Tag: art

artpost: how awesome is that?

I adore my in-box. This just came in from a sculptor friend of mine, Chris Hausbeck:

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This coming Saturday, October 18th my assistant Dawn Exton and I will introduce the massive mechanical sculpture ‘Inside Hausbeck’s Head-Keeshen Delight No.9’.

All are invited to join us starting at 5:00 until 10:00 for a reception and close viewing of the mechanism.

This mechanism will propel a 500 lb. clown head to a height of 50 feet out of the top of a 150 year old grain silo on the grounds of Wild Bill’s Nostalgia on rt. 3 in middletown, ct. (map)

We have constructed a giant 1200 lb. device, counter weighted with a twisted ball of steel, bone, glass, wood and implements of destruction rising and falling twelve feet through the floors.

Attached are some images and a more complete story in my flickr set.

install day 097


I sincerely hope all will be able to join us for this monumental event and help celebrate this amazing sculpture.

Cheers, Chris Hausbeck

day two of three

Traveled 192 km (or 104 nautical miles, as the useful internet tells me), to be stood up, the first time I’d ever been asked to a dance.

Today I’m awake early, nine o’clock or so, and the apartment still throbs with silence. Later, once Qais and Eliza wake up, we will go after breakfast to the Lighthouse Roasters, (400 North 43rd Street), to hang her show. My plans here are vague this time, and tenuous, (as my lack of cell-phone creates oddly empty spaces around me), though right now they mostly revolve around taking a hot shower and scrubbing the accumulation of Thursday and Friday off of my skin. I still have hot-tub water dried in my hair, and a coating of the warm grease of a thousand exhalations from the gallery last night.

It was packed, by the way, a heavy showing with at least a hundred and fifty variously costumed people drifting in and spilling out back out to chat in the relative cool of the sidewalk, like a black, brassy tide of self examining particles, fresh from the internet, fresh to the scene. ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM was a success. I don’t think any of the organizers expected it to be so popular. Me, I was suprised at how many faces I knew, and, especially, how many people knew who I was. “I’ve seen your pictures, love them!” or, “I’ve never said, but I adore your writing.” Unexpected, that, in this place, my company being the shiny stars of this newly stilted subculture.

I spent the longest time with Tony, a warm friend, who I met once five years ago when he crashed on my couch after SinCity. Facebook reacquainted us, and I hope to see him more, now that we’re back in touch. We walked through the pieces together, telling stories and reaffirming the mythos of past relationships. It was fun. After he left, I mostly drifted, wandering between my local friends and the people Eliza introduced me to. The show went late, to the point of exhaustion, until we dropped into chairs, wilting against the constant influx of new people, an hour after the gallery was meant to be closed. I don’t think we escaped until midnight.

Seattle: what I’m doing this weekend, a partial list

ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM: artifacts by pioneers of american steampunk.

“Long before the age of the internet, and well before the cold efficiency of the assembly line, existed fantastic and terrible machines, run on hope, sweat, and steam.
It was a time in which form and function lived in sin, and everyman was a revolutionary.

We are 13 American artists united by broad geography and narrow aesthetic.

Marrying narrative and nostalgia to design and technology, we imagine the triumphs of the past overriding the failures of the present to create from the ruins and detritus a dazzling future-perfect.“


From Eliza,

“Starring me and twelve other retropostapocalypticians, including Molly Porkshanks and Jake von Slatt, this show will feature insane amounts of designer teas and chocolates, a full set of my fine art prints, and a half-dozen original oil paintings that I have never shown in public, including Shine, Rustbutton Brass, the City, Afterglow, Twilight in the Roachfields (What I Did On My Summer Vacation), and most ridiculous of all, the Vacuum Traffic Controller: a 40 x 66″ collossus that I hope will dominate the room with his deep, slightly furrowed gaze.”

