The Crest Fest Art Show

This weekend sees the opening of the Crest Hardware Art Show in Williamsburg. Sponsored by and situated in the Crest Hardware store, the show features works constructed from items commonly found in - you guessed it! - a hardware store.

The show kicks off tomorrow with the Crest Fest which will feature bands, DJs, beer and a sale of works by local artists. The proceeds will benefit the City Reliquary.

See at left this charming octopus made by Jude Ferencz. When I went and looked up the photo credit, I was happy to see the picture was taken by friend of The Cabinet, Theo Coloumbe of the Brooklyn Photo Studio. You can see more works from the exhibit here.

They are located here. In fact, it would really be beyond convenient to stop by this fest and then just run down the block and see a few offerings in The Brick's Comic Book Theater Festival (which I can't link to directly because of some egregious Flash usage, so facebook it is).

Italian Vogue and the Myth of the Plus Sized Model

I've written before about how tired and sad I find the current incarnation of American Vogue, and about how I think it might be time for Mrs. Wintour to call it a day. American Vogue is mostly white washed (or appallingly racially insensitive), and filled with spread after spread of white girls leaping into the air in front of plain backgrounds. Mrs. Wintour - stop hiding Grace Coddington's light under a bushel!

Not so with Italian Vogue. This is greatly due to the latitude given to photographer Steven Meisel by editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani. Unlike in the American edition, the editors of Vogue Italia have gone to great lengths to feature a much wider variety of beautiful women than their compatriots in America.

Back in 2008 they came out with what they called the "Black Issue", featuring black models exclusively throughout the magazine - except, of course, in the advertisements, the faces in which were nearly all white, making for a telling juxtaposition. This generated a great deal of talk of steps in the right direction and of exceptionalism both. Over all, the issue was extraordinary and really showed up how narrowly beauty is still construed (Mrs. Prada, take note: I blame you for a lot of it). Also of note - the issue was a blockbuster. Particularly in the United States, it sold and sold and sold and back issues on ebay go for about $80. But, contrary to what naysayers predicted, the magazine has continued to be innovative in their art direction and choice of models, and the magazine, as a whole, is far mare integrated than the norm.

The June 2011 cover and feature spread of Vogue Italia feature what are referred to in the industry as "plus sized models". As most people with an even passing interest in the industry are aware, there has been a great deal of worry over rapidly shrinking models. Women such as Coco Rocha have spoken out about how they have been encouraged to "look anorexic". The problem is simple: models should be pretty much the same size as each other so that they can fit into the samples without much in the way of alterations. That's simple practicality. The question that no one seems to be able to answer is: why do the samples have to be so tiny? There has been a great deal of hand-wringing over the effect on young girls and their perceptions of themselves and unattainable standards. Which brings us to the world of plus size models.

Like all models, the plus sized ones are beautiful, tall and pretty much flawless. The average size is an American 10 or 12 for plus size models (but these aren't, as some of you might know, actual plus sizes), and they work mostly modeling larger sized clothes or for print advertisements for various products. Rarely will you see a plus-sized model in a mainstream fashion magazine. But this is slowly changing. Glamour Magazine has started featuring larger sized models in recent years, and a few other magazines have followed suit. And then the most maddening thing of all happened. People started hand-wringing over the fact that plus-sized models might lead young people to believe that unhealthy life-styles are okay.

This made me want to bang my head against my desk until I bled.

If there's one thing (well, one thing among many) I'd like to get through the world's thick, stupid head, it's that aesthetics and fashion are separate from obesity and ill-health. Plus sized models are fit and healthy (unless they have some sort of underlying health problem we don't know anything about as we don't know these people, but that goes for, like, everyone). The only realm in which these women are considered outsized is in the world of very high fashion. Because they cannot, just like all the rest of us, fit into tiny sample sizes. They are not obese, unhealthy, over-weight or anything other than professionally gorgeous. I am completely mystified how anyone could thing that the picture above left could lead any vulnerable young woman down the sad road to obesity and horror (there's much sarcasm here).

But the most upsetting thing is -the skinny women are awful because they encourage women to be anorexic. The larger models are awful because they encourage women to be fat. It's unwinnable and ghastly. Here's the truth people: Ladies, just like gentlemen, come in many shapes and sizes. Some are deemed fashionable, some are not. This is about aesthetics. Health is abut the state of one's insides, something that is unknowable from either a glance or a photograph.

Back to Steven Meisel's editorial. It's one of the sexiest I've ever seen, Meisel is a brilliant and creative photographer and the young women in the spread are gorgeous. It is telling that they are, for the most part, undressed. Katie Grand, when she was still heading up POP, managed to coerce designers into making large sizes for Beth Ditto and others, and teeny sized for marionettes in one of my favorite photo spreads ever. But she might have magic powers and I've never seen anyone else accomplish that feat (though one would think if she had the inclination la Wintour could make that happen, but, as we all know, she lacks the inclination).

