Move Over, Giant Jesus…

and make way for Guan Yu. The awful, homeless Giganto Jesus is not only dwarfed,  but seriously outclassed by the recently unveiled statue of Guan Yu.

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That’s one gorgeous God! You can read and see more about it here. And from Nerdist:

And this isn’t even the first statue depicting his epicness — he’s worshipped in many areas of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as a god of war, brotherhood, and loyalty. Designed by Beijing’s 2008 Olympic architect, Han Meilin, this Guan Yu statue is housed in Jingzhou’s Guan Yu Park along the southern tip of China. The entire park was built to pay tribute to the concept of righteousness, with Guan Yu’s statue figuratively representing the X-shaped Chinese character for the virtue. There’s also a huge museum inside of the statue dedicated to Guan Yu and the overall righteousness of China’s history.

LGBTQ Guide to Comic-Con 2016.

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Every year for the past 29 years, the Gays in Comics panel has graced a stage at Comic-Con International, the annual celebration of pop culture held in San Diego. During this time the convention has expanded from a comic books-only focus to include other mediums like TV, film, and games. And the presence of LGBT people, once relegated to that single panel, has exploded to a point where every day offers a variety of queer content and the breadth of topics continues to grow. Here are some of the best things about 2016, Comic-Con’s queerest year yet.

[…]

You Don’t Even Have to Be in the Convention Center: One of the best things about this year’s Comic-Con? You don’t need a ticket to take advantage of some events and panels. Organizers have long recognized that the demand for Comic-Con tickets far exceeds availability (as does demand for space for exhibits and presenters). Over the years there’s been a growing number of events outside of the convention hall — including in local bars and even the public library (see above for examples). This year Comic-Con has launched this access into hyperspace by introducing a new premium digital network, ComicConHQ. In association with Lionsgate, the service will live-stream select Comic-Con panels and make others available later; it will also offer classic sci-fi and fantasy titles, and it reportedly has original programming in the works, including scripted series and news shows.

This is a long list, people! Stuffed with great events and panels. Wish I was there. Click on over to The Advocate for the full scoop.

Money-grubbing on Trump.

Oh, Ebay. Home of people who will do anything to make a buck, a lot of Trump wannabes. Here’s their idea of Trump-based art. Well, some of it. You’ll have to click over to see all of it, I’m afraid I don’t have much appetite for this stuff.

1

Donald Trump clown dress, $25,000.00.

2

Donald Trump LEGO Mosaic – Custom Build 20″ x 20″ (NEW), $990.00.

3

Donald Trump Art Collage,$2,400.00.

Click over to Gizmodo to see the rest, including a baby doll someone is trying to fob off as a baby Trump doll, for a mere $20,000.  There’s also a Trump towel, which I don’t want to explain. :Shudder:

Just a sec, let me get my tiny violin…

Okay, all set. An artist has set up a perfect commentary around Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Star.

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The miniature wall is quite detailed, as this Instagram user wrote: “Someone had built a 6″ tall grey concrete wall around it. Complete with ‘Keep out’ signs and topped with razor wire.”

Fusion has the story. I have no doubt that the commentary will have lots of commentary tomorrow, when all the cons start decrying this horrific act of vandalism. I have my teeny, tiny violin all ready.

Screw Paintings.

"Things Are Not Always What They Seem" by Andrew Myers (Courtesy AMA).

“Things Are Not Always What They Seem” by Andrew Myers (Courtesy AMA).

While many artists consider pencils and paper to be their essential tools, Andrew Myers prefers his electric screwdriver. For the past several years, the California-based artist has been drilling thousands of screws into pieces of plywood and painting them to make 3-D masterpieces that can be appreciated by both blind and sighted people.

Myers began making what he calls “screw paintings” a few years after graduating from the Laguna College of Art and Design. Up until then he had been making bronze sculptors, but he knew he hit the proverbial nail on the head after witnessing a blind man being led around by a friend who was describing one of his creations at an art show. Arms outstretched, the man ran his fingertips across the piece. In a short documentary film produced by his art dealer, Cantor Fine Art, an art gallery in West Hollywood, California, Myers describes the incredible moment when he witnessed “a blind man who could almost see for a second.”

