We always get a kick out of San Francisco artist Jason Mercier’s witty portraits of pop culture icons made out of junk, garbage and recycled materials. His creations are often the very definition of “form is an extension of content.” In this case, Mercier may be making a statement regarding the current state of politics in America - the USA is being run by jerks and meatheads and we’re all headed for the slaughterhouse. Stampede, anyone?

In this instructive video, Mercier shows us the process of turning dead flesh into art.
 

 
What you’re looking at is not a photograph, but a portrait done with ballpoint pens on paper by artist Samuel Silva. It took approximately 30 hours to finish and lost about 20% of quality during scanning.

Apparently Silva is being bombarded by hundreds of questions concerning this piece. There’s a nice FAQ section on the artist’s page that answers the most frequently asked questions.

Click here to see a larger image of “Redhead Girl.”

Via High Definite

 
An elderly woman (who goes unnamed) with “good intentions” decided a 19th-century Spanish fresco on a church titled “Ecce Homo” by Elias Garcia Martinez needed a lil’ facelift.

“The restoration work was completed without permission” writes The Telegraph.

Employees at the Centro went to check on the mural at the church of Santuario de Misericodia only to find it drastically altered.

What we are left with is something that now resembles André the Giant.
 

 
With thanks to Seán Sansom!

 
This painting was created a few years before Thomas Kinkade’s passing by artist Ron Lemen. And yes, as one would presume, it’s an intentional  knock on Kinkade’s work.

Lemen’s statement about the painting:

“My idea was changing the landscape of art, wiping away the old habits and bringing in something new. Actually, I took an old and wiped it away, the landscape filled with happy little cottages and such…and such ick…our world is oversaturated with this stuff, can we change that please?”

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Godzilla Candelabra

Via Neatorama and I09

The Illuminator projecting on the Russian Consulate in NYC last night

This came prior to Judge Marina Syrova’s court handing down a two year prison sentence today when the feminist punk band was found guilty of “hooliganism driven by religious hatred.” 

Our imprisonment has served as a clear and obvious sign that the whole country is being robbed of freedom. And this threat of annihilating the freeing, emancipatory forces in Russia – that’s what causes me to be enraged. Seeing the large in the small, the trend in the sign, the common in the individual.

Second-Wave Feminists said the personal is political. That’s how it is. The Pussy Riot case has shown how the individual troubles of three people facing charges of hooliganism can give life to a political movement. A single case of repression and persecution against those who had the courage to Speak in an authoritarian country has shaken the world: its activists, punks, pop stars, and government members, its comedians and ecologists, its feminists and its masculinists, its Islamic theologians, and those Christians who are praying for Pussy Riot.

The personal has become political. The Pussy Riot case has brought together as one forces so multidirectional, I still have trouble believing this isn’t a dream. The impossible is happening in contemporary Russian politics: a demanding, persistent, powerful and consistent impact of society on its government.

I am thankful to everyone who has said “Free Pussy Riot!” Right now, all of us are participating a large and important political Event that the Putin regime is having an ever more difficult time controlling. Whatever the upcoming verdict for Pussy Riot, we – and you – are already winning. Because we have learned to rage, and to speak politically.

Pussy Riot is happy that we have been able to spur a truly collective action, and that your political passion has proven to be so strong, it has cleared the barriers of language, culture, surroundings, and economic and political status. Kant would say that he sees no other reason for this Miracle besides man’s moral beginning. Thank you for this Miracle

Defense lawyers for Pussy Riot said they would appeal the verdict, although they are pessimistic about it being overturned.

“Under no circumstances will the girls ask for a pardon (from Putin),” said attorney Mark Feygin. “They will not beg and humiliate themselves before such a bastard.”

Pussy Riot—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30—have been dubbed prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.

Hat tip to Exile on Moan Street

 
Dean Cavanagh is that very rare breed – a maverick whose talents have been successfully proven over several different disciplines.

He is an award-winning artist; a screenwriter and playwright, writing the highly acclaimed Wedding Belles with Irvine Welsh and the forth-coming movie version of the hit on-line series Svengali. He has also been a journalist, with bylines in i-D, NME, Sabotage Times and the Guardian. Dean is also a documentary-maker, a film and TV producer and a musician, with along list of collaborators, including Robert Anton Wilson.

Now the multi-talented Cavanagh has written and directed (with his son Josh), his first movie - the much anticipated Kubricks.

