Kim & Kim: Interview with Magdalene Visaggio.

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Science fiction stories are nothing new. It’s a pretty sure thing modern geeks have traveled to and from the stars many times within the pages of a comic book, novel, or in their favorite TV show or movie. At this point, space is no longer the final frontier; it’s as familiar to comic books readers as a superhero’s cape and tights.

So it’s truly rare and exciting to discover a story that can add a new element to the sci-fi genre. Thankfully, four-issue limited series Kim & Kim is just such a story. Published by Black Mask Studios, written and created by our trans writer Magdalene Visaggio, with art by the straight/queer team Eva Cabrera and Claudia Aquirre, Kim & Kim mixes space-faring action, with salty language, humor, and a female buddy adventure with a trans lead character.

In short, this outer space comic book series with a decidedly queer- and female-centric tale is what our modern culture needs. The Advocate was happy to chat with writer/creator Magdalene Visaggio to discuss Kim & Kim, the importance of featuring an authentic trans character, her upcoming work, and what to look forward two in the final two issues of the series.

The Advocate has an in-depth interview with Magdalene Visaggio, good reading, and if you’re new to Kim & Kim, now’s a good time to catch up!

From Trash to Animals, Wow!

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Instead of contemplating a series of sketches or attempting to envision how an artwork will come together, Portuguese artist Bordalo II (previously here and here) begins each of his animal sculptures in a grimy hunt for raw materials in junk yards or abandoned factories. Car bumpers, tires, door panels, mountains of malleable plastic bumpers, and even entire vehicles are stacked and bolted to the sides of buildings to resemble everything from pelicans to foxes and tiny rodents. The pieces grow on-site, taking form as he interprets the available materials. As a final detail each animal is finished with a flourish of spray paint that bestows a near lifelike quality.

Through his art, Bordalo II hopes to draw attention to our culture’s uncontrollable production of waste. “The idea is to depict nature itself, in this case animals, out of materials that are responsible for [their] destruction,” he shares with Colossal. In this way he hopes to make environmental destruction more visible. “Sometimes people don’t recognize that their simple routines are too much, we are using too many resources too fast and turning them into trash, waste, and pollution.”

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Bordalo II was one of many artists recently involved with the Unexpected art project curated by JustKids in Ft. Smith, Arkansas where he created a new fox and opossum. He also constructed a flying squirrel at Street Art Jam 2016 in Estonia, and several pieces for the Aruba Art Fair. You can follow his recent work on Instagram.

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Via Colossal Art.

The Staten Island Ferry Octopus Attack.

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Monuments and vaguely descriptive plaques are commonplace around cities and heavily trafficked tourist areas, giving just enough insight into an historic event or landmark. The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial blends in with these weathered monuments, except for the fact that all details on the work are completely false. The monument, which is located in Battery Park, Manhattan, was created by artist Joe Reginella and honors the 400 victims who perished during a giant octopus attack of a Staten Island ferry named the Cornelius G. Kolff on November 22, 1963, the same day as the assassination of JFK.

The elaborate hoax was six months in the making, and is also seen by Reginella as a multimedia art project and social experiment. The website, and fliers distributed around Manhattan by his team, give a false location for a museum, ironically a place you must get to by ferry. You can see more tourist reactions and find real information about the fake event on the Staten Island Ferry Octopus Disaster Memorial Museum’s Facebook.

Now that’s a fun prank.

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Via Colossal Art.

Alive.

Images courtesy the Nuart Festival.

Images courtesy the Nuart Festival.

You won’t find the artwork of Spanish artist, SpY, on the walls of a gallery or in a museum: the graffito-turned-urban art activist operates almost exclusively within the public realm. In his latest large-scale text mural for the Nuart festival, an annual international street art gathering held in Norway, SpY painted the word “alive” upside down on the exterior wall of an abandoned warehouse. The mural’s location and position next to water is significant because it creates a reflection of the text right-side up. The body of water flips the text off the wall as well as the other buildings surrounding it, making “alive” come alive amidst the city’s concrete horizon.

