February, 2012
Flora and Fauna: The Craft of Lorenzo Nanni
Lorenzo Nanni makes incredibly intricate, beautiful (often wearable) art, taking inspiration in an amazing way from organic forms and anatomical structures, reflecting a kind of gorgeous hybridization between animal and plant life, often replete with creaturesque tendrils seeming to infest as well as adorn the host. He creates his own breathtaking “lifeforms” from craft materials. I particularly love his Arteries, Veins series, the way that they depict details from anatomy as a textbook would, but in the startlingly tangible materials of his craft: felt, beads, embroidery. They look so visceral, so intricate, but remind us at the same time of their artificial construction, the biological juxtaposed with the inorganic.
Found via Haute Macabre
If you like this, also be sure to check out my post on Mandy Greer.
Tags: anatomical-themed, bizarre, conceptual fashion, flora, monsteresque, needle felting, sinister arts and crafts, visceral, wearable art
Martine Johanna
Martine Johanna does gorgeous, highly detailed, melancholy, sometimes eerie, vividly surreal drawings and paintings. See lots, lots more below.
Tags: "ethereal woodland maiden" look, animals, colorful, hauntingly beautiful, modern fairy tales, realism, surreal, sweet/melancholy
Angelspit’s “Carbon Beauty”: Album Art
I love the artwork on Angelspit’s new remix CD, Carbon Beauty (released March 8), which is awesome as always. It features a black-and-white animal anatomy and taxidermy theme, and Destroyx and ZooG in some heavy-duty avant-garde all-black fetish texturific garb.
Destroyx’s outfit for Carbon Beauty album photographyCheck out all the CD booklet images below. All images are clickable for a larger view.
Tags: amazing makeup, anatomical-themed, angelspit, animal skulls, avant-garde goth, black and white, CD artwork, deer, destroyx, exposed anatomy, fascinators, skeleton, taxidermy
Prose Poetry: “Darling, They’ve Found the Body”
‘Darling, they’ve found the body’ comes from a series of dreams – a body is buried beside a house, a house on stilts, the body has lain there for many years, i always knew it was there but consciously obscured it from view by willfully dimming the lights, the body is my body and i have been murdered by my ‘once upon a time’ lover turned keeper, i scrimshaw this dream onto liz bonami, the blonde dream doll with pernicious eyes lest i forget (when i lived on a boat my father would scrimshaw ships and birds and the letters of our names onto whales’ teeth we bought from a danish bank robber, we would sell these to buy food and make necessary repairs), my apparent self-imposed incarceration means i scratch messages onto the walls of my cell as i wait out my final hours, i try to make sense of the floating debris of letters, unpaid bills and medical records that seem surely to be a poor suggestion of a life, i self-portrait the face that accuses me and demands that i make good my escape, while i sit ludicrously passive watching the pot boil dry…
my sewing machine enables a solipsist god complex to spin out her own creation myth, where time stops and ‘the one who knows’ will come riding by on his ship, up the iron river and i will be waiting pretty as a picture so here i am, an impenetrable snaggle-toothed old crone stirring the secrets of my omniverse…the butterflies are notches on my belt as 39 years flutter by i am reminded of a dream where i live alone in a beautiful cottage in the forest in bavaria, by day i paint self-portraits with a solipsistic narcissism, by night i hunt, i am a wolverine i am reminded of another story – a woman sitting on her roof because of the floods, the water is rising fast, she has been told by God to wait there for a miracle, three times a man comes by in a boat to rescue her and each time she says ‘no, God has told me to wait here for a miracle,’ the water levels continue to rise and the woman drowns, when she gets to heaven she stands accusingly before her God and says why did you not perform the miracle that you promised me and her God says i came by three times and each time you sent me away
- KatieJane Garside, 2007
Tags: katiejane garside, lovely quotations, metaphors, modern fairy tales, stream of consciousness
Photography by Michaela Knížová
Tags: emotive photography, expressive, modern fairy tales, self-portraits
Eye-Love [007]
Photographed by Ben Hassett for Vogue Paris February 2008 {scan by Céline M.}Tags: avant-garde goth, bandages, cute/creepy little girls, dollflesh, fashion editorial, heart, high fashion, joao ruas, lost fish, medical-themed, pop surrealism, queens, self-portraits, white hair
