Unusual Life

View of photographs of forgotten places in Alabama and throughout the South. In the history of photography, Hale County, Alabama, has become nearly as well known – through over four decades of photographs by William Christenberrry – as the Brown Sisters are through Nicholas Nixon’s annual series. Working with a large-format camera and informed by studies in sculpture and painting, Christenberry has defined an image of southern vernacular: row houses, sun-bleached paint, folk customs, and the inexorable advance of kudzu. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear him talk about his own work, which includes drawing, painting, and sculpture, new images alongside iconic photographs, and over 40 years of making art.

Aperture West Collaborative Series: Cultural Observances
Saturday, December 2, 2 PM
Henry Auditorium
Henry Art Gallery
FREE

Built primarily in the ’50s and ’60s, the dingbats are usually simple two- to four-story wood and stucco structures which are balanced on small beams or poles to accommodate parking spaces on the first level. They are found throughout the country, but primarily in California and the West.

Most dingbats are remarkable only in their complete lack of any distinguishable qualities. The builders of some dingbats, however, chose to decorate their flat facades with all sorts of gaudy decorations like tikis, cutout fish, planets and stars. Others sought to achieve individuality by giving them unusual or elegant names.

You’ve probably drove past them for years and never gave them a moments thought, but they’re beginning to garner some attention, no doubt because of the rise in popularity of Mid-Century Modern style.

Artist Lesley Marlene Siegel is a photographer, and she began her series, “Apartment Living is Great”, in the early ’90s, as the photographic documentation of apartment building names, bringing to light their importance in landscape and community history.

Mark Frauenfelder, a writer and co-founder of BoingBoing wrote the first article I ever read about the architectural style, How I Came to Love the Dingbat, first published in the LA Weekly. (Mark, who is also an artist and illustrator, is currently showing at Seattle’s Roq la Rue Gallery, where he has unveiled a series of paintings done in a storybook style with a dash of children’s manga and secret arcane symbolism, and is on view through December 2nd.)

The Dingbat on Wikipedia

More Seattle Dingbats on Unusual Life

Via Grow-a-Brain: Architects in the Eastern European country of Albania have solved the problem of ugly air contioners ruining the look of their buildings. By placing white blocks of color randomly over the exterior of their buildings, they’ve masked and blended the random existence of the real air conditioners and created an icon in their city.

Via Sellsius, we’re introduced to Tom Chudleigh, creator and builder of Free Spirit Spheres, unconventional wooden balls that can be used for healing, meditation, photography, canopy research or leisure.

The wood spheres are made of two laminations of wood strips over laminated wood frames. The outside is then finished and covered with clear fiberglass. The result is a beautiful and very tough skin. Fiberglass shells are also available. The skins are waterproof and strong enough to take the impacts that come with life in a dynamic environment such as the forest. The structural integrity of a sphere and the ability to move and absorb shock loads combine to produce a robust accommodation package.

Contact Tom and friends through the Free Spirit Sphere website.