360 DEGREES Weblog

When Korean-American muralist and graffiti artist, David Choe opted for shares over cash for painting murals on the walls of Facebook’s first office in Palo Alto, California, little did he know that a few years down the line this gamble would yield him some rich dividends. Among the many shareholders who are expected to profit from Facebook’s announcement of filing papers for an IPO, is 35-year old Choe. It is rumored that Choe could have received about 0.1 to 0.25 percent of the company.

Street art by russian street artist Pavel Puhov.

When artist John Baldessari based in California was asked to commission a billboard, he sure seemed to have taken the “bill” seriously, which is probably why you’d now see a massive $100,000 bill stretched above High Line at 18th Street, Woodrow Wilson. Covering the entire billboard measuring 25 feet x 75 feet, The First $100,000 I Ever Made, as you might have realized by now, given the fact that you do sport a considerable amount of reasoning, is fake. But then again, $100,000 did exist at one point of time in history, during the Great Depression to be precise, and only 42,000 of them were ever printed, though none of these ever entered circulation streams, and for good reason.

From designer model cars for collectors and enthusiasts, new realms have been reached in automotive art. We have earlier told you about the automotive themed furniture and car sculptures, with luxury cars as inspiration, the automotive art is reinventing itself. One of the popular auto trends with auto enthusiasts is furniture made from original car parts. But, designer Charly Molinelli of Molinelli Designs has gone a little farther with his crashed car furniture range, which might baffle the die-hard car lovers. The designer’s “Crashed Ferrari Table” has put the car scrap to a better use then letting it get the junkyard treatment. So, next time you hear a bad Ferrari crash, all Charly wants you to think about is how to make the wrecked exotic car a part of your lifestyle in an extremely new manner. The price is still awaited and we are still unsure if the crashed car furniture is only for the crashed car owners or open to the collectors, who are ready to splurge on anything in the name of art.

Swiss artist Dante and his brilliance of work on different materials to create automotive artifacts has been shown in our coverage of the limited edition Aston Martin Golden sculpture, which was the replica of the vehicle’s fundamental structure. The latest example of his Midas touch is going to be the 24-Karat gold Ferrari 250 GTO sculpture, which is set to be revealed at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance Auction, where the series of Ferrari 250 GTO cars will go under the hammer.
Dante is an artist who is known world over for his exemplary work with different materials like gold, wood, steel and even platinum. He has created custom furniture and even vehicle body designs for select car collectors from around the world. His latest range includes precious metals like white gold, silver and even traditional gold, one of which is this chassis scale model made with traditional yellow gold. Speaking on his main inspiration, the engineers at Ferrari, he comments,
“The iconic car sculptures are my tribute to the men who made the original cars: they were artists. One of the most important reasons for my coming to Pebble Beach is the celebration of the Ferrari 250 GTO and the number of original cars being shown. It is my favorite car of all time.”
The gold wire Ferrari 250 GTO will be on display at the Concours site for 3 days, beginning from August 2011, which will have auto lovers and collectors from all over the world coming down to witness the closely contested auctions. Apart from the cars present, Dante’s work is sure to get a lot of the attention as well.

OK brand loyalty aside, how far will you go to prove to show the world how much your opulence quotient is, and how cool you really are? While huge tattoos, and piecing with rare and precious metals encrusted with rare stones is one way to go, they don’t really turn out as well as you first imagined. Take for instance a tattoo of a diamond dialed Rolex on the wrist. Distasteful as it looks, the watch doesn’t read a standard 10:10, but rather it reads 4:20. Well I sure hope he is the first of his kind to attempt such an unpleasant feat!

Not just standard sand art, “Jim Denevan (born 1961) spends hours to create the most beautiful and probably the most impermanent drawings on the North California beaches.”

Damien Hirst has designed the latest record cover for band Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘I’m With You’. The record, which releases August 30th, 2011, features his signature pharmaceutical theme, using a pill.

We have seen many artistic skateboards including some of the finest ones like Carbon fiber skateboard by Alex Luxat or Stephen Sprouse graffiti skateboard that has already hit the slopes.For all the sporty people who are in love with such skateboard, British artist Damien Hirst has created yet other pieces of artwork, this time on skateboard decks.
The skateboard desks were originally introduced in 2009 by the artist in collaboration with New York based skateboard company Supreme. The artist customized 40 decks, in different patterns like; five decks with spots, each in different sizes and colors on the bottoms, few with different scientific symbols and few in different medical signs.
With the re-release of the art pieces, the boards will be available at the publishing company Other Criteria that belongs to the British artist Damien Hirst. The edition of 40 decks signed by Hirst will cost you $1,945 and the larger unsigned edition would cost you $778.The stock is limited and will be available in the store from July 12th, Tuesday.

Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to visit your local art gallery to see amazing photorealistic pencil artworks. All of these were created by artist Randy Atwood.