Ryan Heshka is one of three artists in the "Envirus" show at Roq La Rue in Seattle, opening this Friday, October 9.

See Ryan's other paintings for the show here.

Doctor Popular says,

Today is 24hour Comic Book Day. Cartoonists all over the world will be taking part in the challenge of creating an entire 24 page comic book in just one day. Robots Don't Know Anything About Twitter, which was featured on BB a few weeks ago, was created as part of last years 24HCBDay!

Here are some links: Nationwide, in SF, in Minneapolis, in Albuquerque

Image: snapshot from 24HCBDay in New Mexico in 2006, by baaadasssscomics. Also, here's a Flickr pool.

Audrey Kawasaki says:

REVO LA is putting on a benefit art show to raise money for "Sekolah Dasar Balem Wamena" (SDBW), a model school, which has recently become a light of HOPE in the corrupt regions of West Papua, Indonesia.

Featuring works from Ekundayo, Joshua Clay, Shepard Fairey, Mr. Brainwash and more. The show opens on October 4th sunday at the UCLA Ackerman Grand Ballroom.

I have two prints up for sale there.

Special edition large print of 'Two Sisters' and the Pressure Printing intaglio print 'Okimiyage'.

On her blog, Shelley Rickey shows you how to make Bad Dog Pâté.

The grass is made out of Hummus covered in Parsley with sprigs of Chives sticking out. The Poop is made from Aubergine Pate with lots of Paprika Powder added to give it..uh, a 'nice' poop color. The flies are made out of Olives and Onions. Happy Animal Day Everyone!

Roel sez, "We're a casual gaming company from the Netherlands and we just finished a very big wall painting (containing several game and anime characters) for our meeting room."

Love this -- it's like one of those Sharpie pen murals crossed with the back of my Junior High notebook.

Our awesome meeting room (Thanks, Roel!)

My old high school buddy Mitch O'Connell has a new show opening at La Luz De Jesus Gallery in LA. It runs from October 2 - November 1, 2009. Incredible stuff.

Mitch O’Connell’s imaginative, vividly colorful, smart and well executed artwork is undeniably and unabashedly old-school low-brow. As one of Chicago’s most well-known and busiest illustrators, O'Connell’s works have been featured in magazines from Newsweek to Playboy. His tattoo designs are also a fixture on the walls of tattoo shops around the word. His distinctive style fuses cartoony and iconic imagery plus an innate sense of humor to create pop-kitsch masterpieces.

Mitch O'Connell's "Pre-engagement Ring" art show

“When the Nest’s Beset By Pests, the Babysitters Swift Undressed” - (oil on canvas) 48x36 - 2009

(NSFW thumbnails above: “Dan’l Boone Rescues His Daughter From The Dread Shawnee; July, 1776,” "Goldilocks Rages Against The Fall," “The Bathing Sphinx,” “Werewolf Triptych, #1 - #3” )

A new exhibition by Van Arno will be unveiled at Corey Helford Gallery.

Los Angeles artist Van Arno joins Corey Helford for his second solo show at the gallery entitled “A Change of Skin.” The process of transformation and evolution is no easy task, and Arno skillfully narrates a dynamic collection of Darwinian daydreams in his latest series of oil paintings. Werewolves, centaurs and women shed their original skin, emerging as new breeds of enchanted beings and barbaric beasts. Joining them in the fray are representations of transformation by means of natural selection, cross-species parenting, Black Arts, and even the car crash that altered Montgomery Clift’s famous face. Larger and more ambitious than before, “A Change of Skin” marks a new direction for the artist as Arno introduces multiple characters and a looser, more gestural format to his work. The exhibition will also feature 100 limited-edition silk screen show prints that will be available only at the gallery.

