Via Coolhunting, I was happy to discover the drawings of Stephen Floyd, whose work emits a cheerful ambiguity. Through drawn words and images, Floyd simultaneously captures and comments on artifacts of American culture, such as "American Cheese," shown here.

Floyd's work will be exhibited in a solo show called "I Love America and America Loves Me" at the Heist Gallery in New York through December 18. The exhibit appears to concentrate on his drawings, many of which can be seen here. However, I noticed from a visit to Floyd's website that he does work in other media, notably, panties. I recommend to you his work, "world's prettiest fuckin' panties," on view in the cut-outs section of the artist's website.

On first viewing, I was very taken with Floyd's drawing entitled "olive loaf." Floyd has also created a pair of cut-out panties featuring the olive loaf pattern. Most impressively, Floyd has blown up his "olive loaf" drawing to billboard size, and situated his work on the side of a highway, as seen in the photo at right.

Floyd's blog points to a reaction to the billboard in a local paper, which observed, "Perhaps it is guerrilla art."

The Cute-Little-Red-Headed Girlfriend and I have the flu, so we haven't been going out very much lately. Because we've been hunkered down, which we missed the start of the Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Exhibition happening at Royal/T Artspace. It's a three week long event commemorating Hello Kitty's birthday on--mark the date--November 1. It seems Hello Kitty is 35, which means I must be 102.

I wish I could have gone to the VIP Gala opening event, so that I could causally drop it into conversation. "You were at the L.A. Opera last night? No, I couldn't attend. I was at the Hello Kitty VIP Gala." Although I couldn't attend the opening, I have been able to see much of the artwork online.

Among the pieces I particularly like are the figure pictured above, which shows Hello Kitty wearing a toasted marshmallow costume. I thought it was very appropriate for Halloween. It's actually part of a series of figures depicting Hello Kitty in various marshmallow regalia. You can view more here. I also like the below portrait of the Bigfoot family showing the heartwarming role Hello Kitty plays in their lives.

The first time I encountered Hello Kitty merchandise was in a department store. I remember being confused by it because I didn't know where the character originated from. I thought I must have missed some new cultural manifestation, like a series of Hello Kitty children's books, or a Hello Kitty animated television show--something that gave birth to the character. It took me awhile to understand that Hello Kitty exists purely in reference to her own merchandise.

For my birthday this year, the Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend and I went to Disneyland for the day. We considered attending the annual unofficial Gay Day at Disneyland earlier in October, which we had attended in the past. But the park is running a promotion this year where guests receive free admission on their birthday, and this persuaded us to make a mid-October birthday trip instead.

It had been several years since my last trip to Disneyland. Many of my favorite rides were closed for rehab work the last time I went, and several attractions were looking downright shabby. I have not always been a fan of Disney's rehabs, but I'm happy to report that nearly every attraction I visited had been thoughtfully renewed. The clarity of the audio on the rides was outstanding, and the Pirates of the Caribbean had been restored to a state of glory.

The Girlfriend and I had a good time dining in and outside the park. We began with a breakfast of pancakes at the River Belle Terrace in Frontierland. For lunch, we ducked out to the Storytellers Cafe at the Grand Californian Hotel. The wait staff served me an adorable strawberry cupcake, pictured below, and sang to me when they discovered it was my birthday.

While walking along Main Street U.S.A., I was excited to run across the Disney Gallery, which showcases archival Disney artwork alongside newer artwork and merchandise created by contemporary artists. We saw, for example, several original pieces created by Shag to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion.

We had been on the Haunted Mansion ride only an hour earlier. In anticipation of Halloween, the mansion was decked out with a Nightmare Before Christmas overlay. Although I had seen the overlay before, I left with the impression that the decorations were different and better this year. This impression was later confirmed through a visit to the DoomBuggies forum, where I found Haunted Mansion fans offering similar observations.

My favorite part of the Disney Gallery was a section containing marvelously detailed miniature versions of various attractions, including the old Disneyland entry sign, seen at the top of this post, and the Mad Tea Party ride, pictured just above. Since miniaturism is already built into many Disneyland rides and attractions, the effect was redoubled in some of these sculptures.

Once the Girlfriend and I left the gallery, we found ourselves back on Main Street U.S.A., where a parade was in progress. In keeping with the birthday promotion, the parade was called "Celebrate! A Street Party." An announcer encouraged guests to join in the spirit of this "celebration of you" while costumed performers danced down the street.

