The painter of this sign for the Kebab Centre, Camden Passage, London, was not concerned with rendering a realistic gyros but rather embellishing it with grillwork-style details. Unique among the 500-plus images in The Gyros Project.
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Bizarre Bazaars: Yet More Crazy Store Names
One more installment (for now) from my backlog of crazy store names. Find more than 500 other great names at the main Bizarre Bazaars hall of fame. Also: The Angry Chair hair salon, Newington, Connecticut Babies and Brats, Pawling, NY Bad Design, Switzerland Cafe Bong, Clark Street Card ‘N All, Closter, NJ Dead People’s Things, Denver, Colorado Heal N Cure, Northbrook, Illinois Here We Grow garden supplies, Hadley, Mass. Last Resort RV Park and Campground, Nashville, Indiana No Pork, Brooklyn, NY Stuff-It Storage, Hadley, Mass.
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Out of the Way Folk Art Fence
This pique assiette folk-art fence in Chicago’s wonderful Bowmanville neighborhood appears to date to 1973. It fronts a nondescript house on a nondescript, low-traffic street. Very few people driving by on the nearest thoroughfare are likely to recognize that they just passed an important folk-art site.
Continue readingReview: The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside
The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside by Ryann Ford My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a clever concept, with great photos and beautiful landscapes for a wonderful book. Highway rest areas are, for the later part of the 20th Century, what diners and motels were for the middle of it. They are (and were) easy to take for granted until they start disappearing — which is what Ryann Ford noticed and led her to this project. Getting nostalgic about rest areas takes some getting used to, but the ways she frames them in the
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Bizarre Bazaars: More Crazy Store Names
A second installment from my backlog of interestingly named businesses. More bizarre bazaars to come soon. And 500 other greats names at the main Bizarre Bazaars hall of fame. Go to Bizarre Bazaars main page for 500-plus great names.
Continue readingBizarre Bazaars: New Crazy Store Names
Here’s the first installment from my backlog of interestingly named businesses. More to come soon. Go to Bizarre Bazaars main page.
Continue readingReviews: Unpacking Dubuffet’s Legacy
From Art Brut to Art without Boundaries: A Century of Fascination through the Eyes of Hans Prinzhorn, Jean Dubuffet and Harald Szeemann, by Carine Fol. Skira, Milan, 192 pages, 80 color illustrations, 2015. ISBN: 978-8-8572-2748-1. Paperback, $45 Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet, by Valérie Rousseau with a foreword by Anne-Imelda Radice and contributions from Jean Dubuffet, Sarah Lombardi, Kent Minturn and Jill Shaw. American Folk Art Museum, New York, 248 pages, 142 illustrations, 2016. ISBN: 978-0-9121-6126-6. Paperback, $45 Jean Dubuffet – inventor of art brut, important painter, master collector and connoisseur, exploiter, radical, crank. For obvious reasons
Continue readingLakeside Carvings Uncovered
Ten years of lakeshore projects in Chicago have destroyed scores of vernacular stone carvings, but the most recent project has uncovered some fantastic examples. These are installed on the stretch of new lakeshore at Fullerton Avenue. (See my collection of more than a hundred other lakeshore carvings here.) For those who follow such things, a closer look at this “Easter Island” carving revealed a signature and date: RS -05- (see the bottom of the photo). It is very cool that someone was making carvings of this complexity in 2005 — certainly the most recent I’ve seen. Where this rock originally
Continue readingSome Milwaukee Signs
A brief swing through Milwaukee is enough to turn up some fine examples of roadside art.
Continue readingFrom the corporate slogan department
“Providing solutions for your specialty needs” It’s a medical equipment rental company, by the way.
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