In the loft, guest artist Melissa Forman unveils “Garden of Shadows”, her second series of works at Corey Helford Gallery. Inspired by ancient medicine, Forman’s dark yet delicate paintings study the Four Humours, a medieval method of diagnosing imbalances in patients. Each humour is visually illustrated combining its unique properties such as color, mood, temperament, disposition, and plants. Rich colors and deep black backgrounds add to the ethereal mood and a subtle sense of surrealism in each painting, ultimately sending a message of hope and good things to come during dark times. Open to the public, the reception for “A Change of Skin” and “Garden of Shadows” takes place on Saturday, October 3, and the show will be on view until October 24, 2009.

Van Arno was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and attended Otis parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, California where he supported himself working as a bouncer in nightclubs and adult video arcades. As a young illustrator, his images appeared on album covers, video game box art, and nightclub posters around the city. He has exhibited in galleries worldwide including Jonathan Levine Gallery, Shooting Gallery, Copro Nason, Mendenhall Sobieski and Galerie d’Art Yves Laroche. Several of his works were included in a national survey of Lowbrow painters at the Hollywood Art and Culture Center in Florida along with Mark Ryden, Chaz Bojorquez, Kenny Scharf, Anthony Ausgang and others. For more information about Van Arno please visit www.vanarno.com.

Van Arno Opening Reception Saturday, October 3, 2009 from 7‑10pm
On View October 3 – October 24, 2009

Ethan sez, "I met Joshua Hoffine in Toronto at Fan Expo. He creates stunning horror photography and blogs about the process of creating the photohraphs here."

I guess the test of a good horror photo is whether it makes you scared and uncomfortable without resorting to pure gore. Hoffine's photos qualify.

Joshua Hoffine Horror Blog (Thanks, Ethan!)

Kansas City's Nicholas and Angela make and sell sweet found-object junkbots that they call Nerdbots.

Nerdbots: Found object robot sculptures for your inner nerd (Thanks, James!)

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.

To be honest, I was indifferent to JR's work in the slums until I saw this video. Thank you, Wooster Collective.

A reader writes, "Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls, etc., passionately rants about artists' fear of asking fans to support them directly, and the evolution of new artist-fan relationships as corporate middle-men go as the dodo."

I was at a dinner with Amanda a few weeks ago and we talked about this at length. She's not only incredibly interesting on the subject, but also insightful -- and successful at it.

i can't help it: i come from a street performance background. i stood almost motionless on a box in harvard square, painted white, relinquishing my fate and income to the goodwill and honor of the passers-by.

i spent years gradually building up a tolerance to the inbuilt shame that society puts on laying your hat/tipjar on the ground and asking the public to support your art...

i did this for 5 years, and i made a living that way. dollar by dollar. hour by hour. it was hard fucking work.

and for the last 10 years, i have been working my ass off in a different way: tirelessly making music, traveling the world, connecting with people, trying to keep my balance, almost never taking a break and, frankly, not making a fortune doing it. i still struggle to pay my rent sometimes. i'm still more or less in debt from my last record. i'll lay it all out for you in another blog. it's just math.

if you think i'm going to pass up a chance to put my hat back down in front of the collected audience on my virtual sidewalk and ask them to give their hard-earned money directly to me instead of to roadrunner records, warner music group, ticketmaster, and everyone else out there who's been shamelessly raping both fan and artist for years, you're crazy.

why i am not afraid to take your money, by amanda fucking palmer

The original art for some of Norman Saunders' fantastic Nutty Initials stickers are being auctioned on eBay right now. They were produced by Topps in 1967.

NORMAN SAUNDERS (1907 - 1989) was a prolific commercial artist who produced paintings for pulp magazines, paperbacks, men's adventure magazines, comic books, and trading cards. On occasion, he signed his work with his middle name, "Blaine." These distinctive characters were probably inspired by the work of Basil Wolverton. Painted fairly small, the piece as a whole measures 3.5" x 4.75, and there is some minor paint chipping in the black areas surrounding the monster, and glue residue on the reverse. Very good condition otherwise.

Nutty Initials stickers (Via Anonymous Works)

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.

Never before have I seen my community photographed with such dignity and hope . Omar Mullick, an award winning photographer who shoots for National Geographic, NY Times, etc., has traveled all across America for 7 years documenting the elusive Muslim American community.

