Artists Jaime Wardey and Andy Moss Remember Normandy For Peace One Day.

To Celebrate Peace One Day on the 21st of September, British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss (both from Sand In Your Eye) accompanied by numerous volunteers, took to the beaches of Normandy with rakes and stencils in hand to etch thousands of silhouettes representing fallen people into the sand.







The objective was to make a visual representation of 9000 people which equates the number of Civilians, Germans Forces and Allies that died during the D-day landings, 6^th June during WWII as an example of what happens in the absence of peace.








Titled The Fallen 9000, The original team consisted of 60 volunteers, but as word spread nearly 500 additional local residents arrived to help with the temporary installation that lasted only a few hours before being washed away by the tide.

"On Peace Day we quietly and harmoniously drew 9000 people in the sand so that people can understand the loss with their own eyes. This was a quiet day with a very loud statement. The message of the Fallen is now travelling the globe, those people that lost their lives are no longer with us but on Peace Day 21st September 2013 they spoke." - Jaime Wardley

Learn more here

Disgustingly Cute. No, Wait.. I Mean Disgusting AND Cute. Halloween Treats Gone Wrong.

There's nothing like seeing little kids in costumes. Cute. There's nothing like seeing little kids spit out food and throw up. Gross. And in this "Halloween" commercial for Crest & Oral B, you get both. Effectively.

Directed by J.J. Adler and dreamt up by ad agency Publicis Kaplan Thaler, a panel of unsuspecting trick or treaters are tricked rather than treated when offered 'healthy' Halloween treats.

See what ensues:

The reactions are priceless:


Long Live Candy!



CREDITS
Client: Crest and Oral-B
Spot: "Halloween Treats Gone Wrong"
Agency: Publicis Kaplan Thaler
Chief Creative Officer, President: Rob Feakins
Executive Creative Directors: David Corr, Tony Gomes
Creative Director, Copywriter: George Logothetis
Creative Director, Art Director: Xavier Rodon
Executive Producer: Noelle Nimrichter
Account Team: Angela Pasqualucci, Cheryl Loo, Carine Johannes, Alex Andrial, Dani Winter
Production Company: Tool of North America
Director: J.J. Adler
Editing: Fluid Editorial
Editor: John Piccolo

Fabulous Design, Illustration and Packaging by Veronika Kieneke for the GÖRTZ brand.

Hamburg-based creative and design agency Gürtlerbachmann has created many beautiful in-store promotional pieces for German shoe store chain GÖRTZ. From designing sock puppets and wearable bags to promote their children's section to beautiful packaging for wool socks. Such a slew of well-designed pieces and all of the art direction and concepts were created by the talented (now freelance) illustrator and designer Veronika Kieneke. Every in-store promotional piece and package design in this post has received at least one design award - and in most cases multiple awards.

Limited Edition Haunted Beauty Vampire Barbie Is Goth and Gorgeous.

Designed by Bill Greening, this frightfully chic creature brings a new level of gothic glamour and haute couture horror to the vampire lore. “We’ve had vampires in the BC line before,” Bill says. “But I wanted to do a version a little more spooky and gothic, something the collectors have been asking for.”

Last year, Bill Greening created the Haunted Beauty Ghost Barbie shown below, which is now sold out, but can be found on ebay for upwards of $500+:


Haunted Beauty Vampire™ Barbie® comes alive with so much bold color and intoxicating drama she practically grabs you by the throat! Drink in her gorgeous nocturnal glory as she swathes herself in a delicious fashion drenched in deep, rich, bloody red.



This is one vampire who does show up in photographs. She dazzles from every angle, dressed in a red charmeuse and black chiffon gown, with elaborate jeweled accents at the neck and red-and-gold trim on the empire waist. Her opulent, floor-length coat of red shantung features full sleeves and a spellbinding, face-framing collar. It’s an “essential fashion element,” according to Bill. “Her long red coat is perfect for those chilly nights in the crypt.”



