And now for something completely different...

This appeals to the parts of my brain which appreciate the Wunderkammer, dark humour, the absurd and the surreal. This post is also for my mother, who grew up on the prairie, and hence is of the opinion that the only good gopher is a dead gopher, to the dismay of her city-bred children who had the temerity to think they are cute!

From CRAPPY TAXIDERMY:




These are from The Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, Alberta, Canada. Below we have some good, old-fashioned composite creatures.




(via the Mincing Mockingbird blog)

While I am on the subject of dubious? unusual? creative museums, are you familiar with the Museum of Jurassic Technology? Their quixotic collection covers everything from Anathasius Kircher's magnetic oracle to 'GARDEN OF EDEN ON WHEELS
Selected Collections from Los Angeles Area Mobile Home and Trailer Parks' to Dogs of the Soviet Space Program - and more.

There are also a muriad of weird and wonderful, and oddly specific museums to be found, with the slightless search. These include but are not limited to the Washington Banana Museum, Icelandic Phallological Museum, The Museum of Bad Art and the Meguro Parasitological Museun. I could go on...

Do you have a favorite oddity or quixoitic museum?

Talking Trees, with scarves

I have posted about cutting paper, and before I continue on with the wonders of folding paper, I would like to go off on a brief tangent to ask, "How cool is Jing Wei?" This young illustrator grew up in Northern California, though she was born in China. Currently she is based in "a treehouse in Brooklyn". Her style is has a touch of the surreal, magic, the cute and comics, but she has such delicacy of line and colour, in her chosen media: the woodblock print. Oh, and she has a things about scarves. Go look at her portfolio already! You can find more on her blog too.


Roperite - woodcut, ink, 12 x 12 (inches, I assume?)


Lobsters - woodcut, ink, 9 x 16.5


Groover vs. The Automatic Cat Feeder- woodcut, ink, 4 x 6


Talking Trees - woodcut, ink, 11.5 x 14