[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geek Art, Graffiti & Drawing. ]

Cutesy, feel-good figurines they’re not: one little girl has an eye gouged out, a boy is crucified on the golden McDonalds arches, and an anthropomorphized rabbit carries the severed head of a child. But artist Carole Epp isn’t looking to provide you with pretty little things to place on your mantel. Her fragile and diminutive works deal with issues like neuroses, stress and grief.

A Collection of Small Miseries presents such serious subjects in a disarmingly innocent package – that is, until you get close enough to see the details. Working with both slip-casting and hand-building techniques, Epp creates memorable and sometimes shocking little tableaus, nearly always starring children regardless of the subject matter.

“Through bringing the overwhelming and devastating nature of war, terrorism, poverty, starvation, genetic technology, and environmental degradation back to a dialogue about the individual consumer, I felt that I could offer more positive outlooks for pro-active change in regards to the issues,” says the artist.

“I found that I could use the expectations of the medium and the collectible object as an accessible entry point into the work, allowing for a non-confrontational or disconcerting perspective on the subject matter. I wanted to both entice and repel; and inspire a desire to consume alongside an awareness of the consequences of that consumption.”

[ WebUrbanist - By Steph in Gadgets & Geek Art, Graffiti & Drawing. ]

[ By Steph in Travel & Places, Urban & Street Art, Urban Images. ]

What connection does a discarded sweater on a subway have with the city in which it’s found? For Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen, the used clothing of a city’s inhabitants take shape as three-dimensional textile models of their places of origin, sprouting organically from suitcases. The series ‘Portable Cities’ attempts to imbue cities with humanity and vitality in an age when globalization has made them nearly identical.

Old work shirts, pantyhose, dresses, coats and other clothing items worn by everyday urban residents transform into tiny factories, skyscrapers, roadways and parks under Yin’s skillful hands, creating likenesses of cities such as Seattle, Berlin, Vancouver and Yin’s own hometown of Beijing.

These ‘Portable Cities’ represent not just the increasing homogeneity of the world, but the increasing ease with which we are able to move from one city to the next.

“When I began this series, I was constantly traveling,” says the artist. “I saw the baggage conveyor at the baggage claim every time I traveled. Many people waited there. I was one of them. Since I always traveled with a huge suitcase, it felt like I was traveling with my home.”

“People in our contemporary setting have moved from residing in a static environment to becoming souls in a constantly shifting transience. The suitcase becomes the life support container of modern living…” she told Walker Art. “The holder of the continuous construction of a human entity.”

[ WebUrbanist - By Steph in Travel & Places, Urban & Street Art, Urban Images. ]

[ By Marc in Urban & Street Art, Urban Images. ]

As someone who has never said anything to a hair stylist beyond “Make it shorter,” I have a true admiration for people who step outside of the box and get truly creative with their hair. It’s rare to see someone nowadays with a magnificent mohawk, and though coloring hair is fairly common, the extent to which these hair artisans manipulate their appearance is amazing. Here are some of the wildest haircuts I’ve seen:

Sports Fanatics

(Images via dynamosoccer, chicagonow, buzzfeed, waycoolpics, nydailynews)

Sports fanatics are always finding new ways to declare their support for their favorite team, and though this usually involves branded merchandise or ridiculous makeup, some fans like to use every tool at their disposal.

Creative Shapes

(Images via paranoidpear, creativepics)

Why stop at creepy faces when you can use your hair to display any image you want? I certainly hope the guy on the left realizes his hair stylist did some creative trimming, and kudos to the guy on the right for adding some excitement to his hairstyle.

Mohawks

(Images via about, btnhboard, menhair, buzzle, nofxofficialwebsite)

Mohawks are past their heyday, but it’s still easy to spot some who still sport the most badass haircut around. It would be hard to miss some of these hardcore mohawk supporters, as they have some of the most intense examples I’ve seen.

Two-Faced

(Images via crazyfunnypictures, btnhboard, bizarrocomic, video2funny, everythingweird, videolife)

It’s not uncommon to see little kids fooling around and pretending to have a face on the back of their head, aided with a backwards facing hat or glasses, but these people take it to the next level. I assume most people who do this are just looking for a temporary, hilarious outcome, but it looks to me like some of them have it as a permanent style choice.

Buzz Cuts

(Images via hairextensionspictures, modernsalon, fashionindie, picsdigger, mlgpro, totallylookslike)

A few stylists will add a small flourish when they’re buzzing a client’s head, but these stylists have created works of art. Geeks will be most fond of the Superman and Gears of War emblems.

