All artwork by Brian Pollett. Brian Pollett’s youtube channel.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
All artwork by Brian Pollett. Brian Pollett’s youtube channel.
Courtesy Douglas Flanders and Associates
An art exhibition in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is causing a stir over the artist’s use of Native American imagery.
For over 200 years, non-Natives have appropriated Native American culture for their own intents and purposes. The sphere is wide when it comes to the misuse of Native American culture; appropriation can be seen in sports mascots, fashion and design, product logos; the list goes on and on. The problem with this current mainstream model is that it denies Indigenous people the right to represent their own lifeways and worldview.
The show “Scott Seekins, the New Eden” at the Douglas Flanders and Associates Art Gallery, is being touted as Seekins response to the “Great Sioux Uprising of 1862.” Seekins’s “body of work as an alternative to Minnesota’s tepid 2012 150-year remembrance,” as the gallery touts on its website, is problematic in its interpretation, as it reeks of Native appropriation, and lacks a Native voice.
Scott Seekins, a mainstay of the Minneapolis art scene, is best known for his eccentric dress and demeanor as opposed to the quality of his work. This particular collection of Seekins’s work imitates historic Plains style of drawing (erroneously referred to as ledger art), where he replicates scenes, moves the images around, and inserts himself in a sort of Forrest Gump manner. To be clear, Plains style drawings were a warrior’s record of bravery against the enemy, hunting scenes, courtship, and ceremonial life, these accounts were drawn in accountant ledgers and sketchbooks.
Seekins’s work is the quintessential example of cultural appropriation.
In Seekins’s painting, a clear replica of John Casper Wild’s “Watercolor Painting of Fort Snelling,” (1884), Seekins portrays himself guiding a non-Native woman holding a baby, in the background there are tipis and the fort on the bluff. In another drawing created in the historic Plains graphic style, a Native man has defeated an enemy Calvary, while Seekins, wearing his iconic suit, stands with his arms raised. By placing himself in these historical scenes he positions himself as a mediator and witness. By doing this he disregards the Native American narrative. Considering that this is one of the worst tragedies between the United States Government and American Indians, the U.S. Dakota War of 1862 and its aftermath has had a long lasting impact on the descendants of the Dakota that died. Many Dakota died at Fort Snelling and on the gallows in Mankato, their descendants carry the spirit of their Ancestors with them, they live among us, they are part of us, they are an important part of the Minnesota narrative.
You can read the rest of Joe D. Horse Capture’s article at ICTMN.
Myths, Eiko Ojala.
Myths, Eiko Ojala.
Myths, Eiko Ojala.
Blown. Away. There’s much more of Ojala’s work at http://ploom.tv/ and Behance.
Estonian illustrator Eiko Ojalabrings a fantastic sense of depth and texture into his editorial illustrations by using carefully arranged layers of cut paper and shadows. The works are all assembled digitally, but the artist often incorporates his own photos to achieve the desired effect.
Via Colossal Art.
Fly by Night, by artist Duke Riley. You can read more about this amazing performance art at The Creators Project. There’s a faq at the project’s website: http://creativetime.org/projects/flybynight/faq/ and the show will be going through June 12th at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Louie’s Jurassic Park:
In his off-duty time, NASA Astronaut Don Pettit experiments with the physics of
water in the weightless environment aboard the International Space Station:
McAvoy goes full Stewart:
25 Contemporary Artists Reimagine the African Mask.
Nandipha Mntambo (South African, born 1982). Europa, 2008. Exhibition print, 31 ½ x 31 ½ in. (80 x 80 cm). Photographic composite: Tony Meintjes. Courtesy of the artist and STEVENSON, Cape Town and Johannesburg. © Nandipha Mntambo. Photo: Courtesy of STEVENSON, Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Click the link for more photos, and the full story.
I’m not a “selfie” person, and I shudder when I see “selfie sticks”, those things look like cattle prods to me. I don’t see the virtue in constantly taking photos of yourself, but if that’s what makes you happy, go for it. Just leave the art out of it. A great deal of art work gets damaged by those seeking selfie perfection in the never-ending I can top that! selfie competition. The latest victim to selfie-ism is a statue of Dom Sebastiao, who ruled Portugal from 1557 to 1578, at Lisbon’s Rossio train station.
The statue of Dom Sebastiao before it was destroyed. Courtesy of Peter Burka, via Flickr Creative Commons.
The statue of Don Sebastiao was broken by a young man taking a selfie. Courtesy of Infrastructure Portugal.
The 126-year-old statue shattered after a 24-year-old man reportedly knocked it over while climbing on it to take a photograph. The suspect, who has not been named, is said to have attempted to flee the scene before being apprehended by police.
A spokesperson for Infrastructure Portugal told the Daily Mail that he did not know when the statue would be repaired. Before the unfortunate incident, the sculpture was perched in a niche between two doorways at the station, which is a protected monument.
[…]
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Last May, a pair of tourists damaged a statue of Hercules in the northern Italian city of Cremona while taking a photograph with it. In 2014, an Italian student tried to pose sitting in the lap of a 19th-century cast of an ancient work at Milan’s Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, only to smash the sculpture in the process.
