Curio: Lucky Jackson

Alexa here. Film and embroidery don't seem a natural combination, but, as I've posted before, there are plenty of crafters out there celebrating their film fandom with an embroidery hoop.  One in particular, Jennifer Jackson, a.k.a. Lucky Jackson, continues to amaze me with her prolific output.  She uses thread like others might sketch with a pencil, stitching celebrities she's crushing on or movie scenes she loves.  

Richie's tent

In 2011 and 2012 she did an embroidery each and every day for a year, filling it with many a Bill Murray and Margot Tenenbaum. See a selection, including Bonnie Parker, American Beauty, Kick Ass, Zoolander and more after the jump.

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Curio: Boudoir Beauties

Alexa here. Rachel Corcoran is a Dublin-based illustrator with a distinctly actressy vibe. She specializes in editorial illustration, especially portraits that have a baroque, boudoir-ready style. She often takes pen (and pixel) to paper in the service of film and television, with great results.

Here are some of my favorites involving Breaking Bad, Dowton Abbey, and more from her pop culture portfolio. 

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Curio: All Three Flavors

Alexa here. It may not be Krzysztof Kieślowski, but Edgar Wright's now-completed three-flavor trilogy also had a pretty positive critical response. Then there's the fan base, who devour every tweet from Simon Pegg with more gusto than a hung-over Ed licks a Cornetto.  So Wright has done the inevitable, setting up a tumblr for updates and for the ever-growing collection of fan art.

Here are some samples.

Little Cornetto books by Joey Spiotto.

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Curio: Murat Palta's Classic Film Miniatures

Alexa here. I realized recently that I've been remiss, that I've failed to post on the amazing work of Murat Palta in this column.  Well, today I'll make up for it! For his senior thesis, the Turkish student strove to blend traditional Ottoman miniature book illuminations with classic Western cinema. Rightfully so, these amazing compositions received a lot of attention outside his academic circle. The blend is a perfect one: Ottoman artists used abstraction to highlight the transcendent in the stories told. What's more transcendent than these scenes, so familiar to our modern eyes? 

I won't caption them, as the fun comes in the moment of recognition. How many do you recognize? More after the jump

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Curio: John Stezaker's Forgotten Faces

Alexa here with some art for your Tuesday. John Stezaker has been a conceptual artist in Britain for more than 40 years. His most recent series mines studio images from cinema's golden age, and resulted in his winning the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Stezaker collects old studio portraits of long-forgotten actors and actresses, juxtaposing two images to create new identities.  Or, as he puts it...

 

when they got broken up and recombined, real people seemed to emerge."

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