[ WebUrbanist - By Marc in Urban & Street Art, Urban Images. ]

[ By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Technology & Futurism. ] [ WebUrbanist - By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Technology & Futurism. ]

[ By Steph in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Technology & Futurism. ]

Many an architect has dreamed up visionary plans for city centers, but few have actually seen their designs come to fruition in a real live urban setting. And while many such unbuilt concepts are technically viable, others are wacky, fanciful or downright bizarre. These 13 retro urban design ideas for the future, from perfectly symmetrical egalitarian communities to the egotistical demands of a deranged dictator, will probably never become reality – and in many cases, we’re better off that way.

Gillette’s Metropolis

(images via: io9)

Before his name was inextricably connected to safety razors, King Camp Gillette had a utopian vision for the future which revolved around a waterfall-powered tiered city he dubbed ‘Metropolis’. All residents of this imagined city would have access to the same amenities including rooftop gardens in the perfectly round, precisely divided multi-functional buildings in which they would live, work, play and eat. Like many of Gillette’s ideas, the design never went anywhere, but it’s notably similar to many very modern 21st-century concepts for sustainable urban centers.

Broadacre City

(images via: mediaarchitecture.at)

Like Gillette’s Metropolis, Broadacre City was meant to be an urban utopia. But when renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright imagined the picture-perfect society of tomorrow, he saw not highly compact and efficient high-rises, but sprawling self-sustainable homesteads. Originally conceived in 1932, Broadacre City puts each homeowner in a self-built single-family home on an entire acre of land brimming with gardens. Complete with multiple cars per family, it would almost be an accurate prediction of future suburbia if not for the airplane in every front yard.

Atomurbia

(image via: io9)

If giving each and every family in America an acre of land seems impossible, imagine what life would be like if ‘Atomurbia’ had come to pass. This concept, published in a 1947 issue of Life magazine, detailed how to atomic bomb-proof America by spreading the population across the land in a geometric grid and relocating all industry into underground structures so that any single bomb would do a minimum of damage. The whole plan would have cost a measly 5 trillion dollars in today’s currency, and the authors – atomic scientists from Chicago – thought it could be pulled off within a decade.

Hotel Attraction

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Antoni Gaudi’s architecture defines Barcelona, Spain even today with its fluid curves, reflective surfaces and organic shapes – but it would stick out like a sore thumb in the comparatively staid cityscape of Manhattan. Perhaps that’s what he had in mind for ‘Hotel Attraction’, commissioned in 1908 and also known as the Grand Hotel. The rounded, spaceship-like form would have risen in the exact spot where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were later built, but the idea was ultimately abandoned. Gaudi’s unrealized design was actually considered as a possibility for the Ground Zero memorial after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Welthauptstadt

(images via: wikimedia commons)

We all know that Adolf Hitler had many an ambitious plan that (thankfully) never came to pass – but few are aware of ‘Welthauptstadt’ (German for ‘World Capital’), the Fuhrer’s design for a new Berlin to be constructed after his expected victory in World War II. Taking elements from other empires around the world, Hitler imagined a broad ‘Avenue of Victory’ down the center as well as his very own ‘Arch of Triumph’. A test structure constructed in 1938 to determine whether Berlin’s marshy ground could have even held up such heavy Romanesque architecture (verdict: nope) still stands today.

Palace of Soviets

(image via: adlhochcreative)

The Palace of Soviets would have been the world’s tallest structure at 100 meters high and crowned with a brightly lit hammer and sickle as a monument to Lenin on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior, if only the Nazis hadn’t invaded in 1941, putting a stop to construction. Its steel frame was disassembled for use in fortifications and bridges, and its foundations served as the world’s largest open-air swimming pool for a while before 1995 when the whole thing was filled in so that the cathedral could be rebuilt.

Ville Contemporaine

(images via: tommatthew)

The architect known as Le Corbusier was an essential figure in the development of what we now know as modern architecture, and his many theoretical urban design projects aimed to make life better for residents of cramped cities. Displeased with the chaos of big cities, Le Corbusier designed ‘Ville Contemporaine’ as an orderly home to three million people where housing, industry and recreation all occupied distinct areas connected by roads that emphasized the use of personal vehicles for transportation.

Seward’s Success

(images via: matthewspencer)

If it was Seward’s Folly to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire in the first place, perhaps Seward’s Success – a huge climate-controlled, glass-enclosed city for 40,000 people – could have made up for it. Or not. Proposed in 1968 and nixed in 1972, this unbuilt community was dreamed up after the discovery of oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska when developers imagined droves of people coming to the area. The crowning jewel of the perpetually 68-degree dome would have been a 20-story Alaskan Petroleum Center, surrounded by housing, offices, retail space and an indoor sports arena.

Triton City

(images via: a place to stand)

If not for a certain tell-tale 1960s aesthetic, Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Triton City’ could easily fit among today’s designs for floating eco-friendly cities. The futurist, architect and inventor was ahead of his time as usual when he imagined this tetrahedronal metropolis for Tokyo Bay, a seastead for up to 6,000 residents. Fuller wrote about the possibility of desalinating and recirculating seawater “in many useful and non-polluting ways” and using materials from obsolete buildings on land, which were hardly popular ideas at the time.