The photography will be on display at GalleryFCB Thursday, October 8th at 6:00 pm. The gallery runs for the entire month, but please join us at the opening of this historic exhibit. RSVP on the Facebook Event if you can.

Omar has given me the permission to showcase a handful of photos here at Boing Boing.

More images and info after the jump.

There's a lot to enjoy in the Flickr stream of Vienna-based graphic designer Michæl Paukner. I intend to start following him on Twitter. I think this piece, above, is my favorite of the 27 he has posted online so far.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest. - A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
-- Albert Einstein

Skin Encapsulated Ego (via Fernando Rizo).

Coop took this great photo of Andy Warhol. Coop: "In the future, everyone will be an intergalactic bounty hunter for 15 minutes." Click the image for the Flickr post.

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.

 

Check out Pogo's YouTube Channel for more videos - http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron

Jeff VanderMeer sez, "Our friend South Florida fashion photographer Steven Paul Hlavac has photographed everyone from Warren Zevon to Daisy Fuentes. Now he's got a new exhibit up in which he's repurposed some of his travel photos (from China and elsewhere) in the context of old-timey ads for various products. It's a lot of fun, and for those still addicted to the meat world, you can also find them on display in the Tavares City Hall (north of Orlando) until the end of October."

Seaplanes and Citrus: Vintage Art From An Imaginary Past Photo-illustrations by Steven Paul Hlavac: (Thanks, Jeff!)

A new article in Smithsonian posits that Jackson Pollock hid his full name in the abstractions of his famed piece Mural. The article's author, art historian Henry Adams, says that his wife, also an art scholar, was the first to notice the letters. From Smithsonian:

I was researching a book about Pollock's lifelong relationship with his mentor, Thomas Hart Benton, the famed regionalist and muralist, when I sat puzzling over a reproduction of Mural after breakfast one morning with Marianne, herself an art historian. She suddenly said she could make out the letters S-O-N in blackish paint in the upper right area of the mural. Then she realized JACKSON ran across the entire top. And finally she saw POLLOCK below that.

The characters are unorthodox, even ambiguous, and largely hidden. But, she pointed out, it could hardly be random coincidence to find just those letters in that sequence...

Pollock's possibly writing his name in Mural testifies to an overlooked feature of his works: they have a structure, contrary to the popular notion that they could be done by any 5-year-old with a knack for splatters. In my view, Pollock organized the painting around his name according to a compositional system—vertical markings that serve as the loci of rhythmic spirals—borrowed directly from his mentor, Benton.

"Decoding Jackson Pollock"

Jeff sez,

An iron fence on W. 21st St. in New York depicts the classic image of a rocket crashing into the Man in the Moon from Melies' 1902 pioneering science fiction film, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).

The fence is across from the Clinton School of the Arts for Writers and Artists, and I happened to snap this photo during lunch break. After I was done shooting about 10 or so photos, I noticed that a crowd of kids had surrounded me and continued talking about the image as I walked away.

Soooo, teacher that I am, I went back and asked if any of them knew what it was. None of them did, but they agreed that it was "awesome" and wondered if the thing in his eye might be a bullet. I explained about the Melies film, its history, and what the image was supposed to be, all of which the kids said was even more awesome, so they asked me to repeat the title so they could watch the film on Youtube.

I remember being fascinated by a still of the original scene in a book when I was their age, um, many moons ago. Not only is the fence homage cool in itself, but it was wonderful to see that "A Trip to the Moon" continues to inspire.

Melies Moon Fence (Thanks, Jeff!)

Two armed thieves entered the Musée Magritte in Brussels at 10am this morning and made off with surrealist René Magritte's Olympia, valued at £3 million. One of the thieves rang the bell and asked to be let in. When he entered he pulled a gun and ordered the woman who answered the door to let his accomplice in.

A policeman said: “There were three museum workers inside at the time and two Japanese tourists. All five of them were ordered out the back and told to keep quiet by the man with the gun.

