Sculpture: Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck is an Australian sculpture currently living and working in the UK. Ron started his career as a puppeteer and model maker for kids shows in London in the ’80′s. He created many of the creatures for Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (even voicing the character Ludo) and Story Teller. He left Show Business for the world of fine art in 1996. With his model making skills he faithfully and in minute detail reproduces the human form but alters the scale, tiny or huge, for a sometimes (hell, all the time), jarring effect. His sculpture ‘Boy’ is over 16 ‘ high and ‘In Bed’ (seen below) spans well over 30′. His ‘Spooning Couple” is just a bit over 1 foot long. He creates his pieces out of silicone, polyurethane, wood, synthetic hair and hours upon hours of painstaking detail. Ron shows all over the world – as long as there’s space large enough to hold his work.

Photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm  format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the street photographer style that was coined The Decisive Moment that has influenced generations of photographer.

Cartier-Bresson spent more than three decades on assignment for Life and other journals. He traveled without bounds, documenting some of the great upheavals of the 20th century — the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1944, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, and the deserts of Egypt. He became the first Western photographer to photograph “freely” in the post-war Soviet Union. But many of his most renowned photographs are of ordinary daily life, seemingly unimportant moments captured and then gone.

Cartier-Bresson died on August 3, 2004, aged 95. No cause of death was announced. He was buried in the local cemetery.

France

Brussels

Picasso and daughter – Spain

Rome

Mexico

France

USA (somewhere)

Rome

France – The River Marne

Seville, Spain

Truman Capote – USA

France

Los Angeles

France

Henri Cartier-Bresson

LPs: Christian DIY

The Christian record market of the 60′s and 70′s was an odd phenomenon – to say the least. If you had something to say or a family you thought could sing, well dammit, make a record about it, slap a shitty picture on it and call it good. Thousands of records were produced on small labels, most likely owned by churches, sold to parishioners and not to too many others. They have made their way into Goodwill and Salvation Army record bins the world over, reaching more people than ever, and are for the most part, unintentionally hilarious. Though I’ve bought a number of these I’ve never listened to a single one, though I would give “No Crippled Girls in Heaven” by Lanita Eversole a spin.

Don’t Let the Devil Blow Your Mind – by The Elder, Marshall Taylor

No Crippled Girls in Heaven – Lanita Eversole

Sex and the Female – Evangelist Jay Snell

The Singing Midget – Lowell Mason & The Crusaders

The Beatles & Jesus Christ – The Valley-Aires

The Weibe Family Singers

Songs by – The Chet Long Family

The Love of God is Slipping Away

New Jerusalems Where I’m Bound (in an Airstream) – The Meeks Family

God’s Gospel Giant – Vance Zinn

We’re Excited – The Kings Messengers

Bill & Sue Present Jesus on Conformity Records

And God Gave Me a Fix, From Junk to Jesus

Come Ye Apart Awhile (?) – May Rowland

Design & Film: Doris Wishman

Doris Wishman (June 1, 1912 – August 10, 2002) Doris started her career as a film maker well into her forties. In the late 1950′s it was deemed by the film censorship board that you could finally show nudity in a film, only if it was a documentary. Doris hit on the idea of nudist camp docs and started her career with the nudie Hideout in the Sun. Her 2nd film, about a nudist camp on the moon, abtly titled Nude on the Moon was banned in New York State, as the censor board stated that films featuring nudity in a nudist colony setting was fine, but showing nudity in a science fiction-themed film about a nudist colony on the moon was not. Go figure. The nudie market quickly dried up and Doris, rolling w/ the tide, went into the Sexploitation/softcore market starting with 1965′s Bad Girls Go to Hell and peaking with her biggest hits Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73 about a secret agent who would smother her enemies with her massive 73″ breasts, also making the fabulous Chesty Morgan a star, albeit briefly. Doris would next shoot a couple of hard-core films which she distanced herself from, believing them to be ‘unseemly’. She would end her film career with a bid at the slasher genre – A Night to Dismember, a commercial failure. Doris would retire to Florida, working in a lingerie store and would eventually pass away in 2002 of lymphoma, heralded by Joe Bob Briggs as “The greatest female exploitation film director in history.”

Doris behind the camera

Packaging: KISS

Every band in the world sells some kind of merch. From the smallest Indie to the largest supergroup. A T-Shirt, a hat, maybe a scarf or badge. It pays the bills and can make a ton of money. But one band has taken it to extremes, that being the band formerly known as Wicked Lester, aka KISS. Gene Simmons took over the merchandise and basically licensed anything and everything that could hold a KISS logo. He made partnerships with everyone from Pez to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty and even Mr. Potato Head. There are Kiss coffins, Kiss condoms, Kiss toilet paper and Kiss Beer and wine. There is even a Kiss coffee house in Melbourne. Between 1977 and 1980 they made $100 million on merch alone. Who knows what they’ve made sense. For a truly awful band from Queens NY they certainly have capitalized on their stupid cartoonish persona.

Mr. Potato Head

Hello Kitty

Kiss Condoms

The Snuggie

Deluxe Coffin

Standard Kiss Kasket

Kiss Krunch

NutKracker – The Demon

Paul Stanley Signature Fire Helmet

Pez

Funeral Cremation Urn

Solo LP Art Van Sneakers

Kiss Coffehouse

Medicom Kubrick Bears

Hello Kitty Kiss Toilet Paper

Kiss Wine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everybody Loves: Marion Cotillard

Having  just watched David Bowie’s new video for the song “The Next Day”, starring Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard I was reminded how cool and beautiful she really is. Already a talented and award winning actress in her native France, she has since made a name for herself in the US, winning the Academy Award for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (also winning the French equivalent, The Cesar for the same role) and costarring in among others, Inception, Public Enemies and the final Batman installment The Dark Knight Rises. She continues to act, campaign for Greenpeace, occasionally sing with Scottish Band Franz Ferdinand and was recently voted the most beautiful woman in the world by Hungarian magazine Periodika (?).