Thursday, September 16, 2010

Artful Enterprise

Everybody passes the time somehow. People play video games and take up knitting. People surf the Web, play football and climb rock walls.
Some people do things the rest of us don’t. These are inspiring things. These are horrifying things. These are utterly ridiculous things. Read on to see what people do when they aren’t on Facebook.

The color of progress

Street art isn’t simply for hoodlums with paper phobias and perma-stiff middle fingers. If Michelangelo taught us anything, it’s that architecture makes a good canvas.

Theater company Amadeus and other groups initiated a graffiti project in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil September 2. It extends more than 37,000 square feet and is the world’s largest graffiti display as of that date. It arcs along a stretch of highway trafficked by more than 100,000 people. The artwork advocates youth rights. The project’s goals are to enliven that section of the highway, attract tourists and break graffiti’s criminal stereotype.

The project took 10 days to complete. Many artists from Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina pooled their talents for the effort. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva inaugurated the artwork.

This street-side tapestry may gain ground for human rights. It may bring economic and artistic growth to the Foz do Iguaçu community. It may also free six-year-old Michelangelos to create Crayola ceilings in their Sistine Bedrooms.

That’s a child right I can support.

Tree carving is last century

If buildings don’t sound like appealing mediums, try the human body. Except trade the paintbrush or air nozzle for a scalpel. If the neighborhood medical supply truck is late, try a cauterizing tool. Or a searing wedge of iron. Then commence the process of scarification.

People have formally mutilated themselves for millennia. Like its food, entertainment and entire way of life, America appropriated this cultural idea. Sharon Guynup of National Geographic said scarification began in San Francisco in the 1980s. Victoria Pitts, professor of sociology at the City University of New York, said scarification gained widespread popularity in the U.S. and other countries in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

The process is simple. A stencil on the skin creates the shape. Then the skin is cut or seared away to reach appropriate depth and width.

Ryan Ouellette, a body-modification artist in New Hampshire, said the procedure can be finished in minutes.

“… I've also done pieces that took eight hours over two days,” Ouellette said.

The motives for scarring the body run wide. Some do it to separate themselves from mainstream society. Others do it to tap into deeper spirituality. A few might be nutcases with basement shrines to Hannibal Lecter.
Different strokes, I guess.

Social change

One doesn’t need a scalpel to appreciate the body’s artistic qualities. Randon Beasley of Fayetteville, Arkansas has a pretty sweet belly button.

Beasley recently achieved the summit of belly button athleticism. He broke his own Universal Record Database world record for quarters stuffed inside. The previous record was 20 quarters. Beasley managed 30 this time.

The amazing thing isn’t the number of coins. It’s that he had the ambition to pound his past efforts into old laundry lint. It’s that sort of drive the world needs. People should spend less time competing with each other and more time bettering themselves.

Not everyone can make it in the Olympics, after all.

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