“In the museum the other person stole the painting and they both made good their escape. They seemed to know which painting they wanted to steal - they took the whole painting off the wall, including the frame.”

What usually happens to stolen paintings? Do the thieves hold them for ransom, do they sell them to private collectors who have secret museums in the homes, or what?

Armed thieves steal Magritte painting in daylight raid

Mike Thompson's "Blood Lamp" is a single-use lantern that draws its energy from a drop of your blood, making you consider the cost of energy in a uniquely personal way.

For the lamp to work one breaks the top off, dissolves the tablet, and uses their own blood to power a simple light. By creating a lamp that can only be used once, the user must consider when light is needed the most, forcing them to rethink how wasteful they are with energy, and how precious it is.

Blood Lamp (via Cribcandy)

As part of the ongoing serialization of my forthcoming novel MAKERS, Tor.com has commissioned Idiots' Books to produce 81 CC-licensed, interlocking illustrations, one for each installment. Periodically, Tor is adding these to a little Flash-toy that lets you rotate and realign the images like tiles (each has edge-elements that matches up with the others). They've just put up the 5X5 grid, which I'm finding addictively fun.

Makers Tile Game 5x5

Bassam Tariq resides in New York City. He is the co-author of the blog 30 Mosques which celebrated the NYC mosques during the blessed Islamic month of Ramadan


Iqbal Hussain is a controversial painter based in Pakistan. Not controversial in the Western sense - he's no Dash Snow or Andres Serrano - Iqbal showcases a side of Pakistan that many Pakistani's would rather not acknowledge.

I'm no expert on Hussain's work, so I'll quote excerpts from a fine article on All Things Pakistan written by Pervaiz Munir Alvi.

Iqbal's women are not nude or semi-naked or involved in some illicit acts as their profession might suggest. They are mostly some unknown and unremarkable women of modest looks and appearance.

Bassam Tariq resides in New York City. He is the co-author of the blog 30 Mosques which celebrated the NYC mosques during the blessed Islamic month of Ramadan.



Blu, the innovative street artist who brought us the viralicious wall-painted animation MUTO, is at it again. Just recently, Blu teamed up with David Ellis and together they made COMBO. This is a piece they did at the FAME festival After my first watch, I think I like MUTO better. What do you guys think? (via Wooster Collective)

This breathtaking place is a former Dominican church that was converted into a new retail location for bookseller Selexyz Dominicanen. The architecture firm was Merkx+Girod. From Design Top News:

The store demanded 1,200 sq m of commercial area where only 750 were available.

The initial idea of the client to install a second floor within the church was rejected by the designers, because this would completely destroy the spatial qualities of the church. The solution was found in the creation of a monumental walk-in bookcase spanning several floors and situated a-symmetrically in the church. In doing so the left side of the church remained empty while on the other side customers are lead upstairs in the three- storey ‘Bookflat.’

The ground floor gives room to several different book displays, information desks, magazine-stands and cash registers, all made of standard sheet materials in different colours and surfaces.

Merkx+Girod Architects: Bookstore Selexyz Dominicanen in Netherlands (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

BB readers may remember the Golden Mean, the incredible snail car that my friends Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate made from an old VW Bug. They recently showed off their latest wheeled creation, the "Electrobyte: Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobite." The hand-tooled exoskeleton is mounted on the drive mechanism of an old electric wheelchair. At night, undermounted blue lights give it an otherworldly glow. Jon says, "People would walk up and ask if it was remote controlled. When I pointed out the leather seat and the joy stick they couldn’t believe you could drive it. Lots of smiling faces when we let them try it out." In their, er, spare time, Jon is a blacksmith and Kyrsten is an Oscar-nominated sound effects designer for Hollywood films. Damn, they are a talented pair.