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SpY’s mural and installation work is geared to instigate reflection, to create a public dialogue that isn’t confined to the people who can afford to visit a gallery. Previous installations like Cameras and Barriers incorporate inert items found in urban environments. SpY replicates these in a way that creates a commentary on our urban reality. See Alive come to life in the video below:

I love this so much, because I do think there are too many people in dire need of this particular reminder. Via The Creators Project.

Spot sobre la situación educativa y laboral de las personas trans.

Argentina’s trans community, as is the case in many countries, faces an extraordinary amount of discrimination, from education and employment opportunities to violence. Animator Virginia Gilles, writer Stephanie Santoro and sound designer Thomas Corley decided to put some facts about the community’s Argentine experience into stark relief in an experimental short, which features hypnotic animation, motion graphics, music, and voiceover.

“The spot is not part of any campaign,” Gilles tells The Creators Project. “Our objective is to demonstrate the problems of employment and educational discrimination against trans people. As for aesthetics, we wanted to create a powerful but cool effect, mixing the character of the words with experimentation in image and sound.”

As the artists note in the voiceover, quoting Argentina’s Fundación Huésped (Guest Foundation), “Six out of ten transgender women and seven out of ten transgender men failed at completing their secondary school education.” Half of these individuals failed because of discrimination against their gender identity. The artists are also attempting to raise awareness about the various forms of violence suffered by transvestites and transsexuals.

“The policies implemented by the Argentine government and the expansion of their rights through laws that generate greater inclusion are insufficient,” they write. “We believe that in order to reverse this painful reality requires a real commitment by the whole society, to eliminate social hatred and generate inclusion and actual acceptance of all trans people in various fields, which will enable them to develop a equally dignified life without being discriminated against because of their identity.”

“As people, we have the right to be treated in accordance with our self perception and this should be respected,” the artists say. “Education empowers you and gives you tools to stop discrimination. The doors are open. You have to take impulse and go through them.”

Via The Creators Project.

Oh. Speechless.

Sometimes, there just isn’t an adequate expression, and even wow doesn’t make the cut.

Photograph by Mark Cowan.

Photograph by Mark Cowan.

 

Photograph by Mark Cowan.

Photograph by Mark Cowan.

While traveling through the Amazon to study reptile and amphibian diversity with the Herpetology Division at the University of Michigan, photographer Mark Cowan happened upon a strange sight: a caiman whose head was nearly covered in butterflies. The phenomenon itself isn’t particularly unusual, salt is critical to the survival of many creatures like butterflies and bees who sometimes drink tears from reptiles in regions where the mineral is scarce. What made this sight so unusual was seeing the butterflies organize themselves into three different species groups atop the caiman’s head.

Uh, also, that side eye!

Cowan’s photograph received special commendation from the 2016 Royal Society Publishing photography competition, you can see the rest of this year’s finalists here.

More speechless:

“Hitchhikers” (Lion’s Mane Jellyfish), St Kilda, off the Island of Hirta, Scotland, by George Stoyle.

“Hitchhikers” (Lion’s Mane Jellyfish), St Kilda, off the Island of Hirta, Scotland, by George Stoyle.

The British Wildlife Photography Awards just announced the 2016 winners of their annual competition in categories including Animal Behavior, Animal Portraits, Urban Wildlife, and an overall winner. The awards, established in 2009, aim to highlight photographers working in the UK, while also showcasing the biodiversity, species, and habitats found in Britain.

George Stoyle, overall winner of this year’s competition, found his subject off the Island of Hirta in Scotland.  “I was working for Scottish Natural Heritage on a project to assess the current biological status of major sea caves around some of the UK’s most remote islands,” Stoyle told the BWPA. “At the end of one of the dives I was swimming back to the boat when I came face to ‘face’ with the largest jellyfish I’d ever encountered. As I approached cautiously I noticed a number of juvenile fish had taken refuge inside the stinging tentacles.”

You can see more UK habitats and animal portraits from 2016’s British Wildlife Photography Awards on their website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Via Colossal Art, here and here.

Dali in Wonderland.

Advice From a Caterpillar.

Advice From a Caterpillar.

