Sleepless in Midland

Attention Houston sculpture bombers -- here's the one you should target

Oh those crazy social justice warriors. They can't create, so they destroy. They can't persuade, so they destroy. When normal people read about these people: Houston man charged with trying to plant bomb at Confederate statue in Hermann Park, it's hard to stay calm. Hopefully, law enforcement agencies can keep us and the statues safe from those mad bombers.

Meanwhile, if they want to bomb something, they should go for the eyesores. This one, for example. “Personage with Birds," the ugly sculpture in downtown Houston.

Here's the ways it's described in Art & Entertainment: 15 things YOU GOTTA SEE in Houston:

Joan Miro Sculpture
600 Travis Street (In Front of the JP Morgan Chase Tower)
During construction of the JP Morgan Chase Tower, an art committee commissioned Joan Miro to create this sculpture for the skyscraper’s plaza. The story, that in the 80’s Miro came to Houston to pick up a check before creating it. Miro allegedly asked if they had any particular art themes in mind & someone on the committee responded “Anything but an anatomically correct male nude.”  He was 90yrs old @ the time and world famous for surrealist sculptures loaded w/sexual symbolism. He was a Catalan Spanish artist who made Paris his home and ran w/Picasso & his crowd. This piece is a male stick figure of an artist with pallets in the primary colors and at least 5 stories high. I don’t believe he titled it, but the Morgan/Chase site calls it “Personage with Birds.

Photo source: Miro sculpture in front of JPMorgan Chase Tower.

Who is stealing the Trump yard signs in Midland Texas?

Observant commuters saw something different on their route Monday morning. Where there were Trump yard signs last week, now nothing.

Some miscreants with low level ambition -- whether drug or alcohol induced -- had an idea. But creativity was lacking*. All they could come up with was stealing Trump/Pence signs. It's as if they thought that people with jobs driving to work without seeing Trump signs would be inspired to vote for Hillary Clinton. Poor creatures. There are your deplorables, Hillary.

But to be fair, even Shepard Fairey is uninspired by Hillary Clinton.

*For more creative misbehavior, see the Sabo's imaginative graffiti.

NYT double standard on Catholicism and Islam -- it's so much fun watching them try to explain it

Progressives today are so open minded that they can tolerate their own contradictions.

Every conservative has probably had liberal friends or acquaintances who were so smart they could convince themselves of anything. It's fun watching them tie themselves in knots trying to explain it. Problem is, there's usually no umpire around who can call fouls or declare a winner.

Thank goodness we still have a free press in the U.S. so we can watch some of these things play out in public.

The matter that brings this topic to light today is the New York Time's double standard on display when they produce a photo of an art piece depicting the pope made of condoms. It's just a tad distasteful. But then we are reminded that the same NYT declined to reproduce the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that had the radical Islamists so worked up they went on a killing spree.

Charles C. W. Cooke provides the short version of NYT's twisted excuse in On the New York Times’s Hilarious Charlie Hebdo Double-Standard, as follows:

The answer: For the same reason that the Times is happy to print one and not the other — to wit, because one is insulting to Catholics and the other is insulting to Muslims. If you honestly believe that this is a question of artistic merit or the psychic state of the artist — “ooh, look at the brushstrokes!” — then I have a Greek investment opportunity to put to you.

Succinct, funny, and true. He gets bonus points for tying it in with that stunning exemplar of socialism, Greece.

Arm chair vacationing -- visit Stone Mountain by computer

These days a sight seeing vacation can be taken right at our own desk with this internet thing. After all, when enough time passes all we have left are the photos, anyway. So cut to the chase and just look at photos.

Today's vacation spot is a carving in a rock wall larger than Mt. Rushmore. But this one is spectacularly un-politically correct. It's the Confederate Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.

The first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum was hired in 1915, however, he didn't get far. And in 1925 he took off to go carve Mt. Rushmore. A second caver took over, but he didn't finish, either. Eventually, the state of Georgia bought the property and assigned the job to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.

Walker Kirkland Hancock was given the job of finishing the sculpture. And in 1964 work resumed, this time with thermo-jet torch instead of dynamite. See a photo of one such torch here. The sculpture was finalized in 1972.

From the park website:

The largest high relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving, depicts three Confederate heroes of the Civil War, President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The entire carved surface measures three-acres, larger than a football field and Mount Rushmore. The carving of the three men towers 400 feet above the ground, measures 90 by 190 feet, and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee's elbow, which is 12 feet to the mountain's surface.

The park website said that workers would take shelter from rain in a horse's ear. Now that's big art.

Christmas time for the lawn jockey

OK, the term "lawn jockey" probably doesn't do the little guy justice. But he's so cute with his little stocking cap. It's a lawn sculpture with the Christmas spirit.

Denny Haskew is the sculpture, and if you want one for your own lawn snatch it up for a mere $20,000 here.

Previously on these pages.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Something for the art lovers out there -- Metropolitan Museum of Butts

Check out the Metropolitan Museum of Butts which features photos of sculptures in museums, from the back.

Tag line: "Gay or straight, man or woman... everybody likes butts. And everybody has a butt."

Via mentalfloss.com.

Sleepless in Midland -- always trying to move you to a higher level.

My favorite yard ornament got the Christmas spirit

It's Moulding Our Future, a beautiful sculpture by D. Haskew that's planted on a lawn at a private home here in magnificent Midland, Texas. The lad has been sporting a Christmas stocking cap on his bronze noggin this holiday season helping spread the Christmas spirit. As we approach the new year I expect the cap to come off soon. So here for your enjoyment is a photograph.

