Coolest Finds of the Week #31

Cupcake ATMs Bring Sweat Treats to the Streets of New York (NY Post)

The Grinning Skeletons of Peru’s 1000-Year-Old Nazca Cemetery (Environmental Graffiti)

England’s Guerrilla Tree Sculptor (Treehugger)

World’s Most Expensive Watch Costs $5 Million (LA Times)

Common Heart Disease Drug May Also Cure Racism (Orange News)

Kim Jong-Il Lookalike Has Problems Getting Dates (The Sun)

Woman Is Really in Love with the Statue of Liberty (Daily Mail)

Welded Sculptures Made from Discarded and Recycled Objects (This Is Colossal)

25 Vertigo-Inducing Views from the Highest Atriums in the World (Environmental Graffiti)

Graffiti Artist Decorates Paris Hotel Room (The Big Addict)

Innovative Artist Creates Beautiful Dust Paintings

Los Angeles-based artist Allison Cortson collects dust from her art-subjects’s homes and uses it to paint the background of their portraits. She started her series of “dusty” artworks, called Dust Paintings, several years ago, but she’s only just now getting the online exposure she so rightfully deserves.

Dust paintings…Now here’s something you don’t see every day, right? Well, actually, just a month ago we posted a story about Alessandro Ricci, an Italian artist who paints with dust collected from historical buildings in Florence. But while his dust creations are more like environmental statements against the pollution in his home city, Allison Cortson’s paintings are much more elaborate, and have a completely different purpose. Through her dust paintings, the artist tries to emphasize the fact that “matter is mostly empty space” and  it’s only through interactivity with living beings that they provide any value. That’s why, in all of her Dust Paintings artworks the human subjects are painted in color, while the background is recreated with dust.

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Aggravure III – A Unique Mural Made with 450,000 Staples

In all the years I’d stapled posters on my wall, I never gave it a second thought, let alone consider it an art form. But an artist has painstakingly created a series of beautiful murals made from nothing but staples tacked onto a wall. The pictures you’re looking at are the works of French artist Baptiste Debombourg, and a part of  a collection named Aggravure. His last artwork, Aggravure III, took him 340 hours to complete and consists of over half a million staples.

The collection itself is inspired by engravers of the Renaissance period, Jan Harmensz, Cherubino Alberti and Hendrick Goltzius. It’s amazing what an artist can do with a boring, everyday, office supply like the staple. But hey, if people can make art out of packing tape, maybe staple-art is not so surprising after all.

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Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Brings Sexy Back into Art

Serious artists are bound to find Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School rather blasphemous, but the more lighthearted ones obviously think it’s a lot of fun. How else would you explain a Dr. Sketchy’s branch in 100 cities spread over 5 continents, merely 6 years after the first class was held in a dive bar in Brooklyn?

It’s hard to call the place an ‘art school’, as it looks more like a pub where artists come to hang out, socialize and have a good time. But they do make a lot of drawings while they’re at it. And the major attractions are the ‘subjects’ that they get to sketch. Founders A.V. Phibes and Molly Crabapple make sure to find the most beautiful burlesque dancers, the most rippling hunks of men and the most bizarre circus freaks, who pose for artists every other Saturday for three whole hours. An artist herself, Crabapple decided to create an alternative drawing school to counter the conventional restrictions of mainstream art. She asked a simple question: why can’t drawing naked people be sexy? And this unique anti-art school was her attempt at an answer. So Dr. Sketchy, a fictional corrupt Viennese doctor, was born. On their official website, the school is described as ‘the world’s premier alternative drawing movement’.

The students, called ‘art monkeys’, gather with a lot of enthusiasm at Dr. Sketchy’s. They come from all walks of life: there are galley artists, art students, tattoo artists, illustrators and even non-professional artists. While the more serious ones turn up with their own materials, complimentary art supplies are provided to the amateurs. However, there are no erasers allowed, because “there’s no such thing as a mistake at Dr. Sketchy’s.” After warming up with 1, 2 and 5 minute poses, there are 10 and 20 minute poses to allow artists  to focus on detail. To make the whole experience even more fun they hold all kinds of wacky competitions such as ‘best eyelashes’ or ‘best comic strip’. Prizes include booze, graphic novels and gift certificates to tattoo parlors. It’s surprising to note that, according to Crabapple, Dr. Sketchy’s art monkeys number more women than men.

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Eating Carrots Causes Kid to Turn Orange

“Violet, you’re turning violet!” That’s the classic line from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, spoken by a dad to his naughty daughter who eats blueberry candy and ends up looking exactly like one. It’s funny in the movie, but it’s hardly something anyone would expect to happen in real life. But as it turns out it can and it has. There’s this 4-year-old kid in the UK, Leo Barnett, who turns a bright shade of orange when he eats carrots.

