New College Beat

Noah Butkus [reloaded]

We’ve long been a fan of the work of illustrator and designer Noah Butkus, so it was nice to stumble upon a cool little write-up about him on the BiBaBiDi blog: ‘His stuff is very impressive. I am a huge fan of Moebius, and this guy obviously draws heavily from the legendary French artist. Ah, look! Noah’s testimony: “When I was 14, I was fortunate enough to meet him and he has been the biggest influence on my work”. Like Moebius, he draws in a science-fiction sort of style and uses tons of details to fill up every page. Also like Moebius, he has a slightly shaky line, which makes the work look more organic and natural’. Read more

Elevator Music

This one comes direct from the source: ‘Appearing spontaneously in elevators throughout Melbourne’s CBD, Random Acts of Elevator Music will enlighten the consciousness of office workers with live muzaktronica. Dressed in suits, their portable studio hidden in briefcases, who knows where these undercover sonic redesigners will next strike. Log on to their website for the inside tip on where and when to experience the soothing oscillations and melodies of Random Acts of Elevator Music. Just don’t tell your HR department or the security guy at the front desk. Random Acts of Elevator Music will occur in CBD office buildings on weekdays within office hours during the Melbourne Fringe Festival between Monday October 2 and Friday October 13. Each evening information will be posted to the Random Acts of Elevator Music website on where they will appear the following day’. [see also Noah Butkus]

Noah Butkus

As well as creating some wicked t-shirt designs, American illustrator Noah Butkus has done some really interesting and creative work for Burton Snowboards. He told the Road Trip Nation website: ‘I just grew up skateboarding at a real early age and reading comic books … just drawing and drawing and did that my whole teenage life’. There’s more of his work at his Safe As Kittens website. [see also Edwina White]

FAIL! Man wears crack jacket to drug trafficking court date

From the ‘what were you thinking’ file comes this news report of a man in Fort Lauderdale accused of drug trafficking who turned up to court for his trial wearing a jacket with a cartoon recipe for cooking crack cocaine. Yes, smart indeed.

New Banksy artwork angers the Catholic Church

Banksy has struck again, this time offending the Catholic Church with a bold artwork that critiques their stance on ongoing child abuse scandals. Banksy has taken a replica of a bust of an eighteenth century member of the Catholic hierarchy and added multi-coloured tiles to the face — pixelating it — as a comment on what he considers to be the Church’s cover-up. ‘I’m never sure who deserves to be put on a pedestal or crushed under one’, Banksy noted. And who are we to disagree? Read more

Tattoo artist sued by ex-girlfriend for obscene design

Oh boy, this is so bizarre it could only be true. Apparently a Dayton, Ohio, tattoo artist has been slapped with a $100,000 lawsuit by his ex-girlfriend for tattooing an image of, erm, excrement with flies on her back rather than the scene from Narnia that she had requested. The reason? He’d recently found out that she had been cheating on him with one of his buddies. Damn! And here we were thinking this was the hot new look for trailer park trash crowd.