Some museums have taken steps to protect their art by banning selfie sticks, which extend the reach of the photographer, and may increase the likelihood of inadvertently striking a work of art. (Even without selfies, accidents happen, like the boy who lost his balance and punched $1.5 million painting, or the woman who tripped and smashed an ancient Greek vase.)
Lots of wows here, amazing work by Collin van der Sluijs. Van der Sluijs was most recently in Chicago where he completed a tremendous mural in the south loop as part of the Wabash Arts Corridor that depicts two endangered Illinois birds amongst an explosion of blooms. He also opened his first solo show in the U.S. titled “Luctor Et Emergo” at Vertical Gallery, featuring a wide range of paintings and drawings. You can follow more of his work on Flickr.
Via Colossal Art.
In 1977, sculptor David Nash cleared an area of land near his home in Wales where he trained a circle of 22 ash trees to grow in a vortex-like shape for an artwork titled Ash Dome. Almost 40 years later, the trees still grow today. The artist has long worked with wood and natural elements in his art practice, often incorporating live trees or even animals into pieces. The exact site of Ash Dome in the Snowdonia region of northwest Wales is a closely guarded secret, and film crews or photographers who are permitted to see it are reportedly taken on a circuitous route to guard its location. Nash shares in an interview with the International Sculpture Center:
When I first planted the ring of trees for Ash Dome, the Cold War was still a threat. There was serious economic gloom, very high unemployment in our country, and nuclear war was a real possibility. We were killing the planet, which we still are because of greed. In Britain, our governments were changing quickly, so we had very short-term political and economic policies. To make a gesture by planting something for the 21st century, which was what Ash Dome was about, was a long-term commitment, an act of faith. I did not know what I was letting myself in for.
The newly described dinosaur Zhenyuanlong suni measured 5 feet in length and was a relative of the velociraptor. The fossil’s well-preserved wings bore complex feathers, not simple hairlike structures. Illustration by Zhao Chuang.
Click image for full size. I don’t know about you, but if something like that was chasing me…godsdamn. Feathers, much more terrifying than scales, hands down.
They Had Feathers: Is the World Ready to See Dinosaurs as They Really Were? (Via Pharyngula.)
Swale, a collaborative floating food project, is dedicated to rethinking and challenging New York City’s connection to our environment. Built on an 80-foot by 30-foot floating platform, Swale contains an edible forest garden. Functioning as both a sculpture and a tool, Swale provides free healthy food at the intersection of public art and service. With Swale, we want to reinforce water as a commons, and work towards fresh food as a commons too.
Swale is an artwork. Art is integral to imagining new worlds. By continuing to create and explore new ways of living, we hope that Swale will strengthen our ways of collaborating, of cooperating, and of supporting one another. At its heart, Swale is a call to action. It asks us to reconsider our food systems, to confirm our belief in food as a human right, and to pave pathways to create public food in public space.
This is a great way to get fresh, healthy food to known food deserts. Have a look around Swale’s space, and donate if you can.
© Sara Landeta.
http://www.saralandeta.com/2015/05/la-medicina-y-sus-metaforas-medicine-as.html
A most poignant series by Sara Landeta. Her description:
The project includes a collection of 120 boxes of drugs that have been consumed by different patients to overcome their illnesses. All boxes are illustrated inside with a broad classification of birds from different families, being the only animal that although it gives it a meaning of freedom, because it is the only one able to connect with the earth and the sky, is also one of the main animals in captivity. This juxtaposition of the natural and the synthetic interprets the patient as a captive animal, and the bird as its metaphor.Draw a collection of birds inside these boxes holding a single reflection ; l will learn to be birds in captivity, but they are wanting to fly, and that is what keeps them alive.
Esther van Hulsen at work on an octopus drawing using 95 million-year-old ink. Photo by Stian Steinsli
Dutch wildlife artist Esther van Hulsen was recently given an assignment unlike her typical drawings of birds and mammals from life—a chance to draw a prehistoric octopus 95 million years after its death. Paleontologist Jørn Hurum supplied Hulsen with ink extracted from a fossil found in Lebanon in 2009, received as a gift from the PalVenn Museum in 2014. After several millennia Hulson was surprised to find that the color had remained so vibrant, preserved all of this time in the cephalopod’s ink sac. “Knowing that this animal has used this ink to survive is absolutely amazing,” said van Hulsen of the prehistoric ink.
The Moldovan-born performer of Britain’s Got Talent fame appeared on Ellen to show off his acrobatic sword-swallowing routine. Magala not only swallowed two different swords—a typical Western-looking blade and a katana—but also managed backflips and pole-dancing with the swords. Inside him. Because gay men everywhere just needed to be knocked down a peg—or 20.
Ellen asks what we’re all thinking. Why—just why?
“I’m from Moldova, it’s in Eastern Europe,” Magala says. “It’s a poor country, pretty much nothing to do.”
I’d say something, but the screams are still echoing in my brain.