On Obscura Day thousands of people, all over the world, go out and explore interesting and unusual places. Sometimes they organize the event, sometimes folks organize it themselves! Over the past two years nearly 10,000 people have attend over 200 different events on Obscura Day.

The Atlas Obscura is the definitive guidebook and friendly tour-guide to the world’s most wondrous places. User-generated and editor curated, the Atlas is a collaborative compendium of amazing places that aren’t found in your average guidebook.

And this month, Saturday, April 28th is Obscura Day, an international celebration of unusual places, full of expeditions, back room tours & explorations of the hidden wonders around the world.

FIND YOUR OBSCURE PLACE IN YOUR OWN HOMETOWN!

Since we’re located in Seattle, we’ll tell you about Atlas Obscura’s two places in the Seattle area that are weird and wonderful enough to be included in the official Atlas Obscura Day celebration, the Official Bad Art Museum of Art and a tour of the Inscape Building and the Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore.

Tour #1: Atlas Obscura Day at the Official Bad Art Museum of Art, sponsored by Hendricks Gin, a “Gin made Oddly”.

All day is Atlas Obscura Day at Cafe Racer and the Official Bad Art Museum of Art.

Doors open at 10AM Saturday, April 28th. Have breakfast, peruse the Bad Art in the OBAMA, enjoy some “Hendricks Obscure Punch”.

Schedule is as follows:

2:00pm View in amazement an incredible array of bugs, marine invertebrates, isopods and lepidoptera from “Bug Man” Don Ehlen.

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3:00pm Musical performance by Operadisiac, a surreal opera comedy duo that is sure to delight

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4:30pm Performance by God’s Favorite Beefcake, featuring Shmootzi The Clod of Circus Contraption fame, with music and sword swallowing and God knows what else.

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6:00pm (or thereabouts) the Nu Klezmer Army will entertain with their honkin’ versions of old time favorites.

… The hijinks continue until 1am.

Tour #2: Tour of Inscape building and Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore
Peek into Seattle’s past with a tour of the city’s 77,000-square-foot former Immigration and Naturalization Services building, plus a visit to the Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore for rare D.B. Cooper, UFO, and Bigfoot-related artifacts.

SPONSORED BY HENDRICKS GIN!

We are commemorating the day by looking at some unusual homes and interior decor celebrating the holiday.

Life in a Pink House (collection of pink house photos)

This is one of my favorites. It’s conceptually a brilliant performance art piece. It also appeals to the juvenile prankster part of my brain.

How do you stage an international art show with work from 100 different artists? If you’re Shea Hembrey, you invent all of the artists and artwork yourself — from large-scale outdoor installations to tiny paintings drawn with a single-haired brush. Watch this funny, mind-bending talk to see the explosion of creativity and diversity of skills a single artist is capable of.

See the video below.

TED

“Bumber By Number” is an interactive and fully immersive Paint-by-Number art exhibit curated by Marlow Harris and JoDavid for the 2011 Bumbershoot Arts Festival.

The show features an interactive audience participatory paint-by-number homage to Edouard Manet’s “The Picnic” (“Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe”) by artist Ryan Feddersen. In addition, bask in the glory of Victoria BC artist Bill Blair’s amazing life-size paint-by-number banners and guitars, and local Seattle artists create incredible canvases of altered vintage Paint-by-Numbers.

Ryan Feddersen has created a tableau complete with hand-cast wax crayons used to bring her murals to life.

Canadian artist Bill Blair creates Stories for Paint-by-Number and paints huge 9′x7′ foot Paint-by-Number backdrops.

Over 40 modern, contemporary, abstract and pop surrealist artists were given vintage completed Paint-by-Number paintings and asked to alter them in their own style.

Here is Janet Galore’s “Blue Boy”, prior to transformation.

Seattle artist Troy Gua chose two clowns he called “Father and Son”.

Pop culture cutie Lisa Petrucci adds her own personal style to this tiger painting.

Fantagraphics favorite Jim Woodring puts his own twist on this bucolic covered bridge scene:

John Brophy, fresh from his show at Seattle’s Roq La Rue Gallery, creates “Gift Horse”:

Art Army artist Mike Leavitt, who shows in Seattle at Roq la Rue, Copro Nason in LA and the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC made this fine trio of work:

Detail of Mike’s work:

Jim Dever’s Duck’s Revenge is for sale with all proceeds to benefit Camp Corey:

Nancy Guppy’s piece is an homage to Robert Hardgrave:

And her completed piece:

And Robert Hardgrave himself took a staid and formal arrangement of flowers…..

