ARTBLOX (continued)

This is the second installment of ARTBLOX I have made for the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery, in Salem (Oregon). There is no money involved and the people who buy them do so by buying a $10 token and dropping it into a reconfigured cigarette machine. I have had a lot of fun with this project and have pretty much taken it seriously as a way to make a social comment or a statement on art.

Mary Lou liked the first "Girls Who Smoke" ARTBLOX so much, I decided to make a second, but I switched out the back for another photo from the series by photographer Frieke Janssens of children smoking. I added a stoma to the girl on the front.

This one was designed as a statement on world population, which, truth be told,
came to me after thinking the dimensions of the block would lend themselves
to a visual of a can of sardines. The sides all have population factoids.

This one was actually inspired by a Lily Tomlin skit I saw her perform years ago.

This seemed like an obvious successor to the Art/Soup and features Andy Warhol's banana from the first Velvet Underground record and a photograph I took on W 11th Street, 

in Portland. I inadvertently positioned the photo upside down, but it is kind of hard 

to tell. If you happen to get it from the ARTBLOX machine, let me know and I'll 

replace it... or consider it a real collector's item, like that upside down biplane stamp. 

Botticelli is one of my favorite artists, and the Birth of Venus is one of my favorite 

of his paintings. This was actually a re-do, where I cut and reconfigured the painting up a little, to better conform to the dimensions of the block. 

"Ceci n'est pas une bloc de l'art"

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe"

Having fun with René Magritte.

ARTBLOX

Mary Lou Zeek has come up with a great way for artists to help other artists and have a heck of a lot of fun in the process. The Mary Lou Zeek Gallery has a refurbished cigarette machine, retooled to dispense, instead of cigarettes, original works of art. People are encouraged to buy a $10 token (or two) and let chance take its course. You don't know what you're going to get... a lovely painted block, an assemblage or collage, or in my case, photos and digital photo-mointages wrapped around the block. I just brought seven completed blocks to the gallery yesterday and told Mary Lou how much fun I had doing them. As a 2D designer and photographer, I found creating three-dimensional pieces challenging and, like I say, a lot of fun. Proceeds of the sales go toward the Artist Relief Program, assisting local artists in case of personal financial emergencies. Mary Lou Zeek's gallery is at 335 State Street, in Salem. Participate or purchase! Who knows? You may end up with an original Shapiro!!! 

Natalia among the Ruins (from a digital montage)

Natalia 

Girls who Smoke (1)

Doctors Recommend Smoking

El Gallo esta Muerto

These two ARTBLOX were an attempt to turn a couple of my landscape photographs into three dimensional art pieces. It was an interesting experiment and compelled me to look at my work in a different way... to "walk around the image" as it were