Continuing the shameless pandering, the announcer called out to all the guests who had come to Disneyland for their birthday. This had been on ongoing theme inside the park. When I entered Disneyland that morning, I was given a huge button to wear that read "Happy Birthday, Teresa!" All day long, I was greeted with "Happy Birthday" by every ride attendant, food worker, shop keeper and cleaning staffperson I encountered.

In other times, I might have removed the button, embarrassed by all the fuss. I'm usually not the type that likes to receive that kind of attention. In fact, I had had concerns about going to Disneyland prior to our visit. With unemployment and underemployment in California at 23%, I wondered if Disneyland might feel empty because few people could afford to attend. I worried the trip might seem too frivolous and maybe I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself.

But that wasn't the case. The park was wonderful and filled with people. I cherished each "Happy Birthday!" I heard. I thrilled at the rides. I celebrated me. I firmly put aside the fact that the country is now held hostage to corrupt business interests hell-bent on squeezing the lifeblood out of everyone I know and care about. For this one day, I forgot about all the problems looming and enjoyed my goddamn cupcake.

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has free admission on Thursdays, so The Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I took advantage of the policy to see their current Houseguest exhibition. "Houseguest" is a series of exhibits curated by artists. For this show, Los Angeles-based artist Francesca Gabbiani selected works from collections housed at UCLA.

I didn't know anything about Francesca Gabbiani beforehand, but I was attracted to the theme of the show: witchcraft and sorcery. The collection was immaculately arranged in a small room, giving the exhibit a jewel-like setting. The works Gabbiani collected suggested a dreamy meditation on the themes of witchcraft and sorcery. As a viewer, I felt I needed to let my mind wander in order to make associations between the images.

Some of the artworks were specifically about witches, such as the one shown below, but many were not. I noticed that several of the works with witches had a similar composition to the one reproduced here: a witch is placed prominently in the picture, surrounded by objects and scenes associated with witchcraft.

In this image, one can see human and animal skulls, vials and potions on the floor and on shelves, animals playing instruments and acting as if they were human, and a naked woman standing before a cauldron.

One of my favorite macabre details in the picture above is the skeletal hand sticking out from above the doorway in the top righthand side of the image. I was also intrigued by what appear to be chicken feet belonging to the badger-like creature sitting on a bench in the foreground.

Many of the artworks on display contained some form of bird imagery, such as a raven or an owl. I marveled at the persistent association of some natural objects with womanhood. My favorite image from the exhibit, for example, was a woodblock print, depicting the surface of the water far out at sea. All that could be seen were lines of waves: rough, mysterious, implacable.

I've long had an attraction to conceptual art without fully understanding what it is that draws me to it. So when I saw that a local art gallery, Cardwell Jimmerson, was putting on a show called "San Diego and the Origins of Conceptual Art in California," I thought it would be a good opportunity to explore my reactions to this form of art.

According to the Tate Online Glossary, the term conceptual art "came into use in the late 1960s to describe a wide range of types of art that no longer took the form of a conventional art object." That broad definition encompasses happenings and other event-based works, installations and unconventional art objects.

Once inside Cardwell Jimmerson, the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I found many types of art on display, including video, audio, photography and mixed media. I was drawn to the displays that combined words and imagery, such as "The Double Articulation of Disneyland," a combination of 36 captioned black-and-white photos documenting a trip to Disneyland, which were displayed along with 36 typescript pages of philosopher Louis Marin's essay "Disneyland: A Degenerate Utopia."

The photos show artist Fred Lonidier on a trip to Disneyland with friends. The focus of their trip was to document corporate presence at Disneyland and the ways that corporate messages were deployed throughout the attractions. For example, in the photo shown here of Main Street, U.S.A., the artist muses "Corporate possession of public myths must be natural to this public."

The Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend was interested in "North American Waitress" by Martha Rosler, from the "Know Your Servant Series #1." This work consisted of images of waitresses in typical uniforms along with printed instructions and training information on how waitresses should act. The photography in "North American Waitress" and "The Double Articulation of Disneyland" dated these pieces, yet the underlying "concept" of these works was remarkably relevant to the present.

Another work that seemed especially timely was Phel Steinmetz's "Oil, Profit, Control" from 1973. This hardbound book contained original photography of abandoned gas stations and related imagery from the 70s oil crisis, along with clippings documenting the oil companies' manipulation of the markets for their own profit.

Seeing this show made me realize that I like conceptual art that has a political aspect to it. The definition of conceptual art that I found at ArtLex emphasizes the political and especially noncommercial leanings of the movement: "Art that is intended to convey an idea or a concept to the perceiver, rejecting the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or a sculpture as a precious commodity."

