Ms. Booth (or should I say Mrs., she is recently married) attended a university in Michigan and graduated with an art degree and currently lives in St. George, Utah and attends Dixie State College. Within only a few weeks of living there, she landed an art show at Twenty Five Main, a cafe in downtown St. George with great food, great art, and cupcakes! Her art is displayed there RIGHT NOW, so if you’re in the area, view it!

She’s also dabbled in t-shirt making. Send her an idea and she’d probably make something for you – she’s a sweet gal. Sweet as pie.

A spontaneous hair appointment led me into the brilliant and sunshiney apartment of Kelly Clipperton; hairdresser by day and photographer and music-maker by night. I inquired to one of the photos hanging in his apartment and was pleasantly surprised to find out it was his.

His photos come to life with a raw sexuality and entrance the viewer with a feeling of slight voyeurism; who is watching, and who is being watched?
Toying with sexual and gender identities, Kelly photos beguile and enforce controversial opinions on both political and societal ambiguities concerning the LGBT community.

Kelly iterates on his personal website:

“I’ve spent much of my life trying to figure out how I fit into the pastiche of socialization and creativity. In this ever increasingly detached world, I search for community and a sense of belonging even more than in my youth. That effortless fit into your tribe.”

Going on to describe his photographs as:

“[...] an extension of my need for order and an expression of want for togetherness. Uniforms, resemblance, balance… In each image there is a slight element of distress, which enhances the notion that no matter what goes wrong, continuity will pull you through. In my darkest of dark places I see the simplicity of uniform to be lifesaving.”

His most recent music video, which he sings and directs, deals directly with such topics:

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of those minds that people crave to get an inside view of; where roads don’t play straight and songs don’t drive forward, Mitchell’s mind is a constant creative and spontaneous wonder, and he has invited YOU to come along for a ride.

The debacle of ‘vlogging’ as an art form is subjective, and I, too, am speculative. However, after subscribing to Mitchell, and watching his videos for a few years now, I will admit: it is hard to deny that his ‘vlogs’ are anything but artsy and full of that symbolic ‘more’ we always crave whenever the artsy mind takes a peak into logically ’simple’.

Along with his best friend, Kyle, Mitchell pulls together the narrative of his life, the complexity of the human mind, the simplicity of a clean and clear stage and the intrigue of flipping through the surface pages of someone’s diary. ‘livelavalive’ is not a menage of fuzzy, unsteady home videos, but the dealings of a truly artistic mind.

His most recent video, a collaborative, and somewhat comedic monologue on what it is to be in love:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So this guy, Gary Shteyngart… he’s been around for a few years (his first book, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, was published in 2003), and now is starting to gather some serious writer-momentum.* His latest, the Super Sad True Love Story pictured above, has just come out, and it’s nailing reviews. I have a signed copy, and am proud of myself. You should also probably get a copy. Why? Because Gary Shteyngart is absurd, and probably the funniest contemporary writer around.

It would be easy to write more on the man’s latest novel, and his person in general, but for time saving I’m going to refer you to his NYT interview, the writeup of SSTLS in Slate magazine, and the information that he’s probably still on a reading tour for the book, so get out and see him if you can.

I’ll leave you with this trailer, which, while strange, appropriately evokes the spirit of Mr. Shteyngart, and a link to his wikipedia page, which will confirm the strangeness.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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* Writer-momentum being secondary to nearly every other form of momentum imaginable, a topic addressed in this lovely book!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Art Jargon & Analytic Perspective:

Aimee Mullins has turned her body into a blank canvas; literally recreating herself from nothing and achieving the impossible. How many times doctors must of told her that she would never be able to run again, I can’t even imagine. Aimee’s recreation of herself is inhuman and industrial and a monstrosity that alienates the human body from the non-human body, BUT, Mullins takes an approach that we often fail to look at: that the monstrosity, the inhuman occurring within industrialization, can be turned into a positive force.

The ‘monstrosity’ coincides with that which is not human, that which is monstrous and unknown. No doubt, Mullins’ would fall into this category as an amputee, a cripple- she lacks the body parts which make her ‘human’. The technological equipment and motivation to complete the impossible is a philosophy of the industrial society- the ‘commodity’ has created her LEGS.

On another note, Mullins is turning the abject into an art form, and not even an uncanny one at that. The photos of her modeling with Cheetah legs, and wooden carved legs have sex appeal! She is altering the way that society views the ‘monstrous’. When the internal is stabilized, the external becomes stabilized by default. Mullins’ internal stability has given her the power to not only accept how her external body’s physicality, but the ability to turn the body into anything that she wants it to be. This is a completely new way of looking at a ‘disability’- the woman has turned herself into someone who has potential superpowers!

Okay, so it’s more of a yacht. A pretty yacht.

Yelken Octuri (which is a totally badass name, in the first place) has designed a flying yacht. This is to say that he’s designed a vehicle that is at once a 46 meter sailing trimaran with four automatically functioning masts and a fully functional plane that transforms – on the water – and can travel at speeds of roughly 390 km/h. Take a look at the interior, and beyond being the complete world-killer in transportation, it’s also a luxury chillin’ spot.

According to Automotto, we’ve seen concept sea-planes before. Yeah, I suppose… but nothing that approaches this, even remotely. Apparently, the design is being considered for production by anonymous engineers, which means that anonymous engineers these days can do pretty much anything. The sky is no longer the limit. Nor the sea.

Yelken, an interior designer working for Airbus and also teaching design in his native Toulouse (Fr.), has some other wild ideas as well – air and sea transport for the absurdly wealthy future! Check him out here.

Enjoy the pictures, and note the schematics on Octuri’s page. Wild.