Future Space Vehicles By "Cosmic Motors"

If you wondered who is on the cutting edge of futuristic vehicle design, here is your answer

Daniel Simon, God bless his skills and imagination, is the coolest concept vehicle designer this side of Saturn's rings. The future itself can't help but shrivel and scuttle into a corner when this mighty artist enters the room. Yes! the Future itself feels intimidated, knowing that it will have to come up with something as radical and smooth as Daniel's visions in a few hundred years.

Here you can see how much joy the curves of a properly-designed luxury car can bring to a blissful eye.

An "epic vehicle" is one way to describe the exploration Ice Train that routinely meets two dozen Cthulhu on any given trip (who line up for credit for a chance of ownership, on their unspeakable terms). It's big, it's gorgeous, and it knows it.

Stewardesses of these sexy vehicles are pretty sexy, too. Almost as groovy as the original "Joy of Flying" examples of the 1960s.

This is probably the most atmospheric and moody image that we intensely like (a "Hard Days Night" caption, perhaps?) -

Detailed to the point of obsession, sleek and sensual enough to be considered evil - these machines haunt your dreams and DRIVE your desires, prompting you to look on your current car with a sort of deep sadness...

Order the book directly from the publisher here ..

Visit 13above For Fun

Amazing Sculpture By The Sea

White fright ... taking place from October 16 until November 2, Sculpture by the Sea is Australia's largest annual outdoor exhibition of sculpture.

The free outdoor exhibition, now in its 12th year, stretches for two kilometres along the Bondi coastline.

The display features over 100 sculptures from seven different countries, including this marble sculpture titled New Man.



Gone to the dogs ... six-month-old Maltese puppy Mylo investigates a sculpture titled Mongrel Country-Nil Tenure.



Colourful charatcer ... a jogger passes the rendered polymer plaster work The Drifter by Australian artist Stephen Marr.



Give him a hand ... Stephen King's sculpture Carbon Trading.



Colourful sea view ... Will They See Us? by Ngardarb Francine Riches.



Reflective ... Form of Scenery by Japanese artist Koichi Ishino.



Slip, slop, slap ... Tim Kyle's On The Beach shows us the importance of sun screen.



Strange forces ... Soldier Scale 1:1 by Ruth Belotti & Steve Rosewell.



Pet portrait ... Lisa Charleston and son Huxley admire the sculpture Every Dog Has its Day.



Walk on by ... Phenotype by Tim Wetherell.



Scrabble scramble ... a jogger passes the timber and aluminium work by Australian artist Emma Anna.



Lock it up ... a boy and his dog enjoy the mild steel and bronze work She Thought, by Australian artist Mark McClelland.



High tree ... a woman admires the forged steel and concrete work Fragment, by Australian artist Kevin Draper.



Worth the wait ... Waiting by Andy Townsend and Suzie Bleach.



Spiral attraction ... a woman inspects a work by Japanese artist Keizo Ushio.

Source
Visit 13above For More Fun

Mysterious Bottle Art

Mystified residents have been baffled by empty milk bottles appearing on their doorsteps for months with intricate art etchings created by an artist that’s been dubbed as ‘Pic-glasso’ and ‘Bottle Banksy’ after the enigmatic guerilla graffiti artist whose work appears overnight on buildings across Britain that continually escapes unseen.



When homeowners have gone to grab milk left from the dairyman to sit down to their morning java, they’ve been surprised to find the bottles replaced with an extra empty engraved with images of cows, mice, farmyard scenes and animals into the glass with incredible detail, and the artist long gone.

The bottles started appearing mysteriously at homes in Stourbridge, West Midlands, and surrounding villages last spring, much to the delight of the homeowners, but the identity of the artist remained unknown.




Dawn Jones, 81, from Stourbridge, said she received one drawing and was hoping to get another one. “I am collecting them for my grandchildren, they are marvelous.”

“I had heard something about this from a friend, but nobody knows who is doing it.” said Jackie Dimock, who discovered one of the bottles on her doorstep on Monday.



“I was putting out the empties and I noticed there was an extra one on the doorstep.” she said.

“When I picked it up I saw there was this amazing picture on it. The milkman came to collect the bottles, but I didn’t want to give him the one with the picture on it, I’m going to keep it.”

“Who knows, it might be worth something one day.”

Some of the bottles are left out for refilling and distributed to other homes, but many have been kept as souvenirs or artworks by thrilled residents, and others have even been traded on internet auction sites.

But unlike the ever-elusive Banksy, the artist’s identity behind the milk bottle creations has been revealed as Charlotte Hughes-Martin.



The 30-year-old artist painstakingly engraves the bottles with her own designs — some serious, and others humorous. Once completed, she returns the bottles to random doorsteps in the area, where they’re collected for refilling.



Originally from Cheshire and currently based at the Red House Glass Cone in Wordsley, Stourbridge — a former glass factory — Charlotte uses a variety of techniques, materials and styles to engrave the bottles, taking her inspiration from everyday life. And fittingly, many of her etchings are milk related or feature cows.

Two pieces of her work had been short-listed for the prestigious national Glass Biennale prize.





“Reaction to this milk bottle project has come as a bit of a shock to me. The project started out as something I was doing for myself, and so the immediate interest received from such a wide audience and the Press has been a little overwhelming.”





“The aim of this project was firstly to have a bit of fun; to release art into “the world” and see what would happen. If I introduced something new into the communal glass arena, being moved from one person to another, would it open peoples’ eyes to more of the everyday stuff around them? Would I make the milkman paranoid at the graffiti, and would it get back to the dairy?”

“I was curious to see what would happen.”

“I have started experimenting by taking glass forms and aim to make large scale, highly polished, cast glass.”

Visit 13above For More Fun

A Skull Worths Million Dollar

Damien Hirst, former BritArt bad boy whose works infuriate and inspire in equal measure, did it again with a diamond-encrusted platinum cast of a human skull priced at a cool $98 million.

The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th-century European male, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than $8 million in the center of its forehead.

Hirst, who has a preoccupation with blood and death and whose works range from diced and pickled quadrupeds to bloody depictions of birth, said he was inspired by similarly bejeweled Aztec skulls. While the skull is platinum and the diamonds flawless -- and ethically sourced, Hirst stressed -- the teeth are real.

“It was very important to put the real teeth back. Like the animals in formaldehyde you have got an actual animal in there. It is not a representation. I wanted it to be real,” he said.

“We felt we didn’t need it, so we took it out. It feels sort of human and quirky,” he said.

Hirst, whose works regularly fetch millions of pounds, said he hoped the skull would not be snapped up by a private buyer and taken away from public view.

Other works in the new exhibition include pickled creatures, a flying dove suspended in mid-air, a flayed human statue holding its own skin and a series of pictures of an operation being carried out.

As an indication of the wealth he has amassed since being spotted in 1991 by BritArt mogul Charles Saatchi, Hirst, who financed the skull himself, said he couldn’t remember whether it had cost £10-15 million pounds ($20-30 million).

“I hope this work gives people hope — uplifting, take your breath away,” he said in response to a question on what he expected the public to get from the skull.

Visit 13above for more fun