Cephalopodmania
bioephemera | September 7, 2011
Entangled, 2010
handbuilt porcelain, cone 6 glaze
Kate MacDowell sculpts partially dissected frogs, decaying bodies with exposed skeletons, and viscera invaded by tentacles or ants. It's the imagery of nightmares, death metal music videos, or that tunnel scene in the original Willy Wonka (not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing. . . ). But her medium - minimalist, translucent white porcelain - renders her viscerally disturbing subject matter graceful, even elegant. Some of her pieces, like Sparrow, below, play off the porcelain's resemblance to delicate bleached bone.…
sb admin | September 6, 2011
Photo of Vermont highway courtesy of Kyle Cornell
Last week, I had my long-awaited vacation semi-ruined when, thanks to Hurricane Irene, my flight back from the West Coast was cancelled. I had to rent a car and drive across the country in a rush - not my favorite way to spend three and a half days. But based on what I saw passing through New York, and what I've heard about the damage in Vermont, I can't complain: flooding has overturned homes, isolated entire towns, and destroyed everything some families own.
Vermonters are a notoriously self-sufficient bunch, and I haven't seen that much…
sb admin | August 26, 2011
Gold Cortex
16 x 20, 2010
Greg Dunn
I used to have a beautiful gold Japanese folding screen, which was purchased by my great-grandmother's feisty sister on a trip in the 1920s. I loved the gold patina and the surprisingly modern impact it had on my wall. At the moment, it's loaned to a friend, but looking at Greg Dunn's artwork, I couldn't help but be reminded of the best aspects of my screen: the gold leaf, crisp black patterns, and way that the scene seemed half natural, half abstract.
The biggest twist Greg, a 6th year graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania,…
bioephemera | January 12, 2011
An unbelievable octopus chair - nay, throne - by Maximo Riera.
"the Octopus Chair places the animal and human being in harmony, where each is considered equal and one is not subject to the other. The octopus is not decoration; it is as intrinsic to the chair as the person sat upon it."
Via NotCot (there are even "making of" pictures!)
Want one? email info@maximoriera.com.
bioephemera | January 7, 2011This wooden octopus counting toy is adorable!
The only odd thing here is that the tentacles and baby octopi are numbered in a single sequence. It makes sense, I suppose - you want the child to put the numbers in the proper order, and that works better if you're filling gaps between numbers: 1 _ 3 _ 5, etc.
It's just . . . unexpected to see an octopus with a tentacle marked "15."
Wait - a second odd thing is that it has a small parts warning: for 3 yrs & up. Aren't most kids losing interest in basic counting toys by 3-4? Oh well, it's still adorable.
Via NOTCOT.
bioephemera | December 27, 2010
The ultimate bioephemera: art you eat! This cephalopod by specialty cake artist Karen Portoleo is definitely NOT a cake wreck (although if there were a little cake(ship)wreck under those tentacles, it might not be a bad addition). Karen previously made a "gingerbread" house with an octopus icing and tiling the roof. For serious.
Thanks to Patricia for the link! (Check out Patricia's art blog, too).
bioephemera | November 24, 2010
David Hochbaum
Genisis
NYC artist David Hochbaum, the creator of beguiling ephemera-inspired art, is a long-time favorite of BioE (and our friends at Phantasmaphile). Check out his Open Call portfolio, and if you will, take a moment to rate it five stars - you could help him win an artists' residency!
(psst, cephalopodphiles: this is the artist behind Mother, a piece I blogged about way back in 2007.)
bioephemera | May 30, 2010
I recently stumbled across an interesting post (don't ask how I got there; how do you ever end up anywhere on the Web?) about how the octopus has been used as a propaganda symbol, from WW2 to Big Oil, to represent the terrifying Other. Fascinating stuff - read more here for starters, and here is an entire blog on the topic.
bioephemera | April 23, 2010The Anachronism (Full Film) from Anachronism Pictures on Vimeo.
The full length version of The Anachronism, a short film by Matthew Gordon Long, has been released online. The only thing wrong with it is that it isn't longer. Give yourself a treat this weekend, enjoy the steampunk, and, if you're like me, reminisce about taking a textbook out into the forest to name things in Latin! I'll just give you one warning: this is a filmmaker who, unlike many others, knows how to let a mystery rest undisturbed. Yes, the film leaves you curious as heck, but in the end, I think that's a much better…
bioephemera | April 13, 2010
Anthropologie's new From the Deep collection features cobalt blue tentacles reaching over the edge of a dinner plate while an octopus broods on the salad plate.
