Artist Paints Herself Dressed in Bizarre Dead Animal Dresses

In her 2007 self-portrait series, Booty, Julie Heffernan painted herself dressed in creepy dresses made from dead animal carcasses.

David Cohen, art critic of The New York Sun, describes Julie Heffernan’s paintings as “a hybrid of genres and styles, mixing allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as self portraits.” The American painter uses self-portraits and a mix of history, art and high fashion to offer the viewer a wealth of visual entertainment. But her 2007 series, called Booty, is by far the most intriguing. In this colorful collection of portraits, the artist presents herself draped in pompous dresses made of dead animal carcasses, flowers and fruits. Like Heffernan’s other art series, these bizarre-yet-beautiful paintings are a constant dilemma between the gorgeous and the grotesque, attraction and repulsion.

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Dutch Artist Turns Dead Cat into Remote-Controlled Helicopter

Like many other animal lovers, Dutch artist Bart Jansen found it hard to part with his pet cat, Orville, after he was hit by a car. So he decided to turn the dead feline into a unique piece of artwork called the Orvillecopter.

Jansen named his beloved pet after the famous aviator Orville Wright, so I guess it makes perfect sense that he decided to turn the cat into a remote-controlled helicopter. After having the Orville stuffed by a taxidermist, the artist teamed up with radio-controlled helicopter expert Arjen Beltman to make the cat fly for the first time. Beltman designed a custom mechanism and attached it to the stuffed cat to create a truly bizarre flying machine called the Orvillecopter. Bart Jansen unveiled his unique creation on Saturday, at  the Kunstrai art festival in Amsterdam, and described it as half cat, half machine.

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Dr. Rev’s Creepy Artworks Are Painted in Blood

Dr Rev Mayers is an Australian tattoo artist with a passion for creating crimson artworks using nothing but blood. Using a variety of art techniques, he paints incredibly detailed yet somewhat creepy works of art.

Some artist would probably call Dr. Rev crazy for using his own blood on all of his paintings, but so far his disregard for the norm has proven very successful, as his works have been exhibited all around the world. The Sydney-based tattoo artist uses airbrushing, standard paint brushing, scraping, smudging and layering to create his realistic masterpieces that aim to depict growth, human constraint while capturing the viewer’s heart and soul. In time, he has managed to progress naturally from tattooing and doing body art, to his new found passion, blood painting.

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Urine Iron Man Wins Art Competition

The title is a little misleading, so to make things clear, we’re talking about the face of Iron Man made of real urine, in a toilet bowl. This unusual artwork was actually considered better than 600 other entries in a popular art competition.

You don’t often get the chance to associate Iron Man with urine, but this is one of those rare occasions, and we only have a geeky Taiwanese guy to thank for it. But how does one get the crazy idea to paint a portrait of one of Marvel’s most popular superheroes with urine. Well, this particular art school graduate was taking care of business one day, in the bathroom, when he noticed blood in his urine. Now, most everyone else would have panicked and ran straight to the doctor, but not this fellow. Looking at the colors in his pee, he immediately thought of the colors of Iron Man’s suit, and felt inspired to create a portrait of the popular crime-fighter using his very own urine. Read More »

Indian Artist Paints with His Tongue

Now here’s a hobby that’s bound to leave a bad aftertaste. Ani K, from Kerala, India, makes paintings using his tongue. No, he doesn’t hold a paintbrush with his tongue, as I mistakenly believed at first. He actually slathers paint on it, which he then transfers on to canvas to create beautiful images.

Sounds rather gross to me, but the talent is certainly something to behold. Ani K, who works as a drawing teacher, says he was inspired by an artist who painted with his foot and wanted to do something like that. He started off using his nose, but he realized that was done before and he wanted something unique. That’s when he zeroed in on his tongue. “I thought of giving my tongue a try and succeeded,” he says. “Many newspapers reported it. I got a good response. Then, I made it a regular practice.”

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Artist Plans to Give Birth in Art Gallery, in Front of an Audience

Brooklyn performance artist Marni Kotak plans to have her baby in an art gallery, before an audience, during a performance she hopes will convince people “that human life itself is the most profound work of art, and that therefore giving birth, the greatest expression of life, is the highest form of art.”

