Posts Tagged ‘art’

Being a person who likes to leave things better than I found them, I have never understood the mentality that does graffiti or other forms of vandalism. Some "graffiti artists" might argue that they are trying to improve things by leaving something eye catching behind, but many of them do not leave something good behind. Much of graffiti is vulgar and unsightly, seeking to show disrespect or to draw attention to the vandals themselves, and most people do not appreciate having their property defaced or having to clean up graffiti. In this post I am in no way trying to encourage or excuse vandalism, but since graffiti happens, I will try to look at some of the effects that are actually interesting or even beautiful. Some graffiti is quite creative ... if only that creativity could be directed into more acceptable activity....

I'll start off with some that are really pretty cool.

Here's a staircase illusion.

Here is some modern art done by someone named Banksy, a British street artist with an international reputation.
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Have you ever seen the Mona Lisa? I'm not asking if you've seen a picture of the painting — I'm talking about the painting itself. I saw it for the first time the summer of 1972 with my French cousin Annie. Her family lived in the suburbs of Paris, and I was visiting them and other relatives on my first trip to France. (My paternal grandmother was French.) In my mind's eye I pictured what this most famous portrait in the world would be like. Since it attracted millions of visitors each year, I assumed the painting would be "larger than life." I was surprised that it is only 30 inches × 21 inches (77 cm × 53 cm). Below is a picture of the Mona Lisa, known in France as La Joconde and in her native Italy as La Gioconda.

It's a good thing this world famous "mug shot" is in that protective case — earlier this month (August 2) a Russian woman pulled a ceramic mug out of her purse and threw it at the Mona Lisa in anger and frustration. The deranged woman was sent to a psychiatric ward afterwards. Because of the protective case, this woman's attack was an unsuccessful, literal "mug shot."

The painting has a long history of attacks. It was stolen in 1911 by an Italian nationalist, a Louvre employee named Vincenzo Peruggia. My French grandmother was a 12 year old girl at the time of the theft — I wonder if she even heard about the theft.... The painting was finally returned in 1913. In 1956 it was doused with acid. Later that same year a man damaged the painting by throwing a rock at it. Sometime in the 16 intervening years between those attacks and my 1972 visit, Mona Lisa was put in that climate-controlled, protective case.

I know it seems a bit irreverent to call this celebrated portrait a mug shot. But that term took on a new meaning last month at the 12th annual Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia. The festival featured the huge picture of Mona Lisa made of 3604 coffee cups. 564 pints of milk were used to lighten some of the cups of coffee cups to achieve the required shades for the design. Here are two pictures of the picture.

Now that is a mug shot!

Many other items have been used to recreate versions of the Mona Lisa. This one was done by 300 employees at a department store in Osaka, Japan. They built their rendition with nothing more than old train tickets — several hundred thousand of them.

A mystery artist used about 800 Rubik's cubes to create the image below. He twisted each cube to get the colors he wanted on the top face before placing them next to each other on a board.

Lego has its own Mona Lisa.

That wasn't enough for Eric Harshbarger who used Legos to create "Mona Lego," composed of over 30,000 Lego blocks. It measures six by eight feet and weighs over 45 pounds.

Chinese artist Ju Duoqi did a version of Mona Lisa with vegetables. Her veggie Mona Lisa ("Mona Tofu") is made out of rice, sea kelp, and tofu.

In addition to various versions of the Mona Lisa, there are plenty of perversions. Here she is with bubble gum.

Here's Goth Mona Lisa.

Here she is in a burqa.

Here are some animated "gif" images of Mona Lisa.

I'll end this part of the post with a Mona Lisa comic strip.

Some of my regular readers may have noticed that I didn't do my usual Thursday blog post last week. I had to make a quick trip up to Ohio to help deal with some issues that my mother is having. If you are one who prays, please pray that Mom's thinking will clear up soon. She is having some exceedingly dark thoughts right now, and it's hard to know why this started happening all of a sudden.

What are your thoughts about the Mona Lisa? Do you think it deserves the status it enjoys?

quotation...

"God calls dead rebels to life." - Joshua Pegram

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Rob

If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

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How do you know whether to believe what you see? With today's technology it's possible to alter images so that the changes are almost imperceptible. In addition to that, some people have great fun posing to create certain illusions. And sometimes people and objects are aligned quite accidentally to produce amusing effects. I wish I could find and scan in a hilarious picture taken in our living room where one the people standing in front of our fireplace ended up with what looked like antlers when the pictures were developed.

Here are some pictures that have been accumulating in my files. Some are undoubtedly contrived, but I think that some are purely serendipitous.

In this final week before the elections, be careful. Reality is often distorted, and not everything may be as it appears. It's truly hard to know what and whom to believe. I'm glad to know One who is always to be trusted and believed!

If you have a funny picture similar to those above, please send it my way. I'll do another post in the future with the best ones I receive.

quotation...

"Many brave men have died for countries that don't exist any more." - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob

"I believe in my cosmetics line. There are plenty of charities for the homeless. Isn't it time somebody helped the homely?" - singer Dolly Parton

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Many children and maybe even more grown-up children enjoy playing with Lego. Lego is a contraction of two Danish words - leg and godt or "play well." Later, someone realized that in Latin lego means "I put together," which seems to be as appropriate as the Danish name.

