environmentbuilders

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Here is the poster for The Builders! Featuring some gorgeous illustrations by Meghan Dene Latta.

And below, my Friday afternoon activity of cutting out 300 circle postcards as promo (completed in 1.5 hours cause I am a MACHINE).

The Builders opens in three weeks! September 10-12!

More info here: www.meganblythe.com/the-builders

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Contemporary artist Beili Liu’s site-responsive installation, Recall, created from approximately 600 suspended, handmade paraffin wax drips

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Design inspiration via our set designer Amanda Larder!

These are the sculptural, immersive installations of Brazilian contemporary artist Ernesto Neto

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Instructions

We are writing and playing with instructions texts in the devising process for The Builders right now.

Keely found this lovely little poem that fits right in with the instructions theme...

How to Build an Owl

1.     Decide you must.

2.     Develop deep respect         for feather, bone, claw.

3.     Place your trembling thumb         where the heart will be:         for one hundred hours watch         so you will know         where to put the first feather.

4.     Stay awake forever.         When the bird takes shape             gently pry open its beak         and whisper into it: mouse.  

5.     Let it go.

-by Kathleen Lynch

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The home and garden of Veronica Terrillion, in Indian Lake, New York.

Terrillion lived from 1908-2003 and built the 400+ sculptures on her property during the last 50 years of her life. Her painted sculptures include figures of animals, religious figures and symbols, as well as representations of her family.

The property remains in the family, though is not open for visitors.

Veronica’s explanation of how her environment came about:

“The first thing is my faith is strong. I say when your faith is strong you can do most anything. God has blessed me with many gifts and many talents. These things are first instilled in my mind; from my mind they go to my hands; and my hands go to work. And that’s why it’s easy for me to do.”

-from  “Veronica Terrillion’s ‘Woman Made�� House and Garden” by Varick A. Chittenden, in Personal Places - Perspectives on Informal Art Environments

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Keely alerted us to this house that's in our neighbourhood, and has been covered in glass stones and tiles. We really want to know who the builder/maker is, but so far there hasn't been anyone out in the yard, and neither of us had the gumption to go knock on the door. But maybe we'll get ballsy and knock sometime soon. After all this research into environment building/transforming artists all around the world, it's exciting to discover something so close to us, right in East Van!

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continually inspired by and in awe of the work of Chiharu Shiota, a contemporary artist from Japan

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Far away in the remote village of Kamarchaga, located in the Siberian Taiga, Russian pensioner Olga Kostina has decorated her wooden home with colorful patterns and images made from over 30,000 plastic bottle caps. Olga collected the bottle caps from soda bottles over the course of many years and she began using them to decorate the walls of her wooden house once she felt she had accumulated enough. She placed every single bottle cap by hand, using a hammer and nails to create traditional macrame motifs and various images of creatures living in the neighboring woodland.

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Cleveland Turner, aka ‘The Flower Man’ 1935 - 2013

House was in Houston, Texas but was demolished after Turner’s death, in February 2015

read about Turner’s story here:http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/7022

Photos by Lawrence Harris

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Beer Can House, Houston, Texas, created by John Milkovisch

“Some people say this is sculpture but I didn't go to no expensive school to get these crazy notions.”

–John Milkovisch

Milkovisch‘s wife Mary in front of the house, circa 1992.

Front yard and house, circa 1986

photos from http://beercanhouse.org/gallery.php

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The painted house of Polina Rayko, from the Ukraine.

Many more photos can be found here.

Her story, below, comes from Introducing New Worlds:

Polina Rayko’s was born in Tsyuryupinsk in the Ukraine and for the most part things went as they should. She married in the1950s and had two children, a son and daughter. Polina and her husband made a modest income selling produce from their backyard and lived a very normal life. In 1994, however, everything began to go down hill. Her daughter was tragically killed in a car accident, and her husband passed away shortly there after. Her son, as a result of his own grief turned to drugs and was in and out of prison until he too died from his addiction.

In 1998 when Polina was 69, she began painting her home as a way to brighten up her  life. She received a small pension every month and used it to buy the cheapest brushes and paints she could find at the market. She had no T.V., magazines or regular access to a newspaper so she drew her inspiration from water bottle and wine labels, a set of religious postcards and old chocolate wrappers.

Polina painted the walls, ceilings doors and track into the street before she finished four years later. Afterward she began taking orders locally painting murals on walls, gate and monuments including her son and husbands in the local cemetery.

Although, her art gathered the attention of a few local art lovers her work largely went unnoticed and her grandson who inherited the house sold it for only $6,000.

A few years after her death a painted phrase was found on the garage door: “How to find a way to paradise…”

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Ayano Tsukimi, Japan

photos (except top photo) by Sue Chalom

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Robert found this incredible artist, Ayano Tsukimi, 64, who lives in Nagoro, a tiny village on Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan. The village’s population is dwindling, and for every person who dies or moves away, Tsukimi makes an almost life-size doll in their liking and places it somewhere in the village. She has repopulated the village with her handmade dolls.

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The Shell House of Frederick Attrill (1839 - 1926), East Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK. No longer extant. Attrill created this environment in the last ten years of his life, working on the project right up until his death at age 88.

photos from here.

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The Tenth Wonder of the World, South Los Angeles, California

Built by Dianne and Lew Harris, a brother and sister duo. They find most of their materials in the trash, in alleyways of industrial neighbourhoods...they call the alleys “Alley Cat University Research Centre”.

Photos: spacesarchives.org and info from LA Times

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Found a gorgeous collection of photos from one couple’s road trip to visit art environments and vernacular art from all around the southwest.

Above, Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain

Photos by Brett Hanover.

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Irene Gibson Hall, art environment in Eufaula, Oklahoma (no longer in existence)

Photos from SPACES