Entitled “The Birth of Baby X” Marni’s performance will be the craziest thing that happened in the art world since Marion Laval Jeantet injected herself with horse blood. She is due sometime in the next five weeks, and visitors entering the Bushwick’s Microscope Gallery are warned the baby could arrive at any time. The artist has chosen the place as a “birthing room” and will spend every day there until she has her baby. “I have decided to do this because I want to show people that, as in my previous performances, real life is the best performance art,” she said.

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Woman Pays $10,000 for Non-Visible Artwork

The Museum on Non-Visible Art, or MONA, houses a variety of non-visible works of art that can only be admired by reading the artist’s description. Sounds weird, but believe it or not, someone actually paid $10,000 for one of these ‘masterpieces’.

I have to admit I’ve always wondered why some people spend thousands, sometimes millions of dollars on abstract art pieces that look like the work of someone who has nothing in common with art. But then again, I’m not very art-inclined. Anyway that doesn’t seem so strange to me anymore, not since I read this article about a woman who paid $10,000 for an artwork she can’t even see. “Fresh Air” was just one of the works exhibited at the Museum of Non-Visible Art, a strange project supported by actor James Franco that tries to take conceptual art to a whole new level. There is an official website and even an explanatory video, but basically this museum hosts works of art that don’t exit in the physical world, instead they are imagined by the artist.

So when someone buys one of these unusual creations all they get is a card with a description of the artwork made by the author and a letter of authenticity. You can place the card on a blank wall in your house or an art gallery and describe it to visitors, so they may enjoy it as well. Here’s the description for Fresh Air, the recently sold artwork:

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Artist’s Vomit Painting May Cause You to Puke

Vomit painter Millie Brown creates what some people call art by drinking colored milk and regurgitating it onto a white canvas or even her own dress.

Is it just me, or is art getting weirder and weirder. I mean I’ve seen “artists” paint with their breasts, create props from meat and eve dude that paints with his penis. Someone once told me anything is art if at least one person thinks so, but this is getting ridiculous. Take Millie Brown, also known as the Vomit Painter. She has mastered the art of regurgitation and uses her talents to create actual art. Her work requires her to drink colored milk and simply vomit on a white canvas, thus creating abstract “paintings” worth thousands of dollars.

Why anyone would pay to own someone else’s colored puke is beyond my understanding. I mean, if we were talking about Justin Bieber’s vomit, I could understand, I’m pretty sure there are some girls out there who would pay anything just to sniff his dirty underwear, but this isn’t the case. One of Brown’s artworks, Nexus Vomitus, created to an acoustic accompaniment of opera singers Patricia Hammond and Zita Syme, sold for $2,400, which is just mind-boggling. Read More »

Artist Builds The Great Wall of Vagina

It’s not as old or as long as the Great Wall of China, but artist Jamie McCartney’s “Great Wall of Vagina” is definitely more shocking.

The English sculptor has spent the last five years working on this controversial artwork, casting plaster molds of 400 vulvas of women aged 18 to 76. The models used for the McCartney’s Great Wall of Vagina include mothers and daughters, identical twins, transgendered men and women, as well as a woman pre and post natal. He wanted to include as many possibilities as he could, and during the five years of work looked for someone who had suffered from genital mutilation to model for him, without success.

So why does someone create such a bizarre, intriguing work of art? Well, according to the artist:

Vulvas and labia are as different as a faces and many people, particularly women, don’t seem to know that… showing the variety of shapes is endlessly fascinating, empowering and comforting. For many women their genitals are a source of shame rather than pride and this piece seeks to redress the balance, showing that everyone is different and everyone is normal.

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Artist Makes Stomach Turning Art Out of Marzipan

In an attempt to show the world things can look unattractive on the outside but be sweet on the inside, artist Helga Petrau-Heinzel has created a series of disgusting sculptures out of delicious marzipan.

It all began when the artist saw a picture of Dame Barbara Cartland, a romantic fiction author, and was fascinated by this bizarre old lady dressed in pink. It felt like she just had to create a sculpture of her, and because she looked so “artificially sugary”, she used marzipan as a medium. “It seemed to prove that sweet material cannot only create ‘cute’ things. On the contrary – the bitter sweet side tempted me,” says Helga.

