The Smarmy Carny

Tonight, I discovered a neat project that goes on each year in the Buffalo area called Faces of Buffalo.

First, you print out a 2006 Self Portrait Response Form. Then, create a self-portrait of your face using crayons, markers, paint — any media other than photographs. The 1,000 or so self-portraits are then combined into a mosaic of a buffalo. Be sure to check out their website to see and order past year's mosaics. Sales benefit charity.

Creativity is encouraged, but skill is not. The nature of this project is not to obtain the highest quality self-portraits, but instead to create a high level of participation in this community project. In fact, the website states that "Brian Nesline was inspired to create a bridge between artists, non-artists and art itself."

I think I'll try and participate this year. Perhaps I could roll this into my practice to create some abstract art this year.

This week's site is Worth1000.

Worth1000 (or w1k, as regulars refer to it) is a site that deals with the "photoshopping" (i.e. digital photo editing) of pictures.

While there, you can browse through dozens of contest entries. Contests range from simple tasks like editing a particular picture in any way you'd wish to more difficult tasks like colorizing a black and white photograph to surreal tasks like covering any object with virtual chocolate.

Even if you don't feel like you have the skill to compete, you can still register and vote on the current contest entries. Even more valuable is the Tutorial section, which gives plenty of über-cool advice on how to perform common tasks. Also, for the unskilled, there is a "Training Grounds" section with less difficult tasks.

If Worth1000 was merely a photo editing contest website, it would have been worthy of being Sunday's Site. The quality of most of the entries (and the admission that lousy entries will be tossed out) really allow these contest entries to be breathtaking. Worth1000 goes beyond that, though, by offering a great variety of content for all people.

Click for full picture

Chris Jordan's "Intolerable Beauty — Portraits of American Mass Consumption" simultaneously shows us both the horror and the beauty of mass consumption. As in "Pallets #2" above, you can see the large amount of waste that goes on in our country, but you can also see the beauty created by it. The thumbnail above really doesn't do the picture justice because it is cropped and resized. You need to head to chrisjordan.com to see the full picture!

Don't stop with this photo, though. Be sure to check out the rest of his work at chrisjordan.com . . . just click on "images" to see the rest.

I StumbledUpon this site a while back and just had to bookmark it and share it. Just this week (July 24), his art was featured on the front page of The New York Times' Art section. The article was titled "A Great Big Beautiful Pile of Junk."

Shh . . . PostSecret!

Here's another must-see website. PostSecret is "an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard."

PostSecret has dozens of postcards up on the site, and more are added.

Though I doubt that many of these are true, they still have great impact, both emotionally and artistically.

I can't do most of these cards justice, as they really are little pieces of art that must be seen and read. Thus, I won't be giving any examples, except for one randomly selected one shown to the right. You really should go to the site, anyway!

I have seen a few pictures of a professional sidewalk chalk artist and his pieces around the net, and they are amazing. You should be able to see a sample right in this post. There are pieces that are more amazing, but that one happened to fit the space on my blog well. Check out this piece, as it is one of the more impressive that I have seen.

Be sure to check out the sidewalk chalk guy page hosted at gprime.net.

If anyone knows this artist's name, please let me know. I did some searches and found plenty of lousy pictures done by 5th graders and such. I'd like to learn more. Finally, I received an e-mail forward that included this artist's name: ::wikipedia("Julian Beever")::. Visit his site and see plenty of his anamorphic pavement art at Julian's homepage.

Want more? Another street artist is Kurt Wenner, who tends to draw pavement art along a more classical art theme.

Sand Animation

Sand animation is a really neat art. Actually, it's more of a really messy art, but let's not get picky.

Take a few minutes to watch this video. It's a couple years old, but it's certainly worth watching. From what I have gathered, this was the opening "act" for SICAF 2003. SICAF is the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival. The clip features Ferenc Cako telling the story of Genesis 1-3 via sand animation.

Granted, the art created is not breathtaking, but the method certainly is. Then again, you try your best to create some "breathtaking" art as quickly as he does. That's where the "animation" comes in.

If this video had piqued your interest, check out Ferenc Cako's homepage, as well as sandanimation.com.

I think that an interesting finale to his show would be to have a beach bully run up and kick his creation over, but that's just me.