Recently in Art Category

by Tom Pappalardo. I love it. I just love names and nicknames for pets, and Flossie is such a great dog name -- full of personality, cute, quaint, sweet, easy for the dog to learn and understand (sticking to one or two syllables is usually best), and doesn't sound like anything else that might confuse her (a dog named "Seth" might become confused with the "sit" command; "Noah" might get confused with "No!" etc.).

But speaking of pet names, I have to mention this: I've looked at a lot of pet name generators and pet name lists, and recently came upon a fairly unique one. Pet-o-licious Namerator is a World of Warcraft pet name generator to help gamers to name their WoW game pets.

You can find names both silly and serious (serious in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game sense, at any rate) for cats, dogs, bats, wolves, moths, wasps, crabs, "spirit beasts," "warp stalkers," "ravagers," and more. Need a silly name for a spider? The generator suggests Lollipop, Bluestar, Scuttlebutt, Waterspout, Tickle, Spinnerz, Nuzzle, and Icanhazfly. My next pet spiders are def being named Scuttlebutt and Tickle.

But I also found a great name for a cat here:  Luxray! Oh yeah. Love it. 50 Nicknames for My Imaginary Cat Luxray: Lux, Luxie, DeLux, Luxomatic, Luxolicious, Raygun, RayRay, FayWray, SprayRay, RuxLay... never mind me, I'll be at this for a while...

I'm feeling amused by a site I stumbled across this weekend (that ended up smeared all over the bottom of my shoe). The Sprinkle Brigade was apparently a group of activists/jokers/artists (take your pick or mix and match) who decided to bring attention to the problem of dog owners who don't pick up their pals' poops -- by decorating said sidewalk surprises in all manner of outlandish ways, with sprinkles (hence the name) of glitter, googly eyes, toy figures, or whatever other odd adornments their twisted little imaginations could muster.

Here's "Law and Order," for example:


The poop crew seems to be no longer active, but they had a good run. Over two or three years they managed to be featured in gallery exhibits, publish a book, travel the world by invitation, and appear on several documentaries and news clips. You can view a gallery of selected poopy images or watch some of their videos on their site.

I love this photo art by H. Koppdelaney, currently my desktop wallpaper (click the image to see at actual size!). Here's another gorgeous photo with a dog by the same photographer. And more! (The weeing pup makes an appearance in several :P)

If you're having post- (or 'tween-?) holiday doldrums at all, I have something right here that's sure to pick you up ... or possibly give you some rather strange dreams. I first came across mention of the amazing animal novelty photographer Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1953) on the great site Shorpy, in this post. Frees photographed all sorts of animals, but especially kittens and puppies for postcards, calendars, books, and ads for several decades in the early 1900s. The elaborate costumed vignettes he fashioned and photographed with live pets fairly boggles the mind, especially when one remembers that he had no recourse to modern tricks, effects, and techniques. According to this article, the animal costumes were sewn by his mother, and many of his photos featured his own cats, Rags and Fluff, as well as the various pets of neighbors. This old Life Magazine feature on Frees mentions that "Mr. Frees takes very few pig pictures because, when he poses a pig, all the pig does is to shut his eyes and squeal."

Said Frees about his own work, "These unusual photographs of real animals were made possible only by patient, unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times," and the introduction to his book "The Animal Mother Goose," notifies us that, "Every subject in them was a living, healthy, active animal brought into position by patient kindness. No drugged animals much less any that was artificial or stuffed, could give the results shown in this book." You can find more of Frees' photographs at Wikimedia Commons, on Flickr, and in various places on the web via Google's image search. There's also a book, Cats, Dogs & Other Rabbits: The Extraordinary World of Harry Whittier Frees that was published in 2006.

For your groovy seasonal satisfaction, a selection of snowdogs from around the web:

I love this this little widdler ... unfortunately, I can't find any info about the artist/photographer. I found it on a photo aggregation site that collects photos and doesn't give credits -- which I'm not going to link to, because it includes images that are not safe for work. If anyone knows who did this, please let me know!

I love the tongue; looks just like my dog! Found here, along with a doggy Christmas carol. :)

I was amused to find a photo set on Flickr taken by Cooper, an American Shorthair cat in Seattle, with a lightweight "kittycam" attached to his collar. Cute! There are four pages of great shots, and some are really quite lovely and artistic. This one's certainly better than most of my Christmas shots! Cooper's catcam camera came from Mr. Lee, and it seems that this furry fotographer has become quite the celebrity, with his own blog, his own serious gallery show (see video below), and his own book that just came out in October (a portion of the proceeds benefit PAWS, Progressive Welfare Animal Society).

After so much success, it seems Cooper might want to take a catnap, relax, and luxuriate in his fame and fortune a bit -- but apparently not. No, it seems that Cooper has said, "Next, I want to Direct!" You can view Cooper's video catcam masterpieces here, here and here. Hey, Hollywood, get his Oscar ready!  >^.^<

ARTWORK BY MICHEL KECK (click to see larger)

I love modern art, and I especially love collage, and I really, really love dogs, so I'm kind of crazy about Michel Keck's Modern Dog Art canine collages. Her first experiment with this form was a portrait of her German Shepherd, Moose (shown above), when she was asked by PETA to donate art for a fundraiser. She followed up with a collage portrait of her beloved Greyhound, which led to more dog collage art... quite a few more. (This last link is a great way to view the work, because it features large images as well as zooming for details, which is nice.) Art prints of Michel's dog collages are available at pricing from $35 up to $549, and some originals are also available ($2,500 - $3,500), with a percentage of each sale going to either PETA or American Greyhound. She also accepts commissions for original mixed media pet collages. I'm currently kind of in love with Cisco the Chihuahua, myself.

Michel's work has definitely reawakened my own interest in collage and inspired me to create something similar for our dog, Sky... which poses a bit of a challenge, since she's all white. :)  If I do eventually manage to create something decent, I'll post an image here! Also, while I'm yammering on about pets and collage (and things I'd love to try), have a look at this:

ARTWORK BY ELIZABETH ABERNATHY

Elizabeth Abernathy has created several wonderful cat-themed "tiny collage playing card books" using actual playing cards and recycled paper, and has a tutorial on her blog that teaches you how to create the basic playing card booklet. Very clever!