While glancing at Salvador Dalí’s paintings one might get the sense that they’ve tripped down their mind’s own rabbit hole, all of a sudden dropped within a barren wasteland filed with abstract objects and creatures. The pairing then, of Dalí and Alice in Wonderland writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll, seem perfectly matched—two men whose minds travel far beyond the cutesy corners of an average fairytale. In the 1960s an editor at Random House realized this genius partnership, commissioning Dalí to illustrate an exclusive edition of Alice in Wonderland, of which Dalí signed every copy.

This rare edition of Alice was long coveted by rare book collectors and scholars, making only occasional appearances for study or the auction block. However, for the 150th anniversary of Lewis’ surrealist tale, this one-of-a-kind collaboration has finally been printed for the public by Princeton University Press. The deluxe edition, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, features an introduction explaining Dalí’s connection to Carroll by Lewis Carroll Society of North America President Mark Burstein, and exploration by mathematician Thomas Banchoff of the mathematics found in Dalí’s work and illustrations.

Mad Tea Party.

Mad Tea Party.

There are many more photos of Dali’s artwork at Colossal Art. I’ll definitely be adding this book to my overburdened book collection.

The Bird-Based Colour System.

Bird diagram from Robert Ridgway’s ‘A nomenclature of colors for naturalists : and compendium of useful knowledge for ornithologists’ (1886) (via Smithsonian Libraries).

Bird diagram from Robert Ridgway’s ‘A nomenclature of colors for naturalists : and compendium of useful knowledge for ornithologists’ (1886) (via Smithsonian Libraries).

WASHINGTON, DC — An effort to describe the diversity of birds led to one of the first modern color systems. Published by Smithsonian ornithologist Robert Ridgway in 1886, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists categorizes 186 colors alongside diagrams of birds. In 1912, Ridgway self-published an expanded version for a broader audience — Color Standards and Color Nomenclature — that included 1,115 colors. Some referenced birds, like “Warbler Green” and “Jay Blue,” while others corresponded to nature, as in “Bone Brown” and “Storm Gray.”

Ridgway wrote in his 1912 preface that “the nomenclature of colors remains vague and, for practical purposes, meaningless, thereby seriously impeding progress in almost every branch of industry and research.” He railed against confusing trade names like “‘zulu,’ ‘serpent green,’ ‘baby blue,’ ‘new old rose,’ ‘London smoke,’ etc., and such nonsensical names as ‘ashes of roses’ and ‘elephant’s breath.’”

Personally, I have a great fondness for those old trade names. They are wonderfully imaginative, and that sort of thing tends to appeal to artists. Ashes of Roses and London Smoke conjure up wonderful imagery. I also quite like the odd colour that is Ashes of Roses.

A copy of Ridgway’s 1912 book is on view in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Color in a New Light. Installed in two large display cases on the ground floor of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the exhibition examines the point at which art, history, and science blend through color. Ridgway’s research is joined by the work of 19th-century painter Gerald Handerson Thayer, whose studies of animals disguising themselves influenced military camouflage; a discussion of Fiestaware, which was painted with orange-red uranium oxide glaze and thus became unintentionally radioactive; and the history of Tyrian Purple pigment, made by mashing up snails.

Color systems date back centuries, at least to Richard Waller’s 1686 Tabula colorum physiologica. Yet bird-watching hones a sharp eye for color differentiation, so Ridgway had an edge — as well as a drive for perfection enabled by 19th-century synthetic dye advancements. This new color technology wasn’t without its dangers. One sample in Ridgway’s book is labeled “Scheele’s Green,” a reference to Wilhelm Scheele’s toxic mix of arsenic and copper.

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The Smithsonian Libraries’Color in a New Lightcontinues at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (10th & Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC) through March 2017.

Colors from Robert Ridgway’s ‘A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists : And Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists’ (1886) (via Boston Public Library/Wikimedia)

Colors from Robert Ridgway’s ‘A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists : And Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists’ (1886) (via Boston Public Library/Wikimedia)

Hyperallergic has an in-depth article, with many more photos on this always fascinating subject.

Comics.

Cover for The New Gods #1. Illustrated by Jack Kirby. Photo courtesy of DC Comics.

Cover for The New Gods #1. Illustrated by Jack Kirby. Photo courtesy of DC Comics.

