Fun optical illusion from 2017
Town in Iceland Paints 3D Zebra Crosswalk To Slow Down Speeding Cars, Stella, Pored Panda, October 25, 2017
Art for the Birds…
…with a sense of humor
Apocalyptic Birdhouses Touch Down in NYC, Elaine Velie, Hyperallergic.com, November 26, 2023
Artist Paul Gagner’s sculptural avian dwellings offer an absurdist take on the core structures of small-town Americana.
Near Highland Park, a few square blocks of Queens’s Ridgewood neighborhood jut southward into Bushwick, Brooklyn. The industrial area boasts clubs, recording studios, a slew of warehouses, and now, 10 carefully arranged birdhouses in artist Paul Gagner’s newly opened exhibition Calamityville. They’re displayed in a small outdoor exhibition space co-run by Lower Manhattan’s Chart Gallery and the artist-run Marvin Gardens Gallery next door.
Gagner’s tiny homes, arranged on moveable iron pipes, depict the core structures of small-town Americana. They also each depict a disaster: Flames ravage a fire department, a UFO beams up a church, an asteroid crashes into a city hall, and a sea monster wraps around a movie theater.
Gagner has long made art that ventures into the humorous and absurd, but he started making birdhouses in 2020 after he bought a home upstate with his wife. He had lived in the city for over 20 years and found himself inside a cozy new house immersed in nature at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There was no one else looking at my yard at the time, so I thought it would be funny to make art for birds,” Gagner said… Read the whole article here.
Happy Holidaze!
November 2023 Film Festival Awards for Joey Skaggs Oral History Films
Thank you Baltimore Next Media (BNM) Web Fest and The NewsFest International Film & Writers Festival for honoring films #6, #7, & #8 of the “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond” Oral History Series:
Joey Skaggs: Metamorphosis, Cockroach Miracle Cure:
WINNER Best Documentary
WINNER Best Documentary Writer (Joey)
WINNER Best Host/Narrator (Joey)
and, cheeky as it is,
Joey Skaggs: Celebrity Sperm Bank:
HONORABLE MENTION: Best Guest Stars Richard Sher, Oprah Winfrey from “People Are Talking”, 1981
Joey Skaggs: WALK RIGHT!:
1st PLACE WINNER Best Human Interest
and
Joey Skaggs: Celebrity Sperm Bank:
GRAND WINNER Best Short Doc <15 Min.
The Earlville Opera House, Still Standing After All These Years
In 1971, Joey Skaggs saved a derelict opera house that was about to be torn down in Earlville New York. Today, 50+ years later, it is a thriving cultural centerpiece for Central New York. WBNG Channel 12 News covers its remarkable journey.
Earlville Opera House brings arts and culture to Chenango County for past 50 years, by Autriya Maneshni, WBNG Channel 12 News, November 20, 2023
The Earlville Opera House brings about 15 performers to Chenango County every year
EARLVILLE, NY (WBNG) — The tale of the Earlville Opera House is one of perseverance. It’s about how a group of volunteers came together to save an abandoned building from the wrecking ball.
In 1887, the opera house was housed in an old Baptist church. That structure burned down. After a second structure was built, half of that building also burned down a couple of years after it was built. The third reconstructed opera house was beloved in the community and this one felt indestructible. However, the building closed its doors in the 1950s due to the evolution of technology.
In 1971, the opera house was threatened to be demolished. With this threat looming on the horizon, it felt as though the opera house would disappear from Earlville for good. A young artist and social activist named Joey Skaggs decided this wasn’t going to happen. “If I hadn’t come along and decided to save it, it wouldn’t be there. It would be a parking lot,” said Skaggs. Read the rest of the article and watch the video here.