If you want sculpture like this of your own shop online here or here. To read more about the piece go here.

Merry Christmas, kiddo. And learn to spell.

Ray Villafane carves some crazy crazy pumpkin faces

If you haven't yet seen the talented Ray Villfane's pumpkin faces check out VillafaneStudios.com.

They are unbelievable.

Lois Gibson forensic artist

Drawing a sketch that looks like a person who is sitting right there is hard enough. But it has to be even harder when all the artist has to go on is a verbal description. The job of a forensic sketch artist isn't easy. And when someone with talent like Lois Gibson comes along she gets noticed.

She's so good that according to Dailymail.co.uk she earned the "Guinness World Record for being the world's most successful sketch artist, having helped to solve well over 1,000 crimes over her 30-year career."

But there's more to her work than criminal investigation. She also sketches faces of Holocaust victims based on descriptions from survivors. Pretty amazing.

See some samples of her work here. And come to think of it, since her sketches are usually of victims or criminals, getting drawn by her is something the rest of us might want to avoid.

Via.

Warbird nose art

Hubba hubba yowsa!

Yesterday we talked about the free admission to the CAF Airpower Museum today, Memorial Day. And any visit to the museum isn't complete without seeing the WWII warbird nose art on display.

Being the compliant type, this blogger observed and obeyed the no-photographs sign, so you won't see any of that art in this post. The various nose artworks had one thing in common. The subject in every case was a scantily clad female. Yeah baby. A pinup on a plane.

The CAF Gulf Wing visited with their B-17, equipped with a Norden bomb sight, and yes, nose art of its own. That's her on the right.

Fast forward to the politically correctness of the current era, and one has to wonder what the modern day nose art would look like. Gender, culture, race, color, creed neutral. A non specific blotch might pass multicultural scrutiny.

Hilarious street art by Oakoak

The problem with most graffiti is that it's not just narcissistic, but it takes so much work to get rid of it. This guy has a better idea -- find something unusual on the street, apply some creativity, create a cutout, and make a drab scene funny. It's the art of OakOak.

Did I mention that he's funny?

This is better than graffiti. It's removable.

Via Pleated-jeans.com.

You don't have to be Rain Man to appreciate this

Todd McLellan is the dismantler/photographer. It looks like a painstaking process, but the results are amazing. This is a disassembled typewriter with the components spread out in a nice orderly manner.

Click Everyone has a piece of the puzzle to see more like that.

You can almost hear Philip Glass in the background while looking at these.

Shadow art

Remember as a kid trying to make animal caricatures on the wall with the shadow of your hands? This is quite a few steps beyond. And the results are remarkable.

Found at TheMetaPicture.com where you can see more.

The artists are identified here as Kumi Yamashita, Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

More amazing Blu wall art

It's a series of still photos as a guy paints a courtyard and surrounding walls to give an illusion of an animated motion picture. Watch Youtube video. It's amazing stuff and makes one wonder how he got that paint to dry so fast.

Perhaps you'll remember a previous one posted here early this year.

Via Laughing Squid.

Updated: Dang. I need to check friendly blogs more frequently. Fireant Gazette posted Blu's art video yesterday.  He certailny has great taste.

More amazing sidewalk art

A couple of years ago we admired the photos of Julian Beever's amazing sidewalk art work -- see previously on these pages for links.

Here's another artist using the same principle, Edgar Mueller, who painted Ice Age in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, in August of 2008.

See more photos of it here. And watch him do it on Youtube.

Via Neatorama.

Art in the Park

The non-profit group called Arts Assembly of Midland has really given us some nice art to admire as we walk around Windlands Park. These photos were taken just after sunup the other morning.

CORRECTION (added 2/13/09): The sign for this sculpture is incorrect. It identifies a previous exhibit which this one replaced. The item you see above is Passion in a Bud Vase 2008, in stainless steel and etched pigment, 7’x 12’ by Jim LaPaso, Kyle, Texas

CORRECTION (added 2/13/09): The sign for this sculpture is incorrect. It identifies a previous exhibit which this one replaced. The item you see above is, Spy Hopping, 1996, Stainless Steel, 66" x 96" x 36" by Willie Ray Parish, El Paso , Texas. What is Spy Hopping? Here's an explanation, via PDF.

The sculpture is abstract. It is not a whale, but is about surfacing sea mammals. Parish did a number of sculptures in the '90s derived from the various shapes that appear above the water line when sea mammals surface. The idea was to try to draw attention to the environmental damages to the earth and particularly the oceans. This particular one is similar to the "spy hopping" move that some whales regularly make. They get vertical in the water, sticking their heads above the water line, presumably to see what is happening. Willie Ray Parish is the Sculpture Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and founder and Director of the Border Art Residency.

The sculptures are rotating art pieces, and the Arts Assembly insures them and pays a fee for their use. There are two more on the way: Super Happy Chicken by Carter Ernst and Weathering the Storm by Paul Kittelson. However, their arrival has been delayed by an injury accident on the highway in route to the Midland. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.

Rotating exhibits are an ideal way to enjoy big art like this. After they've been in place for a while we gets used to them, and just about the time we begin to ignore them, WHOA, what's that? A new one appears like magic.

Thanks to Danny Holeva, Executive Director at the Arts Assembly of Midland, for the corrections.  And thanks to everyone at Arts Assembly of Midland for bringing this fabulous art to the Tall City!