Ladies Dressed as Appliances

Back in the old days, ladies dressed up as appliances.

From the 1936 Los Angeles Electrical Exposition. Via Retronaut. Thanks, Amanda Uren.

Beard and Moustache Championships

Devon Holcolme from Jacksonville, Florida is a part of Beard Team, USA. He participated in the National Beard and Moustache Championships in the Freestyle Moustache category.

Holcolme says, "You'll see everyone here likes attention. You kind of have to be silly to walk around with this."
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Via BYT
Previously on GJ: Best Artist's Facial Hair

Soft Robots

Soft robots make use of pliable structures instead of hard forms like gears, pistons, and hinges.


(Video link) Engineers can now design flexible artificial creatures inspired by the octopus, earthworm, starfish, or jellyfish. Most prototypes move by means of air pumped into sectional chambers. Although the current soft robots are small and clumsy looking, tethered to their air supplies, they have a striking "alive" quality.


A new paper in Science magazine demonstrates how they can change color for camouflage or display. Other morphing blob-like bots can squeeze through narrow spaces.

Whether the soft forms are used alone or combined with hard forms for armor or skeleton, these breakthroughs suggest new possibilities for concept artists and mech designers who are trying to dream up organic-looking artificial beings.

Imagine creepy slug-bots, graceful gas-bag air floaters, or (ahem) sexy robots.
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Image from Innovation News Daily
For other striking advances in robotics, check out:
Big Dog
Nano Quad Rotors

Cardboard Bicycle

Is it possible to make a bicycle out of cardboard?


This video shows how engineer Izhar Gafni did it, using cardboard for the frame and for the wheels and spokes.

The video glosses over how he dealt with the high stress points, such as bearings, brakes, drive system, and head tube. Surely there must be metal parts there.
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Via Best of YouTube

Backpack Blower

Here's the scene outside my window (sketched from life). 

A guy with a backpack leaf blower is blowing some dust and gravel around.

His buddy, a mower guy, goes past. The leaf-blow guy starts blowing his hair, and the mower guy doesn't seem to mind. He stands there and seems to enjoy it.


Then the mower guy leans over and lifts up his shirt a little.


The air velocity of a backpack blower is about 200 miles per hour, enough to put a rippling dent in the mower guy's butt.


Then they go back to work. And so do I. 

Our heads are getting larger

According to a report in National Geographic, our heads are getting larger.


From 1825-1985, the span of the skull has increased by about a third of an inch. The size amounts to about a tennis ball worth of additional volume. This doesn't necessarily translate to greater intelligence.

Anthropologist Richard Jantz, shared the findings at a meeting of the American Association for Physical Anthropology. Scientists aren't certain why this might be happening, but have suggested some possible explanations: increased c-sections, vaccinations, or changes in diet or exercise.

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National Geographic report

Image from Outer Limits “Sixth Finger” 

Colonel Sanders resembles Confucius

Kentucky Fried Chicken has opened more than 3,000 branches in China, and now the restaurant chain is more profitable in China than in the USA. One theory for KFC's boffo success: Colonel Sanders resembles Confucius.

More chicken lore in this month's Smithsonian magazine: How the Chicken Conquered the World, by Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler 

Spectrum Expedition

I just completed this little video about the long journey to attend Spectrum Fantastic Art Live, which ended yesterday.


(Video Link) The whole experience seems like a dream now that I'm sitting in a hotel room along the highway, waking up and heading home.
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Spectrum Fantastic Art Live
Book: Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art
Announcement of Spectrum 19 award winners.

Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com. Images and artists in the video include: Phil Hale Jon Foster (poster), Arnie Fenner, Jeff Preston, Paul Tobin, Greg Manchess, Thomas Kuebler (full-size figure sculpts), Tim Bruckner, J.B. Monge, Paul Bonner, Mike Mignola, Donato Giancola, Brom, Omar Rayyan, Michael Whelan, Vanessa Lemen, G. Manchess, Bruce Mitchell, Bobby Chiu (diving).

Elaine's Romance Covers

If I had to give a prize for the most delightfully weird romance cover, it would have to go to "The Hungry Ones" from 1966.

Whatever his pickup line is, she seems to be taking him seriously. Should be an interesting date. What he hasn't told her yet is that she's got to fit into his VW with 19 of his friends.

