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At the booth of Pan American Art Gallery in Dallas were some Silver Clouds by William Cannings, clearly based on the ones Andy Warhol made in 1966. Instead of being filled with helium, Cannings’ clouds are made of metal and hang on wires. Gallery director Cris Worley explained that Cannings, an Englishman who now lives in Lubbock, makes the things out of "inflated aluminum" -- welding together sheets of metal, heating the resulting object in a kiln and then inflating it. The clouds are $750 each.
After learning of HUD's request in the early 1970s, Thomas Konen, an alumnus of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, informed the school and wrote a proposal for the project with Dr. Daniel Savitsky, professor emeritus of ocean engineering.
"[HUD] wanted to limit it to a university rather than contract it out to some company," said Savitsky, who accredits much of the planning and success of the "Big John" project to Konen, who has since passed away.
Over the five-year operation, the 44 fully functional toilets [four on each floor] were flushed in cycles by a computer system in order to determine the effect that the different combinations would have on the centralized drainage system.
"We would sometimes flush them all at once," recalls Savitsky. "We called it the 'Royal Flush.' "
the nyt discovers rat rods
a while back i heard someone compare the younger rockabilly scene to renaissance fair drag. i have to agree that the whole fantasy lifestyle concept thing is pretty silly. they also missed the point that barn paint (the rusty deterioriated paint condition that the host car was found in) is the real deal and that matt black primer is a distant second in paint choices.
hat tip to adman
HOPE, Ark. (AP) -- Nearly 10,000 emergency housing trailers that were intended to be sent to the Gulf Coast to help Hurricane Katrina victims have been freed up for other uses.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency parked the trailers at Hope Municipal Airport in the months following the hurricane. The agency came under criticism when the trailers sat empty.
FEMA officials said that regulations against placing the homes in flood plains prevented their use on the Gulf Coast.
On Friday, Congress approved a homeland security spending bill that included a provision allowing FEMA to sell or donate the trailers to municipalities, nonprofit groups or American Indian tribes.
Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said he would prefer that the homes had gone to hurricane victims as originally intended, but selling or donating them to cities or community groups was better than letting them sit unused.
''Allowing the homes to sit and deteriorate at the airport is an abuse of taxpayer funding and should not be an option,'' Pryor said in a statement.
Pryor and Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., sponsored the measures in their respective chambers before the provision went to a conference committee. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., added the option to convey the trailers to Indian tribes to house the homeless.
''I am proud that the 9,778 fully furnished manufactured homes sitting in Hope, Arkansas, may finally be put to good use,'' Ross said. ''These are the kind of commonsense solutions the American taxpayers expect and deserve.''
FEMA was directed to work with the Department of Interior to transfer the trailers to tribes, depending on need.
Indian housing has been a problem for decades. According to a 2003 survey, an estimated 200,000 housing units are needed immediately in Indian country and approximately 90,000 Indian families are homeless or ''under-housed.''
The Homeland Security Department's inspector general has said that U.S. taxpayers could be stuck with a maintenance bill of nearly $47 million a year for thousands of trailers that sit parked at sites around the country.
the boxing mirror
john zorn: genius grant
its in alphabetical order so youll have to scroll (but you knew that). the summer of the first year i moved to new york city (82?) i saw zorn perform several times. he was using (playing) various duck-calls blown in to a shallow bowl of water seated at a card table. GENIUS!! seriously.
the next year we started an east village gallery at 104 e10th st. i comissioned a show called "works in concrete" that was devoted to visual writing or concrete poetry work on paper. it included a whole bunch of people related to the local avant garde film scene. some nyu film students we knew took classes with abigail child whos extended crowd included word and concrete poets henry hill, chas burnstein, etc. also zorn, who was a fave for film soundtrack purposes. we included a bunch of his xerox street advert show flyers done in the ransom note cut and paste stye. Genius!