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Tattoo Artist Scott Campbell Designs Bags & Inks Models For Louis Vuitton





Gucci has already introduced a Tattoo-inspired collection of handbags and Chanel introduced their temporary tattoos, so it's no surprise that luxury brand Louis Vuitton has jumped on the tattwagon.

The LVMH company has collaborated with artist and tattoo master Scott Campbell to design some men's bags for the Louis Vuitton 2011 Spring Summer Men's collection. In addition to the leather bags which feature tattoo-inspired images, Scott Campbell also decorated the runway models for the show with temporary tattoos in the form of LV logos and with the same dragon and flourishes he used as imagery on the bags.

The Bags:



detail:






detail:


The Louis Vuitton Tattoos
The tattoos that graced the model's necks, arms and legs are the same designs as Scott incorporated into the leather bags for Louis Vuitton:






Scott, who has received much online attention for his cut-up currency art, is personal friends with Marc Jacobs, the fashion designer and Creative Director for Louis Vuitton. Jacobs sports several of Scott's tatts (both Marc and Scott have his "Bros before Hos" tattoos), so it's no wonder he chose him to design a few pieces and ink the models for the show.


above: Marc Jacobs of Louis Vuitton and artist Scott Campbell backstage at the runway show

Louis Vuitton
images are courtesy of the artist, ilvoelv.com and, with runway photos by Monica Feudi and Gianni Pucci for Style.com.

2010 Cannes Lion Grand Prix For Design Goes To....




The Toyota IQ font.
If you never saw my post on this interesting (and now award-winning) project, watch the video, see the stills, meet the people behind it and download the font for yourself here.

Johnny Swing Turns Cold Hard Cash & Currency Into Furniture & Textiles. Literally.




A trained sculptor and licensed welder, 49 year old Vermont-based artist Johnny Swing, an alumnus of Skidmore College and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture uses found materials and objects to repurpose into art, furniture and more.


above: artist and welder Johnny Swing on his Nickel couch

With a vast amount of work to his credit, it's his American coin-soldered furniture and paper currency printed objects I want to share with you today. Below are several angles, images and information pertaining to his soldered coin furniture followed by some of his textile objects made with dollar printed fabrics.

The Nickel Couch, 2006:


His second in his series of furniture made from coins, the nickel couch is comprised of 7,000 nickles, 35,000 welds, and a substructure of stainless truss work utilizing 350 feet of stiffening rods. 80"wide x 42"deep x 28.5" high and weighs 125 pounds.




above: Swing's Nickel Couch, 2001, fetched over $100,000 at auction at Sotheby in December of 2009.

Quarter Lounge, 2008:

Quarters and stainless steel, 96 x 47 x 28 inches



Half Dollar Butterfly Chair, 2009:


The third in his series of coin furniture, the Butterfly chair, reveals an exposed substructure and is made of 1,500 half dollar coins and 7,000 welds. 46"wide x 32"deep x 34" high and weighs 58 lbs.




The Quarter Chair:


The fourth in his series of coin pieces, the Quarter chair has an hourglass shape and is made from approximately 1,200 quarters. The shape and proportion are that of traditional diningroom furniture. 21" wide x 24" deep x 36" high and weighs 28 lbs.





The Loose Change Chair:


The fifth in the series of coin furniture, this was inspired by the childhood game Booby Trap. The substructure is created from technology shared from airplane wing design; it flexes to the ground but is torsionally rigid to accommodate thousands of pounds.




The Quarter Stool:


Nickel Bowl:
His bowls are an effort to play with other shapes that force the constrained circular coin into complex forms and patterns similar to mosque screens and Native American woven baskets.


All The Kings Men, 2010:


One of his most recent pieces, All the Kings Men is a curved settee with soldered open framework underside made of half dollars and stainless steel and measures 97" x 52" x 28" inches.






As Kiera Scholten reported for Artworks Magazine about his Coin series in 2008:
When he began using coins, Swing says it wasn’t simply about money as a material-”it was about taking what was a useless piece of money and kind of making it special again.” With this idea in mind he constructed his first piece out of pennies. What many consider America’s most disposable piece of coinage suited his purpose perfectly. Swing was happy with his first piece, which he modeled after a Bertoli chair, but using the pennies became a problem. After 1981 pennies were made with zinc, which caused them to disintegrate when welded together. Finding thousands of pennies dating before Reagan took office made an already labor-intensive process even more of a chore.
So he moved on to nickels. He’s now created 20 nickel couches, each assembled using about 7,000 of the Jefferson coins-that’s $350. His half-dollar chair utilizes about 1,500 coins, or $750. The price of these pieces, though, is much more than face value. You would have to save a lot of five-cent pieces to afford the couch made of them. An original Johnny Swing Nickel Couch can be had for upwards of $50,000. But the price pays for a painstaking process; for one couch it takes more than 300 hours to complete the 35,000 welds that hold all the coins together.
Welding coins together simply to sit on them may seem like a strange concept, and some critics are quick to classify Swing’s work as “bad boy art” under the assumption that he’s defacing money by using it in this manner. At first, even Swing wasn’t sure if his art was illegal, though his original answer was that “the government doesn’t care if you use their objects in art; they’re sort of flattered.” He soon thought he had better check it out to be certain, so he called the Secret Service, which at the time was a part of the U.S. Treasury. “They said, ‘It’s your money, do with it what you want,’” says Swing. “The agent told me the rumor that destroying money is illegal is just an old wives’ tale to keep kids from putting coins on the railroad tracks.” Swing could breathe a sigh of relief and move ahead with his work.

In addition to using coins, he has also created the following pieces using fabric printed with US Currency.

Piggy:



Teddy Bear:


Throw pillow:

By the way, you can purchase the Dollar Teddy ($1,250.00) and the Butterfly Coin chair ($59,000.00) here at Vivre.

all images courtesy of the artist

Jenny Holzer Keds for The Whitney IS WHAT I WANT




Artist Jenny Holzer, best known for her projections, LED installations and truisms -- artwork made with words, is collaborating with Keds for the Whitney Museum to launch a special collection that features her famous phrase "PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT" which has previously appeared on everything from golf balls, a BMW v12 race car, condoms, on wooden postcards and installed on buildings and more as art projects.







The KEDS, which feature the phrase, will be available in both high and low tops, canvas and leather and in black or white:





above: artist Jenny Holzer, courtesy of artnet
"It's great that Keds and the Whitney are friends," states Jenny Holzer. "I have a renewed respect for shoe designers."

The collection, which is expected to retail for approximately $70-$75 a pair, will be available at select Bloomingdale's stores nationwide beginning in July, as well as on bloomingdales.com and keds.com starting in July 2010.

All Keds’ profits from the Jenny Holzer kicks will benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Special Keds collections by painters Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner, all of whom have exhibited at The Whitney, will follow.

Special thanks to Alex Asher Sears for bringing this to my attention.

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C'mon people, it's only a dollar.