A very Henry Darger-ish story has begun to unfold in Detroit, USA—an asbestos inspector (what a thankless job THAT must be in Detroit) found several drawings in a house slated for demolition, and gave them to that city’s alt-weekly, the Metro Times.

Reader Joseph Goeddeke found these drawings in an abandoned Detroit house that he was inspecting for asbestos while working for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The house was scheduled to be demolished later that day, and Goeddeke (who says he’s “not an art guy” but thinks “they are great drawings”) decided to save the art and send it to us. We’re glad he did.

We don’t know anything about the artist other than that one of the pages is signed “Clifton Harvey” and dated “12/79.”

The Metro Times’ Lee DeVito has asked that anyone knowing who Clifton Harvey is or was contact the paper at arts@metrotimes.com.

The drawings are not entirely unlike editorial cartoons, some depicting Satan leading humans into hateful acts. Harvey seems to have had a very specific loathing for racism.
 

 

 
Some, unsurprisingly, depict eschatological themes, especially Satan’s ultimate demise.
 

 

Oh great and powerful Satan, King of all kings, the coming of the other Lord has drawn very near. Most of your people have gone into hiding and say they will not fight by your side against such a great and powerful force. More and more people on the Earth’s surface are starting to turn toward the Bible and worship this enemy. They say they can no longer fear a king who can take only the body, but the one who can take both body and sole great Lord.

Behold Satan, Lord of all evil, your last day has come. Death to you and all like you. No longer shall your wickedness be tolerated. I shall [indecipherable] you and yours from all the rest. As of this day never again will you bother anyone.

 
A great big, sloppy, wet Ave Satanas to Taylor Rick for this find.

 
I was going to post about these clever-as-hell weightlifting skateboards by Russian artist Meisha Petrick a few days ago, but there was too little information about them. There still isn’t, but from what I understand, they are being produced by Meisha and if you’re interested in ‘em, you can inquire about ordering one (or more) at hello@petrick.ru. I have no idea how much they’re selling for as no one has a listed price anywhere.

A strong board indeed. 

With thanks to Jeff Albers!

Miley Cyrus in “A Spanish Beauty,” by Henri-Guillaume Schlesinger
 
A French woman named Bénédicte Lacroix has a Tumblr going called “Voyage dans le temps” (Time Travel) in which she inserts photographs of 21st-century famous people into artistic masterpieces. We’ve all seen variations on this general idea, but I especially liked the execution here—not all of the paintings are so familiar, and in fact I would say that in every case, if you click through to the original painting (I’ve supplied the link at each title), you are guaranteed a glimpse of something sublime.

The Roger Federer one is especially clever.
 

Leonardo DiCaprio in “Self-Portrait,” by Vincent Van Gogh
 

Megan Fox in “The Girl With The Pearl Earring,” by Johannes Vermeer
 

Steve Jobs in “The Son of Man,” by René Magritte
 

Beyoncé in “The Necklace,” by Jean-François Portaels
 
More of these after the jump….....

 
I blogged about Natalie Sharp‘s AKA Lone Taxidermist‘s incredible face-painting skills last year when she tackled a slew of album covers painted on her own face. Well, she came through again this year with a new set of painted album cover faces. Dig ‘em.

I’m dying over the King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King face paint. It’s truly spectacular.

Talk Talk: The Party’s Over
 

The Velvet Underground & Nico: The Velvet Underground & Nico
 

Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel
 

Annette Peacock: I’m The One
 

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
 
See more over at the Quietus

STUDDED JACKET, 2014
 
Brooklyn-based artist Kelsey Henderson paints stunning portraits in oil, recently turning to punks and more explicitly counterculture fashion plates for her subjects. The louche bodies that illuminate her canvases sometimes pose coyly for observers, but some paintings feel more like amateur photography—perhaps impromptu snapshots from a punk show. Henderson sometimes even stages the images on mock-smut magazine covers, adding a cheeky layer of niche consumerism to the viewing. From her artist’s statement:

At first seemingly influenced by fashion photography and photorealism, Kelsey Henderson’s work is a brutally honest study in perception and attraction. Her painting style is comprised of seemingly invisible layers which connect to her subjects like skin. Lying at the heart of her work, the emphasis on the skin enables the artist to continue exploring the idea of the Platonic Crush, an attraction to beauty devoid of sex, ignoring gender and embracing physical and emotional flaws. Using a desaturated palette, these excruciatingly pale portraits become almost translucent; the artist’s perception on and through the subjects’ skin. Bruises, scars, veins and tendons shine through, not as imperfections, but emblems of beauty.

In art of the less “fine” variety, Henderson also designs and sells patches and pins of S and M and fetish imagery.
 

BLOODY NOSE, 2014
 

christian smoke, 2013
 

TEENAGER IN ACTION, 2014
 
More after the jump…

 
Those who know Sean Yseult are most likely to remember her as the woman who brought some seriously HUGE ROCK BASS to the transformative ‘80s/‘90s groove-metal band White Zombie. Since the end of that band in 1998, she’s played in other, less all-consuming outfits, and has returned to her originally intended trajectory as a designer and photographer. Like many, many memorable bands, White Zombie formed at an art school, specifically Parsons, where Yseult studied photography and graphics. Even as a full-time recording and touring musician, Yseult continued to shoot. Her documents of those years are collected in the book I’m In the Band, and since then she’s attracted praise for purveying gauzy, nostalgically-charged photos that express influences from Bellocq, Weimar erotica, the antiqued surfaces and grim moods of Joel-Peter Witkin, and the decadent, occultic history of her adopted hometown of New Orleans. By all means, have a look at it on her web site.