Electrobite at Burning Man
Electrobite set on Flickr

Now this should be deeply weird... BB pal Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis and Visionary State, wrote the libretto for a rock opera about Burning Man. "How to Survive the Apocalypse: A Burning Opera" will be staged at the Teatro ZinZanni cabaret and circus tent on San Francisco's waterfront October 5-7 and 12-14. Here's what Erik says about the opera:

Designed to communicate the transformational madness of the playa to the "Burning curious" as well as the experienced (or jaded) playa faithful, "How to Survive the Apocalyse" follows three newbies as they stumble through the erotic, psychological, and visionary minefield of the festival. Scored by Mark Nichols, with libretto by yours truly (who also plays a wise-cracking bunny with a bullhorn), the show is appropriate both for Burning Man veterans looking for a familiar boost, and for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to enjoy the Burner mystique without the dust and brain-bubbling sun. Bring your neighbor, your Mom, your co-workers: all those folks in your life who've been wondering what you're up to every August but aren't willing to trek to Nevada to find out.

And from the opera Web site:

“How to Survive the Apocalypse” is a Burning Man-inspired theatrical freak-out that combines rock opera, vaudeville, and a Dionysian revival show that is just as inspired and terrified by current events as you are. Part mutant mystery play, part crash-course in proactive future culture, we welcome you to an ambitious and ferociously inventive radically-altered evening of musical theater,  scored by Mark Nichols with libretto by counterculture writer Erik Davis.  Prepare to Participate!

How To Survive The Apocalypse

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

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Adam Shecter makes whimsical, clever, stupid, pretty little blips of cartoons. He's been doing it for a while and has slowly amassed a fantastic Saturday Morning Cartoon broadcast from another planet. Have a look!

Adam's website (link)

Germans! Adam Shecter is exhibiting right now at the Bielefelder Kunstverein (link). UPDATE: New Yorkers! Adam is also exhibiting right now at Eleven Rivington (link).

Ant Army wall-stickers come in packs of 105 and are well-suited to staging your own home insect invasion.

Ant Army (via Crib Candy)

iPhone snapshot: an array of vertical lights, Louis Vuitton window display, Macy's San Francisco Union Square, September, 2009. stills | video (embedded after the jump).

Melbourne artist Martin Harris paints lovely tiny watercolors inspired by children's books, toys, and 1960s television. His latest series, titled Toytown, is hanging at Melbourne's Outré Gallery through October 6. (Above: "Toytown Industrial Estate," 34. 5 x 24.5 cm; "Science Library Vol. 1," 6.5 x 9 cm; "Little Gothic Library Vol. 4 The Raven," 8.5 x 10 cm) Martin Harris at Outré Gallery (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

Kristian Hammerstad's gallery of haunted and monster art has me shivering with delight.

Kristian Hammerstad (via Street Anatomy)

Etsy seller TheBlackSpotBooks sells a library in necklace form -- a collection of 11 miniature blank-books bound in scrap and antique leather. I love the idea, though I'd love it more if the books had tiny little printing, the text of great public domain works.

Library of antique and scrap leather books for the neck - eleven miniature books (via Neatorama)

My segment on Sparky — a robot made by San Francisco artist Marque Cornblatt using a Mac Mini, Skype, and a hodge podge of gadget parts — aired this weekend on PRI's Studio360, the arts and culture radio show hosted by novelist Kurt Anderson. Instead of doing a straight up interview, Marque and I took Sparky to the SF MoMa unannounced to see if we'd be let into the galleries. You can listen to the segment here, but for full effect I recommend going to Studio360's web site and watching the audio slideshow (below the Diablo Cody one) — it includes pictures of Sparky in the MoMa, Marque's living room, and the other characters that make appearances on the show.

Cody, Ellroy, Sparky on Studio360

Artist Kevin Cyr is building a pop-up camper atop a shopping cart. This is a follow-up to his Camper Bike, a 3-wheeler bicycle with a truck camper on the back. Cyr is looking for donations to help complete the Camper Kart. Cyr writes:

It's a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making due with less.

I have always been interested in bikes and vehicles and for many years they have been the subject of my paintings. My paintings document odd and derelict vehicles: old delivery trucks inundated with graffiti and rust, well-traveled RVs, Indian rickshaws and Asian bikes.