The cover is the work of Elaine Duillo (b. 1928), a prolific and talented artist whose cover paintings defined the look of paperback books from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Like all of her contemporaries: James Avati, James Bama, Pino Daeni,  and Bob McGinnis, she was adept at crystallizing a book's appeal into an arresting image that made you itch to pick it up and start reading. As a woman working a field mainly dominated by male artists, she overcame many discouraging remarks and kept producing work of the highest caliber.

Her work and career are spotlighted in an interview feature in the current issue of Illustration magazine, Issue #37.

Elaine started doing gothic covers, which evolved into the familiar genre of romance covers, where a half-clad, muscle-bound hero with long flowing locks embraces a wild woman in an exotic or historical setting. Elaine helped to make the model Fabio famous. He posed for 19 of her covers.

She worked from black and white photographs of professional models in real costumes. Her painstaking painting process used acrylic paint in fairly transparent layers, which made changes difficult. She retired in 2003.

The current Illustration magazine also features 1950s glamour illustrator Coby Whitmore, one of the Famous Artist School instructors. [Edit--he actually wasn't in the FAS, that would be Jon Whitcomb--thanks, Steve.]
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Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing for mentioning this post.
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More GJ posts about pop culture rabbit trails.
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Illustration Magazine (preview the whole issue in thumbnail form)
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Elaine was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2003 

Vintage streetlight collection

Joe Maurath stores his collection of vintage streetlights in a maze-like museum behind his home in Abington, Massachusetts.

Ever since he was a child, he has always been fascinated by telephone poles, streetlights, and insulators—all the so called “street furniture.” He worked as a meter reader, and he has befriended utility crews, who often given him retired lamps and housings. 

He loves seeing streetlights in their element close up from a bucket truck. “You gotta go up in a truck and look at these in the wild,” he told me. “It’s a whole different world up there.”

He has a special fondness for the “cobra head” style streetlights from the 1950s. I was struck with how big the housings appear when they’re brought down to eye level. They look like weird metallic mushrooms or UFOs.

Here's a Westinghouse OV-25 Separate Ballast from 1963 in the wild. Maurath's collection focuses on streetlights and insulators, but he's also got high voltage signs, switches, and police call boxes. Movie companies rent them from time to time to use in period films.

  

The older mercury-vapor illumination, with its pleasant cool color tinge, has almost entirely been replaced by the orange-colored high pressure sodium lamps. The traditional mercury vapor lamps are friendlier to trees, and they make better economic and environmental sense, he says, because the lamps last longer. 

Mercury lights also have the aesthetic advantage of a fuller color spectrum. High-pressure sodium (HPS) spikes almost entirely in the yellow-orange, and has an abysmal CRI (Color rendering index). “Sodium vapor light at night has that city-crime look to it,” he said. “And it makes the snow look dirty.” Hopefully, the new LED street lights, which have superior CRI, may eventually replace HPS.

READ MORE:

Joe's website: Vintage Streetlights

More photos of Joe's museum

Video comparing color appearance of HPS and LED

More about all this in my book on Color and Light

Previously on GJ: Multi-colored Streetlights

Forevertron

The Forevertron is a scrap metal sculpture in Wisconsin made in the 1980s by Tom Every. It's one of the largest found-object sculptures in the world. 

Mr. Every collected unusual castoffs for decades to incorporate into his magnum opus, including Thomas Edison dynamos, lightning rods, power plant components, scrap from an ammunition plant, and the decontamination chamber from the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

The backstory is that a Victorian scientist named Dr. Evermor built the Forevertron to "launch himself into the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam." 

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Wikipedia on Forevertron

The full story at Roadside America.com

Thanks, Tim Fehr.

Delta Wing Takes to the Track

The revolutionary new race car called the Delta Wing had its first track test on its way to Le Mans this summer. 

(Video link) The car was designed by Ben Bowlby and built by the team at All American Racers, headed up by Dan Gurney and his son Justin. 

Two time Grand Am champion Alex Gurney had the honor of being the first driver to get behind the wheel and try it out on the Buttonwillow Raceway in California, where it delivered a near flawless performance.

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All American Racers press release

Photos of the first track test

Road and Track description of the car

Previously on GurneyJourney

The Delta Wing at LeMans

Alex Gurney, race driver
Goldsworthy Gurney's Steam Carriages

Carpe Diem

A sunny day, a sandwich, a sketchbook, and a stool. Carpe diem! Time to head out in search of a sketch.
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....later....

