comments about a supposedly pro-life sculpture of her naked and bearing a child, pop star Britney Spears says she is shocked by it. Normally the one doing the shocking at her concerts and in the headlines, the sculpture of Spears debuted at a local New York art gallery in late March. The life-size sculpture depicts a naked, pregnant Spears as she is about to give birth to her new baby, Sean Preston. She is crouching down on a rug and holding on to a wolf's face as the baby's head appears from her uterus.

Spears says she was "dumbfounded" when she found out about the sculpture and saw the national controversy and press it generated. She also said she thought the idea was hilarious and not a serious attempt to display the beauty of birth. "I think it's the most hysterical thing I've ever seen in my life," she told WENN. "My assistant and I were totally dumbfounded when we saw it. We couldn't believe somebody actually did this."

Spears said she had no interest in purchasing the sculpture for her Malibu, California home. "No thanks. They can display it somewhere, but not in my beautiful home," she said.

Sue, Britney, sue over this! How else are you going to find enough cash to convince K-Fed to relocate to the other side of the world after the divorce?

Posted on May 12, 2006
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Prince Sued For Painting Leased House Purple

According to The Smoking Gun, Prince is being sued by his landlord for breach of contract. The landlord (NBA star Carlos Boozer) is unhappy that PRince painted the house with purple stripes, the Prince symbol and the number "3121."

Claiming that his $70,000-a-month tenant Prince undertook an extremely tacky makeover of his Los Angeles mansion, an NBA star recently sued the mercurial singer over the purple-hued alterations. In a January complaint, Carlos Boozer, a forward with the Utah Jazz, sued Prince/MPG Music over unauthorized work done on the 10-bedroom, 11-bath West Hollywood property, which is owned by the C Booz Multifamily I LLC. According to the lawsuit, Prince/MPG Music violated its eight-month lease by "painting the exterior of the [house] with purple striping, 'prince' symbol, and numbers 3121."

Prince's new album, "3121," is scheduled for release tomorrow. Inside the home, among other renovations, a purple monogrammed carpet was installed in the master bedroom and plumbing and piping was added in the downstairs bedroom "for water transfer for beauty salon chairs." As part of a promotion, Prince is expected to hold a private concert at the Hollywood property--which recently was listed for sale at $11.9 million--for album purchasers who find a Wonkaesque "purple ticket" inside their CD cases. The Boozer corporation filed its lawsuit two months after hand-delivering a "three-day notice to cure or quit" to the Sierra Alta Way property.... Responding to the lawsuit, Prince's counsel denied the owner's allegations....

Some landlords just have no sense of humor.

Posted on March 21, 2006
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Meter Pops in D.C.

These Meter Pops placed in D.C. by artist Mark Jenkins are quite a sight. One man was curious enough to want to touch one of the Meter Pops. We wonder how long it was before law enforcement finally came by and removed them. You can see more street installations by Jenkins on his website and blog. One of the comments on the Wooster Collective blog says the Meter Pops were inspired by a Belgian comic book.

Posted on January 25, 2006
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Mona Lisa Smile is 83% Happy

Computer imaging has now solved the mystery of the Mona Lisa's smile.

The smile of the Mona Lisa may seem enigmatic because she is, in fact, a blend of many different emotions. A computer analysis of the Renaissance masterpiece has found that she is 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful and 2 per cent angry.

Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous portrait has been scrutinised by a software programme or algorithm designed to tease apart the different emotions behind a facial expression. The result is that the smile of the Mona Lisa is broken down into its constituent parts, said Nicu Sebe of the University of Amsterdam.

*****

According to New Scientist magazine: "His algorithm examines facial features such as curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes, then scores each face with respect to six basic emotions." Dr Sebe said he drew on a database of young female faces to derive an average or "neutral" expression which he used to compare the work against.

Although the overwhelming emotion was one of happiness, the computer found that the second most important was disgust, which could explain why the Mona Lisa may seem to some people to be expressing a sense of irony, said Dr Sebe. "But no one really knows for sure why she looks so enigmatic. We don't know the context of why she was smiling, so it will remain ambiguous," he said.

We thought they said they solved it -- so why will it "remain ambiguous"? Is this some kind of scientific prank or something?

Posted on December 16, 2005
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How to Make a Felt Donut

That donut in the photograph on the right looks like a delicious donut with lots of calories but it is really just a felt donut. The instructions for how to make one of your own can be found a forum on the Craftster.org website. The instructions include lots of tucking and stitching and stuffing.

Turn the donut right sides out.
Now to sew the donut hole closed....
Turn a couple of tabs in at a time and whip stitch them closed, just like when your done stuffing something and you close the opening. Just tuck, stitch, tuck, stitch... easy as...pie.

Now stuff your donut, I like to use the end of a pen to get my stuffing in good and tight. Now's the time to add potpourri or other smelly stuff if you want your donut to smell yummy. Whip stitch opening closed.