In this exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds, Dean talks about the ideas and creative processes behind Kubricks. How he collaborated with Alan McGee, and developed the film with his son Josh, discussing his thoughts on cinema and synchronicity, and explaining howKubricks came to be filmed over 5 days, with a talented cast this summer.

Dean Cavanagh: ‘Stanley Kubrick has always fascinated me in that he was clearly trying to convey messages through symbols, codes and puzzles in his films.

‘For me his genius was in the way he presented the ‘regular’ audience with a clear narrative structure and for those who wanted to look deeper he constructed hidden layers of subjectivity. He was clearly a magician working with big budgets in such an idiosyncratic way that it’s hard not to be intrigued by him and his oeuvre.

‘I’ve been following Kubrick researchers like Rob Ager and Jay Weidner for the last few years and I really wanted to dramatize a story based around Kubrick as an inspirational enigma. There is a wealth of material about the esoteric side of Kubrick on the net and Ager and Weidner are great places to start the journey from.’

DM: How did you progress towards making ‘Kubricks’?

Dean Cavanagh: ‘I’ve been writing screenplays and theatre on my own and also with Irvine Welsh since the 1990’s. Up until last year, I never really had any desire to direct a film but Alan McGee encouraged me to have a go. He offered to produce a film if I would write and direct with the emphasis being on us having total control. This was music to my ears after having mainly dealt with people who are always looking for reasons not to make a film.  Alan’s credo was “just do it and let’s see what happens”. There’s a great freedom in working with him.’
 
Read more of Dean Cavanagh’s exclusive interview, plus free ‘Kubricks’ soundtrack download, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Flavorwire crafted this video montage of some of the trippiest movies ever made:

Films (in order of appearance): The Trip (1967, Roger Corman), Head (1968, Bob Rafelson), Glaze of Cathexis (1990, Stan Brakhage), Allegro Non Troppo (1976, Bruno Bozzetto), Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone), Fantasia (1940, Armstrong, Algar, et. al), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick), Viva La Muerte (1971, Fernando Arrabal), The Holy Mountain (1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky), Performance (1970, Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg), Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg), Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas), Belle De Jour (1967, Luis Buñuel), Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch), El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky), Tetsouro, the Iron Man (1989, Shin’ya Tsukamoto), Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch), Dead Alive (1992, Peter Jackson), Waking Life (2001, Richard Linklater), Anchorman (2004, Adam McKay), Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch), Un Chien Andalou (1929, Luis Buñuel), Requiem for a Dream (2000, Darren Aronofsky), Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch), Pi (1998, Darren Aronofsky), Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper), The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel Coen), Naked Lunch (1991, David Cronenberg), Skidoo (1968, Otto Preminger), Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze).

What no Sweet Movie? (Runs away).
 

 
In an echo of his past work, Sex Pistols artist Jamie Reid razzes repressive Russian President Vladimir Putin with this great image in support of Pussy Riot. (In 1989, Reid produced a similar image with Virgin founder Richard Branson in a balaclava for a memorable cover of the legendary British punkzine Vague).

Three members of Pussy Riot—Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30—have been jailed since March when they performed their an anti-Putin “punk prayer” during a hit-n-run performance art protest inside a Moscow cathedral.

The three young women have been charged with acts of “religious hatred” and hooliganism. Russian prosecutors are asking for a three-year sentence. A verdict in their case is due on Friday, when supporters of Pussy Riot are calling for a day of worldwide protest.

Via Exile on Moan Street

Sticker art by Dimitri Drjuchin
 
The story of how Dangerous Minds pal Greg Barris was recently arrested for stickering in Brooklyn and thrown into jail is told in installment #3 of Scott Moran’s “Modern Comedian” webseries.
 

 
Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry is a good, solid, thoroughly entertaining documentary on the legendary tattoo artist and American icon Norman Collins aka Sailor Jerry.

Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry is a feature length documentary exploring the roots of American tattooing through the life of its most iconoclastic figure, Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins. Considered by many the foremost tattoo artist of all time, Collins is the father of modern day tattooing, whose uncompromising lifestyle and larger than life persona made him an American legend. Through rare interviews, photographs and hours of archival footage, Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry: The Life and Times of Norman Keith Collins, explores the past, present and future of the global tattooing phenomenon.”

The most influential American tattoo artist to have ever lived and the man who inspired my daughter to get one of his designs tattooed from her ankle to her thigh, Sailor Jerry.