I was walking to visit a friend on Monday, March 9, and I passed a store window for a store called  Lou lou lux . The window display was arresting. I have no idea what was inside, but I loved the windows. Only one window is shown in the photo I took. The store is on West Broadway (across from the White Spot) in Vancouver.

Amongst other media, artist Derick Melander creates meticulous sculptures out of carefully folded second hand clothes. His work brings attention to the large amount of  textile waste that is generated daily. The piles of folded clothing typically weigh between five hundred pounds and two tons, and provide a striking impact of the disposable society we live in…in an artistic way. Link.

Ms Greenberg is the opposite of the “National Geographic” type photographer, the NG photographer being the one who endures unfathomable hardships in order to capture iconic images of animals in the wild. (See the NG documentary on the first films of the extremely rare Siberian Snow Leopard.) Ms Greenberg hires animals, as she herself says, like any other prop or model. She pays then by the hour to sit in her constructed environments and then she deftly adds to the images certain enhancements via Photoshop. The results are hyper images to behold. There are various schools of images on her website; commissions and portraits amongst them, but it is her work with animals that bring the exotic and foreign into an intense focus. Link.

The music! The editing!  The images. This is as much fun and as beautiful as anything I have seen on the web. I have a large monitor and had the sound up, on HD and on full screen. I have watched it several times now. Mirko Faienza, you are a gift! Thanks to Miss Cellania via Neatorma.

My friend Gil found this and sent me the link from YouTube. It is hilarious and another example of people with FAR too much time on their hands. But thank goodness for the time wasters, they make life so much fun sometimes. Link.

Having been absent from here throughout the Olympic Games (which were a blast here in my hometown), I have been reflecting on things classical like the origins of the games. And what comes to mind but Bernini. Old passions are renewed. How I wish I had access to classical imagery like this in my hometown. New is fine; but Bernini is exquisite. Above are details of “The Ecstasy of Saint Therese” and “The Rape of Proserpina.” Delicious!

Using recycled materials is an increasingly popular medium for artists. It is a variation on the “found object” tradition of art making. Artist Sayaka Kajita Ganz is a supremely talented user of recycled materials.

I find discarded objects from peoples’ houses and give them a second life, a new home. For my sculptures I use plastic utensils, toys and metal pieces among other things. I only select objects that have been used and discarded. The human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes.  My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist.

Thanks to Neatorama for this link. To go to Ms. Ganz’s website, click here. To go directly to the piece pictured above, click here.

When you visit his website, you can easily see the diversity of his practice. I am particularly fond of artists who display diversity such as he does. The pictures above show only one application, but his site is rich with visuals. Click on “works” to see an inventory of his installations. What you see above is his work called “Aggravure.” Thanks to my friend Luc for this lead.

If truth is beauty, these people are ugly. Although a horrible thing to say, the inverse idea is that falsity is ugly and the subjects of photographer Phillip Toledano have denied the natural truth of their birth by re-creating themselves through plastic surgery. They have created now false selves in order, I assume, to be more attractive to themselves and/or to others, but to my eye they have become icons of artifice.

My parents changed my name when I was adopted—all my names—and I moved from the culture of my birth to be raised in English culture. I have read a lot about transexuals who so often describe themselves as “a man in a woman’s body” of vice versa. I identify with them in a way because I feel DEEPLY like a Francophone in an Anglophone body.

All my life, I felt like an outsider.  When I was 45 years old, I discovered what all my dreams and so very many things I could not explain in my psyche and life were about because I found my birth mother. At that time, I wanted to change my name back to what it had once been. I wanted to re-capture and life the rest of my life in the culture of my birth. But I didn’t. In the end, I accepted that I am who I am, and changing my name wasn’t going to “solve” or fundamentally change anything. So to me, plastic surgery is a false route to acceptance of self. I can’t help feeling this way.

Philip Toledano’s formal portraits are eerily similar. It suggests that Angelina Joli has spawned a growth industry in lip augmentation. The portraits are hauntingly beautiful in spite of the grotesquerie of the surgery. See for yourself here. Click on “A new Kind of Beauty” to see the series of post-surgery portraits.

Thanks to Boing Boing.

Thanks to my friend, Sandy!