If you suspected a few members of the Justice League of America were gay (hello, Aquaman?) and always wished they’d come out of the closet, there’s now a new ALL-gay superhero comic just for you. It’s called Spandex. What it lacks in artistic skill (visually speaking, this ain’t no DC Comic), it makes up for in fabulous gay pride. There’s “Liberty (glamorous transvestite superhero), Diva (a lesbian Wonder Woman), Prowler (absorbs the abilities of gay people), Glitter (male Dazzler), Indigo (beautiful French teleporter), and Mr Muscles & Butch (strong twins)” (see above). We would have thought there’d be at least one big buff or bearded super dude and one super butch without cleavage, but that’s just us (and we’re neither gay nor comic-book readers, so what do we know?). It’s available from the U.K. but you can download a pdf of the first 40-page comic in the series via Paypal here. More excerpts after the jump.
California based artist Mike Stilkey uses the spines and covers of piled old books as a canvas upon which he paints to form larger, often wonderful images. When asked in a recent New Yorkerinterview on how he selects the books, Stilkey said:
I consider several aspects of the book when I’m selecting for a painting. One factor is the color of the book cover, another is the material of the cover, and a third is the title of the book and how this relates to the narrative of the piece.
Former pro-skateboarder and writer, artist Simon Evans received a lotofbuzz earlier this year for his New York City debut at James Cohan Gallery. One work in particular, “Everything I Have” especially entranced many viewers by meticulously detailing every material object the artist possessed using just pen, paper, scotch tape, and WhiteOut.
Never Crew, an art collective put their artistic stamp on this pool at Lugano Skatepark located in Lugano, Switzerland. View more behind the scenes photos and video here.
There are women with small breasts, women with big breasts, women with really big breasts…and then there’s the big boob fairy. Shu Yong’s “Bubble Woman” installation (installed in a public park in Foshan, Guangdong province, China) explores the question of how big we want our breasts to be…and seems to discover that, yes, there is such a thing as too big.
Born in Jerusalem, raised in Buenos Aires, and now a New Yorker, Tamara Kostianovsky (who also coincidentally married my artist friend from high school, Mark Stafford, previously mentioned here) uses fabric in her series “Actus Reus” to create amazingly anatomically correct slabs of butchered meat. Her sculpture “Persistence of Agony” is currently on display at Socrates Sculpture Park, a formerly abandoned illegal dumpsite transformed into an outdoor museum and exhibition space located in Long Island City, Queens.
Don’t let the cutesy knit warmth of Lauren McCarthy’s “Happiness Hat” fool you. It is actually “a wearable device that detects if you’re smiling and provides pain feedback if you’re not” and is a dream come true for any dictator or tyrant attempting to enforce a smiling spirit among their subjects. McCarthy explains:
An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. This is the first in a series of Tools for Improved Social Interacting.
There is not a single piece in UK artist James Hopkins’ portfolio of often amusing sculptures that I did not like. It was really tough to highlight a single one because they all seemed so blogworthy, but theInternet, especially the design community seems to love anything skull related, so check out this piece titled “Shelf Life.”
BeautifulAgony.com launched in 2004 as a response to what the founders saw as a vacuum of real erotica on the Internet. It features videos of contributors’ o-faces, i.e. orgasms from the neck up. Hundreds and hundreds of videos later — they update each weekday — the site is still going strong. It’s heavy-breathing sexy without being obscene in the slightest — quite an accomplishment. You have to pay to join ($14.95 a month) but there are plenty of free samples in case your sex life is on a recession-induced budget. We chatted with c0-founder Lauren Olney about the site:
Do you post every video you receive?
Unfortunately not all the videos we receive make the cut. Mostly it’s technical problems that prevent us from using a contribution: poor lighting, framing, or flashing a little too much flesh. Anything that’s obviously faked or exaggerated will also get politely declined we’re looking for authenticity, genuine emotion — and believe me, after five years, we know how to spot a fake! We also require a Confessions interview with each Beautiful Agony submission, so if a contributor is not willing to speak openly and honestly about themselves and/or their experiences on camera, then we can’t really use their “o-face” video, no matter how sensational it might be.
From the archives, check out this letter dated October 19, 1956 by the first director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art to Andy Warhol informing the pop artist that the museum was regretfully rejecting his generously free gift of his drawing entitled “Shoe.” The letter is currently part of the Andy Warhol Museum’s archives located in Pittsburgh. I wonder how the museum today would respond to an unsolicited gift.
On display through the end of this month at the Bunker Hill Community College’s art gallery is a group show “Eat the Art.” As the theme implies the artwork on display is (deliciously) food inspired. If you don’t know what to do with all those extra jelly beans leftover from trick or treating, try building a flower out of them!