If you scroll through the thread on the Crafster.org forum you can see lots of other felt donuts that were created. We aren't sure why people are making felt donuts but it seems harmless enough. (Via J-Walk)

Posted on November 4, 2005
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Giant Pink Bunny Placed on Italian Mountainside

A 200-ft long pink bunny rabbit has been placed on an Italian mountainside by its creators, a group of artists known as Gelatin. The Huffington Post says the humongous bunny will remain on the side of the side of Colletto Fava mountain in Northern Italy for twenty years. The Guardian says the creators want people to climb and sleep on the enormous pink rabbit.

"Behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy," said group member Wolfgang Gantner. The artists want people to scale the rabbit's sides and fall asleep on its stomach...

Although the group is known for pushing the boundaries of modern art, the idea of giant art installations is not that new.

In June this year, artist Giancarlo Neri unveiled his giant writing desk and chair on Hampstead Heath. The sculpture, called The Writer, is 30ft high and has already become such a part of the London landscape that pranksters have been using it as a pizza delivery address.

One of the most famous outside installations is the Headington Shark. In 1986, Bill Heine put a 25ft shark through the roof of his house in Headington, Oxford.

Information about The Writer sculpture the Guardian is referring to can be found here. More information and photos of the enormous rabbit can be found here on the artist's website.

Posted on October 1, 2005
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Alexander Hamilton Gets a Makeover

They said it was to foil counterfeiters. But somehow during the redesign of the $10 bill, Alexander Hamilton got an Extreme Makeover. The new Hamilton appears to have had some kind of nose job, maybe some collagen injected, and his brows tweezed. And is that blusher on his cheeks? The Treasury Department is sticking to its story, so far.

"The new $10 note design continues the U.S. Government's efforts to make our currency safer, smarter, and more secure," Dawn Haley of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing said in a statement announcing the new bill. "Not only is the new $10 state-of-the-art, it's also a beautifully designed currency note and we're confident the public will agree." The new bill -- still featuring the visage of Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary -- is expected to be in circulation early next year.

"The intention was not to create a counterfeit-proof note -- which is basically impossible -- but one that's harder to duplicate and easier to authenticate," said Eric Zahren, spokesman for the Secret Service. "The new designs have definitely improved upon our efforts in detection and enforcement." The new features are necessary because printing has improved dramatically in recent years with digital technology.

*****

The $10 features three major security improvements. The color of the ink on the lower right side changes from copper to green when the bill is shifted under the light. U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral used the phrase "Tilt your ten" to teach people about the new feature. Holding the bill up to light reveals the second security feature: a faint image, or watermark, on the right of Alexander Hamilton. Finally, there is a security thread running through the bill that says "USA Ten" when held to the light.

Blah, blah, blah, whatever. We know what's going on: Hamilton is being recast as a metrosexual. What we don't know is why. And it's kind of freaking us out.

Posted on September 29, 2005
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Thief Absconds With Mozart's Head

The news from Vienna today is just...odd. Someone stole the wax head of a life-size figure of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from the "Next to Mozart" museum.

The wax figure of the composer was on display at "Next to Mozart," a multimedia museum that opened last year. The wax head has an estimated value of euro15,000 (US$18,427), but museum employees told Austria Press Agency that the work was truly unique -- and appealed for its return.

"It must have happened between 8 p.m. Friday, when we closed, and today before 9 a.m.," museum employee Elisabeth Stoeckl told APA. "When we opened up again, Mozart's head was gone."

The item was part of a Mozart figure on the museum's fourth floor. "It stands just next to the wax figure of Herbert von Karajan," Stoeckl said.

What in the world are the thieves going to with a life-sized, wax head of Mozart? One shudders to think.

Posted on August 27, 2005
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The Singing Park Benches

A new art project in England is placing seemingly intelligent bins and benches in a public area in The Junction at Cambridge University. The benches and trash bins, which are solar-powered, appear to move around, sing, avoid bad weather and head for the shade if they get too hot.

Bins and benches will be free to roam independently within the piazza. The Bins and benches are solar powered but, to passers-by, they will look like ordinary metal bins and standard wooden park benches. Each bench will drift slowly around the square and all bins and benches are equipped with sensors to detect the presence of objects in their immediate vicinity, coming to a complete halt when any object is closer than two meters. To guard against loss by theft, Bins and Benches have tilt alarms fitted and global positioning technology inside. Occasionally, when the weather is good, small clusters will gather and sing a harmony with the bins joining in with their sweet soprano voices.

The creators of the exhibit claim to have created the singing and dancing benches to give people some entertainment during the day. One might ask: who really wants to chase after a park bench?

Posted on June 12, 2005
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Early Man and Shopping Carts?

An unusual rock painting could be seen in the British Museum for just two or three days. The rock drawings show a primitive man pushing a shopping cart (see pic on right). The faux cave art was placed in the museum by Banksy, a prankster who is well-known for his art spoofs. The BBC reported that the British Museum's staff took the joke well.

A British Museum spokeswoman said they were "seeing the lighter side of it". She said it went unnoticed for one or two days but Banksy said three days.

Banksy also hung a sign saying the cave art showed "early man venturing towards the out-of-town hunting grounds".

The British Museum isn't sure what to do with the piece now. Obviously it doesn't belong in the prehistoric art display. They have temporarily loaned the piece to Banksy so he can display at his art show called Outside Institute, which opened in London today. But they want it back afterwards.

Posted on May 20, 2005
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