Apart from singing, Wesley Willis was a pretty alright artist, too.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Baumgartner, Kittenger, and the Golden Age of Aviation Pioneers
As well as being the day of Felix Baumgartner's momentous leap from the stratosphere, yesterday was also the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager becoming the first person to break the sound barrier in a manned flight. Yeager, every inch the old-school bad ass, managed to accomplish his feat with two broken ribs - which he broke by falling off a horse while hammered the night before.
Yeager, unsurprisingly in some discomfort the morning of the record-breaking flight, found that he was unable to close the hatch of the plane properly. Luckily, his mechanic supplied him a length of broomstick, which allowed Yeager, hungover and broken-ribbed as he was, to climb down from the B-29 bomber that was carrying the test plane (8,000 feet in the air), climb into the X-1 rocket plane, and close the hatch without use of the arm on his injured side. The flight went off without a hitch, and Yeager was back on terra firma in plenty of time to get sloshed once again, and crash a motorcycle in the desert in the middle of the night.
So, in honour of when men were men, and test pilots didn't allow little niggling concerns such as broken bones prevent them from entering the history books, here's a video of Joseph Kittenger's jump from a balloon at 102,800 feet on 16 August, 1960. If Kittenger's voice sounds familiar, it is because he advised on, and acted as Capsule Communicator for Baumgartner's jump.
Enjoy.
Buy The Right Stuff (the source of my Yeager anecdata) on Amazon
Friday, October 12, 2012
Arrested Devlopment Art
Don't Leave Your Uncle T-Bag Hanging!, Jesse Riggle
Who Will Save Our Village?, Jason Liwag
The Bluths, Kirk Demarais
All images from the There's Always Money In The Banana Stand exhibition at Gallery1988
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
The Virgin Mary as Pop Cuture Icons
Mario
My Little Pony
(Mighty Morphin') Power Rangers
Images by Soasig Chamaillard. From the Laughing Squid, via Broadsheet.
Previously: My Little Pony as Pop Culture Icons
Friday, September 28, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Book Covers: The Casual Optimist
The Odyssey, Homer (Coralie Bickford Smith)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (Coralie Bickford Smith)
Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Coralie Bickford Smith)
2666, Roberto Bolano (Charlotte Strick)
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (Gary Taxali)
The Train, Georges Simenon (Christopher Brian King)
The Art of Immersion, Frank Rose (Jason Booher)
Double Indemnity, James M. Cain (Evan Gaffney)
The Ethics of Interrogation, Michael Skerker (Isaac Tobin)
Columbine, Dave Cullen (Henry Sene Yee)
Images from The Casual Optimist, via The Book Design Review Twitter feed.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
The Cold Edge
Sleeping Giant
Blue Iceberg
The Blue Line
Images from The Cold Edge, an exhibition on Arctic photography, opening in The Copper House Gallery in Dublin on Thursday 13 September.
Images: Dave Walsh
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Elias Garcia Martinez's 'Ecce Homo' - make your own restoration
The art world was introduced to Cecilia Gimenez recently, due to the Spanish pensioner's spirited-but-misguided attempts at touching-up Elias Garcia Martinez's Ecce Homo.
You may scoff at her crude daubings, but could you have done any better? Well, here is your chance to find out. Go to ceciliaprize.com to have a go at making your own restoration to Ecce Homo. You can can win a poster of the restored work if you enter, but the real satisfaction is gained by taking part.
Here are El T's picks from the entries:
View more entries on the ceciliaprize's Pinterest page.
First image from NY Times.
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