Throughout the last year, I decided to build my own type of vehicles. On a trip to Beijing, I conceived and built a CAMPER BIKE: an amalgamation of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike with an American cabover style camper. Interested in building a series of mobile vehicles and inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, I started sketching plans for CAMPER KART: a mobile unit built into a shopping cart--an ubiquitous urban object.

Camper Kart (Kickstarter)
"Kevin Cyr's Camper kart" (Hi-Fructose)

The publisher of R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated kindly gave permission to share Chapter 19 with our readers. Click on the thumbnails for an enlargement. Enjoy!

I understand the book will start shipping as soon as September 23rd.

From Genesis: Translation and Commentary, translated by Robert Alter. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Alter. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Crumb

Toy photographer Brian McCarty shot this dreamy image of the Moon Wanderers, resin figures that are hand-cast and painted by Russian artist Sergey Safonov. Here's what Brian said of the photo shoot:

I fell in love with the characters, instantly imagining a scene of floating figures under a paper moon. To achieve the shot, I mounted the toys on metal rods and drove them deep into the soft mud of Two Ocean Lake inside Grand Teton National Park. The camera was placed on a semi-submerged tripod, and a very long exposure made the water seem glassy, except for the rippled reflection of strobe light off a paper moon suspended in the background.

Moon Wanderers

Covered is a blog that posts comic book covers redrawn by different cartoonists. The results are fascinating. Covered

A powerful and beautiful photo-essay by Matt Mendelson about a powerful and beautiful young woman from my home town named Lindsay Ess, a fashion major at Virginia Commonwealth University. Same school, even the same building where I spent a lot of time as a kid, growing up -- so the story *really* felt familiar and personal to me, even though I do not know her, and cannot imagine what it feels like to endure what she's prevailed through.

The story begins at a student runway showing, where Linsday is looking on:

Lindsay, it should be noted, has no hands to clap and no feet on which to get up. She had them back in the summer of 2007, when she was tall and thin and had just graduated from VCU with a fashion merchandising degree. Then, to use her words, a blur. When she entered Henrico Doctors' Hospital that summer, the procedure to remove a small piece of inflamed intestine, a nagging complication of her Crohn's disease, was supposed to go routinely. But supposed to go routinely rarely turns out well, and there hasn't been a routine day in Lindsay's life ever since. Not since the leak, not since the sepsis, not since the organ failures, the brain seizures, and not since the coma. Definitely not the coma. Not since one day in August turned to October and then drifted on towards Christmas. Certainly not since the quadruple amputations, the cruel coda to having been so close to death all those months and then surviving. Oh, honey, you know what they're going to do, right? the nurse said. There's no routine to being bathed and fed and dressed like a child mere months after you've graduated college, and no routine to learning how to walk again at the age of twenty-five. No routine in continuing a long-distance relationship with someone who admits to having originally been smitten by your looks, or to being with your mother almost every waking hour. There's no routine for taking a fistful of pills a day--the Pentasa, the Entocort EC, the Lexapro, the Keppra, the Urosidol, the Spiranolactone, the Zolpidem, the Lyrica, not to mention the occasional shot of actual alcohol. There's no routine, no manual, for wishing you were whole again, so that just one morning of your life you could actually wake up and make it to the bathroom on your own, even if the arms and legs you now covet so are made of acrylic and not skin and bone and muscle. And, perhaps most of all, no routine for the long, slow realization that those acrylic arms and legs might not, in the end, be the answer to anything. If you're Lindsay Ess, routine pretty much stopped on August 3, 2007.

The Lessons of Lindsay (story) Sports Shooter Q & A: with Matt Mendelsohn (chat with the photographer).

(Sports Shooter, via @Glennf)

Organizers of the "Out In Africa" gay and lesbian film festival in South Africa are seriously pissed: some homophobic jerks tore down all the posters for the fest, some 700 of 'em attached to poles and lamp-posts about town. There are two reasons this is upsetting: one, it is a clear message of intimidation and intolerance. Two: nobody should desecrate good graphic design, and these posters are really nice.