The New Gods #1 (Reprint)

One of the comics featured in this week’s roundup is a digital reprint of a classic Jack Kirby comic. Kirby, longtime collaborator with Marvel icon Stan Lee, helped create famous characters like The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. Unlike the more straightforward, BAM! POW! creations of Lee, Kirby’s written and illustrated works are tinged with the weird, the cosmic, and the symbolic. If readers try the reprint of New Gods #1 (reviewed below) and like what they read, other Kirby must-reads include the OMAC series, Devil Dinosaur, and Machine Man. In these comics, it’s clear Kirby didn’t care if you couldn’t keep up with his breakneck speed and garbled, grandiose language. This is old-fashioned science fiction, which neither strives for accuracy nor ease of readability, but falls somewhere wonderfully in-between.

Originally published in 1971, The New Gods tells the story of a battle between the forces of good and evil, with the New Gods (a group of super-powered heroes) battling the evil Darkseid. The main hero, Orion, rides around on little golden leg harnesses, uses his “Astro-Force” to blast away his enemies, and comes off like a grumpy old man as he quarrels with those trying to help him. This comic is baffling in its own self-reference and complexity, and biblical in its language and scope, but it’s absolutely a must-read for those who gravitate toward the weird and extra-dimensional. The closest piece of fiction one could compare The New Gods to are the latter novels in the Dune series, by Frank Herbert. And Kirby’s artwork is unparalleled in its ability to conjure grandeur with an economy of lines.

Cover for Jim Henson’s Labyrinth Tales. Illustrated by Corey Godbey. Photo courtesy of BOOM! Archaia.

Cover for Jim Henson’s Labyrinth Tales. Illustrated by Corey Godbey. Photo courtesy of BOOM! Archaia.

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth Tales

Artist and writer Corey Godbey captures all of the charm and mystery of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, and turns that into a storybook for kids. Less of a true comic than a series of full illustrations with narration, this book is so beautifully illustrated it will absolutely stick in the minds of young ones. The illustrations by Godbey are honeyed and sweet, and the world presented is simply magical. Though children’s books aren’t often covered in this column, this work is an absolute must for readers with young children.

Cover for Black Hammer #3. Illustrated by Dean Ormston. Photo courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.

Cover for Black Hammer #3. Illustrated by Dean Ormston. Photo courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.

Black Hammer #3

The heroes of Black Hammer used to be comic book heroes with rich backstories and varied interpersonal lives, but now they’ve been retconned. After a multidimensional crisis writes them out of their own stories, they’re forced to live in a small, timeless farming town. This issue focuses on Barbalien, the alien barbarian, as he attempts to adjust to his new life, and as he reminisces on how he got to earth to begin with. This is a hugely imaginative comic with wonderful art by Dean Ormston. If the series pitch intrigues readers, it’s probably best they go back to the start and try out issue #1.

Via The Creators Project.

Street Signs: The Good and The Bad.

Official signs are cropping up across the city, with four of Toronto's major streets now bearing signs with their Anishinaabe names. Spadina, or Ishpadinaa, is one of them. (Craig Chivers/CBC) .

Official signs are cropping up across the city, with four of Toronto’s major streets now bearing signs with their Anishinaabe names. Spadina, or Ishpadinaa, is one of them. (Craig Chivers/CBC).

Toronto is joining a number of other places as far as street signs go, adding the language of the original inhabitants of the land.

“By doing this, it shows that the First Nations people are still here. We’re still on their land. We share it but we’re still on their land,” Grant said.

That’s the problem though, isn’t it, that all the colonial people are still on their land, dominating that land, and dominating the original inhabitants, and not in good ways. While I have been in favour of various street sign initiatives, I think they have little impact on on non-Native people. Oh, they might ooh and aah for a moment or three, and then it’s ignored and forgotten.

Indian Country Today reported on this effort in Toronto back in July of 2013:

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[Read more…]

Cool Stuff Friday: MAD.

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MAD (taken from the Danish word for “food”) is a not-for-profit organization that works to expand knowledge of food to make every meal a better meal; not just at restaurants, but every meal cooked and served. Good cooking and a healthy environment can and should go hand-in-hand, and the quest for a better meal can leave the world a better place than we found it. MAD is committed to producing and sharing this knowledge and to taking promising ideas from theory to practice.

