Pennsylvania artist Matthew Buchholz reinterprets American history through imaginatively altered vintage prints, postcards, maps and photographs. His ongoing project, titled Alternate Histories, incorporates aliens, monsters, robots and horror icons into historic scenes. Here’s a sample of his historical vandalism. But you can see more, and support the project, at his Etsy storefront.
Urban dwellers are well acquainted with the sight of abandoned bicycles that stay locked to poles for months, rusting away and slowly being stripped of all of their parts. In Toronto, Caroline Macfarlane and Vanessa Nicholas decided to do something about it. The artists/gallery managers paint bikes in bright neon colors, sometimes adding planters and flowers to their baskets, and place them around the city.
At first, they ran faced an unappreciative city bureaucracy, their initial piece of bike art in front of their gallery received a ticket for being stored on public property. But since then, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has endorsed what is now called “The Good Bike Project,” which has grown to include 50 reclaimed bikes, and the city government has begun donating abandoned bikes to the artists. “Our intention is to fuel a discussion about cycling and public art in the city,” Macfarlane says.
Here’s a sample of some of the transformed bikes brightening up Toronto’s streets:
The artists will name a bike after anyone who donates $100 oe more to the cause.
Michigan artist/cartographer Jerry Gretzinger has been creating his own fictional world 
through his nearly half-century mapmaking project. If you love maps as much as I do, you’ll find Jerry’s world mesmerizing.
You can support Jerry’s life-long project by visiting his website and by purchasing a “postcard” view of Jerry’s world on Ebay.
Five young men of questionable sanity recently attached a thin nylon line between Paris’ twin 400 foot Tours Mercuriales. Then then proceeded to defy death by cavorting on the slackline for this amazing video.
You can see more of their dare-devil antics at the Bad Slackliners website and on photographer Sebastien Montaz-Russet’s adventure blog.
Oosterduinkerke, on the coast of Flanders, is the last place in Europe to see the 500 year-old tradition of commercial fishing by horseback.
Last Sunday’s post included this (above) astonishing photograph, which artfully captures the duality of life in the Big Apple. The photo is from the upcoming exhibition by Stephen Wilkes that will run from September 8 to October 29, 2011 at the ClampArt Gallery in Chelsea, NYC.
Wilkes creates his intense images by setting up cameras above iconic New York locales, taking hundreds of shots from dusk to dawn. he then blends the photos into one large, dramatic image, creating an original hybrid scene.
An ambitious company called Orbital Technologies has an out of this world plan to put an actual hotel/space station in orbit. The little getaway will be nestled 217 miles above the Earth.
A five day stay,including round trip transport, will set you back $500,000 per person (assuming the space hotel ever gets off the ground).
Each room in the orbiting hotel is designed for seven guests. There won’t be much privacy, except for the stylish zero gravity hanging sleep sacks. But the hotel does come equipped with a microwave oven, fridge, shower cubicle and air toilet. Leave the wine at home, because alcohol will be forbidden.
Orbital Technologies plans to have the hotel in orbit, via Russia Soyuz rockets, by 2016. So get your deposits in pronto.
That buzzing sound you hear at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport could be a jet taking off. Or maybe it’s coming from the 1.5 million bees that call the airport home. In May, the Chicago Department of Aviation partnered with a community group to start a 2,400 square foot apiary on-site. Now 23 beehives are up and running and are scheduled to yield 575 pounds of honey this year.
The project offers a creative, sustainable, and productive way to use otherwise wasted open space at mega-airports like O’Hare. The bees’ new home on the east side of the airport campus had long stood vacant, so it was a natural spot for the bee program to begin. And if that’s not enough benefit, the beehives provide employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated adults (similar to other projects that teach prisoners beekeeping).
Sweet Beginnings, the offshoot of the local economic development agency that’s managing the project, trains felons in the art of beekeeping and the process of making honey, candles, and lotions, which are sold under the brand Beeline. O’Hare’s shops intend to start selling the hyper-local honey products soon.
The “airport beekeeping movement” has been growing in Germany since 1999, when scientists realized honeybees could be helpful for monitoring air quality, but O’Hare is the first American airport to get an apiary. In a way, it’s a return to the airport’s agricultural roots: O’Hare was founded on a former apple orchard, which lives on in the three letter airport code “ORD.”
Philly’s award-winning design studio, The Heads of State, is a two man operation run by Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers. After learning their design chops creating posters for Philly bands and music venues, the team has garnered such diverse clients as Starbucks, NPR and Modest Mouse.
I’m a big fan of their Travel Series. The art deco-ish group of city posters pays homage to America’s great cities and historical landmarks with spare graphics that draw inspiration from historical prints and tourism campaigns without being overtly retro pieces.
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