However, resisting commercialism doesn't necessarily mean giving up on beauty, or on the art object itself. I was deeply impressed by the display of "Book of Lagoons," by ecological artists Helen and Newton Harrison. This awesome work on the life of lagoons represents to me what a concept or an idea looks like as a developed art form. You can find links to large .pdfs containing the complete "Book of Lagoons" here.

This past weekend the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I went to the Autry National Center for the American West to see the exhibit Bold Caballeros y Noble Banditas. I became interested in going to this show after seeing a painting of a gun-slinging woman, Adelita by George Yepes. The image is being used to promote the exhibit.

The theme of the exhibit was the tradition of virile heroes and heroines fighting for social justice in Latino and Latina culture. Drawing examples from the historical record as well as from popular culture and the imagination, the exhibition ranged from the Old West to the Mexican Revolution to Hollywood and the Mexican cinema.

As I've mentioned here before, the Autry Museum has an impressive collection of material artifacts from Hollywood cowboy movies and Western serials. Many such pieces were put to use in this bilingual exhibit, in effect shifting the focus towards American (rather than Mexican) and non-Hispanic (as opposed to Latino and Latina) contributions.

For example, while there was some interesting illustrated matter dating from the Mexican Revolution on display, the larger narrative of the exhibit emphasized the way Hollywood was inspired by revolutionary leaders and events. I would have rather seen more historical artifacts pertaining to Pancho Villa than see the costume worn by the actor playing Pancho Villa in a Hollywood production.

The section of the exhibit on outlaw champions of social justice in film contained a wall devoted to macha women in Mexican cinema. I especially enjoyed the material related to the life and career of movie star Maria Felix. Although the images and posters related to Zorro and other Hollywood creations were fun to look at, I felt the presentation willfully ignored Hollywood's history of racism in depicting Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

Despite these reservations, I enjoyed the exhibit overall and am happy to see such cross-cultural, cross-border offerings. The theme of the show has special resonance now, when a Robin Hood or two would be most welcome.

The Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I went to see Wall-E over the July 4th weekend. I recommend staying for the closing credits, which shows the history of Western art in 2D animation, with robots. Beginning with cave paintings of robots, the history passes through ancient forms such as mosaics to wall frescos to impressionist works and right down to present day pixel art. Wall-E is a demonstration of the state of the art of CGI animation, but the ending is a sweet reminder of the pleasures of 2D. After you've seen the credits, stay for the movie's final frame for an extra joke right at the very end.

Based on a post found on the blog MAKE, I decided to try out the Firefox extension Ad-Art, which works in conjunction with another Firefox extension I use, Adblock Plus.

I often help my less technically inclined friends and family set up and maintain their computers. I love to tinker and tweak and add new things to my own computer, but when I set up a computer for someone else, I usually follow the maxim "less is more." I'm happy to have four or five different browsers on my machine, but I understand that most people only want one.

Still, I always wind up installing Firefox with the Adblock Plus extension. Because in addition to blocking advertisements, Adblock Plus solves common computer problems like slow load times on Flash-heavy web pages.

Adblock Plus is very flexible. I usually choose the option to collapse ad space, which means text and images flow into the space where an ad would be shown. The result is usually seamless--the page looks like the ads were never there to begin with. Alternative settings include replacing ads with a blank box or a box that reads "Ad."

The Ad-Art extension offers users another possibility: replacing ads with a selection of curated art works. Anyone can sign up to curate an Ad-Art exhibit, and artists are welcome to submit their own work for display. The project is free and open source.

To use the Ad-Art extension, I had to disable the option in Adblock Plus to collapse ad space. Then I began to see images from the current Ad-Art exhibit, Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, curated by Joan Cummins of the Brooklyn Museum. I found it very relaxing to encounter the images sprinkled across the page. I've included a screenshot, above, showing how the extension looks on the web site Gizmodo.

I liked Ad-Art even better on the GameSpot web site, which has one of those annoying full-page interstitial ads that pause for about 30 seconds. But with Ad-Art enabled, Hiroshige's work appeared alone on the page in place of the ad, framed by a dramatic black background, and lingered there restfully before the page I sought appeared.

I've been following the discussion regarding the representation of Wonder Woman on the cover of Playboy Magazine since it first appeared on Pink Raygun and then reverberated throughout various blogging circles.

When I saw the pictures from Playboy for myself, I found myself thinking about a male equivalent for the Wonder Woman imagery. My first thought was of Margaret Harrison's images of Captain Marvel in drag, which were included in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution exhibit in Los Angeles. It, too, appropriates a superhero figure that symbolizes a gendered ideal of patriotic agency and submits it to a sexualized gaze.

