Miss Rockaway Armada

So I set out today searching for information on one of my favorite street artists, Swoon, whose wheatpaste work has tickled my whimsey for a while. In my net wanderings, however, I came across a project that she has been a part of that is, to be blunt, absolutely amazing: The Miss Rockaway Armada. The concept is fairly simple: a few dozen or so artists, sculptors, musicians, builders, and dreamers collect a mountain of junk and garbage and make a few rafts and, Huck Finn style, sail them down the Mississippi river from Minneapolis to New Orleans. "Well that's cute. But why should I care?" you ask. Because they're beautiful, functional, and fabulous, that's why. Each raft, while functional as a mobile river home with electricity and motors, also contains several different art installations by the builders themselves. True to the DIY spirit, all the motors are refabbed deisel car engines that run off of used veggie oil, and no one spends any money on any of the installations. While the pictures below provide a sampling of the type of work that comes out of the armada, their website, http://www.missrockawayarmada.com/, has more information if you have river raft fever. Particularly, check out some of their non-mobile installations, which their Flicker account wouldn't let me post. But I won't hold that against them.

 If stumbled onto this page looking for Swoon's work, check out the second door from the right.

Beginning this year's barge: you have to start somewhere.

Another new raft begins for this year

Craig Tracy

When most people hear the term, "body painting," they usually think of either that cheezy Pink Floyd poster or a strategically-placed butterfly flitting across some lady's titties at Bonnaroo. At this point, it's safe to say that most of the world can only do so much by painting on a live person, myself included. That is why I was so delighted and surprised to run into the gallery of Craig Tracy in the French Quarter this weekend. Tracy's a New Orleans native, and has actually developed a body painting style that is both captivating and original. Because his work is painted on actual nudes, all of his work is presented as photography. However, without knowing exactly what you were looking at, you may mistake the entire photograph, and the live nude in it, for a painting. They're that good. If you check out his web site, there are of course some duds that come along with this kind of medium, like some generic girls and babies painted gold or striped, but the rest truly make up for it. I'm particularly a big fan of the piece, "Butterfly" that he has on his site. I didn't include it here because the mastery of it is really in the photos he posted of his process more than anything. Few people can hide a girl's booty in a painting without taking something away from the piece. 'Nuff said.

This piece, "Sixtree" is my favorite and the only non-studio photo on Tracy's site. The tree in the center is made up of six painted people. I like it because it is beautifully understated. Hopefully, we'll see more work like this from Tracy in the future.

I have some personal envy for the kid who's mom heard, "I want to turn your womb into a radioactive, glowing space coccoon for hearts," and she was like, "Hell yeah. That'll go great in the blacklight room."