An outraged Out in Africa South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival director Nodi Murphy has lodged a complaint with police. "Some stupid twits with more time on their hands than brains trashed our gorgeous posters. And for what?"

Our gorgeous posters have been trashed (Out In Africa, via Kalaya'an Mendoza)

Polyghost is a simple and fun iPhone app that brings collectible vinyl toys into the virtual realm. In development for a year, it features the delightful artwork of BB pal Tim Biskup along with FriendsWithYou and DEVILROBOTS. Developed by Last Legion Games, the $3.99 app comes with Tim's infamous "Helper" character (top left) and you can buy others within the app itself. They range in price from $.99 to $9.99, depending on the value of their real vinyl counterparts. I don't think I'd pay $9.99 for a virtual vinyl character, but I bet some hardcore collectors would. Once you download a character, you can pose it, change the lighting to set a mood, and easily composite the critter into any image in the iPhone's photo album. PolyGhost also offers one-click sharing of your creations on Facebook and Twitter. Polyghost

London design firm Berg (formerly Schulz and Webb) is working on a series of provocative videos exploring "designerly applications for RFID." The first one is this lovely Rube Goldberg machine running on RFID: "With RFID it's proximity that matters, and actual contact isn't necessary. Much of Timo's work in the Touch project addresses the fictions and speculations in the technology. Here we play with the problems of invisibility and the magic of being close."

Nearness

The fine folks at Flux will show the animated short "Logorama" in their screening lineup at the Hammer museum tonight.

The entire universe of this film, even the characters within (a talking "Pringles" man, and a villainous Ronald McDonald), even the city of Los Angeles itself -- are all composed of repurposed corporate logo art, all of which is used without permission.

If you're in LA, you really must head over there tonight. There's a great post (with video clips) about the making of Logorama over at Creativity Online.

Jonathan Wells of Flux tells us,

The short was created by directors within H5, a French graphic studio renowned for its CD front covers (Superdiscount, Air, Demon...) and artistic direction (Dior, Cartier, YSL...). Members François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain directed many music videos (Alex Gopher, Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Röyksopp...), and are regularly invited to exhibitions for their artistic talents (2007 Nuit Blanche, Beaubourg, MoMA). Logorama is their first short film, and premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Kodak Short Film Discovery Prize at the 48th Critics' Week. The short was *four* years in the making, and features a voice cameo by filmmaker David Fincher as the Pringles man.

More stills after the jump!

Buy Coilhouse #3 right here. We're big fans of Coilhouse Magazine over here at Boing Boing, so it was a special honor and delight when the gothtastically beautiful ladies who run the publication told us they were planning a feature on me/BB. I swear I'm not just vanity-blogging here -- this whole issue is awesome, and the insane illustrations by Stuntkid (aka Norfolk, VA-based artist Jason Levesque), including the unicorny one above, are the coolest ever. I love his work!

The physical thing itself is gorgeous: rich colors, lush print quality, embossed glossy cover, beveled corners. The articles are wonderful stuff, and the same sort of material we'd cover here on any given blog-day: a photo-essay on the "pirate ghetto," Walled City of Kowloon; an avatar fashion spread shot by Gustavo Lopez Mañas (this is the cover shot), Marina Bychkova's creepy ball-jointed porcelain dolls, and an interview with Battlestar Galactica's conceptual captain Ron Moore. There's lots more.

I know the Coilhouse folks have been struggling of late to keep putting out such a high-quality, densely-packed publication in this crappy economy. Y'know how, some magazines, you buy 'em, then toss 'em right when you're done reading them -- but others, you stick on your bookshelf and keep 'em forever? Coilhouse is a keeper. They're doing amazing work in the true Boing Boing spirit of Happy Mutantry, and I hope you'll support them by buying a copy (or a t-shirt!) today.

* Link to Coilhouse issue #03 preview
* Flickr set with details of Stuntkid's illustrations.