Tom, since you asked, we went hiking and then did some shape-note singing. I sketched my friend Alan with a Stabilo 8008 graphite pencil.
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Artist's Facial Hair Poll

It's time to vote for the artist with the best facial hair. The poll is at left.

First row: Aivazovsky, Courbet, Friedrich

Second row: Kahlo, Uhde, Dali

Third row: Man Ray, Steele, Dickens

Fourth row: Brancusi, Rodin, Meissonier

----Added later: Dali is the winner. Here are the results, with 519 votes:

Aivazovsky	35 (6%)
Courbet	20 (3%)
Friedrich	13 (2%)
Kahlo	86 (16%)
Uhde	84 (16%)
Dali	106 (20%)
Man Ray	19 (3%)
Steele	39 (7%)
Dickens	15 (2%)
Brancusi	15 (2%)
Rodin	22 (4%)
Meissonier	65 (12%)

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Previous Post: Best Facial Hair

Blog on Artists' Beards

Roadside Dinosaurs

Brian Switek, of the Smithsonian blog "Dinosaur Tracking," has gathered up photos of the "Best of the Worst Roadside Dinosaurs." 

This weak-kneed Corythosaurus (photo by Mark Ryan) is propped up alongside Interstate 15 near Victorville, California.

He looks like he's hoping to hitch a ride, and if that doesn't work, he'll just radio back to the orbiting cruiser to return him to Neptune.

Best of the Worst Roadside Dinosaurs

Best Facial Hair Nominations

Taking nominations for "Artists with best facial hair." 

Please include link-URL in your comment. We'll do a poll of the top ten later in the week.
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Left: Fritz von Uhde; Right: Salvador Dali.

Ghillie Suit

A ghillie suit is a head-to-toe camouflage outfit used to disguise hunters, snipers, wildlife photographers, and paintball enthusiasts.

Also called a "wookie suit," "camo tent," or "yowie suit," typically they're a netlike base covered with scraps of frayed rope, mossy tendrils or leaves. They're far more effective than traditional patterned camouflage because they break up the outline of the form.

They're often used in forest or grassland environments, but they've also become popular for an amusement called "urban camouflage." 


(Direct link to video) A German artist recently hung out in an IKEA store in Stockholm wearing a ghillie suit made to blend in with a big display of colored paper.
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Wikipedia on Ghillie Suit

Viking Raid

There wasn’t much to do last night so I joined a raid on IKEA with the Norse Hollywood Vikings.


One of their customs is the “Valkyrie Pile On” in the sofa department, followed by the “See How Many Vikings You Can Fit into a Shower” gag, and the "Pillow Pillage."


There were about 25 of us at the banquet. Of course we demanded the Swedish meatballs because they were out of Norway rats. No one challenged armorer and ringleader Tony Swatton when he brought his longhorn cup to the lingonberry drink machine for refills.


Tony presented me with my helmet as an amazing gift. Wow! Tacka Dig, Tony!!! He based the design on Arthur Denison’s outfit from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. The wings are hammered brass, riveted onto a custom-made anodized aluminum helmet shell.


Then we went on pillage Hooters, where we had to deal with three of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....but that’s another story.

LINKS
 Find Norse Hollywood Vikings on Facebook
Tony Swatton's Sword and Stone: Custom-made props and armor for movies
Pick up a signed copy of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara for a Viking near you!

Unusual Artist Name Poll (at left)

It wasn't easy, but I narrowed the list of interesting and unusual artist's names down to ten finalists. Thanks for all your great suggestions.

Here they are with links to their Wikipedia page. Please vote for your favorite name (never mind their art) in the poll at left.

Augustus Egg
Cy Twombly
Fra Filippo Lippi
Hercules Brabazon Brabazon
Tibor Gergely
Man Ray
Rupert Bunny
T. Hee
Ub Iwerks
Odd Nerdrum

Previously on GJ:
Unusual Artist's Names

Unusual Artist’s Names

In this age of googling artist names, it's a real advantage to have an unique name. But it's hard to beat some of the really cool and memorable artists' names in history.

First off, there's the great Disney animator T. Hee. 


And here's a portrait of Illarion Pryanishnikov.

And let's not forget Hercules Brabazon Brabazon.

Would you like to nominate some artists for the most interesting or unusual names? Out of your suggestions in the comments, I’ll pick my top ten favorites, and then we’ll put it to a poll.

Wikipedia on T.  (Thornton) Hee