Curio: Black Sheep White Sheep Designs

Alexa here with your weekly art appreciation. I am a real lover of collage as an art form. Anyone who picks up this tome on my coffee table is likely to hear an earful from me as to why I think it is the perfect medium for our age.  So I'm always seeking out artists that do it well for inspiration.  I recently stumbled upon the etsy shop Black Sheep White Sheep and bookmarked it immediately.  Designer Maria Simeonova has created some particularly lovely film posters using collage and illustration that would look gorgeous in any room; she's also done wonderful portrait illustrations of her favorite directors. Best of all, her prints are affordable, at around $30-$50 each.  

You can see all her prints here. After the jump, more of my favorites...

Click to read more ...

Curio: Kim Novak, Painter

Alexa here.  Recently I was doing some searching for the perfect alternative poster for my second-favorite Hitchcock film Vertigo (wanted a companion piece for the print I have celebrating my favorite) and I stumbled upon a link to the painting below.  Turns out it was painted by the actress herself, Kim Novak.  

I then found myself in a Google deep-dive regarding 'Kim Novak, artist'. Here are some samples of her more intriguing pieces...

Click to read more ...

Curio: Handmade Movies

Alexa here with your weekly arts and crafts. In a sort of continuation of last week's episode, here's an odd little obsession I've had brewing lately: making your own paper movie machines. I've always been into early cinema (TCM Silent Sundays were a must until my cable bundle dropped TCM) and reading up on the Lumiere brothers and all the strange optical toys that preceded the advent of photographic moving pictures. (Yes, Hugo was a thrill in this regard.) I went as far as to buy this book on etsy, which has very interesting instructions for making your own thaumatropes, kinematoscopes, rolloscopes and lots of other tropes and scopes I had no idea existed.

At one point I had a ridiculously analog notion to make strips from screencaps of my favorite films so I could watch them with my daughter through a zoetrope, until I realized this would totally make me a Portlandia punchline. I promise, I have no other steampunk leanings.

Various optical toys that replicate the wonder of the earliest moving pictures are being made by many, and antique machines are a collectors item. Flipbooks, praxinascopes and thaumatropes are after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Curio: Introduction to Pinocchio

Alexa here with your weekly film curios. After I read Tim's post celebrating Pinocchio on its 75th anniversary, I wondered how I'd ever missed it, and more importantly, how I'd missed showing it to my 5-year-old, now a budding film buff. After all, we had read the Little Golden Book together many times, and it was even one of her favorite cartridges to watch on our vintage Fisher Price Movie Viewer.  She likes to play the short sequence of Pinocchio coming to life backwards and forwards and study each frame. (If you aren't familiar with this fantastic toy, read more here.  Any toy that involves hand-cranking a small Super 8 film is irresistible to me.)  

 

 Unsurprisingly, since investing in the DVD the film has been in heavy rotation around our house.  After the jump, some Pinocchio curios, vintage and handmade, to continue the film's 75th Anniversary celebration...

Click to read more ...

Curio: Oscar Snacks 2015

Alexa here. I knew early on that my annual Oscar pig-out this year would feature the pastry at the center of Wes Anderson's latest. Not only because it was probably my favorite film this year, but because Wes kindly supplied detailed instructions for making the Courtesan au Chocolat.  A literal invitation to create my own Wes Anderson diorama!  I had to try.  

 

It was all fun and games until the assembly, when the mini towers toppled like dominoes. Damn you, Wes! 

Click to read more ...