Today's Inspiration is a blog "for those with an interest in illustration from the 40's and 50's to share their knowledge, views and opinions." This week it is featuring a guest blogger analyzing Norman Rockwell's illustrations for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. This blog can always be counted on to inform you about illustrators and cartoonists you've likely never heard of. Also advertising icons and my favorite: Smokes for Mom! It's all on Flickr too. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Jul 9, 2009 - 11 comments

"You could be a doorstop or paperweight or maybe a national anthem." Beck talks to Tom Waits. Part of Irrelevant Topics: a new section [of Beck's web site] featuring conversations between musicians, artists, writers, etc. on various subjects, without promotional pretext or editorial direction.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Jul 8, 2009 - 22 comments

Comics in the Classroom: 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teachers
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Jul 7, 2009 - 27 comments

The Art of Erik Johansson
posted by moonroof on Jul 7, 2009 - 9 comments

Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet and activist now based in New York, writes about being a Muslim immigrant and also a woman challenging conventions. Spotted by Russell Simmons for Def Poetry Jam, she has performed pieces about love in the time of war, exoticising beauty, and a touching ode to her father, among many others. Suheir has just produced and released her first feature film Salt of This Sea, up for the Cannes Films Festival and possibly an Oscar, and recently performed in Ramallah for the 2009 Palestinian Festival of Literature.
posted by divabat on Jul 7, 2009 - 4 comments

Black Acid Co-op is a new installation by Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman at the Deitch Projects annex on Wooster St. in NYC. It just opened and you can check out a video tour here. It is the third collaboration between the two artists on the same theme. The first version, "Hello Meth Lab in the Sun" was in Marfa, TX and the second incarnation, "Hello Meth Lab with a View" was at last year's Art Basel Miami.
posted by rare_g on Jul 6, 2009 - 7 comments

Scenes sculpted with nails by Czech photographer Vlad Artazov. (via)
posted by netbros on Jul 6, 2009 - 14 comments

Light-Test: a home for all of our light tests. A website dedicated to pictures of photography assistants at work. Sort of.
posted by ColdChef on Jul 5, 2009 - 23 comments

Clothes made of ceramic shards from the Ming, Yuan, Qing and Song Dynasties by Li Xiaofeng, a 43-year-old Beijing artist who has found a way to link his contemporary work with traditional Chinese 10th Century art. Some of the porcelain bits were salvaged from the roof tiles of the emperor’s palace. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jul 5, 2009 - 12 comments

The Art of Kevin Van Aelst
posted by hypersloth on Jul 3, 2009 - 12 comments

It's Seurat by me. Iconic album covers by the Beatles and the Clash. Mixed media (a metric buttload of Rubik's cubes shown in Dailymotion video). (via)
posted by maudlin on Jul 3, 2009 - 11 comments

Drawing and storytelling in sand.
posted by dmd on Jul 3, 2009 - 26 comments

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
posted by Miko on Jul 2, 2009 - 37 comments

"The animals were allured by a sausage. When the fox bit in the bait, it activated the camera connected by a cord with the sausage. One week later the animals had learned to eat the sausage without being photographed." Daimlerstrasse 38 or How to get a fox to shoot portrait of itself For less furtive results, you could hire classical bassoonist, Andy Stolarek and jewelry designer/obedience and agility trainer Miki Aso to photograph your pet.
posted by xod on Jun 29, 2009 - 44 comments

Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors. Astonishing works created more than 25 years after the event, many accompanied by artist's comments. [disturbing, possibly NSWF artworks] [more inside]
posted by fire&wings on Jun 28, 2009 - 71 comments

Amazing Pooktre Sculptures. A gallery of living art. Previously. (with bonus extra Previouslies inside!)
posted by hippybear on Jun 27, 2009 - 10 comments

Pauline Kael called it "a huge, jerry-built, crumbling ruin of a movie". Roger Ebert called it "such a silly and stupid movie... our immediate reaction is pity". Few directors of Michelangelo Antonioni's stature have followed a film as acclaimed as Blowup (1966) with one as reviled as Zabriskie Point (1970). [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 25, 2009 - 30 comments

Ross Racine's work may be interpreted as models for planned communities as much as aerial views of fictional suburbs, referencing the computer as a tool for urban planning as well as image capture.
posted by netbros on Jun 24, 2009 - 11 comments

Renowned blacksmith, Phillip Simmons, of Charleston, SC has died at age 98. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Jun 24, 2009 - 16 comments

The blog associated with Ptak's online science bookstore is an absolutely fascinating, frequently-updated tour through historical, social, and scientific miscellany extracted from unusual books in the collection of the author, John Ptak. [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Jun 23, 2009 - 5 comments

Marc Johns: Drawings on paper, drawings on sticky notes, drawings on rat traps. Twitter, Flickr. Interviews.
posted by gerryblog on Jun 22, 2009 - 7 comments

45 pictures of Mario & Luigi!
posted by EatTheWeak on Jun 22, 2009 - 22 comments

Poupees Viandes (Meat Puppets): a flickr photoset of "flesh dolls made with stuffed taxidermy skin." These sculptures are not for those easily made nauseous! (via)
posted by OmieWise on Jun 22, 2009 - 30 comments

'It has been said that cinema is in essence a special effect. The video work of Bernard Gigounon reduces that notion to its minimal essence: cinema as an illusion, created by the manipulation of images in time. He does not create this effect with advanced, multi-dimensional digital technologies, but rather through simple, transparent magic...' [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Jun 19, 2009 - 31 comments

