In landmark art preservation news: 

It’s hard to miss the 70-foot-tall blue saxophone as you drive down Richmond Avenue [in Houston].

Its name is Smokesax, and it has been at that location on 6025 Richmond for the past 20 years. But Wednesday, the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, a local folk art organization [mentioned previously here], announced it is going to acquire the oversize horn, which is made out of car parts, oil field pipes and a surfboard, as well as an entire Volkswagen Beetle that forms the U-joint at its base.

The big brass was built by legendary Texas artist Bob Wade as a special installation for Billy Blues Bar & Grill. It was fully restored three years ago, and the current property owners, Kensinger Properties Ltd., said they wanted the Orange Show to ensure the piece would be preserved for future generations.

The saxophone will be removed from its current location at 10 a.m. on Feb. 28. The process to remove the massive piece will take a full day. Then, Smokesax will begin its 13-mile journey from Richmond Avenue to Munger Street. Artist Bob Wade will be overseeing the entire removal and transportation. Once at the Orange Show, it will be housed in the organization’s warehouse until an exact location has been chosen for permanent display.

(via Orange Show Center for Visionary Art to acquire Smokesax - Houston Business Journal)

Old Styrofoam packing peanuts = new garland for City of Houston’s “Holiday Trees: Artistically Upcycled” exhibit.

unconsumption:

Happy Halloween and Day of the Dead!

Pictured: “Dead Media,” an installation that repurposes 497 VHS tapes. Created by friend of Unconsumption Noah Scalin (mentioned previously several times here), of the Skull-A-Day project. (photo via SkullADay here)

See also: Other videotape-related repurposing examples in earlier posts here.

Today: Cans filled with Campbell’s tomato soup.

Next month: After the soup’s consumed, the empty cans, with colorful labels still on them, will be repurposed as … art supply holders!

[If you haven’t heard about these specially designed labels, here’s a little info: Campbell Soup Co., in a promotion with Target stores and The Andy Warhol Foundation, packaged a batch of tomato soup in cans covered with limited-edition Andy Warhol-inspired Pop-art labels. The cans were made available this past weekend at Target store. (I read that some stores sold out hours after the cans went on sale.) The project commemorates the 50th anniversary of Warhol’s famed Campbell’s soup can work. A portion of revenue from the project will benefit the Warhol Foundation.] Now I have to admit that I don’t typically shop at Target, but I needed cat litter, and I’d read about the can promo; together, they gave me a reason to visit a nearby Target store! #Popartisforeveryone

(Taken with Instagram at Super Target)

A good use for empty wine bottles. (Taken with Instagram at HCAF Point Theater)

unconsumption:

Dave Bowman, of Dearborn, Michigan-based Design Turnpike, turns vintage license plates into beautifully crafted pieces of art.

For a project like this 60” x 40” American flag, it can easily take Dave 40+ hours to find, prepare, and assemble the 40-50 steel license plates, which get cut and mounted onto a distressed wood base.

Check out photos of some of Dave’s other work on Design Turnpike’s site here, Facebook page here, and Etsy shop here.

Happy Fourth of July!

Via artgalleryofontario:

Mounir Fatmi
Save Manhattan 02, 2009
VHS tapes, glue, table
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York

Click here to learn more.

Via szymon:

magnificent book sculptures by Jonathan Callan

Jonathan Callan is another artist who makes good use of discarded books. (And wood screws.)

Take a few minutes to open the link above and scroll through images of his other works. Truly amazing.

Here’s an interview with Callan (in association with a February 2010 installation in Wisconsin for which area residents gathered some 3,000 books for his use) in which he talks about his work, process.

Via unconsumption:

Via pratt:

Pots From Recycled Books — inhabitat.com

D.I.Y. idea

Via unconsumption:

Church pew headboard — a before-and-after project featured on Design*Sponge

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray …

O.M.G. I love this.

Reposting my unconsumption post:

Grocery Getters:  The Farm Proper Plants Real Food in Shopping Carts — FastCompany.com

Alissa Walker writes:

Urban farms are sprouting in vacant lots and forgotten walls all over the country. But a farm in San Diego, California employs another type of abandoned real estate: The shopping cart. Firms Set & Drift and mi-workshop have used a signature blight on the urban landscape to create a mobile garden concept called The Farm Proper in the city’s Barrio Logan neighborhood. 

Abandoned carts gathered from the neighborhood have been lined with burlap sacks donated by a local coffee retailer and packed with plants. Carts deemed inoperable have been anchored permanently at the space, and in this case, planted into a kind of bean pole teepee. The image of the supermarket staple serving as a planter for fresh food serves up some pretty nice symbolism as well. 

It’s the meals-on-wheels element that really makes this kind of gardening exciting. One can imagine how banged-up carts could be collected from the streets, brought here for planting and then be wheeled away to permanently park at the homes of deserving families. Another idea, which was already demonstrated at a Farm Proper potluck, could bring healthy lunches to local workers: With the proper combination of crops, these mobile carts could roam the streets as super-fresh, pick-your-own salad bars.

Via unconsumption:

Who says you can’t run an ad agency out of a trailer in your backyard? — Austin American-Statesman

Your typical ad agency has guys in $550 suits working in a posh high-rise with glass walls, marble floors and polished mahogany tables.

Then there’s Big Blue Sky Creative, a two-man ad agency that operates out of a tiny travel trailer in Chad Swisher’s South Austin backyard.

“After all, it’s Austin, so why not?” said Chad, who bought the 14-foot, 8-inch ‘71 model Scotty for $650 about five years ago and fixed it up. He says it was “a hunk of junk” when he found it. 

What Chad calls the “reception area” consists of a new awning and two red lawn chairs by the trailer’s front door. 

[Thanks, @smashadv!]

Photo credit: John Kelso, American-Statesman