Life Artists 2: How to Turn Your Town into a Surreal Wonderland

That first post on Guerrilla Art-in-the-Round (as Lisa dubbed it) was so popular that I've been collecting links ever since for a second go-round.

*Cartoonify your life with a Sharpie and some pingpong balls, courtesy of Dyers.org.  Want to see this Muppetification on a grand scale? Check out FilthyLuker's DeviantArt gallery.

*Zoomdoggle strikes again with their Fun-O-Meter, a spiritual successor to the late, lamented Gumball Poetry. For fifty cents, you get a fun idea, a toy, and a quarter. Can't beat that in this town!

*The Toy Society started as an Australian street art project, but now "spreads the love throughout the streets of the world. Nothing to it really just a bunch of handmade toys looking for a nice home. "

*Got a steady hand and some chalk? Create your own choose-your-own adventure story on the streets of your neighborhood, just like the Mission Stencil Story

*LexofGreen is the one of the heir apparents of the glamourbombing community. Her fae (read: devious and quirky) sense of humor shines through her work. Seen here are her watchful trees, but I also love the havoc she wreaks with balloons and toy dinosaurs

*Fellow NYC denizens: you are lucky enough to have three guerilla art-ing collectives in your midst. Improv Everywhere is the one with the elaborate pranks, Flux Factory does the strange and thoughtful installations, and Newmindspace is all about having childlike fun on a giant scale.

All fired up, but want something to keep you company when curling up in bed after a long day of chalking? Here are a few guerilla-arty titles

13 Little Blue Envelopes is too much fun to give a lot of the plot away, but when its heroine discovers a series of letters from her beloved late aunt, she sets off on a whirlwind tour of Europe to do good in others' lives and make the world a more whimsical place--as well experience some crazy adventures of her own! It's very Amelie-esque for the teen set, and I love it.

 

 

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is smart, funny, and cleverly full of inspiration for girls displeased with the social status quo. When Frankie's barred from her boarding school's boys-only secret society, she takes inspiration from the Cacophony Society and turns the Basset Hounds onto their heads, raising awareness about the inequalities present on their prestigious campus. Sound boring? Not when the Library Lady, a hound made of produce, and a kidnapped guppy make their appearance!

 

                                                                                                                                   Love, Stargirl is the superior follow-up to the infamous title about a magical girl who transforms a school, then leaves under mysterious circumstances after human nature kicks in. The sequel proves that Stargirl is no Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but a very human teen with hope and heart and plans to bring her community together in unique ways

 

 

 

The Queen Geek Social Club is rather on the light side for LSL,  but its heroines--who start a social group for misfits and plot screwball schemes with the help of a fussy but kind-hearted house robot--are charming enough to warrant  a check-out from your local library. I could do without Shelby's love interest in this volume and the sequels--he's a whiny, possessive drip--but the musical numbers, Feed the Models campaign, and ping-pong proms will keep you entertained.

Life Artists Unite: Those Who Make the World More Whimsical/Surreal/Wondrous

INVITATION

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

~Shel Silverstein

Imagine this: you're walking down the street, and the trash can is looking at you.

Or you're dragging your hand along a brick wall and discover a secret city between the cracks.

Or you're at a cafe, and a girl pulls off her hat, removes a handful of treasures from her bag, and starts playing a game with her tablemates.

Art isn't just paint on a canvas or clay on a pottery wheel. Anything that makes you stop and think and see the world in a slightly tilted way? That's art too. In my travels around the net, I've discovered quite a few artists who are making the places they live a bit more surreal, whimsical, and wondrous.

Every day I see such lovely things.

ColorMeKatie documents tiny adventures in NYC--sticking hearts and eyes and butterflies in unexpected places, dying food unexpected colors, dancing with strangers and photographing missions with Improv Everywhere. Her photos have a wonderful sense of color and composition, and every post makes me want to go out and have an adventure, too. The best part of ColorMeKatie is the integration of art and everyday life--so inspiring!

Lea Redmond’s other creative projects range from socially-engaged conceptual artwork, to projects with youth, to small performances reminiscent of magic tricks. In a nutshell, she loves to make things. Things that inspire. Things that tell stories. Things that spark critical thinking. Things that question. Things that make us wonder. Things that envision and create a new world.

Recipe dice and The World's Smallest Postal Service. Poetry ribbons and reader-named crayon colors. Matchbox theaters, creative wedding consultations, and earrings for spontaneous seeding. Lea Redmond proves that you can be whimsical and environmentally conscious with her quirky, earth-friendly projects, crafts, and performances. When I first discovered this site, I gasped in delight and devoured every word. Find treasures in her Curiosity Shoppe, read about her Art Projects, and keep up with her latest works on the Leafcutter Designs blog. The World's Smallest Postal Service was recently featured on BoingBoing.

When Leonardo's da Vinci's pupils were stuck for inspiration he advised them to make a study of a crack in the wall, and it's true that when you spend time engaging your imagination with such a crack, all sorts of possibilities and new worlds may begin to appear...

Helen Nodding's website is called Stories from Space, but her work is thoroughly terrestrial.  She creates castles for spiders, fairy-lit caverns for squirrel gods, a bestiary's worth of mythical bugs, and messages in moss.