Recently I was reading an interesting article about Denmark (the homeland of Lego) and was reminded of some interesting Lego lore I had come across - a Lego OSU stadium, a Lego church, a Lego tower, and a Lego artist.

Lego stadium

A scale model of the Ohio State Stadium took 2+ years of work (July 2002-October 2004 - over 2000 man hours). It is a 1:275 (approximate) scale, built entirely with Legos, and weighs around 38 pounds, not including the plywood base. Jim Stricker, the person who built it, had certain "rules" to help guide the project: no modifying of pieces, no glue, and no paint. This model is held together entirely by the interlocking features of the Lego bricks and gravity. Because of problems of space and expense, Stricker had to make certain compromises - notice the absence of yard lines, for example. One challenge was obtaining a horseshoe shape with square Lego pieces. Up close, the appearance seems rough, but everything blends together well when viewed at a distance. The builder lives over 200 miles from the stadium (in Michigan, of all places!) and had to rely on pictures and very infrequent visits to the real stadium.

Lego Church

I received an e-mail a while back with amazing pictures of the Lego church. It features a balcony, a Narthex, stairs to the balcony, restrooms, coat rooms, several mosaics, a nave, a baptistry, an altar, a pulpit, and an elaborate pipe organ. You can visit the site of the woman who built it by clicking here

Here are a few pictures of the Lego church:

Lego tower

At Legoland in Windsor the Lego brick tower stands nearly 100 feet tall and is shaped to resemble a Viking longboat mast. This tower, composed of nearly 500,000 bricks, was put up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Lego bricks in May of this year.

Click here to read an article about the Lego tower. Here are a couple of pictures of the tower.

Lego artist

One of my former students has a hobby/sideline of making portraits with Legos.

Here's a picture of his son Christopher with his portrait.

You should check out his website - http://www.duckingham.com

If you're interested in learning about the history of Lego, you can click here or for a more detailed history, click here

Did you grow up with Legos and love playing with them? Do you enjoy playing with Legos as an adult? What did/do you like best about Legos?

quotation...

"Prayer and pride are enemies." - Dr. Drew Conley

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.

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That's an odd title, isn't it? Why oddments? Oddments is a word that means remnants, leftovers, odds and ends, hodgepodge, etc. You get the idea. So... why oddments? What I'm posting today is little bits of stuff, none of which would make a real blog post, but they're things just too good not to share! Mainly it's stuff that I've received or found that has something to do with previous posts on my blog. I'll put a link to the various posts that the oddments are related to. And some of it is simply interesting little oddments I'd like to share, not related to much of anything. Emphasis, I guess, on odd....

A while back I had a post called 10,000 words - 10 really crazy pictures, each worth 1,000 words. I have since learned that one of the pictures actually could/should have been part of a later blog post dangerous hike and freebies. Here's the picture...

Here's another outhouse that could have been part of the post nice bathroom humor

That's something we could all keep in mind as we go into the elections this fall!

Here's a picture that could have been part of the post sign language The picture is of a martial arts school.

I ran across a neat picture that I think could make a great header picture for my blog (if it weren't the wrong size and proportion, let alone all the potential copyright issues). Just think, instead of having an ancient gargoyle looking over the skyline of Paris, I could have Ratatouille looking at it from a different angle....

My wife found a great recipe online for the ratatouille that Ratatouille made in that animated film. We love this dish and have declared it her recipe find of 2008! If you'd like to try it out, you can find it at http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/07/rat-a-too-ee-for-you-ee

I tried something new in the garden this year - Thai Red-Seeded Long Beans. They're like the green beans we've eaten in China and like the ones in many Chinese buffets here in the USA. The name "long beans" is not an exaggeration! Here's a picture of me measuring several against a yardstick. I don't know if you can make it out in the picture, but the longer of the two beans measures 30 inches - 6 inches longer than they're supposed to be! Just a couple of beans is enough for a meal for the two of us!

Recently I've found a couple of neat "toys" online. Anyone who reads my blog finds out pretty quickly that I am a word person. I love puns and other forms of wordplay. Well, here are several visual forms of wordplay. In both them them you can tweak the font and colors to your liking.

The first one is called Wordle. You can create your own "wordle" in several ways - either by pasting in "a bunch of text" (as they say) or by entering a URL. I chose the second, entering the URL of my most recent blog post last Thursday. Here's the wordle of that post...

Another word toy I ran across is a text animator called textanim. Here's my little creation from that site...

Several weeks ago I had a post called t-shirt slogans. Someone sent me a great video clip on how to fold a t-shirt in seconds. It's in Japanese (I think), but if you watch it a few times, you should be able to do it too. My wife has mastered the technique and says, "This has revolutionized my recreational laundry!" Click in the square below to start the video.

Now I think you'll agree that my calling this blog post "oddments" (with a heavy emphasis on odd) was appropriate. I'm looking forward to some really odd comments now.

quotation...

"Most problems in our lives go back to a false idea of who God is." - Dr. Chris Barney

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Rob

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

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