4/04/2010
6/27/2008
Dr. Seuss Birdhouses
The birdhouses are made out of cedar wood and painted with enamel paint and the poles are made out of galvanized steel electrical conduit pipe and painted with enamel paint. The flower is made out of the same materials.
4/27/2008
Five not 5
2/23/2008
Couch made from 6,400 welded Nickels!
1/12/2008
Jewelry - Custom Designed by Betty McKim
Betty McKim is a fantastic jewelry designer, and I'm not just saying that because she's my wife, I swear! Betty has been creating awesome Jewelry for over 30 years and it shows in her design sensibility and her craftsmanship.
Here is Betty's profile:
Education and Experience -
Graduated with M.F.A. degree in Metals/Jewelry - East Carolina University
Attended selective Jewelry Workshops at Penland, Wild Acres and Revere Academy
Teaches and Directs the Jewelry Program at Pullen Arts Center in Raleigh, NC
Has her work featured -
Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor, NC
Rebus Gallery, Raleigh, N.C.
Grovewood Gallery, Grove Park Inn, Ashville, NC
Lark Books Series - 500 Earrings
Participates in -
The Larkspur Garden Show, Raleigh, NC
Boylan Art Walk, Raleigh, NC
Art In The Park, Blowing Rock, NC
Carolina Designer Craftsmen Show, Exhibitor, Raleigh, NC 2007
Visit Betty's Website at: http://www.bettymckimjewelry.com
1/07/2008
Vacation - Mixed Media Collage
12/26/2007
Diamond Encrusted Human Skull - Is it Art?
Article By
By WILLIAM SHAW
Published: June 3, 2007
It’s particularly fitting that the title of artist Damien Hirst’s new headline-grabbing work came from an exasperated exclamation of his mother’s: “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?
The answer, pictured here, is a life-size platinum skull set with 8,601 high-quality diamonds. If, as expected, it sells for around $100 million this month, it will become the single most expensive piece of contemporary art ever created. Or the most outrageous piece of bling.
(Photo: Courtesy Science Ltd. and Jay Jopling/White Cube - London)
At home in Devon, Hirst insists it’s absolutely the former. “I was very worried for a while, because if it looked like bling — tacky, garish and over the top — we would have failed. But I’m very pleased with the end result. I think it’s ethereal and timeless.”
For Hirst, famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, all his art is about death. This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”
The dazzle of the diamonds might outshine any meaning Hirst attaches to it, and that could be a problem. Its value as jewelry alone is preposterous. Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.
“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”
The piece is not exactly the stuff of public art, but Hirst says he hopes that an institution like the British Museum might put it on display for a while before it disappears into a vault, never to be seen again. Whether the piece is seen or not, Hirst will likely go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most extravagant artist.
“I hadn’t thought about that!” he suddenly snorts with laughter. “I deal with that with all my work. The markup on paint and canvas is a hell of a lot more than on this diamond piece.”