captivate clarendon chrome

John Baldesarri

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences. (Stella Adler)

Off today to do more battle with Comcast and mess about with the thirty things I've got going in the studio.  And drive by the lot to see if anybody's there!  We made friends with our new neighbors-to-be last night because he is keeping a close watch on everything happening there-  maybe a bit TOO close, but I have a feeling this might be great theater for them!  And I've decided I really need some help with this process, a different set of eyes looking at what I am doing and what I want the place to look like.  Our builder is a nice guy, he built an then renovated our current house so we have a 20 year history with him,  but I am not trusting that we are on the same page yet.  We'll see if we can find someone today that won't have visions of grandeur and want to put up floor to ceiling heavy chintz draperies.  I'm an open window kind of lego-squirrel!  

And BTW, I've received a few purple-stove comments, and rest easy that as much as I love that stove, I will pick something a bit more conservative, still a color, but more in line with what might still please me 10 years from now.  Thanks all for the permission and encouragement to get the purple, it's running in second or third place right now.  I LOVE your feedback, thanks so much.  But really, if your new neighbor asked you over for coffee, would you love to see a purple stove or would it brand hr as a nut job from the get-go?  

Today I have limited my 'art' choices to Lego art-  it's quite amazing what people do!  One day at Urban Outfitters I found a little envelope of the tiniest little Legos to build a parakeet.  I spent hours on the thing-  about 2" high, then had enough pieces left to make part of another one.  More hours...  But he is way cute, and it is very satisfying to concentrate on something besides sewing for awhile.  My boy grandkids are still too little for regular Lego, but you can bet at first chance I will be the one who gets the Big Set!  

Painting/ Drawing  Lego Guernica:  The bas-relief replica is considerably smaller than the 137.4-by-305.5-inch original, measuring just 14.5 inches across and 7 inches in height. While it took Picasso about a month to paint his gloomy antiwar masterpiece, which depicts the bombing of the titular Basque town by German and Italian forces on April 26, 1937, Watson created her version in under two days, using more than 800 Lego bricks.
And some other copies of iconic art rendered in Lego~

Hmmm, they just look like bad photos of the art, low resolution, pixilated!  

 Brazilian artist Valentino Fialdini, who specializes in architectural photography, told Modern Met that the Lego pieces were an attempt to create his own architecture. He captures these mini worlds and then blows them up in large photos, causing a distortion in perspective that makes them feel life size.
Note the minimalist hallways he’s created. They remind me of white box galleries with a splash of color at the end of a long sterile hallway.  Indeed, these seem less like Lego structures and more like buildings in themselves, until you start paying closer attention to the reflection of the materials. And that’s when you realize that, yep, they are indeed Lego.

BRIDGE:I recently came across the work of street artist Megx, who painted a bridge in Wuppertal, Germany, to look like it’s made of gigantic Lego blocks. The photos look convincing, with the signature grooves seemingly carved into the bridge, while the colors gleam bright over the street. It’s amazing how the bridge, which appears to previously have been drab concrete, looks so much more lively now.

LEGO is celebrating 50 years in Australia with an array of installations across the country, with the most recent set up in the rural town of broken hill, new south wales. residents of the outback locale were surprised to wake up to a life-size forest made up of 15 four-meter high pine trees and flower sets recreated to a 1:1 ratio of the original pieces, and then supersized to be 66 times bigger.

Nathan Sawaya, a New York-based artist who creates very nice pieces using some unlikely things, mostly LEGO bricks. He seems to be the most prolific of the Lego artists, with some realistic and exacting copies of portraits, logos, large and small sculptures ... all made of bricks.He only uses commercial Lego he purchases so he claims ANYBODY can do this-  I don't think so... He is currently touring North American museums in a show titled The Art of the Brick, an exhibition focused exclusively on LEGO as a way of art

LITTLE GUYS: An art installation with 1200 wee Lego men by the English studio Acrylicize.


And, in the spirit of Lego art, I also have some squirrels for you today-

 a gray,

 and a red

Take your pick!

or me, 
SQUIRREL GIRL