Lustrous raven locks provide a striking contrast to the unearthly pale complexion on her Glimmer (Louboutin) head sculpt. Crimson lips and painted white “fangs” emphasize her fierce vampiric look, while black eyeliner and smoky shadow highlight her hypnotic golden eyes.



Haunted Beauty Vampire™ Barbie® doll’s sensational ensemble would earn raves on runways around the world. But this mysterious stunner prefers the darkness of moonless skies to the glaring lights of fame, as she searches for romance that will stand the test of time. “It’s a story of a long-lost love, tortured soul, and timeless beauty,” Bill says. “A creature who has looked centuries to find true love.”



Price: $100 (limit of 5), buy her here

Doll Details
Body Type: ModelMuse™
Skin Tone: Peace
Facial Sculpt: Glimmer/Louboutin
Fashion Sewn On?: No
Eyelashes: Painted
Customizations: Necklace attached to dress
Included with doll: Shoes, ring, doll stand.
For the adult collector.

Why Do I Blog About Barbie Dolls?
I think some of my readers may wonder why I blog about some of these Barbie Collectibles, but dolls, like most anything else, can be artfully designed. The Barbie Collectibles, which are made for adults, include fashion design, sculpting, make-up and in some cases, interesting marketing and packaging.

Just to give you an idea of the difference between the mass-produced $13.99 Mattel Barbie Halloween 2013 Doll and this $100 one, take a look:


So, as long as they keep designing beautiful Barbies, I will keep blogging about them.

images and info courtesy of Barbie Collector

18 Colorful Employee Portraits by Olaf Breuning Add Creativity To Pernod Ricard's Annual Report

Co-creation by Olaf Breuning is a new photo campaign for the Pernod Ricard 2012/2013 annual report in which 18 employees create a fresco for the cover and pose for pages with personal quotes scattered throughout the 168 page annual report.

Pernod Ricard’s commitment to contemporary art, which it has inherited from Paul Ricard, is an integral part of the company’s sponsorship strategy. The Group endeavours to share and promote creativity in all its forms. Therefore, for the last 35 years, Pernod Ricard has commissioned a piece by a renowned contemporary artist to illustrate the cover of its Annual Report.



The approach now focuses on contemporary photography, giving a well-known photographer “carte blanche” to produce portraits of their employees, the front-line ambassadors of the organization’s values. In 2010, Argentinian Marcos Lopez became the first photographer to have his work featured in the report, while French Denis Rouvre and Spanish Eugenio Recuenco have followed in his footsteps in subsequent years.


above photo of Olaf Breuning by Herbert Zimmermann

Olaf Breuning, the Swiss photographer and visual artist, has been selected for this year’s annual report photo campaign. He and 18 Group employees were invited by Pernod Ricard to a private area of the Pompidou Centre to work together on a series of artistic images. Inspired by the 2012/2013 annual report theme of “co-creation”, he asked the models to paint on a gigantic canvas. Each person was given an unusual object or tool with which to paint, and a matching colour.


above: the completed canvas, used on the cover, painted by the 18 employees

Under his artistic direction, the models themselves became the artists for this unusual piece. Joy, pleasure, concentration, introspection – each one of them experienced the range of emotions which goes hand in hand with creation and the images are featured throughout the report, along with their personal quotes, such as the example shown below:



Over three days of “creative conviviality”, the fresco took shape and what emerged was the collaborative work of art which adorns the cover of this document.

All 18 portraits:



















Having been inspired by observing these fledgling artists, Olaf Breuning immortalized the models in portrait form at the end of this creative session: “Artistic creation is often the product of confrontation, of dialogue… I wanted to follow this creative process for a Group that makes sharing and conviviality its signature. The idea was to bring these people that I was meeting for the first time closer to one another, and then to expose them to my world. They had no idea at all of what the final piece would be: like an exquisite artistic cadaver, they would each make their personal contribution, but only I knew where the journey would take us”.



Olaf Breuning was able to infuse his art with Pernod Ricard’s DNA as “Créateurs de convivialité”.

