Posts Tagged ‘crafts’
Pencil it in…
“I’m known as the pencil guy,” laughed Dalton Ghetti, 49. “I don’t mind that at all.”
The Bridgeport artist creates impossibly detailed miniature sculptures on the tip of a pencil.
He shuns a magnifying glass and uses simple tools like razor blades and needles to create delicate little figures – from a tiny, jagged handsaw to a minibust of Elvis in shades…
Readers can find the full, photo-laced story in The NY Daily News (and more in The [U.K.] Daily Mail); and readers in the Northeast can see the Brazilian-born carver’s work at the New Britain Museum of American Art, as part of its “Meticulous Masterpieces” exhibit, through this Sunday.
(Many thanks to reader PL.)
As we ponder altogether new meanings for “sharpen my pencil,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1940, at the New York World’s Fair, that the world’ first Parachute Wedding was conducted. Arno Rudolphi and Ann Hayward, were married on the Parachute Jump, a 26-story high ride created for the World’s Fair (though now working on Coney Island). The entire wedding party– minister, bride, groom, best man, maid of honor & four musicians– was suspended aloft until the newlyweds completed their vows.
Starry, starry night (with jam)…
Sticking with the “handmade” theme of yesterday’s post, the extraordinary work of Catherine McEver, “Embroidered Wonder Bread“:
Catherine volunteers answers to two questions sure to be on readers’ lips:
How do you embroider Wonder Bread? Very, very carefully. How long do they last? I have a couple of slices that are over four years old that look just like new.
See more of her beautified bread here– and browse a wide variety of “art, textiles, and oddities” on her site Stuff You Can’t Have.
(TotH to GMSV)
As we try to find those thimbles, we might recall that it was on this date in 1570 that Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp issued Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum– a collection of 53 maps that is generally agreed to have been the first modern atlas.
The eyes of the beholders…
Readers will know Etsy, the successful online “market for handmade things,” where the mission is “to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.”
Now, thanks to reader PL, readers can discover Regretsy– a site that focuses on a sub-set of the postings on Etsy; as Regretsy’s motto explains: “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet.”
For example:
or…
Regretsy is quick to be clear about where it stands:
Don’t get us wrong. We like crafts.
We just don’t like these crafts.
Yes, we know these people put their hearts into it. We know it took hours and hours. We know how mean it is to laugh at their creations. And we regret being the only web site on the internet that makes fun of things.
But what can we do? We’re immature.
Besides, art is totally subjective. Who cares what we think? I barely care and I’m writing this.
Listen, if you like something you see here, don’t argue with us, go and buy it. Seriously. Click on any photo and you’ll be taken to the seller’s store (if a photo is not linked, the store is closed, or we are unable to find the seller). We’re only too glad to have made the introduction.
Otherwise, we’re just going to sit here and look at the amputee kitten paintings and vulva earrings and laugh so hard that we pee in our reusable Pokemon pads.
Etsy, for its part, has been very gracious: “If it brings in more traffic to the shop and helps make sales, then all the better.” And in fact, many of the items featured on Regretsy have found new owners.
For our parts, lest we rush too quickly to any judgments, we might recall the thoughts of several close observers of beauty and the arts:
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
- Marshall McLuhanIt is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
- Salvador DaliTaste is the enemy of creativity.
- Pablo Picasso
As we reach for those knitting needles, we might ponder bobbing our hair in commemoration of the incomparable Louise Brooks, fabled actress (Pandora’s Box and other Pabst greats) and author of Lulu in Hollywood; she was born this day in 1906.