I'd also recently browsed some of Nicole Eisenman's work when it appeared at a gallery here in Los Angeles. I love her work and have written about her several times on In Sequence. One of the works I saw included an image of the knowledge-seeking Alice from Alice in Wonderland with her head nearly consumed by Wonder Woman's exposed snatch. Wonder Woman's heavy legs, her stance, and the "missing head" as a byproduct of sex remind me of R. Crumb's depictions of headless women having sex.

I imagine that as a lesbian, Eisenman identifies with both figures in this work: the big, triumphant Amazon woman and the one who seeks knowledge by way of a woman's body. Here, it looks like little Alice, with her penchant for looking into holes, is following the instruction to "Feed your head."

While we're discussing the phantasmic worlds of Alice, I might as well mention one of the most discussed comments regarding the Playboy issue, Greg Rucka's statement linking the appearance of an undressed Wonder Woman with anti-Hilary sentiment:

Do you really think it's a coincidence that Playboy chose this year, the issue for the month containing "Tsunami Tuesday," to run this particular pictorial? Do you really?

I really couldn't believe how many people were completely freaked out at this statement. But people also took it very literally. It seems obvious to me that there will be many strange permutations of and challenges to the theme of "a powerful woman in charge" in our culture over the next few months, and maybe longer. (For an excellent analysis of Hillary hatred, read Stanley Fish's recent essay for the New York Times, "All You Need Is Hate.")

I like the haughty side of Wonder Woman, which seems to be more in evidence recent issues. Her expressions of disdain, whether they occur when she's fighting a weak opponent or brushing off a would-be admirer, make me feel like the character is in charge of her sexuality. The other visual element of Wonder Woman that makes me feel incredibly empowered as a woman are, of course, her vaginal speed trails, on fabulous display in the picture at left.

Via Cool Hunting, I found a link to a gallery of work by Thomas Allen, who photographs sculptural objects that the artist himself makes out of old pulp novels.

If you're a fan of the pulp genre, you'll find the usual topics represented in Allen's photos: women, alcohol, boxing, sailors, and so on. I liked this picture of a girls-and-horses title, and the image I've included here, of a woman with a knowing stare.

I've developed a bad habit of going to the Los Angeles County Museum's exhibits at the end of their run, and as a result, I haven't bothered to blog about the last few I've seen. However, there's still time for Angelenos to see Dali: Painting & Film, especially with the holidays coming up.

I'm not a big fan of LACMA's blockbuster exhibits when they are organized around a single artist or movement. I much prefer their major exhibits when they present a definite slant or perspective, even if the result is a partial rather than a comprehensive view of the subject.

Dali: Painting & Film focuses on an aspect of Salvador Dali's work, the connection between his paintings and various film endeavors. This framework offers more experienced viewers with a new way to look at familiar Dali pieces as well as previously unseen material. For those who might be seeing Dali in depth for the first time, the exhibit sketched in enough of Dali's biography and other important works to give a sense of his overall development and contribution as an artist.

I knew of some of the connections between Dali and film on entering the exhibit, but hadn't realized Dali was so influenced by film comedy. The exhibit traces Dali's famous melting watch image back to the silent film Safety Last! and documents Dali's attempt to work on a project with the Marx Brothers, who he thought of as surrealists.

The dour side of Dali is present in his more autobiographical paintings, which often revolved around his troubled relationship with his father. The dreamlike imagery of these paintings shows up in Hitchcock's Spellbound, for which Dali designed a dream sequence. You can watch the scene on YouTube here.

For me, the highlight of the exhibit was being able to finally see Destino, the animated short created by Disney based on ideas and storyboards provided by Salvador Dali. Although Dali worked with the Disney Studios on plans for the film during the 1940s, the short did not actually get made until 2003. There have been a few showings of the film in Los Angeles, but Destino has never been widely released and is not available on video or DVD.

The action reminded me of a ballet in the way the main characters' movements expressed emotion and narrative. As we sat together watching the film, it became clear to me and the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend why it was not made earlier: there is a sensuous and even erotic quality to the female lead. It's not titillating so much as it is bold.

As the female character explores her dreamlike surroundings, there is a playful metamorphosis of objects as she interacts with her environment. A bell becomes a ballerina, insects turn into bicyclists. Emotions transform, too, as grotesque imagery suddenly gives way to a sorrowful tableau. The emphasis on transformations surprised me, since so much Disney animation is based on a quasi-realism.