Michael Ackerman is an Israeli-born photographer whose haunting visions of New York, Varanasi, and Poland are characterized by their grainy texture, extreme contrast, and uncompromising intensity. [more inside]
posted by Houyhnhnm on Jun 18, 2009 - 13 comments

Civilization is a video mural created by video artist Marco Brambilla and Toronto-based studio Crush for an elevator in the Standard Hotel in New York. It depicts a journey from hell to heaven as the elevator goes up, or from heaven to hell as it goes down. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Jun 18, 2009 - 26 comments

The Global Oneness Project is exploring how the radically simple notion of interconnectedness can be lived in our increasingly complex world. They travel the globe gathering stories from creative and courageous people who base their lives and work on the understanding that we bear great responsibility for each other and our shared world. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jun 18, 2009 - 9 comments

Custom Letters is an evolving category that includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and type design.
posted by minifigs on Jun 18, 2009 - 17 comments

Before the mouse, there was the trackball. Built for DATAR in 1952, DATAR turned out to be a complete failure. The next user interface device that used a ball was the mouse at Xeroc Parc in 1972. Trackballs are a dying breed of interface devices. But sometimes a trackball just seems more natural choice for certain applications - not so obvious for others. Would you sit on one?
posted by bigmusic on Jun 17, 2009 - 65 comments

Hooping. The hoops adults use to dance and perform tricks are larger and heavier than the children's toy called the Hula Hoop. As hooping becomes more popular, people across the States and across the world are pushing the boundaries of dance and sport with a simple, easily made tool. Hooping for pleasure, exercise, and meditation is becoming a phenomenon. There's even a documentary. [more inside]
posted by fiercecupcake on Jun 16, 2009 - 24 comments

"Pryde and I came across it one day in an old stable, on a sack of fodder. It is a good, hearty, old English name, and it appealed to us, so we adopted it immediately." That's how The Beggarstaffs, a short lived but influential paring of graphic designers, got their name. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Jun 16, 2009 - 9 comments

Mark Wagner makes money into art.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 15, 2009 - 17 comments

Ukrainian art is widely varied: easter eggs, body art(some pics nsfw). Painting, folk art, and religious art.
posted by lysdexic on Jun 14, 2009 - 11 comments

Fallen Princesses : Dina Goldstein explores what life might have been like for Rapunzel, Snow White, and others after happily-ever-after. (via)
posted by divabat on Jun 14, 2009 - 24 comments

"This is the first show I've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off."
posted by shoesfullofdust on Jun 12, 2009 - 49 comments

Matt Dorfman is one of the creators of Mammal Magazine. Here's his client work, personal work, blog, and his wedding invitation.
posted by mattdidthat on Jun 12, 2009 - 18 comments

BauBike
posted by ardgedee on Jun 12, 2009 - 63 comments

JOIN THE COOLCATS MVMT. So-Me is the art director for Ed Banger Records. His job description includes touring with his muse Busy P, living with Justice, directing music videos, fashioning t-shirts and album art, designing Coca-Cola bottles, contributing to art exhibits, and just being a Cool Cat. [more inside]
posted by Juliet Banana on Jun 11, 2009 - 10 comments

The Karl Waldmann Museum, where you can see all of his collages.
posted by OmieWise on Jun 11, 2009 - 6 comments

Dr. Frances W. Pritchett, Professor of Modern Indic Languages at Columbia University, New York, has created a superb online collection of resources, all about India and South Asia, its art, history, literature, architecture and culture. Her Indian Routes section (the Index page) is a particularly rich resource. Her vast, colorful and informative site also has many great images. Check out her "scrapbook pages" on the Princes l the Ghaznavids l British Rule l Women's Spaces l Perspectives on Hinduism. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jun 9, 2009 - 14 comments

Skin & Bones is a new exhibit about sailor tattoos and their symbolism and history, developed at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. NYTimes story with neat art slideshow.
posted by Miko on Jun 9, 2009 - 6 comments

Jonathan Ro-Schofield is Jonny Cardboard, an artist and window display designer whose developmental medium is, yes, cardboard. Sure, anyone can fold a box, but can you make incredible sculptures or storefront display-designs and props? Perhaps Jonny Cardboard can cater your wedding cakes. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jun 9, 2009 - 1 comment

Beautifully designed, quirky, colorful late 19th-century "artistic" and "gaslight" printing at Dick Sheaff's ephemera pages. [via, via] [more inside]
posted by mediareport on Jun 8, 2009 - 11 comments

What [Francis] Bacon produced are not paintings, at least not satisfying ones. They are little more than rectangles of canvas inscribed with noirish graffiti: angst for dummies. Bacon turned his clever little quotations from the masters, old or modern, into the twentieth century's most august visual claptrap. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 8, 2009 - 86 comments

Morisawa Fontpark : View or create amazing art with Japanese characters.
posted by rollbiz on Jun 8, 2009 - 4 comments

Robert Burden's artwork (drawings, paintings) mainly concerns toys. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston on Jun 7, 2009 - 9 comments

My Milk Toof [more inside]
posted by Lord_Pall on Jun 7, 2009 - 36 comments

Growing into Womanhood -- In the images in White’s series, both figures are blossoming into womanhood, though each along a different path. [via]
posted by empath on Jun 6, 2009 - 79 comments

Travel Posters — a Flickr set from the Boston Public Library. "Combining superb illustration and hand-drawn typography, they produced dazzling images in rich vibrant colors rendered through the magic of stone lithography." (via)
posted by netbros on Jun 6, 2009 - 15 comments

NAWLZ: A science fiction flash-based graphic novel 'experiment in interactive storytelling' that's pretty cool. Now up to 13 'issues'. [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Jun 6, 2009 - 7 comments