Future New York, “The City of Skyscrapers”

(images via: io9)

By 1925, many of New York City’s skyscrapers were already present, but futurists of the time envisioned not only a great deal more but a sort of aerial civilization complete with elevated train platforms and perhaps a rather unsafe number of aircraft flying around all at once.

New York City’s Dream Airport

(image via: ptak science books)

All the airplanes in that 1925 postcard would definitely require a monumental airport in New York City, and what better location than right smack in midtown Manhattan? This concept  for “New York City’s Dream Airport” featured an astonishingly large – and some say ugly – runway platform. But for all of the prime real estate that this monstrosity would have devoured, it seems as if it could only handle a handful of planes at a time with absolutely zero  margin of error, sending errant planes straight into Central Park or the East River.

Slumless, Smokeless Cities

(image via: bigthink.com)

How do you build a city so egalitarian that slums are eliminated entirely, and nobody ever has to breathe in pollution? Sir Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city movement, believed that a careful layout with six satellite garden cities connected via canals to a densely populated central city would do the trick. Thoughtfully, the design included specially designated spaces for “Eplileptic Farms”, “Homes for Waifs”, “Homes for Inebriates” and an insane asylum.

Boozetown

(images via: modern drunkard magazine)

“Just imagine a resort entirely centered on the culture of alcohol. A boozer’s paradise built expressly to facilitate drinking and the good times that naturally follow. Where the bars, clubs and liquor stores never close.” Mel Johnson’s ‘Boozetown’ was an entirely sincere proposal with street names like “Gin Lane” and “Bourbon Boulevard” that would have begun as a resort town in Middle America and eventually expanded into a full-sized adults-only city with permanent housing and its own suburbs. After many obsessed years of struggling for financing, Johnson gave up on his dream in 1960 and died in a mental hospital in 1962.

[ WebUrbanist - By Steph in Architecture & Design, History & Factoids, Technology & Futurism. ]

[ By Steve in Graffiti & Drawing, Travel & Places, Urban & Street Art. ]

The “Gum Wall” takes the concept of sticktoitiveness to a new level – actually, 15 feet above Post Alley in Seattle‘s famous Pike Place Market. The wall’s owners no longer bother scraping away the gooey graffiti, no doubt causing those who “chews” to add a wad to what’s been called one of the world’s germiest tourist attractions to drool with anticipation.

(images via: Rebecca Ellison Photography and Oddity Central)

Got the gumption to check out a little chicle culture? Gum is all you need, and the culture (of the microbial kind) looks after itself. We’re talking about the Gum Wall, of course, the only Seattle attraction guaranteed to keep you sleepless – especially if you’re from Singapore.

(images via: TravelPod, The Examiner and Seattle Daily Photo)

The Gum Wall runs for about 50 feet along Post Alley, where paying customers to the Market Theater in Pike Place Market would wait in line for the next show to begin. Evidently the wait was too long for some theater-goers – long enough, at least, that their chewing gum lost its flavor. Lacking a handy bedpost (as in the classic tune by Lonnie Donegan popularized on the Doctor Demento radio show) to stick it on, antsy chewers chose the next best thing… well, the NEXT thing, which happened to be the brick wall bordering Post Alley.

(images via: Zooomr, Jdong and Seattlest)

At first (around 1993), gum-stickers used their chicle chaws to affix coins to the wall but, times being tough and all, eventually the coin part lost favor as fast as gum loses its flavor – coins stayed in pockets while gum stayed on the wall.

(image via: Dutchgum)

The same goes for other objects fastened to the wall using gum as a sort of Mac-Tac: postcards, written messages, buttons and business cards, for example. Paper doesn’t last long out in the open, though, and with the passage of time the gum remains while more ephemeral materials decay.

(images via: Hippoo, SodaHead, Red Box Pictures and Kristie Serra Photography Blog)

Gum itself is stretched, molded and arranged to form a variety of miniature self-contained artworks, names and symbols. These features utilize the intrinsic properties of chewing gum: soft and malleable when freshly chewed; tough and colorfast when dried.

(images via: Jasontopia and Kitsap Scouts)

The owner of the building (Unexpected Productions’ Seattle Theatresports) was less than impressed by what they saw as a rapidly expanding gum-bomination and hired crews to scrape the wall clean at least twice (and you think your summer job is lousy) but gave up in 1998 when officials at Pike Place Market noticed that people were, often as not, lining up to see the Gum Wall instead of the current theatrical production. Things took off from there: in some places the gummy deposits are several inches thick. Ick!

