Melody at National Public Radio just emailed me with a contest for snarky crafty types (that's you!). They're asking for people to put together D.I.Y. Christmas/Haunakah projects that have to do with current events. Whip up a homemade menorah or christmas ornament that deals with a news story for the past year. Here are some examples:

*A Mel Gibson menorah
*A global warming Christmas ornament
*A red state /blue state ornament

NPR would like to ask our readers to post the pictures on Flickr.com with the tag word: NPRHOLIDAYCONTEST. They will feature the best designs in the coming weeks, and also link to individual websites, if the designs are selected.

If you have any questions, please feel to contact Melody Kramer at mkramer@npr.org. A note: a menorah design must conform to Jewish law and also be capable of safely supporting nine lit candles.

Extreme Craft on 11/28/06#

Last weekend, I got an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at the founding of Agrifolk, a new art movement created by Jonathon Keats and Andrew Dietz. The pair are literally farming art at a plantation in North Georgia. Fifty leland cypress trees, selected for their resilience and flexibility, spent the weekend cranking out drawings that were authenticated by Dietz and Keats. Georgia's forests and tree farmsprovide an almost unlimited potential for artistic production. Works by the artists will beexhibited on October 14th and 15th at the Soho Myriad Gallery in Atlanta. I've got a longer writeup on Extreme Craft, along with a link to plenty of images. Collectors, start your engines! This is your chance to get in on the ground floor of an important new art movement!

LINK

Extreme Craft on 09/20/06#

I've always been a big fan of B3TA's Phallic Logo Awards, an amazing collection of hilarious inadvertently phallic logos. Graphic designers can be incredibly sneaky, or they can be incredibly clueless. Turnabout is fair play. I am pleased to share the American Museum of Ceramic Art's fantastic vagina-centric logo with all of you. HOLY COW! I think I saw this exact diagram in Sex Ed class when I was in sixth grade. Mad props to the museum's graphic designer for adding some subversion to a normally male-dominated world. Take that, all of you macho potters!

LINK to AMOCA

Extreme Craft on 08/29/06#

Theresa Honeywell is tougher than you. You're just going to have to accept that fact. She lives in Pennsylvania, where knits, cooks, embroiders, and otherwise kicks the everloving shit outta the domestic arts. Theresa has an eye for the masculine arts, knitting tool belts, jackhammers....and yes, a MOTORCYCLE! The knitted motorcycle pictured is on view through April 30th at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia, along with some of the other lovingly created objects in this FLICKR photo album, brought to you exclusively by your pals at Extreme Craft. Honeywell also embroiders tattoos, which serve as heirloom-quality samplers that will last for generations, long after that celtic cross has been lasered off your ass.

LINK

Extreme Craft on 04/21/06#

If you have any way to get to Atlanta between now and June 18th, please do so, even if it means you have to lie, cheat, steal, or shiv a family member with a sharpened toothbrush handle. Hopefully, you won't have to resort to such drastic measures, but if you make it to Atlanta, you'll get to visit the Quilts of Gee's Bend exhibition in person. This is the exhibition that started at the Whitney museum, and I had pored over the catalogue, and had even seen a few of the quilts in galleries and museums, but nothing could prepare me for the experience of seeing all of the quilts in person. I won't gush on and on in this forum, but if you'd like my full review, check it out at Extreme Craft. The show is truly worth the trip. If you live in the Atlanta area, there are all sorts of events this weekend, including a round-table discussion with many of the quilters. I have the good fortune of working a few blocks from the museum, so you can probably find me camped out at the museum over my lunch hour. LINK

Extreme Craft on 03/23/06#

I must confess. Dirty dishes have ben on my mind lately. A few weeks before I heard about James Victore's exhibit, I picked up a copy of Paul Matthieu's excellent book, "Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics". Maybe it's the scatalogical clay connection that keeps potters' minds securely in the gutter, but there's a long and venerable history of erotic pottery. From the greeks to Demi Moore's star turn in "Ghost", clay and debauchery are firmly intertwined. Matthieu's lavishly illustrated volume takes the reader on a tour of historical erotic pots, then confronts them with modern pots that explore bodies, hygiene, queer sexuality, and of course, scatology.

Ceramic vessels often provide surprises for the user--If you were drinking from a Greek Kylix, you might find a Satyr with a stiffy waving to you from the bottom of the cup when you finished. Porcelain vessels from occupied Japan often had a sneaky nude embedded in the bottom which were only visible when held up to the light. I often lash out against ceramacists for making crunchygranola work, but maybe a bit of "Who's Your Daddy" would help make the medicine go down. Especially since it seems that for ceramic artists, that medicine is usually Viagra. LINK

Extreme Craft on 11/07/05#

It's been a banner week for craft. Healthy competition between crocheted zombies and knit robots can only be helpful for the craft world at large. Here's one more reason (as if you needed more) for crafters to hold their head up high. This morning, BoingBoing published a link to knitting website knitty, which brings us an article on KNITTED BREAST PROSTHESES! It seems that Beryl Tsang, creator of "tit bits" struggled with not-so-aesthetic prostheses, which, while they might jiggle just right, are heavy, and reminded her of a piece of liver.
Being a MacGyver type, she knitted herself a proud, luxe replacement:

I finished my first knitted titty an hour before the party and wore it with one of my favorite lacy underwires. When a friend, who had been following the whole titty saga, saw me she remarked, "You really did a great job! Your left breast looks almost as good as the right one -- a bit lumpy but very realistic."
"You know," I replied, "It was my right breast that was removed."

Extreme Craft on 10/18/05#

I was never really a big fan of video games. For one, I didn't have the manual dexterity for them. Secondly, my family (gasp!) didn't own a video game console. I eventually got a Commodore 64 Computer, and could play things like fake pac-man, but I usually buried my nose in a book instead. I still have a keen appreciation of the video game crafts, though, and I have enjoyed the recent explosion in Nintendo music. Here's a great website devoted to D.I.Y. Powerup Blocks and other SuperMario treats. Decorate your town with them, and use them up when you need a little power boost. It's called karma--you should look into it!

LINK via Aeropause

Extreme Craft on 09/27/05#

Athens, GA-based artist Amanda Burke is what you would call a renaissance woman. Born and raised in Iowa, Amanda moved to New York to pursue improv comedy, did some shows with the Upright Citizens Brigade, and decided to conquer the art world next. She up and moved to Athens for printmaking grad school, but she can also craft with the best of them. Today, I created a photoset of an amazing artist book that she created out of fun foam. The book is a photo album of polaroids--every polaroid is painstakingly constructed from layer upon layer of the foam. Subjects range from stark (Brooklyn Bridge) to shocking (heart transplant) to tragic (mustachioed synthesizer-wielding musician). I don't love you enough to show you her yeti polaroid...but maybe someday if you're really good.

LINK

Extreme Craft on 09/27/05#

I just stumbled onto this online exhibition from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. This is a treasure trove of documents relating to 20th century craft--letters from prime movers in different craft movements--from Dale Chihuly to Robert Arneson. There are also photos, sketches, glaze recipes, and advertisements. There is an initiative afoot at the Smithsonian to gather documents pertaining to American Craft, as well as interviewing and transcribing at least 100 key figures. It's interesting to scroll through the archives and see how American craft evolved. Their archive of transcribed interviews is a phenomenal resource. Bookmark it today, and experience the artists in their own words. You know, sometimes America is pretty kick-ass!

LINK

Extreme Craft on 09/12/05#