The arresting artwork from a vintage package of Black Bat flashlight crackers made in Macau, China.
 
Aside from an annual 4th of July family event I am quite fond of attending (let’s drink together next year, Atlanta), I’m not huge into celebrating Independence Day. One of the reasons is as a pet owner and animal lover, I hate to see how dogs, cats, and other animals in the wild react to the sound of fireworks. Alternatively, I have zero sympathy for the parade of idiots who end up parting with their fingers or even an entire hand lighting off fireworks. Every year someone blows off bodyparts on the 4th of July—it’s a stone-cold fact. They also start fires and one set off by fireworks in September of 2017 burned 48,000 acres I have traversed through extensively in the majestic Columbia River Gorge. Sure, I’ll kick back and watch firework shows on the television because guess what? The other thing I hate is crowds—especially if the said crowd is A: drunk, and B: armed with matches and packages of firecrackers and cherry bombs. My holiday crankiness aside, as a lover of art, I can’t help but appreciate the vintage artwork used to adorn packages of fireworks. Whoever came up with the idea of using a werewolf to help sell fireworks is a damn genius as I’d buy a pack for this reason alone.

So in honor of Independence Day, let’s take a look at some old-school firecracker and firework packaging. Many are from Macau, a region of China located on the country’s south coast. During its heyday, the Taipa area of Macau was the largest producer of fireworks, employing more than one-third of Macau’s residents. In a single day, the factory was capable of turning out three million firecrackers. The Iec Long Firecracker Factory (established in 1926) still stands after closing its doors in 1984 in an effort to help to preserve the long history of firework manufacturing in Macau. In the latter part of the 80s, Macau looked once again to its history with fireworks and threw the first Macau International Fireworks Display Contest. The contest has since expanded to several days of firework displays in September and the first week of October. Anyway, enjoy the kooky photos below, get your pet some earplugs, and try not to shoot your fingers off this week!
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

Chicago’s 2012 fireworks demo, ‘A Butterfly for Pomona.’ Her latest, ‘A Butterfly for Brooklyn,’ was much larger.
 
Judy Chicago is the original feminist artist—in fact she actually coined the term “feminist artist.” Her most famous work, “The Dinner Party,” is a gigantic installation, a three-sided table setting for 39 women from history and mythology, ranging from Hypatia to Saint Bridget to Sacajawea. Each place-setting has a customized tribute, and many of the plates feature Chicago’s trademark “butterfly vagina” imagery—think less anatomical, more Freudian floral. It’s a groundbreaking piece, but despite my affection for all things vaginal, it never really spoke to me. Don’t get me wrong, I highly recommend a visit to Brooklyn Museum for a viewing. It’s a hugely ambitious installation, full of deliberate detail and it challenges me to really articulate my criticism. I guess it just ain’t my cup of vagina.

Her latest piece, “A Butterfly for Brooklyn,” was much more to my liking, boom-loving rube that I am. To commemorate her 75th birthday, Chicago took over Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last Saturday with a fireworks display of the vulval variety. Far from a mere Fourth of July cliché, the 20 minute display of punany pyrotechnics came in ebbs and flows, metaphorically mirroring the life cycle of a butterfly. Chicago has done fireworks before, but not nearly to this scale and though the demonstration certainly kept in her milieu, this much more… accessible rendition of her famous butterflies brought feminist art to a crowd that might not all be so amenable to walking around a giant room full of vagina plates.

Plus, explosions! The people’s art!
 

 
It’s that time of the year again, when you can’t tell if you should duck for cover when you hear a loud “BOOM”—or if it’s just someone with fireworks (it could be either in our neighborhood).

Somehow this guy mounted a camera in the eye of the storm, so to speak, of exploding fireworks.

 
(via Cynical-C)