Recently, her work has taken an unexpected turn. Abandoning the dreamy atmospherics, Yseult has produced a visually livid and unsparing series that’s interesting for what it reveals rather than what it implies. These are huge prints, starkly lit and sharp as can be, an array of mystic still-lifes and elaborately staged tableaux vivants depicting the lavish gathering of a 19th Century secret society. A show of the work, Soirée D’Evolution, will open Saturday at the Scott Edwards Gallery in NOLA. The large size is understandable—one could return to these photos repeatedly and still keep finding new things stashed away in them, and there was just so much to unpack from the things that we decided it was best to just ask Yseult to walk us through a few of them.
 

 

My sister and I were in the Louvre, in the Dutch Masters wing. We got almost lost in there for about two hours, and at some point, she said to me “you know, for your next show, you have such an odd collection of things in your house, so many antiques and human skulls and strange things, you should just create a bunch of still lifes.” That was my original inspiration for the show, looking at these enormous paintings with all these garish things going on, and that was what I decided I should do, photo-realism but with actual photos [laughs]. I’d never done such detailed color photography before, nor had I ever gone so large. The thing that stays similar to the past work is thematically I’m always kind of obsessed with history and the macabre.

I started off with one still-life based on a kind of a Catholic reliquary and votive holder, decorated with human skulls, antique musical instruments, and candles. That was the first photo I took, it’s called “Opening Ceremony.” I ended up doing a lot of research on New Orleans and secret societies and the Krewes, these very high society people who created Mardi Gras and the parades here, around the 1850s. I ended up basing the whole show around 1873, because there’s an antique store around the corner from me where I bought this French banner dated 1873. It has musical instruments on it, and some information, which when I looked it up it led me to a story about the Wild Girl of Champagne, France. That was a feral girl found in the region of France where the flag was from, she’d been living alone in the woods for ten years. She’d escaped a ship that was raided by pirates, and when she was found, she’d been living off of killing animals and sucking their blood for nourishment, or sometimes catching fish and just eating them raw. So that was the second photo, a tableaux vivant of that. That’s her holding the club, and the guy on the other side represents the abbey in that town—when she was captured she was held in a castle next to that abbey.

 
More after the jump…

 
This HUGE needle-felted cat head was made out of wool by Housetu Sato and his students at the Japan School of Wool Art. It’s not exactly “hot off the presses,” but the more I saw it making the rounds on the Internet… the creepier it got for me. Every time I encountered it, I was even more disturbed. To add insult to injury, the cat is cross-eyed.

We try to avoid cat-related posts here on Dangerous Minds as the blogosphere is saturated with ‘em. But this one was just too… er, special to pass up!

Sadly (thankfully?) there are currently no plans to manufacture the cat head. I’m positive that will change the more these images get passed around.

The cat head will be on display at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum from April 18-23.

 

 

 
via Laughing Squid

Siouxsie Sioux doll by Refabrications
 
Somehow I found myself googling “Siouxsie Sioux dolls.” The best ones, IMO, are done by Alyissa Brown AKA Refabrications. I *think* you can purchase the dolls on her website.

I tried to find other Siouxsie dolls by different artists, but sadly the majority of them just ended up looking like Edward Scissorhands.

I couldn’t find the artist’s name for the amigurumi Siouxsie Sioux. So if anyone out there knows, tell me in the comments and I’ll update the post with proper credit and a link.

Siouxsie Sioux doll by Refabrications
 

Siouxsie Sioux doll by Refabrications
 

Siouxsie Sioux doll by Refabrications
 
More after the jump…
 

 
Pope of Trash John Waters and Divine (“the filthiest person alive”) couldn’t look anymore adorable as amigurumi by knitting maven Captain Howdee. I just want to squish the hell out of these dolls ‘cause they’re so damned cute.

These were posted on Captain Howdee’s Flicker page back in 2007. I not sure if they’re for sale, but oh my gawd do I wish they were! I’d like to see an Edith Massey amigurumi. Imagine what that would look like! Why not a David Lochary doll, too?

 
via Divine on Facebook

 
Photographer Sanna Charles has been capturing the wild joy of Slayer fans since 2003, and her new book, God Listens to Slayer, has such an enthusiastic, youthful feel about it—which is not as as counterintuitive as it may seem. For any other band of nearly 35 years, this would be a late start. For Slayer however, there is always a fresh crop of teens reconstituting their fanbase with fresh, pubescent faces. Sanna describes her first time watching the fans explode at a show:

The show had been put back by three hours, it was baking hot, and they were now playing in a smaller tent instead of an outdoor stage. The tent was rammed and people were in there waiting for pretty much three hours solid. That buildup, and then watching them play, was amazing. The other photographers left the pit after three songs but I just stayed because I was so mesmerized by the crowd.

The pure release of anger and aggression by the fans felt so free. Everyone was packed into the tent, kind of like kittens in a pet shop trying to get out. Afterward I got about three portraits of people leaving, just as an afterthought, but when I got them back I really fell in love with one of the photos.

Sanna’s photos are more than sympathetic to her subjects; they’re celebratory, with an eye for the evergreen, joyous revelry that is a Slayer show. At the same time, describing them as “kittens” feels about right—no amount of pentagrams can hide those cherub cheeks.
 

 

 
More Slayer fans after the jump…