“Seeing the man smile, it was one of those visceral smiles that comes straight from your stomach,” Myers tells Smithsonian.com. “As an artist, it’s my goal to make people feel something, and the emotional aspect [of this experience] stuck with me.”

The Full Article is Here.  Andrew Myers’s website is here. Truly inspired work!

Child Resurrected.

At left, 2015 photograph of CHILD prior to conservation treatment. At right, CHILD after treatment in January 2016. All images courtesy of MoMA, New York

At left, 2015 photograph of CHILD prior to conservation treatment. At right, CHILD after treatment in January 2016. All images courtesy of MoMA, New York

Bruce Connor’s sculpture, CHILD, done in 1960 in response to the execution of Caryl Chessman, has been quietly falling apart for 50 years. It has long been thought to be outside of restoration abilities. It has now been restored, and is on exhibit. The full story of the restoration is fascinating, and I’m glad to see this disturbing and thought provoking piece back in the public eye.

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Since its acquisition nearly half a century ago, the exhibition Bruce Conner: It’s All True marks the first time CHILD has ever been exhibited at MoMA. Details of the restoration are here.

Via The Creators Project.

Shredded Holiness.

I’m finally getting a start on a piece I’ve had in mind for the last couple of years, titled Rendered Harmless. This will be smaller than originally planned, 41″ x 48″ (1.04m x 1.22m). This involves shredded holiness. While bibles are a dime a dozen at any charity / thrift shop, it’s not so easy to find a used Quran here, so that I’ll probably have to buy new.

So, shredded bible (a start at least.)

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Inside the bible was a church card, and I had to smile when I looked at the back of it:

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“I feel pretty, oh so pretty.” Someone really liked West Side Story. :D

Iron Man: Female and Black.

Marvel.

Marvel.

Yes! Now I want to see Riri on the big screen.

Tony Stark is stepping down as Iron Man and will be replaced by a young black girl named Riri Williams at the end of the comic book event series Civil War II.

According to Time, “Riri is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at the age of 15. She comes to the attention of Tony when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm.”

[…]

Bendis claims that some of the most die-hard fans have been willing to at least give the casting shake-up a shot, thanks to his involvement with other diverse heroes such as Miles Morales (aka black Spider-Man) and Jessica Jones. He admits, though, that while there are still some bizarrely racist comments out there over Marvel’s increasingly diverse roster of characters, that’s changing.

“There was a part of an audience crawling through the desert looking for an oasis when it came to representation,” he said, “and now that it’s here, you’ll go online and be greeted with this wave of love.”

And from what it sounds like, Iron Man is in good hands with Riri. “Her brain is maybe a little better than his [Tony’s],” Bendis adds. “She looks at things from a different perspective that makes the armor unique. He can’t help but go maybe I should buy her out.”

Via Out.

Architectural Matryroshka.

Blockoshka architectural nesting dolls. All images courtesy of Studio Zupagrafika.

Blockoshka architectural nesting dolls. All images courtesy of Studio Zupagrafika.

Oh, these are so cool!

Parts of Moscow, East Berlin, Warsaw, and Prague are nearly indistinguishable from each other thanks to their architecture. After mass destruction from World War II, rows of Modernist, high-rise housing blocks popped up during the Cold War, a result of Communist urban planning that gives many Eastern European cities a repetitive, rectangular aesthetic. To help shine light on and define the differences and similarities between these housing blocks in each city, Poznán-based design studio Zupagrafika has created Blokoshka, a set of nesting dolls—or as the studio calls them, “Modernist architectural matryoshka”—made up of typical building types from the four cities.

