k e r m i n t //

hi i'm ess. [ art | arch | pink | etc ]

[silverscreen-andfashion]

AVA GARDNER wraps herself in a mink fur stole for a studio glamour portrait, 1952

[silverscreen-andfashion]

JAYNE MANSFIELD as Jerri Jordan

The Girl Can't Help It (1956)

[lilbowchic]

Audrey Hepburn photographed by Cecil Beaton 1963

[mtaartsdesign]

Avenue M Station // Q subway train Rita MacDonald: Hare Apparent, 2011 Glass mosaic and tile

Artist Rita MacDonald works with everyday patterns in much of her work, manipulating and enlarging the shapes to fit architectural spaces in her installations and painstakingly rendering each line in her prints. Often her patterns are based upon architectural grids, fabrics from old clothes, well-worn curtains, etc.

In her two-station project on the Q subway train in Brooklyn, Hare Apparent and Bird Laid Bare, she puts these practices to good use, creating a trompe l'oiel effect in which the tile wall is folded back like a curtain to reveal a vintage wallpaper-like pattern behind. The fabricator, Miotto Mosaics, faced a challenging technical puzzle of trimming rectangular tiles to resemble an unfurling form so that it seem as though an invisible hand has peeled back a layer of the wall.

The creature featured amidst the floral pattern is a large friendly rabbit, or hare. The friendly and furry animal is a subtle symbol of transportation in residential neighborhoods and where many trips are just a short hop away (pun intended!).

Avenue M features a rabbit design with rabbits leaping from the wall and hopping along the station stairs. Avenue J depicts birds who fan out from the pattered wall and seem to fly throughout the station. The creatures appear to have escaped from the old-fashioned wall pattern of the past to join us here in the present day station. In an inspired flight of fancy, the animals travel to the neighboring stations: a bird is seen mixing it up with the rabbits at Avenue M and at Avenue J, a rabbit hops over to visit with the birds.

Check out this great Arts Alive! video to meet Rita MacDonald and see the art during installation. Happy weekend! Click on an image above to see the hi-res photo set.

[mtaartsdesign]

What better way to celebrate National Cat Day than with Andrea Dezsö’s seasonally charming orange cat, part of “Community Garden” (2006) expertly fabricated by Miotto Mosaic Art Studios and installed at the Bedford Park Boulevard-Lehman College station in the Bronx. Dezsö’s whimsical work is also currently on exhibit at Virginia MOCA through December 31!

[mtaartsdesign]

Eamon Ore-Giron’s expansive mosaic project, “People’s Instinctive Travels: Homage to The Tribe” at the Bay Parkway (N) station in Brooklyn, visualizes the world as abstract forms and shapes and their interplay as a reflection of the ways in which people of different communities – such as those surrounding the Bay Pkwy station – negotiate their relationships with each other and new places, a process of reinvention and creation. Mosaic fabricator Mosaicos Venezianos de México translated Ore-Giron’s six oil on linen paintings into twenty-four glass mosaic panels. The northbound platform mosaics mimic the movement of gears and the mechanics of the human-made world, conjuring feelings of New York’s ecstatic urban environment. People’s Instinctive Travels: Homage to The Tribe originates from Eamon Ore-Giron’s “certain nostalgia for global modernism,” wherein “public works meant to create a kind of civic mindedness and unity.” It is Ore-Giron’s hope that these mosaics will offer subway riders a space to see the world anew through the shapes, forms, colors, and movements of these artworks.

[mtaartsdesign]

When pigs fly…in #subwayart. Happy Year of the Pig! #ChineseNewYear

Image: Detail from Peter Sis’ “Happy City” (2004) at 86th Street (4,5,6) station.

[mtaartsdesign]

Whether you’re dressing for a chilly fall day or dressing up for Halloween, Keith Godard’s “Memories of Twenty-Third Street” (2002) at the 23rd Street (R/W) station in Manhattan has all of the hats you’ll need.

[mtaartsdesign]

Roy Lichtenstein’s "Times Square Mural" (2002) at Times Sq-42 St (1,2,3,N,Q,R,W,S) station captures the spirit of the subway, its linear movement and dynamic energy. With a nod to both the past and the future, its central image is a futuristic bullet-shaped car zipping through an underground station. And not just any station: Times Square, in the heart of New York City.

The work references Lichtenstein’s earlier works and appropriations of other artists’ and designers’ work, such as the old Buck Rogers comic strips. It is a signature work that honors its creator and the place in which it is located.

Lichtenstein’s work is now printed on five US Postal Service Forever stamps, joining the ranks of some of the greatest American artists, including fellow #MTAarts artist Romare Bearden.

Photos: MTA A&D/Rob Wilson

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Sylva Koscina in So Sweet, So Dead (1972)

[oldshowbiz]

[angelicdewdrop]

[midnightmurdershow]

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Directed by Wes Craven

[1950sdarling-deactivated2022051]

[retropopcult]

Ray Milland and Jimmy Stewart

[retropopcult]

Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory scientists Fred Whipple and J.Allen Hynek plotting the orbit of Sputnik on a giant globe at MIT, 1957  (Photograph by Dmitri Kessel)

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

Here’s looking at you: over 1,000 vintage “faces in things”.

[pastpatterns]

La coquette de 1935