Work it girl, liven up that public sculpture

Public sculpture with interpretive dance by Raquel Welch and some spacemen. The site is the Ruta de la Amistad sculpture project from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Watch the clip here.

[all pix screengrabs from the youtube clip]

Neighbors coordinate exhibition of snoopy/smurfs

And next door..

From Almere, Netherlands

[pix by imagineering]

What kind of attention?

Bike-rack-as-sculpture and The Ugliest Staircase Ever.

[pix by imagineering]

Clogged

A typical suburban house in Belgium. When did shoes become architectural ornament, and what would be the equivalent in America? Some sneakers stuck to the front door?

[pix by imagineering]

Super de boer

An inspired product display at my local Super de Boer grocery store.

[pix by imagineering]

Marshmallow Cosmos

Marshmallow Cosmos is a replica freeway column mass-produced as a breakfast cereal. A series of high resolution photographs of supporting columns from underneath the I-280 freeway in San Francisco were offset printed, using the same process as standard cereal packaging.

The work is a re-branding of generic breakfast cereals. Types and flavors of enclosed cereal vary widely and the variety of cereal in each box is unmarked. (Yes, there is really a bag of cereal in there, and no, we can’t remember what kind. You can pick it up and give it a shake.)

Our attention is drawn to the blurring of word and image in the layered buildup of graffiti. On a cereal box we read for brands and logos, but in this “freeway” version we find instead a networked sprawl of animated text.

Marshmallow Cosmos documents the supporting columns of the I-280 freeway in San Francisco, California, and all graffiti and painting was done by artists who frequent that site. 10% of the sale price of each box is donated to SF Connect, a local charity. The work is printed in a limited edition of 1,000 and each box is individually signed, numbered and sealed.

For more information please see my website www.kposehn.com. To purchase or inquire about the work, feel free to email me at kposehn at gmail dot com.

[pix by cindy and imagineering]

Floating

For carnival anything can be and is attached to wheels and pushed, pulled or dragged into town. Today I saw an football team and cheerleaders about 4 kilometers outside of the city center. They were pushing a sound-system (which was fully operational) the size of a volkswagen bug along the side of the road. When I passed by again forty minutes later, they’d only moved a few hundred metres.

The little-known NASA “Recovery” pictured here on a mission with hamburger fixings and a waffle maker; the official parade; mixed-myths of the American frontier all saddled up; the Chinese Olympic Ping Pong Team 2008, with table; and a portable laundry.

[pix by imagineering]

The arches of Maastricht city

1. The pedestrian bridge over the river Maas.
2. A sculptural thing next to the medical complex.
3. A soda can display at the supermarket.

[pix by imagineering]

Lusty pump

Easy

Libraries can be really odd places.

Gardensport

Have forklift, will advertise

A totally unrelated enterprise to that previous tractor post. But remarkable in its own way.

The more it tells you, the less you know

You may be wondering, like me, what is this odd little niche blog? Or more specifically, what niche is this?

Yes, there’s method here. Though half the fun (uh, for me at least) is figuring that out.

I’m interested in images: what constructs them, ways to think about them, how we encounter, manipulate and are manipulated by them. This blog is a porch and I’m swatting flies – noticing images, collecting glances and not-quite-so-random thoughts. The blog roll at present ranges mainly between art, architecture and planning, with a helping of cultural theory, pop culture and gaming.

Our image-world, what we see and the forms of perception at our disposal, is so massively influenced by marketing media. I got scandalous looks at my viva from a comment in my thesis that I’d rather look at ads than most fine art photography – ads being more sophisticated and more compelling. Then there’s things like this:

Every year a local farmer piles hay bales and paints them to look like a big ol’ John Deere tractor. It sits at the edge of the field advertising their fruit stand to the interstate freeway, a painted folk marketing sculpture.

Photo by imagineering
Quote from photographer Diane Arbus: “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”

Commercial

Just another day at the Commercial Casino in Elko, Nevada. Apparently the stuffed version of the bear hasn’t moved from that spot since 1958.

Neighbors II

The Air Force has returned to their fleet of barracks next door, and they seem to be doing training-type exercises, mostly indoors this time.

Oddly, they’ve strapped a flag to their Dr Pepper machine and put a flashing orange light on top. An interesting image: sort of a combine-type-thing that tends to fall flat in the artworld, but seen here in its natural environment it really shines.

That’s probably the only Dr Pepper within a two-mile radius. Reliable sources report seeing a military helicopter touch down at this site, pausing only for a passenger to jump out and fetch chilled beverages from the machine, lifting off again without further ado.