Leo actually suffers from a condition called hyper-beta carotenemia. This means that his body lacks the necessary enzymes to digest carotene, the substance that provides the orange color to carrots and other foods. So carotene just builds up in his body, turning him orange over time. Leo’s mother Angie says the boy is now on a diet devoid of any food containing the substance. The only vegetable that he’s allowed to eat is cauliflower. According to Angie, the problem was first noticed when he was 6 months old and suffered from pneumonia. His kidneys and liver were failing so they had mistaken the color to be a symptom from the disease. But a month after recovery, he was still orange and that’s when they discovered his allergy to carotene.

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Artist Twists Aluminum Wire into Beautiful Tree Sculptures

I find it fascinating how some artists can turn rigid materials into works of art that seem almost organic. Case in point, Kevin Iris, a man who creates beautiful tree sculptures exclusively from aluminum wire.

A self-proclaimed “treenut” Kevin Iris has been making incredibly detailed tree sculptures from aluminum wire for the last 23 years. His works vary in shape and size, as he’s trying to inspire different emotions with each one, but the most remarkable thing that’s common to all of them is that they are made only out of twisted wire. That means he uses no glue, coatings or any other substances. he simply takes tens of feet of aluminum wire and twists them into a variety of shapes. As you can imagine, Kevin’s artistic process is very laborious and time-consuming. For example, talking about the aluminum tree n the photo below, the artist says “I average about 26 leaves per strand so I have about 10,062 leaves up there on the top. This [22-inch wide] tree took about 450 hours or so of hands on twisting wire time over four months.” Pretty remarkable stuff…

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Young Woman Is Strangely Addicted to Sponges and Soap

While the rest of the world is awakening to the benefits of eating organic food, 21-year-old Kerry Trebilcock is doing just the opposite. Actually, what she eats isn’t even food. The young girl from Cornwall eats (yes, eats) soap and sponges. So far, she’s consumed 4,000 washing sponges and over 100 bars of soap. Well, I suppose she at least has super-clean intestines!

It’s no laughing matter though, as Kerry is suffering from a condition called Pica, which makes her crave things that have nothing to do with food. People with Pica are known to eat a variety of things ranging from metal to sand, and even chalk, coal, light bulbs and furniture. For a long time, Kerry’s diet consisted of sponges dipped in tea or hot chocolate, or spiced up with mustard and BBQ sauce. She would never leave the house without a snack – a small plastic bag of cut up sponges and sauce in a Tupperware.

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Poveglia – The Venetian Island of the Dead

When I first saw a picture of Poveglia Island, I couldn’t help but notice how pretty it is. But then I read the story behind the place and let me tell you, there’s nothing pretty about it. For centuries, the island has attracted nothing but the worst fate, with hundreds of thousands of people suffering torturous deaths. Today the island may look uninhabited, but legend suggests otherwise…

Poveglia is located in northern Italy, in the Venetian Lagoons. It has no owners and entry to the place is strictly forbidden. The only time any visits are made is to harvest vineyards. Even fisherman won’t venture intot  the waters near the island, for fear of catching human bones in their nets. For a time, it was owned by the Italian state but was sold to a private buyer in the 1960s. The poor guy lived there for a short while, but abandoned the place after a short while. More recently, a family was known to have purchased Poveglia in an attempt to convert it into a holiday home, but again, they couldn’t spend more than one night there. Rumors say that their daughter’s face was split open and 14 stitches were needed to fix it.

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Mysterious Real-Life Robin Hood Leaves Envelopes of Cash to the Needy

It’s nothing short of a modern-day miracle,when envelopes stuffed with cash just keep appearing all over town. And not just small cash, we’re talking large amounts. Since late last year, envelopes containing sums up to 10,000 euros are being mysteriously ‘given’ to those who are in need of money, in the German town of Braunschweig. The donated money that’s been accounted for so far amounts to a whopping 200,000 euros.

While the benefactor is unknown, the beneficiaries have so far “suspected” a hospice, a robbery victim, various charities, and also the family of a handicapped boy. The cash-stuffed envelopes have been left in prayer books in churches, beneath doormats and also in letterboxes. There are several theories as to who is behind this sudden ‘shower’ of cash in the settlement. Some say that it could be a lottery winner and others feel it’s probably someone who’s received a large inheritance. Whoever it may be, the person is being hailed as a present-day reincarnation of Robin Hood, who we’re not yet sure if  is stealing from the rich, but is certainly giving to the needy.

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Really Hang-Out at Tokyo’s Hammock Cafe

Who needs chairs when you can just relax and have a cup of coffee or tea in a comfortable hammock, right? That was probably the idea behind Mahika Mano, a popular Tokyo venue, better known as the Hammock Cafe.

