A very brief introduction to Charley Harper, Cinncinati-based artist and king of style. If you’re unfamiliar with the man’s visual style, this short n’ sweet primer will whet your appetite. Todd Oldham wrote that “Charley’s inspired yet accurate color sense is undeniable, and when combined with the precision he exacts on rendering only the most important details, one is always left with a sense of awe.”
Well said. After you’re done with the video, check out the book.
Some rad magazines with Wild Things issues are circulating around the globe.
Monster Children from Australia
and Little White Lies and Huck from the UK. All three mags are rad and totally worth supporting. Give ‘em a look.
It seems like this film is amazingly under the radar right now. But when I was in England, our good friend Mark Romanek was filming a movie adapted from the book of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and I got to visit him on the set and sneak into his edit room on a weekend and see some of it. I don’t know what I can and cant say about it but I love the story. Even just a few scenes he showed me on their own were really moving. The combination of a science fiction film handled very subtly and naturalistically that also made me cry and is beautifully photographed (Adam Kimmel) is a trifecta. Congrats Mark!! We will post more as we can. Here is a shot stolen from the edit room that gives some sense of the look of the film and Mark at lunch on weekend. We had insane japanese food at a place called Roca on Charlotte street.
Oh hey, who’s cooking crawfish? NO ONE! That ain’t no sink full of crustaceans, its a sink full of costume “hair” made from twine and dyed with red and brown dye for the ultimate wild things costume experience. Arrivings slightly too late for Halloween (but useful nonetheless) is the definitive How To Make a Wild Things Costume tutorial, courtesy of Tim.
All you need ares some hula hoops, tape, mesh, dye, hot-glue, fur, foam, wire, plastic tubing, paper mache, glue, and an insane attention to detail.
Seriously. Insane.
Werner Herzog has spent his whole life a maverick — he’s not the type of filmmaker who plays the “one for me, one for them” game, satiating studio executives in between forgotten passion projects. Herzog just doesn’t give a hoot. Rather than working his way up the industry ladder, he simply stole a camera from the Munich Film School, made some oddball shorts and documentaries, and then released an audaciously lunatic feature film in 1970 called Even Dwarfs Started Small.
Foreshadowing the spirit of anarchic glee that would take the world by storm through Jackass and its derivatives three decades later, Even Dwarfs Started Small is a delirious orgy of mayhem-cum-art film. With a threadbare narrative (a hoarde of little people go wild in the wake of a jailbreak from an abusive institution), Herzog sets the stage for one of his most spontaneous and startling masterpieces. He merely allows the film to revel in the increasingly mad escapades it portrays until the final frame. Best of all, Herzog doesn’t force the audience to approach Even Dwarfs with a critical eye, never imposing the pretense of a deeper meaning or a moral imperative behind the work. You can read what you want into the monkey crucifism, or the plight of the deposed dwarf despot– or you can just sit back and enjoy the carnage.
Snapped by our man in the streets Marcel Dzama.
Bonus making of:
Pop quiz. What’s fuzzy, warm, and reminds you equally of your dad and gorillas?
Anwswer: beards. Only a select percentage of the population (hairy men) can grow these timeless facial accessories, but the rest of us can participate in the fun by downloading this awesome BEARD FONT.
It is surprisingly subtle.
David LaChapelle cohort and rad fashion photographer Kenneth Cappello wasn’t always entrenched in the glamorous world of Hollywood starlets– once upon a time Cappello was just another punk kid in Houston, Texas, taking pictures of his friends on their boards. In his collection Acid Drop, the sharply observant photographer teleports us to a moment of idealized suburban angst, eye-popping duds and gravity-defying hairstyles. Released through Tiny Vices and the Aperture Foundation, Acid Drop is a photographic marvel and, yes, a nostlgaic love song to a specific era– but it’s also a reflection of a universal adolescent spirit.
Renee Adams makes sculptures of creatures that resemble UFOs, wedding cakes, early 19th century industrial machines and koosh balls. “Using both natural and artificial materials,” the artist writes in her statement, “I create imaginary hybrid species that are delicate, alluring, and sometimes awkward or disturbing. I am interested in blurring lines, creating the indefinable, and manipulating the senses; leaving the viewer without a point of reference.”
Mission accomplished. Adams points to the drawings of German biologist Ernst Haeckel as visual inspiration; Haeckel’s fiendishly detailed studies of jellyfish and other creatures have a color sense and adherence to detail that pops up gloriously in Adams’ work. Both influencer and influencee are worth a long look.
Spike Jonze’s feature film rendition of Maurice Sendaks classic story Where The Wild Things Are has hit movie theaters worldwide.
The film represents years of work from hundreds of different artists, writers, photographers, musicians, actors, and creators of all degrees.
This place has been established to help shed some light on many of the small influences that converged to make this massive project a reality.
You are looking at the We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze blog archives for November, 2009.
Site designed by Landon Metz, developed by Ricky Irvine, in cooperation with Matt Rubin.
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