Photographer Sandro Miller uses actor John Malkovich as his model to recreate iconic photographs. The collection is titled Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters. To see more visit the photographer’s website www.sandrofilm.com

Like me, Jane C Thom is an art teacher and fiber artist. Unlike me she makes amazing embroidered portraits. I especially like the ones done in heavier crewel yarn. See more on Twitter @janecthom and on Instagram jaygel_threads.

There are no “Howard Brothers” This is all the work of one man who spent over 50 years making an exacting 3/4″ to 1 foot scale replica of the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus c. 1920s when they were still under the big top. When Howard Tibbals started building this in the late 1950s Ringling Brothers would not let him use their name. In 2004 the Ringling museum in Sarasota, FL purpose built a exhibition hall just to house it.

It is impossible to photograph in a way that does it justice. The 42,000 items include all the show elements, but also all the behind the scenes trappings that illustrate the challenge of moving and feeding the hundreds of people and animals and thousands of pieces of equipment from town to town.

A young friend of mine has been using her quarantine time to create atmospheric drama-laden self portraits in all corners of her home. Both her mother and I compared her work to Cindy Sherman. Decades before the cell phone and its associated filters Sherman made a career of making her own image the center of her interaction with the world. If you are sick of being stuck at home, wishing you could “get away from it all”, getting away from yourself might be a well-spent afternoon.

I had already been working on the Academy Award Action figures for a decade before I learned this story. It really helped bolster my confidence that my miniatures were not altogether silly. If doll-sized fashion was good enough for Hermes, Balmain and Balenciaga then its OK for me to play too.

The collection now lives at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington. Someday I will make the pilgrimage to see them. The photos in the slide show below are all from various internet sites, but there is a beautiful catalog published by the museum that has wonderful pictures along with the whole fascinating story.

www.maryhillmuseum.org

“Backyard” is pretty amazing too, but it didn’t carry the shock for me that the first work did. Her non-representative work since this is delicious, but not for this blog.

Japanese Artist Creates Unbelievable Balloon Sculptures That Resemble Real Animals And Insects. But the Japanese artist Masayoshi Matsumoto is proving us all wrong. This guy has been turning balloons into intricate sculptures for a decade now, proving such an unusual medium can create wonders. Every piece, which takes two to six hours to make, is made entirely from balloons with no markers, stickers or tapes allowed in the game.

https://www.boredpanda.com/balloon-masayoshi-matsumoto-japan/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

A friend brought me to a Duane Hanson exhibition at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA. I didn’t know anything about the artist. It was remarkable, and helped develop my current interest in reproduction as an art form. I had already started working on the Academy Award Action Figures by that time, but I hadn’t yet thought through exactly what I was doing or what was motivating me. Seeing that show really helped the wheels keep truing for me.

This slide show contains work from many different series, not just the exhibition I saw in 2006, but the text below is from the Michener Show.

Duane Hanson: Real Life

September 16, 2006 – January 14, 2007 Wachovia Gallery

Duane Hanson (1925-1996) was one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century, with numerous major museum exhibitions including solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Musee des Beaux Arts de Montreal. He became famous in the 1960s and ’70s for his lifelike sculptures of everyday people that were cast from live models, then painted in great detail and finished with hair, clothing, and such ordinary objects as cups, purses, and chairs.

His work is often mistakenly thought of as simply a form of extreme realism, but in fact it grew out of a highly developed social conscience; his early sculptures included victims of violence and war, and eventually he expanded his subjects to include workers, athletes, children, and other commonplace figures. ‘I’m not duplicating life, I’m making a statement about human values,’ he said. ‘I show the empty-headedness, the fatigue, the aging, the frustration. These people can’t keep up with the competition. They’re left out, psychologically handicapped.’

This photo shoot has gotten a lot of coverage. Read the original stories here:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a22320/auto-mechanics-renaissance-paintings/

https://www.boredpanda.com/renaissance-mechanics-photo-portraits-freddy-fabris/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

The important thing to realize about this series is that Eijkelboom takes each collection of photos on the same day in the same place. He just places himself in a public area, picks the look of the day and shoots everyone that has chosen the same outfit.

https://timeline.com/hans-eijkelboom-photo-fashion-75ca9911518c

I LOVE this guy. Not only is he a fabulous forger, but he spent his entire career posing as a philanthropist giving his fake museums all over the world. This film is fascinating not only because of his skill, but for seeing the way so many institutions accepted his donations at face value because they believed they were getting something for nothing. The whole story – creation, deception, reception, detection and finally celebration supports the thesis of my ongoing “Academy Award Action Figures” project; that people are so invested in valuing what they perceive to be valued by others, that they can be easily led to fawn over fakery.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/art-craft-film-review-702147