Tag Archives: art

Elephant self-portrait

A couple of friends told me about this last night and while I might be the last person to find out about it, I also may not be. So, for those who haven’t seen this video already, I bring you an elephant painting a self-portrait.

Previous elephant posts on Duenos:
* Elephant Stories and Psychology Part 1: a look Topsy, the world-famous elephant from turn of the century Coney Island.
* Elephant Stories and Psychology Part 2: Batyr, an elephant in Kazakhstan that was known to mimic human speech.
* Elephants Stories and Psychology Part 3: Ruby, another famous painting elephant.

LEGO Art


Nathan Sawaya, a former 33-year old attorney, is now a famous LEGO artist. His impressive works were detailed in this “CNN slideshow”:http://www.cnn.com/interactive/entertainment/0705/gallery.lego.art/frameset.exclude.html and is discussed in this “CNN article”:http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/05/31/lego.artist/index.html. From a “giant banana”:http://www.brickartist.com/banana.html to a “_Starry Night_ replica”:http://www.brickartist.com/starry_night.html, his LEGO sculptures and mosaics are nothing short of LEGO-licious. His “official site”:http://www.brickartist.com/ has a lot more to offer, specifically his “huge gallery”:http://www.brickartist.com/allgallery.html. And in case you were wondering, eight same-colored 2X4 LEGO bricks can be arranged in 8,274,075,616,387 configurations, at least that’s what “Wikipedia:LEGO”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEGO says.
Interested in other unique artistic mediums? Check out what’s happening with “gummy bears”:http://duenos.net/article/221/13lbGummyBear, “JELLO”:http://duenos.net/article/222/JelloSanFrancisco, and “chalk”:http://duenos.net/article/64/chalk-art-by-julian-beever.
Photo is “Lego Untamed”:http://flickr.com/photos/starycat/461380473/ from Flickr user “Starcat”:http://flickr.com/photos/starycat/

Threadless T-Shirt design

Hey everyone. I’m still traveling around Europe, mostly without internet access. Still, I’d like to ask anyone who reads this website to go to my friend’s submission at “Threadless.com”:http://www.threadless.com/submission/120749/Avian_Flew and vote for it. If you didn’t know, Threadless is a t-shirt site that prints and sells more artsy t-shirts that are über-popular. I’m in Germany now so the keyboard actually has an “ü” button! Threadless tees have been featured everywhere, most famously on Zach Braff in “Scrubs”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0285403/.
This entry was posted in Original Duenos, Uncategorized and tagged , on by .

Graphical goodness

http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/ (fakeisthenewreal.org) is full of great maps. For example, the above pictures are to-scale drawings of subway systems in New York, London, and Madrid respectively. More cities can be found at their "world subways":http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/ page. I like it when people reorganize information and maps in new ways. Other cool cartographic remixes found on fakeisthenewreal are "Chicago Mile by Mile":http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/milexmile/ in which one picture representing every square mile of famously grid-like Chicago is shown on the city map, and "Public Schools in Order":http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/ps/ (shown below) in which all of New York's public schools are connected in numerical order. This entry was posted in Original Duenos and tagged on by .

Thousands pose nude for photo

17 to 18 thousand people turned out in Mexico City the other day to take their kit off and pose for the world’s largest nude photo shoot. The photographer, Spencer Tunick, had previously taken similar pictures in Barcelona with 7,000 people posing. The throng posed in a number of configurations including this one with the entire naked crowd saluting the Mexican flag.

More at the “Daily Mail”:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=453166&in_page_id=1811.

Jello San Francisco


This is an oldie but a goodie. Liz Hickok is a San Francisco artist that has worked with a number of media including sculpture, photography and most importantly, jello. “This gallery”:http://www.lizhickok.com/portfolio_jello.html of photos is from her most famous exhibition in which she cast a scale model of downtown San Francisco entirely out of jello, Golden Gate Bridge and everything.
Previously on duenos:
* “13 lb Gummy Bear”:http://duenos.net/article/221/13lbGummyBear

Street art debate

The “Top Ten Pictures”:http://toptenpictures.blogspot.com/ blog has posted a “discussion”:http://toptenpictures.blogspot.com/2007/04/writing-is-on-wall.html on the merits of street art (graffiti). Among some of the breath-taking art shown as examples, they also chose to use “one of my pictures”:http://flickr.com/photos/alexhrdr/478872286/ as an example of the movement. I encourage you to check out the Top Ten Pictures “post”:http://toptenpictures.blogspot.com/2007/04/writing-is-on-wall.html and weigh in on one of the more interesting debates going on in the art world today.
!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/190/478872286_573dcfa92d.jpg?v=0!

Guerrilla Benches in London


The “Space Hijackers”:http://www.spacehijackers.org./html/welcome.html, self-described as “Trouble with an anti-capital ‘T’, have been part of a sustained “Guerrilla Benching”:http://www.spacehijackers.org./html/projects/guerrillabench/guerrilla.html campaign in the borough of Camden in London. Apparently the Borough Council has been removing benches and the people, at least according to this lot, are not going to take that sitting down.
Photo credit to the Space Hijackers and story via “Time Out”:http://www.timeout.com/london/features/1975/12.html#articleAfterMpu