MAD is a great place to lose yourself for ages on end. Food, food, food, but not all the regular ways food is addressed. Here, there is the breathtaking culture of food, from all over the world, the history of food, the art of food, traditions of food, innovations and artistry of food. Any curiosity you may have about food, you can find satisfaction at MAD. I’ve been trying to catch up, reading at the site for the past month or so, and I’ve barely made a dent. Two articles in particular got my attention in recent days: Turning Trash Into Delicious Things: a Brief Guide by Arielle Johnson, and A People’s History of Carolina Rice, by Michael Twitty.

The first article grabbed my attention because it addresses the waste of craft brewers, and that particular waste happens in my household, as Rick is a home brewer:

On an artisanal-industrial scale, spent grains—the malted barley that is steeped in water to make beer—is a major source of waste for craft brewers, with (roughly) 8 kilos of leftover barley for every 50 liters of finished beer. It can be used as animal fodder, but you can go beyond that, since it also presents creative flavor opportunities.

That waste, it turns out, can be used to make koji, which in turn can be used to make a form of miso. Click on over to the article for details, and recipes! The article on Carolina rice was eye-opening, and details the history of this rice from 3500 B.C.E. to 2013. There’s personal history in this overview of one food:

1770s: My great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother is captured in a war in Sierra Leone and brought to Charleston, without a doubt to grow and mill rice on a Lowcountry plantation. She is a member of the Mende people, who would later lead the Amistad slave ship revolt in 1839.

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1835: My great-great-great grandmother, Hettie Esther Haynes, is born and is later sold out of South Carolina, away from her mother Nora, into the cotton country of Alabama during the largest forced migration in American history—the domestic slave trade. Thousands of Gullah-Geechee will know this fate as rice cultivation faces competition from other countries and slaveholders are forced to reduce the number of bondspeople.

Now I’m going to read about The Carbon Footprint of Eating Out, A War Zone Cuisine, and Culture of the Kitchen: Cooks Weigh In.

Have a wondrous wander through the fields of MAD, it’s a journey you won’t regret.

Art Under the Microscope: Threads.

Most people are familiar with my work, so will readily understand my attraction to this particular piece of art examination, a microscopic look at the Triumph of Bacchus tapestry.

Triumph of Bacchus, design overseen by Raphael, ca. 1518-19; design and cartoon by Giovanni da Udine. Brussels, workshop of Frans Geubels, ca 1560. Paris, Mobilier National, inv. GMTT 1/3. Image © Le.

Triumph of Bacchus, design overseen by Raphael, ca. 1518-19; design and cartoon by Giovanni da Udine. Brussels, workshop of Frans Geubels, ca 1560. Paris, Mobilier National, inv. GMTT 1/3. Image © Le.

 

This photomicrograph shows the warp and weft threads used to create a background detail in the Triumph of Bacchus tapestry.

This photomicrograph shows the warp and weft threads used to create a background detail in the Triumph of Bacchus tapestry.

 

The horizontal threads are the undyed wool warps that are the backbone of the underlying weave structure to the tapestry.

The horizontal threads are the undyed wool warps that are the backbone of the underlying weave structure to the tapestry.

 

The decorative vertical threads include both crimson colored silk wefts as well as precious metal weft threads.

The decorative vertical threads include both crimson colored silk wefts as well as precious metal weft threads.

 

The Metal threads are made of very thin strips of gilt silver wrapped around yellow dyed silk.

The Metal threads are made of very thin strips of gilt silver wrapped around yellow dyed silk.

How exactly was the gilding of tapestries done in the 16th century? These microscopic images reveal all.

These images show the warp and weft threads used to create a background detail in the Triumph of Bacchus tapestry recently exhibited in “Woven Gold: Tapestries of Louis XIV.”

Viewed from a distance (like when the tapestry is hanging high up on a wall), the combo of the crimson silk with the gold threads looks like a bright copper, and here we can see all the separate colors and textures that build up that look.

Detail from the Triumph of Bacchus Tapestry.

Detail from the Triumph of Bacchus Tapestry. It was woven with wool, silk and metal threads.

The Getty has a fascinating tumblr, Art Under the Microscope, examining all manner of art in microphotographs.