Tagged: culture

Don't throw it out! Put that dryer lint in a box next to the crayons, markers, and pencils. Turns out, it can be used to make art.

The Associated Press has a report on Laura Bell's laundry lint creation... a 14'x4' replica of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper." Bell is from Roscommon, Michigan.

From the report:

Bell says she needed about 800 hours to do enough laundry to get the lint, and 200 hours to recreate the mural. She bought towels of the colors she wanted and laundered them separately to get the right shades of lint.

The report says Ripley's Believe It or Not plans to display the piece in one of its museums, adding to other "Last Supper" replicas "made from a grain of rice, a dime and burned toast."

On the Ripley's website, Laura Bells says people have different reactions when seeing the piece:

“For some people, it’s a very spiritual experience. Others are simply amazed at what someone could do with basic laundry lint.”

This week's Artpod episode has a little something for everyone. Today's podcast features local holiday art fairs, ideas for inexpensive gifts (homemade marshmallows anyone?), and a musical rendition of how to make eggnog.

Two big changes recently happened to Russ Hicks. His wife Carol was diagnosed with cancer and passed away.

“I tell you right after Carol died I was completely rudderless and almost berserk. There was a time, a week afterward, at work where they said ‘you 'gotta go home and we'll drive you home!'”

Shortly after that, Hicks got laid off from his job of 22 years at a factory warehouse.

“And so here I am, within a year’s time I’d lost my wife and my job.”

There's a new post on Michigan Radio's Picture Project site.  Bob Vigiletti has eighteen beautiful shots taken in the waning years of the Michigan State Fair.  The fair, proclaimed to be the country's oldest, was closed because of declining attendance and revenues in 2009. Vigiletti writes:

It is only through out thoughts and photographs that we preserve and cherish memories of the past.