Still more images of non-white women, larger sized women or (heavens!) larger sized non-white women is all to the good. Particularly with most designers not casting non-white models because they say they "don't fit in with their aesthetic" as white women are seen as unthreateningly neutral. There are always more frontiers to conquer, and one delightful mini-trend I've noticed - again in Vogue Italia, when researching this piece - is the use of older models. Forty-seven year old Kristen McMenamy graced the cover in May, and forty-one year old Stella Tennant did the same in March. Maybe things are starting to crack!

Lori Nix: Unnatural History and Other Worlds

In talking about photography, I most often say that I like pictures of people. And mostly, the same goes for paintings. But, as in most things, there are oftentimes exceptions and the photographs of Lori Nix are a huge one. I was first introduced to her work via a facebook link posted by the always interesting Artistic Director of Art House. I was instantly intrigued and spent a lot of time with them.


There aren't any people in them at all, and Nix has said in interviews that one of her great influences are the Hudson River School of landscape painters and, in a way, it shows. When I first saw her photographs I couldn't quite figure out what I was looking at. They were from her series "The City", in which we see strange, long abandoned urban scenes in which trees and other foliage have grown back. I didn't understand where they were taken, or how she found these remarkable scenes to photograph.


Lori Nix's wonderful settings aren't found, they are made. She creates them herself, on tabletops. She then lights them and doesn't use any digital manipulation at all. They are perfect and melancholy and exquisite. There are landscapes and interiors and insects. She shares some of my personal obsessions, as do many of the artists I feature here - the conflict between the natural world and the structures of men; museums and toy theaters of all sorts.


I both want to know how she makes everything and I don't. Am I the only one who wants her to branch out into animation? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the power of her images comes from their silence and stillness. Qualities rare indeed in our noisy and over-stimulated world.

All photographs are the property of Lori Nix. If you are interested in purchasing her work, contact ClampArt. (Pssst: Wealthy admirers, I have birthday coming up, you know)

Anthropomorphica: Doll Parts

One day, through channels I no longer remember, I came across a world, in the form of the blog Anthrpomorphica, I had never quite glimpsed before.

Originating in Edinburgh, the gifted proprietress of Anthropomorphica creates strange and wonderful dolls, names them, writes little narratives, takes their pictures and posts them on her blog. Her work is exquisite, gothic, charming. Sometimes she puts one of her dolls up for adoption (via her Etsy store).

She also sometimes features dolls made by other artists. It's a world I didn't know existed, with beautifully crafted figures made of clay and papier-mâché and paint and felt and bone. It led me through link after link of invented worlds and finely crafted beings. I love how so much of it is tied to narrative, and one certainly assumes that they do indeed come to life after the lights are put out.

Please look at:

Anthropomorphica (who, needless to say, owns the photo above)

Harem6

Evelyn's Wonderland

17

The picture below was taken when I was seventeen a very long time ago. It was shot by a friend I no longer speak to and I think it's kind of great in its moody, gothy, self-involved teenager-y way. And my foot looks enormous.

I have a post coming up about bridging gap between one's teens and twenties, so I won't say much here, but I remember being so thoroughly confused. No one in high school would go out on a date with me if their life depended on it from what I could tell, and then when I left my horrible home town I got a lot of attention and mostly, I was baffled. I think I felt a little like Helena, you know, that everyone was making fun of me and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Below is a really self-consciously arty shot. I remember that dress and I loved it. And I wore those boots until they were being held together with electrical tape.

I'm just an addict at this point

Two more cinemagraphs by Jamie Beck. I'm completely and utterly addicted to these lovely, lovely images. The first one is from the series she did with model Coco Rocha, who always seems to be doing and saying interesting things. She came to the world of fashion via the unlikely route of competitive Irish step dancing in her native Canada. She'd never worn anything other than jeans or a school uniform before becoming a model and has been something of a bastion of sense in a senseless industry, speaking often and publicly about eating disorders and the pressure to acquire them. She's the model who was once famously told, "You need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexia. We don't want you to be anorexic but that's what we want you to look like." She's also something of a throwback to the supermodels of yore when beautiful women with big personalities were in favor, rather than interchangeable 15 year old Latvians. She once step danced down Jean Paul Gaultier's runway.

I can't stop looking at this arresting New York moment in which a brief moment, a flicker of movement, has been captured for all eternity. Magic!

