Spirits Dancing

The cost of painting a king salmon on the fuselage of an Alaskan Airlines 373 has been roundly criticized, but the image is pretty cool. The designer was Mark Boyle, a Seattle-based wildlife artist who is also a recognized leader in the livery design of commercial aircraft. Alaskan Airlines has some pictures that show the painting in progressive stages, which took a crew of 30 painters 24 days.

The image above was taken by Ted S. Warren for Associated Press, and shows airbrush artist Chris Coakley at work on the painting.

I was just then reminded of this wonderful image of Aragorn. It takes a second to work it out. It appeared on the side of a NZ Boeing as part of celebrations around the release of the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies.

Tags: 737, aragorn, art, king salmon, make, painting, plane

I’m thinking again about the Colour-in Canberra traffic control box designs, as entries are due by the 23rd. The idea is based on a similar project, Artforce, an initiative of Brisbane City Council managed by Queensland Urban Ecology. They have a gallery of their images, and you can see which are regarded as most popular.

Among my favourites is this one by Annique Goldenberg:
‘On the way to the waterfront at Manly – a traditional turtle migration area’.

Tags: canberra, design, paint, traffic conrol box

From south eastern Australia, possible evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was known to ancient peoples:

Tags: australia, flying spaghetti monster, rock art

Urban services here in Canberra is running a competition for the opportunity to participate in painting designs on 30 traffic controller boxes around the city. Its a good idea; I hope to put in an entry. The competition was launched a few days ago with the unveiling of this first painted box by Franki Sparke. It’s at the corner of Limestone Avenue and Wakefield Avenue in Ainslie. I’ll have to go for a drive and take a look – I wonder what’s on the other side?

Tags: canberra, colour-in canberra, design, paint, traffic conrol box

Its crop circle season in England now; well, from May right through to September. Many of the beautiful photographs of crop circles, such as the one here at Milk Hill, are taken by Steve Alexander. At his site, temporarytemples, you can see images of the latest circles as they appear, as well browse back through the library of images from previous years.

There is an ongoing debate about whether the circles are man-made or paranormal. Steve writes about his feeling that some UFOs are living organisms, (native to our atmosphere but in a different reality that we might not usually be able to see), rather than pure nuts-and-bolts craft. His belief that there ‘is connection between the crop circles, the people who are drawn to the
crop circles, and the bio-forms that inhabit the crop circle locations’ is far more attractive than the ‘planks and ropes v. aliens’ argument you usually hear.

The circlemakers have an interesting site too. They track crop circle patterns as well as making some on contract. Here, for example, is a Hello Kitty pattern.

(Image reproduced with permission. Thanks, Steve)

Tags: crop circles, design

Analogia has a lovely gallery of large scale sand circle patterns, made on the beaches of San Fransisco. The patterns are made by raking the sand , exposing the wetter, and therefore darker, sand underneath. Phidelity has other images of the same circles, and includes some designs to be considered for future circles. Glen Tregurtha in New Zealand is also a sand artist, and his gallery is here. I can understand liking the impermanence, seeing it washed away, rather like the Tibetan monks that spend days making intricate sand mandalas, and then brush it all up in minutes.

Tags: impermanence, pattern, sand cirlces, sand mandalas

I’ve been making a few artist trading cards: an edition of just three. One of them is in exchange for Mimi‘s night baby.

Close-ups are here, here, and here.

I find the concept of artist trading cards quite seductive. It must be the idea of miniature art, like stamps and other mailart. But I am also wary of getting into it, on time grounds alone.

For a long time I wanted to make an installation – sometimes I still do! – with the little images I did for The Republic of Pemberley years ago. (Some of them were money and stamps invented for that imaginary world, featuring Colin Firth’s Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, but those particular ones are not online at the moment). The idea was to print and frame the pictures at the scale they were made – 200 x 150 pixels – and then exhibit them in a purpose-built miniature gallery. The way you would view them would be through peep holes, or being able to pop you head up into the individual gallery rooms from underneath. The idea connects into ideas I have long played around with, to do with how cyberspace impacts on our understandings of public and private space.

Tags: artist trading cards, atc, computer bug, republic of pemberley

Frangipani has a gallery of some beautiful manhole covers in Japan. Some of them are very colourful.

Tags: design, japan, manhole covers, pattern

I do love public and community artwork! A few days ago the Wooster Collective pointed to the public art of Seyed Alavi. There are lots of great projects to browse through, but the Flying Carpet, an aerial view of a 50 mile stretch of the Sacramento River translated into woven carpet, which was made for a pedestrian bridge at Sacramento International Airport, is extra cool.

I also like What do you think? and Solitude.

David D. Schwartz has an interest in casino landscapes, and has a fine gallery of casino carpets. The Treasure Bay carpets make me smile thinking what might have been done with the old Pemberley site map.

I’m meandering now, but you also ought to check out the miraculous Peace Rug. Don’t miss the picture page. Lets ship one to our world leaders!

Tags: carpet, casino, street art

You might have seen pictures in the news of the Prime Minister and his wife dwarfed by a giant platypus, on the occasion of the opening of the Australian Pavilion at the World Expo in Aichi, Japan a couple of weeks ago. It was made by a team assembled by the Melbourne production company, think!OTS, and there are some images of the platypus there, if you check their portfolios.

Yesterday I was delighted to also find photos of the making of the platypus exhibit at Australia at Aichi World Expo 2005 in their Pavilion Photo Gallery. Starting with an artist’s impression, they move on to show how the over-all shape was constructed out of foam, filled with plaster, coated with concrete and covered with leather and soft fur. It’s not clear to me from that description how they end up with hollow sections, but I’m guessing that its the concrete layer that forms the shell. The platypus measures about 11 metres.Here are a few other picture links:

‘Our Mary’ and Prince Frederick with the platypus
‘Our Mary’ sits on its tail
Mr and Mrs Howard with the platypus: 1,2 (both photos by Penny Bradfield)
Update: Platy-cam!

Tags: japan, make, platypus, webcam, world expo