You can read/download the actual annual report here

Heroines by Deborah Oropallo At Melissa Morgan Fine Art

above: Deborah Oropallo, Where am I?, 2012, 50 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches, acrylic on paper

Melissa Morgan Fine Art just received artist Deborah Oropallo's newest paintings and works on paper from her latest series “Heroine.” in their Palm Desert Gallery.

Oropallo says of the Heroine series, which was begun in 2012, “The ‘struggle,’ I think, becomes a kind of metaphor for how women in the media have been portrayed, or wished to be portrayed…pre- or post-feminist, depending on the decade. Since the beginning of the comic-book industry in the 1940s, super-heroines have searched for identity on a broader scale. The super-hero fights for justice, but the super-heroine must also fight for equality. These eroticized and deified female characters, conformed as they are to the comics medium’s traditional visual tropes, thus carry out their struggle in a realm of ironic dichotomies—empowered and exploited, funny and tragic, masked and exposed.”

Don't Believe Me?
2012
Acrylic on Canvas, 64 x 49


This is just the beginning.
2012
80 x 60 inches, acrylic on canvas


What have you done?
2012
49 x 64 inches, acrylic on canvas


There's not enough time!
2012
50 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches, acrylic on paper


How can this be possible?
2012
80 x 60 inches, acrylic on canvas


Not even you!
2012
38 1/2 x 50 1/2 inches, acrylic on paper


This can't be happening!
2012
38 1/2 x 50 1/2 inches, acrylic on paper


From Magolia Editions:

"Deborah Oropallo continues her exploration of the iconography of power and costume in a new series of mixed-media works depicting abstracted female forms clad in superhero costumes. Oropallo’s inspiration for these prints was a troupe of female performers in Los Angeles, whose thriving web-based business venture involves dressing up in superhero costumes and enacting live-action comic books. The artist’s digital manipulation of these figures and their outfits zeroes in on ambiguous moments of dressing and undressing, where a metamorphosis, a kind of becoming or un-becoming, seems to be taking place. This ambiguity is heightened by the artist’s removal of nearly any trace of human flesh or faces from each figure, a signature move that destabilizes the work, creating a tension between figuration and abstraction: because so much information has been removed from each image, the fragments and gestures that remain assume both an air of mystery and a critical significance."

In a 2009 essay on Oropallo’s work, Nick Stone writes: “We know that we are decoding these images not because we are sure of what they mean but precisely because we are unsure; from a semiotic point of view, the works’ indeterminacy is what makes them tick. Because the code is not immediately legible, we become aware of its presence, and are confronted by a system which we may not have even been aware that we were using. This tendency to mask and unmask via layers and distortion is a consistent theme for Oropallo: in a 2004 interview she noted, ‘I’m always trying to soften the definition, [to] dissolve the images a little more.’ Beginning with the Feign series and continuing through the works collected here, Oropallo’s work has increasingly honed in on this theme; she has committed herself to a singular exploration of this indeterminacy, the process of blurring, distorting, and erasing information so as to scramble the viewer’s radar. In Feign, the digitally painted figures are recognizable as such, and their gender roles and costumes are fairly clear; it is the surface code, the medium, the code of line and color on a ground, which is being interrupted and jammed. As the figures in Guise become more indistinct and the boundaries of each figure and his or her costume – the boundaries of his or her very his-ness or her-ness – suddenly the codes of gender and power begin to break down and dissolve into one another. And in Wild Wild West, the figures have disappeared completely, as if acid has eaten away at the underlying medium by which these codes are transmitted. In this series it is as if Oropallo is paring each image down in search of the barest minimum of information necessary for our eyes to read into line and shape a link to some conceptual referent. By feeding our internal codecs ever fuzzier and more ambiguous data, she dares us to be sure of the meaning we take from each image.”

Visit the Melissa Morgan Fine Art gallery to see these wonderful works. They are located at 73-040 El Paseo in Palm Desert, CA.