Amoeblog

FACE PAINT ILLUSIONIST JAMES KUHN ON HALLOWEEN, ART, & GOD.

Interview with the artist, face paint illusionist, drag queen, performance artist and full-time Christian

Forget MySpace and check out MyFace, or, rather, the art that gifted face paint artist/illusionist James Kuhn does, displayed on both his Flickr page and his Face Paint In Motion YouTube channel. The self-described James Kuhn"Artist, Face paint illusionist, Drag Queen, Performance Artist, and full time Christian" has been uploading videos of his face paint art, such as the Rocky Horror "Sweet Transvestite" themed clip above which he posted two days ago, or the brilliant Golden Girls clip (below) that he produced and uploaded six months ago.

Ever the perfectionist, Kuhn said of the Golden Girls piece at the time, "I planned on painting Sophia on my forehead! but ran out of room... I need a bigger head! I am not too happy with this one, I should have searched for better pics to use as my models. The ones I pulled up were too small and Bea was in black and white. I should not try such a big project on a weeknight! Better for Saturdays when I can play all day long and am usually more rested. I gotta get some new glasses too."

On the Three Oaks, Michigan artist's YouTube channel, which is subtitled BibleArtWork, Kuhn has an impressive 234 different videos of various face paint illusions uploaded, usually with a cool accompanying soundtrack, ranging from Bettie Page Pin Up Girl to Miss Piggy & Kermit to Dracula and many, many more.

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Posted by Billyjam on October 31, 2009 at 09:00am | Post a Comment

UKRAINIAN SAND ANIMATOR'S ART MOVES PEOPLE TO TEARS


Ukrainian sand animation artist Ksenya Simonova, who came to fame in her country via an American Idol styled TV show, has been taking her country by storm -- even moving people to tears -- with her unique handmade sand art, which she creates live as a kind of requiem to those who died during the Great Patriotic War. As in the video clip above, her real time public performances of sand animation are typically made up of Simonova swiftly hand crafting various war images, quickly morphing from one tragic image to the next, all to the accompaniment of a somber soundtrack of classical & traditional music plus soundbites of wartime news footage.

Working with a mixture of regular sea sand and volcanic sand, all spread out on a glass pane as canvas, Simonova uses her hands to craft her engaging moving stories. At the end of each dramatic live art performance consisting of tales of death and destruction she blows out a votive candle. Usually at this point audience members are seen tearing up. Surprisingly, Simonova, who is also a part time model, only took up the unusual art form (she is only one of a handful of such artists -- the others are from an older generation) just one year ago after becoming a victim of the credit crunch. Reportedly her next project will be a Michael Jackson themed live art installation piece.
Posted by Billyjam on October 5, 2009 at 04:04am | Comments (1)

Photographic Memory, Part 1

"Say Cheesey"
job o brother
"Please conjure sheets of paper to come floating out of the laundry basket below"
The author, circa 1996

I have recently come into possession of my adolescent photo collection. There was, for a period of about five years, a time when I owned a fetching Ricoh camera which had been given to me by a rad woman whom I lived with on a mountaintop commune on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. She used to regale me with stories from her years as a hot-shot publicist, and explained to me which lines from David Bowie’s “Drive-in Saturday” had been written about her by the Thin White Duke.


Were these claims true? Who knows. But it did distract me from the profound and crippling nervous breakdown I was experiencing at the time, fuelled in part by excessive use of ecstasy as a means of spiritual enlightenment and by living with my then step-father who made such helpful suggestions as, “Maybe you have alien implants in your brain.”

“Oh, yes. Well thank you for that.”

I thought it might be fun to dip into the box and see what musical and/or cinematic associations they bring. Kind of reconsider my colorful past in terms of stuff you could purchase at Amoeba Music. For I am a salesman, ladies and gentlemen.

Posted by Job O Brother on September 7, 2009 at 01:17pm | Comments (4)

Etch A Sketch tribute to Michael Jackson

The Incredible Art of George Vlosich III

It’s been awhile since I last wrote about George Vlosich III, one of the most unique artists working today. The medium he works in, more often than not is the Etch A Sketch. And yes, it's the same plastic, red-framed Etch A Sketch kids everywhere play with for a while before cracking it open to see how the hell it works.
 
Since ten years of age, Vlosich has been Etching. At eighteen he was commissioned by the Topps Trading Card Company to produce a series of Etch-A-Sketch drawings for their 1998 baseball card collection. Since then he has been commissioned to Etch many an athlete, musician and celebrity. 
 
I still can’t get my head around the technique or the amount of patience someone has to have to complete one drawing. And all of it is worked out to such perfection; unfathomable to an Etch A Sketch hack like myself. Most of Vlosich’s original work takes between 70-80 hours to create. Some, like George’s newest masterpiece, Michael Jackson, took 150 hours! That’s a full time job for a month! The details are insane. The images are spot on. And remember, an Etch A Sketch drawing must be done in one long line ... one continual unflinching, unforgiving friggin’ line! Legendary artist Paul Klee once described his own work as simply taking a line for a walk; yeah, but it ain’t nothing like George Vlosich’s trek. Once finished, the piece is then preserved to stand the test of time -- I hope! -- every drawing is unique and cannot be duplicated.  
 
George is hoping to use this Michael Jackson piece for charity, possibly blowing it up to extra large size and then having the performers at the September 26th Michael Jackson Tribute Concert in Vienna autograph it. The concert, which was announced a few days ago, will feature some of the world's top entertainers performing MJ's greatest hits on a crown-shaped stage being constructed outside the 17th-century Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. The tribute will be broadcast live and is expected to draw an audience of one billion.
 
Check out George and his brother Greg’s website.

Posted by Whitmore on September 3, 2009 at 11:10pm | Comments (1)

Happy Birthday Marcel Duchamp

Music for Marcel Duchamp by John Cage

Composed by John Cage in 1947 for prepared piano, Music For Marcel Duchamp was originally created for Duchamp’s segment in Hans Richter's surrealist film Dreams that money can buy. Other collaborators in Richter's movie included Max Ernst, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger. The film, with a budget of $25,000, won the Award for the Best Original Contribution to the Progress of Cinematography at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. Duchamps' segment is entitled "Discs" and consists mostly of his rotoreliefs; flat cardboard circles with painted designs spinning on a turntable. Later, in 1999, Music For Marcel Duchamp was choreographed by the late, great Merce Cunningham.
 
The composition evokes timbres and harmonies of Asian music, as well as the music of Erik Satie: static, meditative and timeless. Using just a few tones, muted by weather stripping (seven pieces), and a piece of rubber and one metal bolt, the soft materials create a less metallic sound and avoid disruptive fluctuations in resonance. The rhythmic structure is eleven times eleven (extended); 2-1-1-3-1-2-1. One of the new ideas Cage worked on in this piece was the concept of silence used systematically. This can be heard, or not heard, in the last part of the work, where seven times 2 bars of music are followed by 2 bars of silence. This repetition creates tension as the work mostly builds on a single melodic line.
 
Joyeux Anniversaire Monsieur Duchamp!

Posted by Whitmore on July 28, 2009 at 09:25am | Post a Comment
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