(images via: Dipity, Clayton Hauck and Amazing)

Mention has been made of the “gross factor” of the wall, including CNN who in 2009 lumped the Gum Wall in with their list of the 5 germiest tourist attractions. While undeniably gross to some – the “distinct fruity aroma” CNN describes surely doesn’t help – it’s debatable whether pathogenic bacteria native to human mouths can survive for long after being stuck on a brick wall.

(image via: Kimberly Kay Photography)

Also, gum stuck on the Gum Wall STAYS on the Gum Wall. People aren’t working some bizarre gum-trading scheme, nor are they kissing Ireland’s Blarney Stone (also on CNN’s list), which receives around 400,000 visitors annually (and usually, orally).

(images via: Seattle Daily Photo and GeorgesSeurat.org)

But back to the Gum Wall, or “Wall of Gum” as some refer to it. From afar, the multicolored blobs of solidified Trident, Wrigley’s, Bazooka and more blend into a rainbow tableau that blurs the lines of the geometrically placed brickwork.

(images via: Minortough87)

It’s as if 19th century Pointillist master Georges Seurat decided to do an abstract version of “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, compete with smell-o-vision. Most of you undoubtedly know of that painting from the classic museum scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, from which the above stills were captured. You can watch the entire museum scene here:

Ferris Bueller\’s Day Off – Museum Scene , via Minortough87

(images via: MYNorthwest and KOMO News)

Icky yes, sticky even more so, the Gum Wall has achieved an odd sort of fame that perhaps appropriately has spread virally thanks to the Internet and netizens’ fascination with all things strange and unusual. According to Market Theater Managing Director Jay Hitts, “Every time I walk out into the alley there’s lots of people getting their pictures taken in front of it, asking questions about it. It has become quite an attraction.” A bonus for Hitts and the Market Theater is there’s probably a lot less gum stuck under the theater’s seats.

(images via: Seattle Wedding Photographers)

The Gum Wall has even been selected by newlyweds as a backdrop for wedding photos – the thought possibly being that like the gum on the wall, these new married couples will stick together come rain or shine.

(images via: New York Times and Daily Mail UK)

Speaking of which, the Gum Wall serves as a test case for the deterioration (or not) of used chewing gum left exposed to the elements over a long period of time. While seemingly frivolous, such information is of great value to municipal budget planners who devote appreciable annual sums to the cleaning and removal of dropped or otherwise discarded chewing gum.

(image via: Oddity Central)

By all appearances, the gum is holding up quite well. Rain or freezing temperatures have little or no effect on the clumps. Hot weather and summer sun DO leave their marks, however: with the assistance of gravity, gum stuck to overhanging ledges tends to droop and sag over time.

(images via: Ethic Soup and Atlas Obscura)

The effect resembles stalactites that grow down from the roofs of caves and natural caverns.

(images via: JafaBrit’s Art, K.M.M. and Fastbird232)

The Gum Wall’s emergence as a icon of chronic yet spontaneous urban graffiti has exerted an attraction to other street artists who seek an association between their efforts and the Gum Wall. The Pike Place Market’s “hands off” policy also acts as an encouragement – at least, it doesn’t discourage – those who work in mediums other than gum to add a little color and variety to the Gum Wall, especially at its fringes where the gum is less obtrusive.

(images via: Seattle Times and Brandon Camp)

The mainstream media has also noted the existence of the Gum Wall, one example being the use of the location in the otherwise unremarkable 2009 Jennifer Aniston film Love Happens. One scene features Aniston and co-star Aaron Eckart on a walking date, strolling from the Gum Wall to take in other Seattle alternative hotspots such as the Fremont Troll and the grave of Bruce Lee. Here’s the video trailer for Love Happens, though don’t blink at around the 2-minute mark or you’ll miss the Gum Wall:

\’Love Happens\’ Trailer HD, via Hollywoodstreams

(images via: Rsyms, TripCart and Rick Kobylinski)

Seattle’s Gum Wall isn’t the only example of this fragrant genre of urban art, much to the chagrin of those who consider these displays dirty, unsightly, unhealthy or just plain ugly. A rival exists several hundred miles down the coast: Bubblegum Alley in downtown San Luis Obispo, California. Bubblegum Alley boasts an older origin, estimated to be sometime in the mid-1950s, and it’s also double-sided. Which gum wall is best? That’s up to the individual to chews. Choose, that is.

(image via: Golmangoli)

The Gum Wall, or something like it, is what you get when large-scale urban art germinates (pun intended) from some tiny, individual action performed without any concept, plan or idea. Who was the first bored theater-goer to take out their frustrations – and their gum – back in the early ’90s? Unlike the gum firmly stuck to Seattle’s wonderful Wall of Gum, that fact has fallen through the pages of art history.

[ WebUrbanist - By Steve in Graffiti & Drawing, Travel & Places, Urban & Street Art. ]