Cinemagraphs by Jamie Beck

The animated gif has been around for as long as the internet has existed (and longer still). They are easily created little graphics that can capture a piece of a television show:



Or make a point in a discussion:



Or are just really funny:



But thus far, they haven't really been created for the purpose of art. Books and magazines and newspapers printed on actual paper are soon to be done for. Soon, only the poor will do something so wasteful and ridiculous as not read off a screen. And then, I assume, the usual switch will happen. Paper will be rare and pricy and the rich will covet it. But, soon, magazines and books will mostly be digital. I don't think this has been thought through much in terms of content, and the capabilities digital files possess. That will come, I am sure.

Photographer Jamie Beck has begun creating what she's calling cinemagraphs. Animated gifs that are using technology to create moody little moving photographs. They're interstitial nature. They are neither film or photo. Below, she collaborated with model Coco Rocha in these lovely shots taken in Rocha's apartment. It's an interesting experiment, and I look forward to seeing where it will lead.

For those of my readers who have gotten tired of the decidedly (but wholly unintentional) fashionable bent The Cabinet has taken over the past week or so, here is another shot by Beck of a gorgeous old timey barber shop at 71st and Lexington that looks like something one can only visit via time machine:

The four above gifs are via Jamie Beck's blog, From Me To You, and the images belong to her.

Little Wooden Hands

When a friend posted the above photo on facebook, my inamorato's comment made me laugh and laugh:

this made me laugh until the tears rolled down my cheeks. It's like the ventriloquist is unaware that his doll has turned into a monster

I was dying of curiosity. Who was this ventriloquist and his monstrous dummy? Was he successful? Did people run out of theaters and music halls screaming? Did the ventriloquist wake up one dark night with his dummy's small wooden hands around his throat?

Sadly, these questions remain unanswered. But I did find out about the photographer. It took a little digging, as the photograph was posted without a source. The photograph belongs to the collection of the National Museum of New Zealand and was taken by a photographer named William James Harding in 1870. He came from an English, working class family and emigrated to New Zealand in 1855 with his wife in the hope of bettering himself. It sounds as if he definitely had an artist's soul. He loved photographing landscape, but people don't much care about landscape photography (Ansel Adams notwithstanding), people want portraits. So, he begrudgingly took pictures of people, but his fury at having to do so was apparent. He didn't retouch or light his subjects in order to make them look better, he had no business sense of any sort. He just wanted to take pictures of the gorgeous and wild country he found himself in, thousands of miles from the place of his birth. Poor William.

We still have no idea who this ventriloquist with the monstrous dummy is. Just some itinerant carney, taking advantage of Harding's cheap rates? Or something far more sinister?

We can only wonder.

Tumblr of the Month! Black & WTF

To my great and (hopefully) unending delight, Fuzzy Bastard recently posted a link to the Black & WTF tumblr, which is now one of my favorites. It's premise is simple. The owner posts (nicely sourced) B&W photographs that are in some way utterly inexplicable or just plain odd. The cumulative charm is immense. The following are a few examples:

(via firsttimeuser)

(via shopkins-fossik)

(via mlkshk)

What I like so much about all the images, is how they spark my imagination. The photograph is such a magical invention that never stops amazing me. Even in this age of space travel and cellphones and those LED signs that tell us when the next subway will be arriving, the permanent fixing of a moment in time using light and chemicals or megabytes never seems any less than a pure wonder. It's one of the things we take most for granted, but in some ways it is up there with written language in the roster of the greatest human inventions, on of the few marvelous things that justifies the existence of humanity.

Photographs, whether they be carefully framed images taken by gifted professionals or snapshots taken by a toddler all stop time cold in its tracks. Because of them we are nearly all immortal. What wonders does this world hold! Look! Zebras! Pulling a carriage!

Pack a Suitcase. Buy a Ticket.

As this morning's post will indicate, I have itchy feet. I haven't been anywhere in a while, and that is just not working for me right now. The sad reality is, though, that travel has become somewhat of a miserable experience, with the TSA and the airlines making it as awful as possible and ensuring we're all as terrified as can be.

Still.

A few days ago I became aware of a former colleague's (and current facebook friend's) travel and photography blog. He seems to be living some sort of fabulous life in which he reports of having lunch in Denmark and dinner London or some such wonderfulness. Also, his pictures are lovely. Look at them.

The above photo belongs to Jason Yalen and was taken in Las Vegas. His blog can be found here.

(Coincidentally, I just found out it's Jason's birthday today!)

Julian Mandel and the Ladies of Paris

No one is precisely sure who photographer Julian Mandel was. Most everyone is sure the famed photographer of tasteful and meticulously posed nudes was a pseudonym, but no one is certain for whom. Some people think he may have been Julian Walery, another photographer who meticulously lighted his subjects, but used a pseudonym when he worked in the erotic postcard market.


Of course, during his heyday, they were sold as pornography, but they possess a really lovely old master sheen.



What is odd, is that they were signed at all, and all of Mandel's postcards were, prominently. It is thought he died in 1935.