Satisfied with her first marzipan artwork, Helga started making even more repulsive sculptures, like animal organs and rotting pig heads. She admits her creations look so real she herself is sometimes disgusted by them.

Marzipan was one of my favorite sweets, but after seeing what it can be molded into, I think it’s time to go on a little diet… Read More »

The Krzywy Domek – Poland’s Crooked House

Looking at these photographs you have to wonder whether  this is real or the result of an optical illusion.

The Krzywy Domek, as it is originally called, is part of the Rezident shopping center in Sopot, Poland. It is three stories high, has a total of about 4,000 square meters and is now the “residence” of a pub called the Wonky Pub. Although it’s architecture is similar to that of the surrounding buildings, this Crooked House seems weary or melting. Ever since it was built, in 2004, the Crooked House became Poland’s most photographed building.

This unusual house is the result of Polish architect’s Szotynscy Zaleski  imaginative mind, who was inspired by Jan Marcin Szancer‘s fairytale illustrations and also by Per Dahlberg’s art, whose drawings you can find inside the Krzywy Domek. (video).

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Chinese Artist Showcases Venus de Milo Statue Made of Excrements

Zhu Cheng, one of China’s most famous and talented sculptors, has helped nine of his art students to create a replica of Venus de Milo out of excrements.

Now, I know we’ve had quite a few strange art mediums here at Oddity Central, from garbage to chewing gum, but excrement has to be the weirdest one yet, by a long shot. Zhu Cheng helped and direct a team of nine art students to recreate the Venus de Milo statue out of feces. Now, the source doesn’t actually specify if we’re talking about animal or human excrements, but I’m pretty sure it’s the last one…A symbol of beauty created from something so disgusting, the idea is pretty cool, but I can’t help but be grossed out by the thought of having to mold feces into a statue with your hands.

Ad you can see in the photos, the excrement-made Venus de Milo is encased in a transparent box, to protect it, and make sure the smell of crap doesn’t drive everyone away from the exhibition at Henan Art Museum in Zhengzhou city, China.

But the most unbelievable thing about this “shitty” statue of Venus de Milo is that it was actually bought by a Swiss art collector, for a staggering 300,000 yuan ($45,113). Talk about spending money on crap, right? Read More »

The Weird Art of Dimitri Tsykalov

Dimitri Tsykalov is one of the few artists out there who don’t discriminate between carnivores and omnivores, he creates art for both. The truth is this Russian artist just likes to experiment with a variety art mediums.

In “Meat”, one of the most disturbing art projects I’ve ever seen, Tsykalov  took a bunch of naked models and fitted them with weapons and armor fashioned from bloody pieces of meat. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be covered in nothing but chunks of red meat, but I’ll bet those models took some really long showers after the photo shoot.

His unique skulls, carved in fruits and vegetables, are not as shocking as his experience in the world of meat, but the level of detail and the unconventional medium draw just as much attention. Read More »

The Rat Poison Packaging Art of Jason Clay Lewis

Who knew rat poison could be used for anything other than killing rats, right? Well, American artist Jason Clay Lewis has been using the famous d-CON rat poison and its yellow packaging to create unique works of art.

Jason Clay Lewis has always been fascinated by bizarre materials that help him develop his idea of attraction versus repultion, and d-CON packages are some of his greatest finds. Back in 2008, the New-York-based artist created d-CON Mary, a unique reproduction of the Virgin Mary statue made of fibreglas and d-CON packaging. It managed to draw attention to Jason’s work, and since then he has created an entire series of sculptures made from d-CON packs, and even the rat poison itself.

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The Contaminated Ceramics of Tamsin van Essen

They may look like ceramic cups that haven’t been washed in years, but these are genuine artworks made by British designer Tamsin van Essen.

Using various “foreign” materials, the artist managed to mimic the infestation of various bacterias on ceramic bowls. As real as the contamination with Salmonella and Streptococcus may seem, the bowls are perfectly clean and ready to be used. Even knowing that, I doubt anyone would be crazy enough to actually use them.

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