September 12 – October 3, 2008
Opening Reception: September 12 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
SUITE 100 GALLERY: 2222 2nd Ave Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 956.3900

::..::

She also has a second show opening this weekend in Seattle, a solo affair launching on Saturday the 13th at Lighthouse Roasters, (400 North 43rd Street), from 4pm – 7pm. “The flagship painting, an original oil on a 24 x 24″ circular board, is the Cardiographer: dark, slick, and glowing, a portrait of a ghost-muse spinning a pulse out from ectoplasm. Co-stars include brand new (as of yesterday) 12 x 12″ Flee, a silvered landscape with robot on the lam; the ever-popular Bat Smax, an extremely adorable collaboration with my partner in rape-and-pillage, Jhonen Vasquez; the complete set of original sketches for the Bee Commission (monsters, demons, and vespid whores); and a full host of fine art prints, including many that won’t be shown at the steampunk show because they simply are not steampunk. And of course, refreshments will be served. Which is really the only reason to show up to an art opening in the first place.”

And, at my gentle nudging, it’s been decided that after her coffeehouse show, we’re all going to saunter over to Toren’s The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets concert at The Funhouse, (206 5th Ave N), where they’ll be calling up non-euclidean demons with BLOODHAG, (“Our mission is to spread the gospel of Edu-Core. Bang The Head That Does Not Read. Everyone Smarter Than Everyone Else. Use Heavy Metal music to promote literacy and vice versa. General Info: BloodHag play really short Heavy Metal songs about Science Fiction authors.”) and The Keeper, (“D&Dish wizard rock. Our EP is called Twenty Sided DIE!.”). Angel is a good friend of Jake, from BLOODHAG, and she warns us, “be prepared to be pelted with Sci fi books!”

artpost: baby’s on fire

Ignite, a Puncture Vine CD Cover, painted by Canadian illustrator Robert Carter.

Other personal favourites include, Halo, Crack!, Sgt. Shakespeare, Unraveling Fire (boy), Inner Dialogue, and Black Gold Or Green Earth.

Prints and commissions are available through his website, Cracked Hat.
Found through Thefunnyweb.com, which has a nice collection of his work posted here.

COILHOUSE: for sale

Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 01 is finally here!
I bought one, have you?


from thier site, emphasis mine:

“Get ready for 96 glossy, full-color pages of art, photography, music, fashion and literature. In this issue, the stark android beauty created by Andy Julia for our cover is counterbalanced inside by his elegant portfolio of vintage-style nudes. Coilhouse travels to Ljubljana, Slovenia (literally! we actually went!) to interview Laibach, while singer Jarboe tells war tales from her career post-Swans. Photographer Eugenio Recuenco contributes a lush 10-page portfolio and interview, while Clayton James Cubitt delivers a poignant, visceral spread (again, literally) on the topic of genital origami. Renowned science fiction author Samuel R. Delany shares an exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming novel, “From the Valley of the Nest of Spiders,” while our first installment of “All Yesterday’s Parties” digs up forgotten party photos from eras long gone, starting with London’s Slimelight circa ‘95. Fans of WZW and Z!ST will love Zo’s fashion pictorial, in which she reconstructs a Galliano outfit on a budget. Pop-surrealist Travis Louie gives us a glimpse of his inner monster, and cult painter Saturno Butto has some medical fun at the expense of Catholics everywhere. All this, and much more – including supervillain how-to’s, Coilhouse paper dolls, interviews, fashion and art await.

Readers of the blog, we have another treat just for you: the fact that the version of the magazine that you are buying here today will not be available in stores. Coilhouse will be in stores this fall, it won’t be the unique version that’s available here. On this site, and on this site only, you can get the uncensored edition. This version includes a powerful piece that was too risqué for stores to accept without problems due to the graphic (and in our opinion, beautiful) images involved. Only 1000 copies of this very limited version exist – a mere fraction of the entire print run. And that version is only available here, on this site. When we run out, we’ll start selling the censored version that will also be available in stores – so get the limited edition copy that we call the “true version of the magazine” while we still have them!”

My deepest and most sincere congratulations to Mer, Nadya, Mildred and Zoe.