Dali, however, embraced the theme of metamorphosis in his non-moving work, as shown in the painting I've included above. This was one of my favorite works from the exhibit, using sequential doubles to indicate transformation.

There are some segments of Destino on YouTube but they don't give a very good impression of the whole. There are also very few still shots from the film available on the web, due to obviously well-policed copyright restrictions. I hope the short will be released on DVD at some point; in the meantime, grab the chance to see Destino if you have the chance.

I've written before about my appreciation for Stjepan Sejic's covers for Dynamite Entertainment's Dark Xena comic book. In my last trip to the comic store, I was riveted by Sejic's cover for Savage Tales #3, also from Dynamite. I love the strength the artist shows in Red Sonja's arms, and the way her brutality in fighting is reinforced by the rough, swooping strokes of paint. On Sejic's website, I found another image of Red Sonja I liked that he had done in a completely different style. In that image, it's the muscular definition in Red Sonja's thighs and the sheer bulk of her knees that impresses me.

Through a link on Neatorama, I found the Alphabet of Horror, a themed alphabet created by Jared von Hindman of headinjurytheater.com. I chose to show his image for the letter L here because I feel his visual interpretation of the word "lycanthropy" neatly captures the idea of the were-creature as a metaphor for the anguish of a divided self.

I like many of his other images, too. I mean, who doesn't love a good clown picture (the letter C)? His Pharaoh (the letter P) is very atmospheric, and I felt choosing "Trepanation" for the letter T was an original and unexpected choice. There's actually a ton of content on the site, although you have to dig around for it. There's single-panel and multi-panel comics, horror film and comic reviews, and more alphabets to look at.

Joystiq posted recently about a Dutch digital media artist, Arno Coenen, who has created several public mosaics based on video game art. Joystiq has up a gallery of images that includes an awesome mosaicwork of Lara Croft made from tiles, as well as a clever scene of Pac Man ghosts scurrying along the sides of a corridor.

Virtual Fairytale 2.0 is a large-scale mosaic created for the exterior of a school in Utrecht. The photo shown here is of a bricklayer following a color map for the mosaic during construction. Take a look at this series of photographs to see the scope of the project, including some great shots taken from above.

Yesterday the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I went to see WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Geffen Contemporary, a satellite location of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

I had read that the show was monumental in scope and the truth is that it was completely overwhelming. WACK! covers feminist art from the 1960s to the present day, both in the U.S. and abroad. The physical layout of the show was confusing and mazelike, and a minimalist approach to labeling (no narrative context, no translations) made it difficult to get a handle on many of the pieces on display.

Nonetheless, it's a collection that's worth making an effort to see and understand. WACK! represents the work of over 120 women artists, including Mary Kelly, Tee Corinne, Faith Ringgold--whose work is pictured here--Barbara Hammer, and Judith F. Baca.

The WACK! website seems to contain much of the context that wasn't present at the exhibit. There are photographs, exhibit walkthroughs, and podcast lectures by represented artists as well as feminist art historians available online for free. Also, the exhibit catalog is massive and well-organized, providing additional depth to this encyclopedic show.

Artwork from the late 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. forms a major portion of the show. One of the pieces from this period that intrigued me was General Strike Piece, by Lee Lozano, an avant-garde NY artist. In a series of written pages from a peyote-fueled journal, Lozano chronicles a series of acts she takes in pursuit of "TOTAL PERSONAL & PUBLIC REVOLUTION."

Another work, Prostitution Notes, by Suzanne Lacy, consists of handwritten or drawn notes on cardboard documenting the working lives of L.A. prostitutes, as well as her own reactions and relationship to the women she observes. Like Lozano's piece, Prostitution Notes, is as much about self-interrogation and self-discovery as it is about confrontation with patriarchy.

Some of the art in WACK! struck me as strongly dated. Visual works that incorporated magazine advertisements as a means of critiquing the representation of women seemed to veer into kitsch. Similarly, a few works that were taken as powerful gender critiques when they were originated seemed crude in light of more recent art informed by gay, lesbian and transgender perspectives on gender.

I enjoyed many of the sculptural and installation pieces in the show, including walking into Faith Wilding's cavelike Crocheted Environment, shown here in an older photo. My girlfriend and I were both mightily impressed with photos of Ana Mendieta's earthworks series, Siluetas. Mendieta created a working volcano shaped like a vagina and then documented it in the act of exploding. We loved seeing the earthworks vagina spewing red hot fire. I wish the MOCA gift shop had printed Mendiata's work on a coffee mug--I would have bought it.