Located in the Kichijoji district of Tokyo, a place renowned for its chill-out atmosphere, Mahika Mano fits in just perfectly, with its hammocks hanging from the ceiling inviting passers-by to just sit back and enjoy a tasty drink. As soon as you walk in, the first thing that hits you is the absence of chairs, but as soon as you lay down in one of the hanging nets you start to wonder who ever got the crazy idea of using chairs, when hammocks are so much more comfy. As you can imagine, this unique cafe is pretty busy (sometimes you have to wait in a queue to grab a seat hammock) so the place has implemented a time limit of 90 to 120 minutes, so that everyone can have a chance to literally hang out. Whether this policy is enforced or not depends on the occupancy of the cafe.

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70-Year-Old Woman Looks Like She Just Turned 40 Thanks to Vegan Diet and Rainwater

Just yesterday, we wrote about Dr. Life, the man with a 70-year-old’s face and a 20-year-old bodybuilder’s physique. Well, now in the news is another 70-year-old who seems to have found the secret to eternal youth, only hers doesn’t imply using growth hormones and testosterone. Annette Larkins doesn’t look a day over 40, thanks to the diet and lifestyle she maintains. She looks so young that people mistake her to be the daughter, when she’s out with her husband of 54 years, but I suppose he isn’t complaining.

Mrs. Larkins says the secret to her beauty lies in the raw vegan diet, consisting of organic vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts grown in her own garden, she calls the ‘fountain of youth’. The woman doesn’t touch anything that has been cooked. And another strange thing she does is collect rainwater, to keep her garden blossoming, but also to drink. But the resident of Miami-Dade County, Florida, didn’t always have such a healthy lifestyle. In fact, she consumed meat regularly, as her husband used to own a meat factory way back in the 1960s. It was then that she decided to change her eating habits forever. And what a great decision that was. I mean, just  look at her!

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German Man to Sell His Face for Tattooed Advertisements

A German man loves dogs so much that he wants to build a museum dedicated to St. Bernard dogs. So what does he do to raise the money? Why rent out his face, of course. The idea seems so simple, I wonder why people don’t do it all the time. Maybe because no one wants to walk around with a bunch of advertisements TATTOOED on their face. But Uwe Troschel has no such qualms, so he’s perfectly happy to rent out sections of his face for companies to place their advertisements on.

Each section comes at a price of its own. So to put up an ad on Troschel’s forehead costs 50,000  euro, and each cheek, 20,000 euro. The nose is priced at 2,000, and if any company is interested in the entire face, it would set them back a whopping 100,000 euro. His intentions are commendable, but I’m not sure this is the right way to go about helping his four-legged friends. After all, when this is all said and done, they might not even recognize him…

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Speech Jammer – The Wacky Japanese Device That Stops People from Talking

Ever came across someone so annoyingly chatty that you wanted to shoot them with an invisible gun and shut them up? Well, you might just be able to, thanks to the Speech Jammer. It’s a Japanese invention that could very well be the perfect answer to all the talkative people out there. The device is said to be powerful enough to jam a person’s speech from up to 98ft away.

Sounds too good to be true, right? The inventors, Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada, explain how it works. The prototype invention supposedly records the obnoxious speech with a directional microphone, adds a 0.2 second delay, and then fires it right back at the prattler with the help of a directional speaker. So there’s basically a delay between when the person says something and when they hear their own speech. This would mess with the person so bad, that they would soon be rendered speechless for a while. Perfect! But then, the device itself looks so huge and scary in its current avatar, I think people might shut up the very moment it was pointed at them.

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Dr Jeffrey Life – The Guy with the Head of a 70-Year-Old and the Body of a 20-Year-Old Bodybuilder

Neck-up, a 70-year-old man. Neck-down, a 20-year-old bodybuilder. This is what a photograph of Dr. Jeffrey Life looks like. When I first looked at it I thought it was actually a young person whose face is ageing due to an illness, but it’s actually the other way round. The photo is that of a real 70-year-old, and we can safely vouch for the fact that his head hasn’t been photoshopped onto a model’s body. Although, Dr. Life’s methods to achieve the body of his dreams can’t exactly be termed as natural. The man is heavily dependent upon hormonal modifications to look like this.

Dr. Life’s life (that’s weird) changed at the age of 60, when he started to take fitness pretty seriously. Until then, he was overweight, a borderline diabetic and stressed-out. It was when he came across a 12-week fitness challenge on Muscle Media Magazine that he decided to make a few changes in his life. So he sent in his before picture as required by the challenge and started to work out big-time. After the 3 months were up, he had lost over 25 pounds and considerably cut-back on body fat. This, however, was not long-lived and at age 64, his body could no longer hold muscle mass and began to shrink. The culprit – a condition known as andropause – involving a steady decline of testosterone levels.

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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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