And re-created the piece in an unusual and unexpected way.

Seattle artist Mary Iverson was recently featured in Juxtapoz Magazine.

“Bag Painter” Chris Crites, chose a classic ship to alter:

And added his own personal style to the piece:

Show details:

• Curated by:
Marlow Harris
JoDavid

• Featured Artists:
Ryan Feddersen
Bill Blair

• Special Guest Artists and PRICE LIST will be posted on the Bumber-by-Number website.

High-Resolution photos by Jodavid on Flickr

MORE PHOTOS HERE: Seattle Twist Bumber-by-Number

• WHEN and WHERE?
Bumber By Number and other Visual Arts exhibits are open 11am – 8pm, 9/3 – 9/5, and the Location of the exhibit is the Seattle Center Pavilion (just east of Key Arena)

Free Visual Arts Preview, Thursday, September 1st, 3pm – 9pm, – Mayor’s Arts Awards are 4-6pm

• The dates and times of Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival are 9/3 – 9/5, 11am – 11pm at Seattle Center.

Please visit their website for information…
www.bumbershoot.org/

A visit to our Paint-by-Number Salon on Treasure Hunter’s Roadshow hosted by Andy St. Claire.

This bathtub couch started as cast iron clawfoot bathtub and has been converted to a fashionable and comfortable sofa for the new millennium. Ruff House Art starts out with old cast iron bathtubs, which were found in nearly every home at the start of the 20th century, and were often thrown out when the house was remodeled, and converts them to groovy furniture

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Cna Exam Study Guide

I was also able to make a short video of the exterior of the home the last time I was here. Jane told me that she has made provisions after her passing to leave her amazing home to the Yakima Valley Historical Society.

The art of Richard Elliot

The art of Jane Orleman

French artist Julien Berthier has designed a fully functional boat to look
as if it is sinking. The 21ft yacht was cut in half with a new keel
and motor added so it remains in the sinking position while being fully
functional. He describes it as “the permanent and mobile image of a
wrecked ship that has become a functional and safe leisure object.”

Berthier has taken the boat (or should I say half-a-boat) across the
English Channel to London and has toured it around Europe , getting plenty
of offers of assistance from unwitting good Samaritans, who would
presumably be either very annoyed or rather bemused by the contraption.

The designer and artist designed and built the floating installation in
2007. He named his creation Love Love.

A Tip-O-the-Hat to Ms Kelly Lyles for the heads-up on ‘Love Love’

]]> http://unusuallife.com/2011/02/11/the-love-love-was-built-to-look-as-if-it-is-sinking/feed/ 0 http://unusuallife.com/2010/11/23/slums-into-rainbows/ http://unusuallife.com/2010/11/23/slums-into-rainbows/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:34:20 +0000 Marlow Harris http://unusuallife.com/?p=1988

Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, known as Haas & Hahn, saw potential in places that most Brazilians view as unsightly, undesirable and terrifying. Favelas like Vila Cruzeiro and Santa Marta drip with sewage and ring with gunshots and police sirens, but Haas & Hahn wanted to give local residents a source of pride. The Favela Painting Project started with a huge mural called ‘Boy Flying a Kite’ and expanded into covering nearly every surface in Santa Marta with cheerful shades of green, blue, pink and yellow.

Slums into Rainbows

Gage Academy supporters recently took a tour of several artists homes and studios around the Seattle area in the Mighty Elvis Mobile. Hilarity ensued.

Gage Academy received a donation of $50 in gift certificates, so midway into our tour, we stopped at Dick’s Drive-in for lunch. Delicious!

We started the tour at Close Enough Engineering with Kim Hall and Steve Walker, then went on to the Paint-by-Number Salon and moved to the home and studio of Kelly Lyles, the home of Steve Bard and then ended the day at the beautiful home and studio of Ginny Ruffner.

Super fabulous painted lawn of artist Beth Thom of Austin, Texas. She has a website called http://www.polkadotlawn.com/. What a great way to deal with a dormant brown lawn in the heat of Texas.