Would you spend $55,000 on a motorcycle that doesn’t run? Before you make a decision on that, here’s what you need to know – the motorcycle in question is actually made of animal bones. A Florida man created the beast using a lot of pieces from other dead beasts – three to four cow skulls, two to three alligator skulls, bones of goats, wolves, raccoons, turtles and pigs, and a cow spine for each of the wheels. The bike is rather cheekily named: ‘Cowasaki’.

Reese Moore, the bike’s creator, said it takes him about a year to collect all the bones from dead animals on the side of the road, or carcasses from hunters and farmers. It then takes him a week to sand the bones down and but the bike together. It’s not just bikes – the 65-year-old also makes a host of other things with the bones, including dinosaurs and choppers. And when he isn’t doing that, he trains whales and sea lions, builds museum exhibits and performs in Timucuan Indian re-enactments. He was also a snake wrangler at one point.

“I don’t do anything normal,” Moore observed. “I just go around and show off and make weird stuff.” He got into the bones business after using them to make Halloween decorations for his kids sometime in the early 1990s. That year, he made a dinosaur out of an assortment of bones for his sons. When the owner of Froggy’s Saloon asked him if he could take the model, Moore had a better idea. “I was kidding, and I said, ‘I’ll build you a motorcycle for Bike Week.’” The bar-owner said it couldn’t be done and Moore accepted the challenge. “In about three or four days I called him up and told him he could pick up his motorcycle.”

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Did you know that colors can be seen as well as heard? Well, now you do, thanks to 31-year-old Neil Harbisson, a color blind artist who spent years looking for a way of experiencing the colors of the world around him. For the past 10 years, Neil has been wearing an external electronic eye that picks up the frequencies of the colors before him and converts them into sound vibrations that he can hear. Initially he wore the device outside his head. But later, the London-based artist convinced surgeons to implant the chip int his skull to be able to perceive more intricate colors.

The idea for the device came about when Neil heard a cybernetics talk by computer scientist Adam Montandon at Dartington College of Arts in 2003. The pair then collaborated to create the device and Neil ended up memorizing various frequencies so he could recognize colors. So he still couldn’t see the colors, he could now hear and identify them. Neil, who was born with achromatopsia (a rare condition that allows him to see only black or white), said during a talk in 2012: “For me the sky is always grey, flowers are always grey and television is black and white.”

“But since the age of 21 instead of seeing color I can hear color. So I’ve been hearing color all the time for eight years so I find it completely normal to hear it all the time. At the start I had to memorize the names you have for each color and the notes but after some time all this information became a perception and I didn’t have to think about the notes and after some time this became a feeling. I started to have favorite colors and I started to dream in color.”

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You’ll have to look really close at this picture of a beautiful parrot to realize that it’s not a parrot at all. The rich red-and-gold plumes are, in fact, a woman’s limbs painted to perfection. The incredibly clever photograph is the work of 35-year-old body painter Johannes Stoetter. The artist, who lives in Italy, spent four long weeks planning the transformation of a female model into a hauntingly realistic parrot. The actual painting work took him about four hours to complete and he spent another hour positioning the model on a tree stump before clicking a series of photographs.

Stoetter’s photographs form the perfect illusion. But if you observe carefully, the head of the parrot is actually the woman’s left arm wrapped around her head. The wings are formed by her right leg and arm, while her outstretched left leg is made to resemble the tail. Stoetter said that he chose to have the model sit on a tree stump to enhance the life-like appearance. As you can imagine, the entire process was quite complicated and painstaking.

“It was quite hard to take the photo, to tell the model how to pose to make the parrot seem as real as possible and also to find the right point of view for me to take the photo,” said Stoetter. “It was not easy for the model to hold the position either. The whole process took about four weeks from start to finish.” Although it was tiresome, the artist said that it is immensely satisfying, especially when people compliment him for a nice picture of a parrot.

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When Jesse Krimes was growing up, he probably never realized what a cruel pun his last name would turn out to be. In 2009, he was sentenced to 70 months in prison for possession of cocaine, after a long-drawn legal battle of unfair charges and accusations. While the judge recommended that he be sent to a minimum security prison close to his family in New Jersey, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) chose to send him to a medium security facility far away from home.

According to Jesse, that was just the first of a series of measures taken by a system that is designed to dehumanize. The experience must have been extremely frustrating for him, to say the very least, but he did find a unique way of fighting back – through art. “The system is designed to make you into a criminal and make you conform. I beat the system,” he said with pride.

The extraordinary artist didn’t have fancy art supplies to work with. At his disposal were mundane objects like old New York Times (NYT) newspapers, prison bedsheets and hair gel. But these were more than enough for him to create something so striking that the world just had to stand up and take notice. He created an enormous mural by burnishing high quality visuals from NYT on to the bedsheets, using only a plastic spoon. He used the hair gel as a transfer agent.