(Special thanks to photographer Clayton Cubitt, whose work appears in the aforementioned feature; to Courtney Riot, who did the graphic design on this issue, and to Nadya Lev, Meredith Yayanos, and Zoetica, the co-editrix trifecta behind Coilhouse.)

Oh, I love these "I'm the Moon" screensavers. Apparently, new stuff. Silent and talking versions. I want one immediately. Non-Boosh-fans: The Moon is one of the weirdo recurring characters from the TV show/stage phenom/cultural oddity "The Mighty Boosh," and is played by Noel Fielding. During Boing Boing Video's interview of Fielding and co-creator Julian Barratt, I asked where the moon character came from, and the answer was something like -- a hodgepodge of speech accents... an Eastern European girlfriend of one of their friends, mixed with "mildly retarded man-on-the-street." Online: imthemoon.tv

Previously:

What a sad loss. He will be remembered, respected, and missed. NYT obituary. Patti Smith, another personal idol of mine, says of Carroll, "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty."

Photo: Patti and Jim (via ifcharlieparkerwasagunslinger, no image credit given)

In LA's Koreatown district, two dueling billboards over on Wilshire Boulevard. Two enter, one leaves. Guess which?

At left, Consumer Watchdog's ad, arguing that you can't trust Mercury Insurance. Yup, you guessed it -- THAT billboard was dismantled last week when the subject of the ad issued lawyergrams.

At right, the Absolut vagina Mango ad, which still flaps proudly in the Southern California breeze:

"If you drive three to four blocks east of where ours was," said Jamie Court, "there's a huge Absolut Mango ad, and it's really not a mango." Court said he was alerted by his wife, who happened upon it while driving and made the following observation: "There's a five-story vagina on a building."

So, happy mutants, lesson learned: You may or may not be able to trust Mercury Insurance, but you can trust humongous hoo-hahs.

Read: LA Times via MSNBC. Images from Consumer Watchdog; howunoriginal.com.

This just in: a multimillion dollar collection of Warhol works, some twelve paintings including the Athletes series, have gone missing from the Los Angeles home of art collector Richard L. Weisman.

A $1-million reward has been offered by an anonymous source for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. Weisman, who was friends with Warhol, commissioned the silk-screen paintings in the late 1970s - a time when Warhol produced hundreds of pieces of work for wealthy patrons able to pay the roughly $25,000 he charged for portraits.

I'm excited to be going to Baby Tattooville this year (as a member of the press) and hang out with a lot of my favorite artists. If you want to attend, hurry and sign up, as only nine slots remain.

Baby Tattooville is an unlike-anything-you've-ever-heard-of-before art extravaganza. It's like a high-roller's cross between a lively art fair, a down-to-earth studio visit with famous artists, and a 'round-the-clock private party... with lots of jaw-dropping gifts for the lucky few who are adventurous enough to attend.

The event takes place early next month (October 2-4, 2009) at the spectacular Mission Inn Hotel and Spa in Riverside, California. This year's artist lineup includes James Gurney, Michael Hussar, Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Elizabeth McGrath, Miss Mindy, Johnny KMNDZ Rodriguez, KRK Ryden, Greg "Craola" Simkins, Yoskay Yamamoto and a number of surprise guests (big surprise guests).

In order to insure that attendees are able to interact directly with their favorite artists, a total of only 45 tickets are offered for sale. As mentioned above, only 9 tickets remain available as of today.

The retail price is $2500 for an individual ticket, or $3000 for a two-person ticket (the two people must occupy the same hotel room and will receive one gift bag between them). The retail price includes 2 nights hotel accommodations, several meals (including a spectacular Sunday Brunch), access to a weekend's worth of social and creative interaction with all of the attending artists, and an unbelievable assortment of original art, limited edition prints and collectible merchandise. Go to babytattooville.com to learn more and register.

In addition to everything mentioned above, you will find yourself with an unparalleled networking opportunity since you will be spending a fun and stimulating weekend with top artists, other industry professionals and media insiders.

Spend the Weekend with Your Favorite Artists and Get Lots of Exclusive Stuff