There are even suckers on the teacup handles!
You can Life Aquatic it up quirky-collage-style with the coordinating dishes featuring collaged fish, stripes, and disproportionately tiny ships, but I'm a purist: I WANT a set of those three tentacular pieces. If I were only getting married so this could be my pattern. . . sigh.
From the Deep collection at Anthropologie.
bioephemera | April 4, 2010Style Bubble has some snapshots of luxe skull- and carapace-inspired jewelry by Dominic Jones. You've just got to love a crocodile skull vambrace!
See more snaps at Style Bubble.
Via Haute Macabre - you musn't miss their other recent post on Dominic Jones' work for Vice Magazine. Here's a teaser:
bioephemera | March 29, 2010
Good idea: the National Zoo is letting us name its Giant Pacific octopus.
Bad idea: the names. All four are terrible:
Olympus: This octopus arrived at the Zoo just before the 2010 Winter Olympics, and for many zoogoers the octopus gets a gold medal for being a compelling animal.
Ceph: Octopuses belong to the fascinating group of animals called cephalopods (class Cephalopoda), which means "head-foot." The arms or feet (podos in Greek) of these animals are on the front of their head ("cephalo" comes from the Greek kephale, for head).
Octavius: "Octavius the Octopus" is more than just a pretty…
bioephemera | February 15, 2010I have my priorities!
Do I even need to comment on how awesome this is? Via iO9.
bioephemera | January 21, 2010
Here's one for PZ: the lovely proprietress of Sea of Shoes shares two stunning, huge jeweled cephalopod pieces by Paris-based jewelry team Hanna Bernhard. These are some seriously impressive wearables.
Many more photos at Sea of Shoes, plus a short interview with the artists.
bioephemera | December 28, 2009
scarobeus cornepleura
Mauricio Ortiz
The technically gifted Mauricio Ortiz is originally from Costa Rica, but now lives in London, where his artistic star is on the rise. His octo-beetle, above, was recently selected to appear in a deck of playing cards as part of a high-profile British charity fundraiser, alongside a card by British bad boy Damien Hirst.
The octo-beetle is one of a number of painstaking drawings in the style of scientific illustrations, and inspired by Wunderkammern, the "wonder cabinets" of the Renaissance. Rather than starting with completely unfamiliar wonders, though,…
bioephemera | December 24, 2009
The recent blizzard turned our decorative holiday planter into a suspiciously Cthulhulian holiday effigy. A cephaloconiferopod? A gymnosquid? An everoctogreen? I have no idea what to call it, but it obviously says "Merry Christmas, BioE readers!"
bioephemera | October 13, 2009
I don't know who commissions a steampunk wedding cake, but whoever they are, I like the way they think. Check out these whimsical steampunk cakes (including a metallic, Jules Verne-esque cephalopod) at the normally frightening Cake Wrecks. And big thanks to LindaCO for the heads up!
bioephemera | August 27, 2009
I'm still tickled by the British scientists who discovered a cache of ancient squid ink and used it for. . . art:
Paleontologists discovered the remains of the creature, called a Belemnotheutis antiquus, during a dig at a Victorian excavation in Trowbridge, Wilts. They cracked open what appeared to be an ordinary looking rock only to find the one-inch-long black ink sac inside. After realising what they had stumbled across, they took out a small sample of the black substance and ground it up with an ammonia solution. Remarkably, the ink they created was good enough to allow them to draw the…
bioephemera | July 15, 2009
. . .Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. According to editor Jason Rekulak,
I know there are a lot of vampire fans, but the genre feels exhausted to me. Whereas Sea Monsters allowed us to draw inspiration from so many rich and diverse sources--most obviously Jules Verne novels and Celtic mythology, but also Jaws, Lost, Pirates of the Caribbean, even SpongeBob Squarepants! I think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fans are counting on us to deliver something original, and I don't think they will be disappointed."
Hey! He didn't mention Cthulhu. But check it out - there is a quantitative…
bioephemera | July 5, 2009
Kurt Peterson
Artomatic just wouldn't be complete without a sinister cephalopod, and luckily Kurt Peterson stepped up to make it happen. At least I think that's a cephalopod. Unfortunately, Peterson's another one of these off-the-grid, website-free artists, but you can read a little about him at his Artomatic user page.