happy as an owl in a book tree

I love this sculpture by Colombian artist Federico Uribe, made of deconstructed books.  He has a whole forest of them in an exhibit at Now Contemporary Art in Miami.  See the photos here, or take a virtual tour.

Photos by Moris Moreno for the NYT.

letters and letters

This piece, An American Puzzle by Lloyd G. Schermer, a gorgeous collage of old letterpress type, is my favourite in the SAAM (click on the photo for a closer look). I always make a point of dropping by to see it when I'm there, and I always notice something new. So I was pretty thrilled to see this as the subject of a recent Eye Level (the SAAM blog) post, and to get some background on the piece.

"Schermer worked for a newspaper in Missoula, Montana and in 1964 when the publication updated its manufacturing methods to offset lithography (which uses photography to transfer images to the paper), he saved many of the old type pieces, hoping he'd eventually find another use for them. Some type pieces are two hundred years old. Over the years, Schermer has collected enough type and engravings to fill over 900 drawers in his studio."

"It’s fun, too, to note the old-fashioned appearance of the plates: Mickey Mouse looks younger, if that’s possible, and the uniform of the football player seems to be right out of the 1920s. The piece belongs in a museum as a piece of art and a piece of history."

Be sure to search this piece out if ever you find yourself in the SAAM. Just look for the Luce Center, it's to the right just inside the door.

nerdbots are go

Meet the Nerdbots, my new best friends and--what the heck, let's make 'em the piece of the week. Found object sculpture is always awesome. Here we have Klorg, Lewyt, and Nodaway. Oh, if only I were rich man (metaphorically speaking, that is) and not a poor, poor student...imagine the vast armies I would build. Via swissmiss.

and this is why inflatable sculptures of poo are a bad idea

When I was a kid, a local car dealership had this giant Betty Boop balloon as a promotion for something. Well, one day Betty demanded freedom and the balloon simply drifted away. For weeks afterward there were frequent Betty Boop sightings and she caused some trouble for local airports. For my brother and me, keeping an eye out for the giant flying Betty Boop was just another way to alleviate boredom while in the car.

The inflatable sculpture that recently flew away from its moorings in Switzerland is a different animal altogether.

“A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled “Complex S(expletive..)”, is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children’s home, said museum director Juri Steiner.”

Quote from here, via the Flickr blog.

guess what I saw today

by 100wordminimum

Impressed? You should be--I never left the US! While en route to visit relatives in Tennessee, my mother and I made the impromptu decision to visit the Natural Bridge. Little did we know that doing so would bring us face-to-face with...

by crowolf

By Mark Cline. Isn't kitsch great?