A co-worker of mine sent 'round an e-mail today -- tipping a bunch of us off on an artist's work she thinks is awesome. And, indeed, it is.Supposedly the internet is abuzz with excited reviews of Iri5's series Ghost In the Machine. Portraits of famous artists (musicians mostly, by the looks of what's out there) done with manipulated cassette tape tape (old film reels as well). I quite enjoyed this Robert Smith number.
But it got me to thinking about another artist whose art is molded out of cassette tapes. His name is Brian Dettmer. And if I'd never stumbled across a tiny little blurb about him once in a magazine, I would have surely missed out on this insanity.
What's that burning plastic smell? Ha ha ha! Okay, Brian -- you have creatively molded a human skull out of old rock tapes from K-Tel or whatever label "X". Fair enough. But then you up the ante by moving on to another medium: the hard cover book...
There are sites that you can visit where you can peek behind the velvet curtain & see the smoke and mirrors of his craft exposed. But I'll leave it as a mystery here.
If you live in Chicago though, and you've got nothing to do tomorrow -- you should try & make it out to the last day of his show 'Adaptations' at the Packer Schopf Gallery.