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Performance artists Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder are currently roommates – not in an apartment, but in a large hamster wheel. Alex, who is afraid of heights, lives on the inside of the wheel, at the bottom. Ward, who has no such reservations, stays put at the very top, on the outside (180 degrees from Alex). They came into this unique living arrangement last Friday and plan to continue until March 9th.

Ward and Alex are actually in the middle of an art project that they like to call ‘In Orbit’. They are on display at The Boiler, a performance space at a New York’s Pierogi gallery. It took them four weeks to construct the 30-foot tall, 60-foot in circumference hamster wheel themselves, with a little help from engineer friends. The gigantic structure is suspended from the ceiling and has furniture fastened to it on the inside and the outside. Ward and Alex each have a bed, a desk, a kitchen-bathroom combo, a chair, lamps and a dresser to use.

Every piece of furniture is aligned to its counterpart, so both inhabitants of the wheel have to use the bathroom at the same time, work at the same time and go to sleep at the same time. To change the furniture setting, they simply walk on the wheel in opposite directions, moving it until the next station arrives. For safety reasons, they walk very, very slowly.

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The city of Detroit is home to the most artistic, most magnificent car park in America. The opulent structure that was once known as Michigan Theater is now being used as a three-level parking garage. And here’s the irony of the situation – one of the reasons the theater had closed down was insufficient parking space!

In fact, you could safely say that the car park has come a full circle. Before the theater had opened at the site, it used to contain Henry Ford’s first automobile workshop. That was torn down in 1926 and the theater was constructed with a massive budget of $5 million. Michigan Theater was one of the largest in the state – it could accommodate 4,000 people.

The premises was a multiplex of sorts – it served as a theater, concert hall and movie house. The French Renaissance décor included 10-foot tall chandeliers, a gilded four-story lobby, and mezzanine seating for black tie guests. The structure, covering 1,000 sq. ft., was an architectural marvel and a symbol of Detroit’s growing wealth.

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A 23-year-old Chinese girl is being forced to leave her boyfriend for a weird reason – he can’t use his legs. Yang Nan’s parents permitted her to live with Yan Hongbo for three years, in which time he had to start walking again. But the time is up now and the boy is still wheelchair-bound.

Yang has begged her parents for more time, and they’ve allowed her another 6 months. But she has almost no hope that things might improve. “I don’t know what to do, I know that he can be cured but we don’t have any money now for medical treatment. We don’t even have enough money to properly get by day-to-day. We need a miracle,” she said. Yan on the other hand is being the sacrificial lover – he wants Yang to listen to her parents and leave him. “I don’t see any future for her with me, she has a bright future ahead of her,” he said. “If we can’t get my legs fixed I have made her promise that she will do as her parents want if we don’t get things sorted in the next six months.”

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When snow is free of cost, who’s going to pay for snowmen, right? Wrong! Apparently, people will buy anything if you sell it right. These two Chinese men have hit the marketing jackpot – making the most of heavy snowfall, they’re selling snowmen by the dozen.

The two men (we don’t know their names or who they are), make snowmen for cars in the suburb of Chengdu, in Southwest China’s Sichuan province. A photograph taken on 10 February shows them placing snowmen with orange eyes, noses and buttons, on top of a customer’s car.

According to some reports, they had sold over 100 snowmen before noon that day. Other pictures show several cars lined up in a street, all sporting snowmen on the roof. It certainly made for a festive display. It was as though the frozen figures were cheering on the traffic.

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Adam Brown, a Missouri-based painter, is offering his clients a unique way to connect with their deceased loved ones. He mixes the ashes with paint pigments and uses them to create portraits of the dead, as a ‘lasting memory’.

The 32-year-old artist said: “It hit me that having ashes in an urn on a fireplace would be a good way to remember that someone died, but having them in a piece of art is a good way of remembering that someone lived.” For Brown to paint the portraits, his clients need to send him the cremated remains of their loved ones. “Out of respect, I still wear gloves when handling the ashes,” said Brown “And whatever is left over, I am careful to return. I only need about four to six ounces, depending on the canvas. The ashes would go into the background.”

He takes these ashes, which have the texture of sand, and mixes them with paints, craft glues and resins. Brown also incorporates the deceased’s favorite colors and personality into the artwork. He puts a written inscription at the back warning that the painting contains human remains. This is “in case it ever leaves the family and goes into auction, so people know what they’re buying.”

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Sweets are not just meant for eating, they can be used for art too! Artist Michelle Wibowo recently used tasty treats to create a life-size replica of Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel painting – The Creation of Adam. Measuring 18’9’’ by 9’2’’, it features 10,000 marshmallows and half a billion cake sprinkles. It’s been rightly dubbed, ‘The Baking of Adam’.

Michelle took 168 hours to complete the project that marks the 450^th anniversary of Michelangelo’s death. “Britain is currently gripped by baking fever with a real emphasis on unique designs and showmanship,” said the 35-year-old artist who baked the masterpiece for Cake Angels. “When we learnt of Michelangelo’s anniversary celebrations, we really wanted to join in. We decided to challenge the boundaries of cake design by immortalizing his most heavenly creation in our own special way. No celebration is complete without cake and we really hope that Michelangelo would have given us his official seal of approval.”

