You’d probably expect temple murals to depict religious themes and Buddha, but the Wat Rong Khun temple in Chiang Rai isn’t your ordinary holy place, as you can easily tell by the murals.

According to Wikipedia, in 1997, Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat volunteered to carry out the work for Wat Rong Khun’s ubosol (the temple’s assembly hall) at his own expense, but he changed the original plan so drastically that it  began drawing in both local and foreign tourists, eager to see the white wonder. Just like Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral, the unconventional Buddhist and Hindu temple is still under construction and some say it won’t be finished in the next 100 years.

Wat Rong Khun is entirely white, to symbolize Lord Buddha’s purity, and the mirrors used signify his wisdom, which “shines brightly all over the Earth and the Universe.” There is also an impressive bridge across a sea of human hands reaching out towards the sky, but perhaps the most interesting thing about this unique temple is its interior artwork. The imagery is painted in golden tones, depicting sacred animals and spaceships alike. That’s right, futuristic spaceships piloted by robots, ans superheroes like Superman in flight, that’s what’s painted inside Wat Rong Khun. Other scenes you might recognize show popular characters like the Predator, Neo from Matrix, Spiderman, Batman, and even creatures from the Avatar movie.

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While the Indianapolis 500 is the undisputed main event in America’s Circle City, it’s probably not as fun as the Zoopolis 500, a turtle race preceding the big motor race.

Kids and their families look forward to the Zoopolis 500 race, every year, because even though it lacks the speed of the Indianapolis 500, racers give it their all to put on a good show. Yesterday, the Indianapolis Zoo hosted the 30th annual Zoopolis 500, featuring five radiated turtles competing for the best prize they could wish for – a big plate of delicious fruit. Competitors were named after IndyCar drivers Dan Wheldon, Simona De Silvestro, Alex Tagliani, Ed Carpenter and Scott Dixon.

The race flag went down at 11.30, and as you can imagine, the turtles were off to a pretty slow start, ignoring the excitement and cheering that went on around them. They even went the wrong way a few times, but managed to get back on track with the help of zoo keepers. IndyCar legend Tony Kanaan, who acted as Grand Marshall for the event, tried to give Simona an edge by placing some fruit in front of her, but the tortoise just stopped for a bite.

In the end, it was Dan who crossed the finish line first and got to feast on the fruit, and many said it was an omen that Dan Wheldon will win this year’s Indianapolis 500.

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Can pornography be art? That’s the question artist Tom Gallant is trying to answer through his series of beautiful paper cutouts made from archived adult magazines.

Brussels-based Tom Gallant describes his unique art as a visual language “dealing with a private matter in a very public way”. Using a very sharp scalpel, he cuts into the hardcore imagery, layering extremely delicate cutouts to create a whole new image that almost completely blurs your vision. If you look closely, you can see some flesh, hair, eyes, lips, sometimes even genitalia, but it’s the newly created shapes that first stand out.

“I use pornography as a representation of our visual culture, the underlying ideas are used to connect the motifs and concepts, whether it is the idolotry of youth, flesh, sex or the exploitation of the female and feminine.  Pornography is the medium but not the message,” Gallant says about his art.

I’ve posted some of the more “innocent” of Tom Gallant’s cutouts, but you can check out some of his more revealing creations on his official website. Read More »

I’ve seen some pretty bizarre jewelry since I started writing for OC, from rings made from human teeth and hair, to insect accessories, but this Pimple Popper ring is the most disgusting one yet.

For reasons I cannot understand, some people just love to pop pimples, and Etsy user Winona Johnson is one of these crazy types. Disgusting as it may sound, she admits to popping zits, pimples, black heads, white heads, for pure pleasure and this gave her the idea for this unique Pimple Popper Ring. Made of sterling silver, copper, enamel and a white pearl, this bizarre piece of jewelry is one of the grossest pimple recreations I’ve ever laid eyes upon, and it’s just the first piece of a skin related jewelry set. Who knows what “wonders” Winona will create next, but i wouldn’t be surprised to see stuff like a wort necklace or bunion brooch.

If you’re big on pimple popping, you can buy the Pimple Popper ring for $163.

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UK-based artist Inge Jacobsen has found an ingenious way of turning commercial images like the covers of Vogue Magazine into unique works of art.

In an interview with Global Grind, the 24-year-old artist explains why she chose Vogue for her latest embroidery project:

I’ve always had a thing for Vogue ever since I was a teenager. Every new issue I bought I would try and immerse myself into that world of beautiful images, of beautiful people and material objects. I’d love to live in a Vogue magazine. I tried to think of ways to experience the magazine other than just reading it or looking at it, I wanted to get under its skin. The stitching has allowed me to do that, it’s been my way of intervening in the exclusive world of high fashion magazines, partly by giving it a very touchable surface. More importantly, the cross stitching has allowed me to make my issues of mass produced magazines completely unique. You can’t buy mine at your local newsagent.