ABC Adventures began one dreadfully boring night in Tempe, Arizona. Elizabeth Adventure and Brian Adventure were sitting at her house, determined to have an exciting, adventure-filled night but were running dry on ideas. We wished we’d had a book that was full of awesome things to do almost anywhere, any time, any day of the week. Since no such book existed as far as we knew, we decided it was imperative to create such a thing and share it with the rest of the people in the world who would most certainly, at some point, be as bored as we were that night. While the physical book is still our goal, we’ve chosen to publish our adventures as we go on this blog.

When you've been all shook up from reading arty blogs and want to go out into the world and do something, ABC Adventures is your guidebook to cheap fun: bubbles, moustache-wearing, tree-climbing and secret-note-leaving. They love reader participation, so send in your own adventures!

plain and simple, the mission is: to spread big or small bits of love and things that make you smile and laugh, little bits of unexpected happiness and affirmation. we believe in feeling good and spreading it; we want everyone everywhere to know that somebody somewhere loves you. because you are amazing in all your strange and wonderful ways.

here you will find lists on how to love yourself more, beautiful things, ways to share your beauty & knowledge & love. you will also find stories of people who have discovered YOU ARE REMARKABLE through the tangible guerrilla love sharing.

Does what it says on the tin. While the sites above aim to spread art, this one looks to spread love--which becomes a kind of art in itself. I love the List of Ways to Heal a Broken Heart, secret gifts, and love letters to & from.

Want to join them?

1. NamelessleTTer is a collaborative art project where people from all horizons leave personalized bookmarks in books with the goal of seeing other readers discover them. Library-based arting? Awesome.

2. Cakespy created faux cupcakes with inspiring messages and left them for the world at large. “The ultimate goal was a momentary escape from everyday worries, and a small reminder that yes, life can be strange, but sometimes sweet.”

3. Zoomdoggle's on a mission to send out 1,000 love letters.

4. Magnets + plastic army men, dinosaurs, and aliens +magnet friendly surface = Vertical Wars! Guttermonkey on Livejournal tireless documented his own tiny plastic battles: Post 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. (Noting that I don't necessarily endorse the views of the first website, but I do like reading posts about weird art and ghost stories.)

5. Are you a fiber artist, or just a chick (or dude!) with sticks? Join the Global Guerilla Knit Up Challenge!

6. If it wasn't for Keri Smith (and Jerry Spinelli--Stargirl, naturally), I wouldn't know about the crazy world of guerilla art. Read her post on How to Be a Guerilla Artist as a primer, and this interview at Art News for in-depth exploration of her work and philosophy.

Maybe Art Does Save: The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

Here's a confession: I'm a child of the Eighties. Secret clubs, rebellion against the status quo, and well-dressed protagonists are an easy way into my heart.

The Plain Janes, written by Cecil Castellucci and illustrated by Jim Rugg, has all the tropes of your typical teenage novel at first glance. Main Jane is exiled to suburbia and vows to start over as a new person in this strange land. She falls head over heels in love, fights with her parents, flaunts authority and gets away with it, coming out stronger and a bit wiser in the end.

Trust me, though: it's better than that. Main Jane forgoes the overtures from the right crowd to befriend the freaks: shy blonde Brain Jane, athletic Polly Jane with a magnificent Frida Kahlo eyebrow, and Theatre Jane, with a flair for dramatics and a knack for seeing material in everything. While they are initially skeptical of the friendly girl in gogo boots, she appeals to each in a unique way with her plan for brightening the relentless mundanity of their little town. Her solution? Art attacks--random acts of creativity, such as knitting hats for fire hydrants, turning Main Street into a map of the solar system, and making wish trees. Fans of Amelie, Grapefruit, or glamour bombing will find familiar grounds in this graphic novel. No mere simple acts of beauty, P.L.A.I.N. (People Loving Art in Neighborhoods) use these art attacks to draw attention to injustices against young people in the town, among other issues. It's a big concept for a young adult graphic novel, and I applaud Cecil and Jim for making it accessible, entertaining, and inspiring for the younger set.

One of Cecil Castellucci's greatest draws is her characterization. She has a gift for rounding out a character in just a few lines of dialogue. The Janes are smart, dedicated, and interestingly flawed. Each brings something different to their girl art gang (don't you just love that? I want to be in a girl art gang.), and they work together beautifully. The Janes are a joy to read, especially when carrying out their art attacks, and also in a touching subplot involved Main Jane and a young artist in a coma. Jim Rugg's designs are appealing. Many reviewers cite Daniel Clowes as a parallel, but I see more Sarah Dyer in his clean lines and expressive faces. My only wishes? A list of resources and full-color art throughout, though I can see how the former could be a liability.

It's a fact of life. Hearts are always hurting. And yet they still keep pumping. The best way to fix a broken heart is to do something beautiful. Something P.L.A.I.N. I knew just what to do.

Maybe art can save. Maybe it can save me.

The main Minx website has a short (Flash-enabled) preview of this and other titles.
The jots of a nerdy girl is Cecil Castellucci's website.
The Guerilla Girls fight sexism in art with tactics something like the Janes', but on a much grander scale. Itty Bitty Titty Committee is a movie inspired by the Guerilla Girls, and I'm still kicking myself for missing out when it was screening in NYC.
Oh--and the sequel, Janes in Love, will be out on September 2nd of this year.