The top and largest layer, in red, represents the “sleeping districts” of Moscow’s, semi-suburban communities dedicated solely to housing blocks. Inside the largest piece fits the typical East Berlin Plattenbau. These buildings, made of concrete slabs, were erected quickly and en masse in the 60s in order to accommodate an influx of new residents from further east, and an increasing desire for the-then modern designs that provided a better alternative to pre-war buildings.

Open another layer of Blokoshka, and reveal a yellow building representing Warsaw, another city that was essentially leveled by the Nazis in World War II. Finally, the smallest architectural nesting doll is a blue Panelák, a pre-fab concrete tower representative of the places where many Czechs still live today.

The Zupagrafika team, David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka, tell The Creators Project that their inspiration for these works, which follow projects like Eastern Block, a collection of Warsaw-inspired building models, comes from a love of the Modernist aesthetic, and a desire not to see these iconic buildings renovated and erased from history.

Via The Creators Project. Find out more about Blokoshka on Zupagrafika’s website, here.

No Home for Giant Jesus.

At 80 meters, the statue -- which itself is 33 meters tall and is intended to stand on a 47-meter pedestal -- would be twice as large as the famous Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro.

At 80 meters, the statue — which itself is 33 meters tall and is intended to stand on a 47-meter pedestal — would be twice as large as the famous Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro.

 

The actual giant Jesus in question, in a photoshopped location.

The actual giant Jesus in question, in a photoshopped location.

 

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Residents of Russia’s “northern capital” are once again girding themselves to defend the city’s world-renowned, 18th-century skyline.

Less than five years after locals successfully fought off an effort by state-controlled natural-gas giant Gazprom to build a 400-meter-high skyscraper in the center of the city, municipal officials are now looking for a place to erect a towering statue of Jesus Christ that has been donated by the Kremlin’s favorite sculptor, Zurab Tsereteli.

“Tsereteli has hardly created anything decent, even on such a holy topic,” longtime Petersburg rights activist Yury Vdovin says. “But it seems the authorities of the country and the city don’t give a damn about people’s opinions. They are pursuing their own ends.”

[…]

It was originally intended for the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, but officials there rejected it because of its enormous scale. Last year, there were reports of plans to put it up in Vladivostok.

This spring, St. Petersburg officials tried to place it in a large park on the outskirts of the city but local residents objected and the initiative was withdrawn. On July 9, however, St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko ordered the city planning committee to find a new home for the statue.

Local reaction to the announcement has been uniformly negative, particularly after municipal authorities just last month overruled public opinion and named a local bridge after former Chechen President Akhmed Kadyrov, the controversial father of current Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov who had no discernable connection with St. Petersburg.

[…]

Outspoken local clergyman Andrei Kurayev has said the best place for Tsereteli’s creation would be the Novaya Zemlya archipelago more than 2,000 kilometers to the northeast in the Arctic Ocean.

The Life.ru website created a satirical photo gallery of the statue photoshopped into various iconic St. Petersburg locations such as Palace Square or next to the Peter and Paul Fortress.

“Petersburgers love their city,” local lawmaker Aleksandr Kobrinsky says. “We shouldn’t forget how they unanimously resisted the construction of the [Gazprom tower] and won. I am sure that if the authorities insist on placing this statue, they will meet just as much resistance.”

“Instead of telling [Tsereteli] where to take his gift, the city authorities are looking for a place to put that monster,” he adds. “It is exactly the same as it was with the Kadyrov Bridge, when they spat on the opinion of 90 percent of the city because Moscow pressured them.”

[…]

Even local representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg think Tsereteli’s statue is a bad idea that not only does not fit into the city’s historic image but flies in the face of Orthodox practice as well.

“I am not opposed to new things, but they have to be canonically based,” says priest Georgy Mitrofanov, a professor of the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy. “I’m not speaking about its aesthetic basis. From the aesthetic point of view, not being a fan of Tsereteli’s, I think this work clashes with the sculptural ensembles that already exist in St. Petersburg and I cannot imagine Tsereteli’s masterpiece within the cultural atmosphere of the city, particularly because it is so dubious from the canonical point of view.”

Full story at RFERL.