She apparently spent around 50 hours hand-stitching right over the original Vogue covers, which allows some of the image to show through as background coloring.

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Slavisa Pajkic, from Serbia’s Pozarevac county, is known as “Battery Man’ for his amazing ability to withstand high voltage without getting hurt.

Biba, as his friends know him, says electricity has no friends, except for him. He apparently discovered his amazing capabilities when he was 17, and he’s been in an incredible relationship with electricity, ever since. Voltages of over 50 volts can cause dangerous levels of electricity to flow through the human body, and that’s precisely why your mother once told you to never stick your fingers in the power outlet, but Slavisa can withstand a lot more. He actually set his first Guinness record in 1983, when he took a hit of 20,000 volts like a champ. His second record dates back to 2003, when he was able to heat up a cup of water to 97 degrees Celsius, in 1 minute and 37 seconds.

Slavisa claims he can be an insulator, a conductor, an accumulator or a heater, depending on the case, and so far scientists haven’t been able to figure out exactly how he’s doing all of these things. He can light up a light bulb, cook a sausage and even set alcohol-soaked things ablaze with his body, by storing or acting as a conductor for electricity. Some reports say that because of a genetic defect, Slavisa Pajkic has no sweat and salivary glands, and scientists suspect current isn’t really passing through his body, but passes on the outside of his skin, which acts as a natural insulation.

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53-year-old Momir Bojic, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, has recently showed-off his unique Volkswagen Beetle, made almost entirely from wood.

Momir built his wooden Beetle six years ago, as a hobby, and says it took him an entire year to complete the job. At first glance, it looks like a 1:1 scale replica of Volkswagen iconic buggy, but this is a real drivable vehicle. It has a full wooden body, wooden steering wheel, hub caps, dashboard and has become somewhat of an attraction on wheels in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka, near Momir Bojic’s hometown of Celinac. During the recent auto meeting held in Banja Luka, out of the over 100 models of vintage cars on show, the wooden Beetle got the most attention from visitors and passers-by.

Momir says he has driven his wooden car all through his home country as well as through some of the neighboring states, and people just couldn’t take their eyes off the amazing vehicle covered with around 20,000 oak slats.

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Scott Blake is one of those rare artists who use original mediums to create unique works of art, in his case bar codes. He uses them to create unique portraits of celebrities like Elvis, Madonna or Ronald Reagan.

Blake, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, began making bar code art over 12 years ago, right before Y2K, inspired by the whole year 2000 computer bug, and threatening digital apocalypse. While experimenting with halftone dot patterns, “looking for a black and white shape that could be repeated and modified to create grey tones in a digital mosaic”, he stumbled upon bar code imagery. He first tried circles and squares, then rectangles and notice the clusters of lines looked a lot like bar codes, so he started putting numbers on the bottom to describe the pixels’ grayscale value and grid coordinate.

But placing thousands of bar codes on a canvas to create a portrait is only half of Scott Blake’s work. Each of the bar codes he uses are somehow related to the person they describe. For example, when scanned each of Bruce Lee bar code plays one of the actor’s kung-fu scenes, while in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s case they play one of his movie trailers. Eventually, all of the bar codes end up in Photoshop where Scott uses Action scripts to place each code in the right mosaic tile, but even so, it takes him between two and six months to complete a portrait.

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Ivan Stoiljkovic, a six-year-old boy from a small town in norther Croatia, has been attracting media attention with his unusual gift of making large quantities of metal stick to his torso.

Young Ivan may not look to be in the best possible shape for his age, but that’s never stopped him from taking off his t-shirt and sticking metal objects on his chest and belly. “We always felt he was a bit different. At 15 months-of-age he was rollerblading, he started walking at eight months. He was less than two when he started driving a little motorcycle, and it was a bit weird,” says Ivan Surlovic, young Magneto’s grandfather. It all started as a joke, a few months ago, when Ivan’s grandmother was watching a show about a boy with magnetic capabilities. Her grandson took his shirt off and asked if he could do something like that, so they tried putting metal things on him and they just stuck.

According to Ivan Surlovic’s family, his powers are strongest in the morning and when he is calm and focused. They say he is capable of carrying up to 25 pounds of metal on his body, with heavier objects actually sticking better than lighter ones. His upper body appears to be more magnetic.

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Fancy menus may be enough for most restaurant diners around the world, but not in Japan. Here, image is everything and before going in for a bite, people want to see exactly what the food they want to order looks like. That’s where Japan’s realistic plastic food displays come into play…

Japanese fake food models can be traced back to 1917, but it wasn’t until 1926 that a restaurant owner decided to use them in a glass casing, to attract more customers. His idea was a big hit and people flocked to his venue hoping to get a serving of the delicious meals displayed outside. Soon, other restaurants followed his example and fake food display making became a lucrative business. In 1932, Iwasaki Ryuzo set up up a company that made and sold fake foods to restaurants and today it’s Japan’s top plastic food manufacturer. Business is very lucrative, as estimates show it produces revenues of billions of yen every year. For an entire menu, executed to perfection, luxury restaurants will pay up to one million yen.