According to creative director Alex Balzaretti, “Cake Angles is all about inspiring the baker through creativity and innovation. We’ve been looking for a project for a long time that enabled us to do that and it became apparent that 2014 was going to be a historic year in the celebration of the life of Michelangelo. His most important and probably prized work of art is The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and what more heavenly creation to be picked.”

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Aww, this has got to be the most adorable car in the world. The Aston Martin DB Junior is a fully functioning classic petrol-engine sports car for children aged 10 and over. Its design is inspired by 007’s legendary Aston Martin DB5 of the 1960s. No machine guns or ejector seats included, though.

So if you fancy seeing your little boy or girl drive a mini-size Bondmobile, all you need to do is bust US $27,000 on it. Guaranteed, it’ll burn a rather large hole in your pocket, but the expression on your kid’s face – priceless!

Now for the specs: the DB Junior is a convertible, measuring 8 foot 2 inches long, 3 foot 4 inches wide, and 2 foot 5 inches high. It comes with composite coachwork, leather or vinyl seats, a wood-rimmed steering wheel and hydraulic Brembo disc brakes. A key-operated electric starter ignites the 110 cc four-stroke petrol engine linked to a semi-automatic 3-speed gearbox. The top speed is 46 mph – this can be restricted downwards.

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Peter Gibson, a Montreal-based artist, began a campaign in 2001 to encourage the city to build more bike lanes. Although intended as an activism effort, the campaign was artistic in nature – it involved huge drawings on black asphalt, plain for everyone to see.

A decade ago, around the same time, Gibson was actually charged with 53 counts of public mischief for drawing on the streets. But he was popular with the public and support poured in from everywhere, helping him to walk free.

Today, the reason for protest may no longer exist, but the art form sure hasn’t died out. Assuming the pseudonym ‘Roadsworth,’ (“where Wordsworth is a poet of words, Roadsworth is a poet of roads”), Gibson has cleverly transformed roads, sidewalks and parking lots into stunning pieces of art.

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‘Carcass’ is an odd name for a kitchen, don’t you think? But this isn’t a regular kitchen we’re talking about. It’s a diorama on view at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago. This happens to be artist Roxy Paine’s first solo show, ‘Apparatus’. Carcass is the full-scale replica of a real fast-food kitchen that Roxy made entirely out of wood.

The details of the kitchen are incredible – order screens, cash registers, deep fryers, soft-drink dispensers and stacked up containers for burgers and fries, all made of wood. There’s something very attractive about the neat, clean lines and the monochromatic appearance. Makes me want to reach into the photographs and touch the all-wood kitchen.

The absence of flashy logos lends the diorama a very gaunt appearance, something like that of an empty shell, hence the name ‘Carcass’. The large-scale model is entirely carved out of birch and maple wood and formed from steel. Roxy’s work is significant, according to Kavi Gupta gallery, because he has challenged the perception of visual language and how it affects the understanding of our environments.

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Arizona Snowbowl, a resort in Flagstaff, Arizona, has resorted to the worst kind of commercialism seen in modern times. Since 2002, they’ve been using the city’s treated sewage effluent to make fake snow. Environmental groups, concerned citizens and the indigenous people of the region have been opposing this for years.

For the Hopi Tribe, the San Francisco Peaks, where the resort is located, are a spiritual and holy land. The tribe has been trying to get the city to stop selling its waste water to the resort for almost a decade. They recently got permission to file a lawsuit against Arizona Snowbowl in November 2012, due to the threats posed by the reclaimed water to an endangered plant found only on the Peaks. But it appears that the resort has turned a deaf ear to all protests.

According to a news report on Elite Daily, “Skiing is big business in Flagstaff. Resorts bring in about $35 million to the local economy during snow season. But since the climate has been changing, there isn’t enough snow.”

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Artist Jennifer Trask creates sculptures that are so delicate, it’s easy to mistake them for paper. But they’re actually made of bones. I’m seriously awe-struck at how she can convert something as hard and dry as bone into such exquisite works of art.

Some of the petals carved by Jennifer are so thin and frail, they would be instantly pulverized if you touched them. Her complex pieces contain several motifs – delicate florals and mythical creatures surrounded by vines and curls, cleverly laced with gold and other found objects dating back to the 18^th century. They usually form wearable pieces like pendants, necklaces, and brooches, or wall art.

The New York based artist, who received an MFA from SUNY at New Paltz, has a very philosophical reason behind choosing bones as her preferred medium. “As the ultimate expression of both physical sensation and emotional sentiment (e.g. ‘I feel it in my bones’), bone is the absolute reductive essence of both life, and death,” she said. “Initially made of living cells, evolving, incorporating evidence of how we lived, the material itself embodies a latent narrative.”

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