In the old days, fake food models were made from wax. It was melted and pored into molds made from kanten (a seaweed jelly), but today manufacturers use silicon molds in which they pour liquid plastic and heat it up until it hardens. Modern materials and techniques apparently make the food considerably more realistic.  Restaurants send fake food makers the exact item they want replicated, along with photos. Silicon is poured around and over the disk and solidifies into a mold, which is then filled with liquid plastic and cooked in an oven. Then comes the really hard part – getting the details right. Oil based paints, regular brushes, air brushes, knives and carving tools are all part of fake food artist’s arsenal, but they all keep their techniques a secret.

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Detailed artworks take a lot of time to complete, but American artist Joe Fenton took it to a whole new level when he decided to dedicate 10 months of his life to a single drawing.

Solitude is indeed one of the most intricate drawings I have ever seen, and knowing it’s all been done with an 0.5 mechanical pen makes it that much more impressive. Maybe you’re under the impression the artist just worked on it a few times a week, throughout the 10 months it took to complete, but in reality Joe Fenton drew on the 5 meter high and 8 foot across piece of paper for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most people would have probably given up after only a few days, but Joe showed enough confidence and patience to see it through. “It took courage to start it as I had never done anything that size before,” he told My Modern Met. “As you can imagine, you have to invest a lot of your time to complete something like this. I just had to believe in my process and have faith that it would work out!”

For Solitude, Joe Fenton created all the elements on a smaller scale than pieced it all together like a giant puzzle by tracing all the drawings on a large piece of paper. Although he isn’t a religious person, for this project he wanted to include various religious references like a “Ganesh-like character, a grinning Buddha, or a faint crucifix adorning a rooftop in the far distance.” After 10 months of work, he finished it all off with acrylic and paint.

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Ohio-based artist, John Sokol, has created a collection of portraits depicting some of the world’s most famous writers, using their own immortal words. Face reading takes a literal meaning when it comes to Sokol’s “Word Portraits” as he uses lines from some of their most popular works to outline their faces, and recreate lines and wrinkles. Easier said than done, I’m sure, but Mr. Sokol’s works really do their subjects’ justice.

While actually trying to read every word John Sokol uses in his works seems practically impossible, the idea of using the authors’ own words is brilliant. If you’d like a unique portrait of your favorite author, head over to John Sokol’s website and take a look at his beautiful Word Portraits. They’re well worth a few hundred bucks, if you ask me.

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Dutch artist Levi van Veluw has recently 3 rooms covered with over 30,000 wooden blocks, balls and slats, as part of his last installation. Absolutely everything in the rooms, including every inch of the floor, walls, ceiling, even himself are covered in the same material – 4 square centimeters dark brown wooden blocks.

Every one of the 30,000 wooden blocks was made and glued in place by van Veluw, who also covered himself in them for his signature formal approach to self-portraiture. This unique installation, called Origins of the Beginning, is inspired by various aspects from the artist’s childhood bedroom, where he apparently spent many hours alone, between the ages of 8 and 14.

In case you’re wondering why van Veluw is burning the desk, in the video below, it’s because he had an obsession with fire, as a child.

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Marquis Los Cabos luxury resort, in Baja California Sur, Mexico, offers its guests the most exclusive popsicle they’ve ever tasted, priced at 1,000 US dollars.

So what makes a simple popsicle cost so much money, apart from the chance to savor poolside in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Well, rich people tend to have a soft spot for gold, so the world’s most expensive popsicle contains 24 carat gold and Tequilas Premium Clase Azul Ultra, a special brand of tequila which sells for $1,500 a bottle. The frozen treat is served poolside, on a classic plastic stick, with some gold chocolate coins. Although salt would have been much more appropriate for a tequila popsicle, this one contains sugar, to take the edge off.

If you don’t have a sweet tooth and real gold flakes don’t impress you enough to throw a whole grand on a popsicle, the guys at Marquis Los Cabos will gladly serve you a simple shot of Tequilas Premium Clase Azul Ultra for a mere $500.

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London based artist Justine Smith makes original sculptures and collages using real banknotes from various countries around the world.

From the artist’s website:

Paper has always been a primary material in the work of Justine Smith. Her current work is concerned with the concept of money and how it touches almost every aspect of our lives. She is interested in money as a conduit of power and also in the value systems with which we surround it. On a physical level a banknote is just a piece of paper, but it is what a banknote actually represents that is central to Smith’s work. Through her collages, prints and sculptures she examines our relationship with money in a political, moral and social sense, whilst also exploiting the physical beauty of the notes.

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