Le Palais Ideal is one of the most popular examples of naive art architecture, built by Ferdinand Cheval, a French Postman, over a period of 33 years.

Cheval began building his Ideal Palace in April 1879. While he was on the job, the postman tripped over a stone and was impressed by its unusual shape. Inspired by the stone, he returned the following day and started gathering more rocks and putting them in his pockets. Over time he began carrying them in baskets and then, in a wheelbarrow.

With no architectural skills whatsoever, Ferdinand Cheval managed to build his Ideal Palace, combining several styles and using the Bible and Hingu mythology as inspiration. He spent 20 years on the outer walls alone, binding the stones together with lime, mortar and cement and decorating them with all sorts of chapel and temple models.

Cheval wanted to be buried in his Palais Ideal, but French law didn’t allow it. So he spent the last years of his life building himself an intricate mausoleum, in the cemetery of Hauterives. His palace was recognized as a masterpiece and is now a cultural landmark and one of France’s popular tourist attractions.

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Huang Xin, a hairdresser from Beijing has created replicas of monuments and famous buildings around Tiananmen Square, using discarded human hair.

I’ve seen some pretty impressive models throughout the years, including a plywood helicopter, a matchstick Minas Tirith or a toothpick city, but never anything made from human hair. But, they say there’s a first time for everything, so today I stumbled over some photos of famous Chinese buildings made entirely from human hair.

Huang Xin, a young Chinese hairdresser wanted to celebrate the 60th anniversary of People’s Republic of China in a unique manner and used his talent to do it. Using discarded human hair, mostly from women, he spent almost an entire year creating some very impressive models of Tiananmen Square.

photos via ImagineChina

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George Reiger considers himself Disney’s number one fan and to prove it, he has covered most of his body with over 1,900 Disney tattoos.

When people ask George Reiger why he has almost 2,000 tattoos relating to Disney, his answers that Disney practically raised him when he was a child and he wanted to have Mickey and the entire Magical Kingdom with him everywhere he went. George had his first tattoo, Fantasia Mickey, when he was just 18 years old. By the time he turned 20, he already had 80 Disney tattoos.

That’s when he went to the company’s owners and asked them for permission to have even more characters permanently inked on his skin. Disney agreed to let him become a walking Disney canvas, as long as he used just one tattoo artist for every one of his tattoos and didn’t make any money from them. He agreed and went one to cover about 85% of his body with Disney characters and settings. He has 4-5 new tattoos done every week.

To George Reiger, nothing is more important than Disney. That’s probably why he’s currently at wife number 6, with all six honeymoons spent at Walt Disney World. He lives in a Disney-themed house, full of over 24,000 Disney collector’s items.

He admits that it’s pretty bizarre for a 50-year-old man to be covered in tattoos of children’s characters, but this is what makes him happy. He spends around $50,000 on Disney every year and when he dies, he wants his ashes spread over the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, so he can live in Wald Disney World forever.

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Also known as “The Queen of Beads”, Liza Lou is considered one of the most original artists of our time. She has created unique artworks by covering common surfaces with thousands, even millions of glass beads.

Liza Lou first shocked the world in 1996, when she presented her first major work, “Kitchen”. It took the artist five years to cover every inch of a normal kitchen with glass beads, including the water in the sink and the dirty dishes. In 1999 she went even further, creating “Backyard”, a masterpiece for which she used over thirty million beads. Most of  them have been used to create the 250,000 blades of grass making up the lawn.

She has often been criticized, called “obsessive”, “second-hand jeweler” and some went as far as to say her beading work isn’t real art. But the genius grant she received from The MacArthur Foundation, in 2002, silenced most of her critics.

Liza Lou‘s art may look amazing, but it came with a high price for the artist. She was diagnosed with acute tendinitis while she was working on “Kitchen”, because she applied every glass bead individually, using tweezers. She uses only beads brought in from the Czech Republic and considers them the most beautiful beads in the world.

Photos via Pamrubert

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Heather Jansch is a very talented artists who specializes in creating amazing sculptures of horses and other animals from driftwood.

As long as she can remember, Heather Jansch has always been fascinated by horses and dreamed of living in the middle of nature, surrounded by grazing horses. Thanks to her drawing and sculpting talents, she has fulfilled that dream and can truly say she does what she loves for a living, sculpting horses.

Her amazing driftwood horses are made from driftwood, gathered from estuaries and the local woodland, and oak provided by neighboring estates. Asked how she fits the pieces so well, Heather said “By whatever method works. Each sculpture is different and can sometimes call for innovative means of construction, it is part of the fascination and why my interest in this way of working continues.”

via bookofjoe

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Discovered near one of Florida’s shorelines, this sea-faerie mummy is as real as these things get in the real world and it could have been yours.

This extremely rare creature has just been auctioned off on eBay and sold for $305. Had more people known about it, I’m sure the price would have went even higher. I mean, how many times do you get the opportunity to buy a sea faerie. Although it didn’t actually live in the sea, its parts did.

eBay member aquatica_art created the faerie by draping once organic fish skin around a short human skeleton. The wings are made from fish fins, and the lips, teeth and jaw-bone also come from fish. The long antennae were borrowed from the tail of a stingray. So you see, this IS a real sea-faerie!

And the best part about this unusual mummy is it has no fish odor at all.

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Skull artists Quinn Gregory decided to take a break from designing bling-skulls and created a 5’3″ sculpture of Jesus, covered by nearly 250,000 Swarovski crystals.

Entitled “Infinite Hope” this statue of Jesus took the artist 14 and a half months to complete, 10 of which he pent just encrusting the crystals. To him “the brilliance  of the crystalized Jesus symbolizes all of the hope religion and my faith bring to me.”

He has entered his “Infinite Hope” in the Grand Rapids Michigan ART PRIZE contest, for a chance to win a considerable prize. $500,000 is awarded to the top 10 artists in the competition.

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Adam Morrigan, a British artist from Gloucestershire, Britain, creates works of art from roadkill and actually sells some of them

Adam is one of the most unusual artists on the planet. He makes a living creating and selling artworks made from the carcasses of dead animals he finds around his house. He often cooks and eats the roadkill he finds, but what he can’t eat, he turns into fashion accessories or pieces of dead art.

So far he has created over 30 roadkill art pieces, including bags made out of the body of a fox or a deer, calf-skin rugs, feather hats and even framed carcasses. It’s not something I’d buy for my art collection (if I had one), but apparently people are crazy about this roadkill art. Adam  Morrigan’s pieces start at a few thousand pounds, but he’s sold a few with as much as 50,000 pounds.

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Dominic Epistolo had the idea of recreating some of the states in the USA out of pieces of meat and I for one thinks his works look good enough to eat.

Dominic Epistolo, a very talented photographer from Philadelphia has shot many photos in his career, from fashion to still-life, but his most popular set, “The United Steaks of America” has been featured all over the internet. He had the original idea of carving the United States out of pieces of meat.

His photographs look amazing, but I wonder if he cooked his work after shooting it. I’d sure like to sink my teeth into juicy Pennsylvania.

via Toxel

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The last thing you would expect to find in the middle of the driest desert on Earth is a a work of art. But that’s exactly what you’re gong to see, if you happen to be traveling through the Atacama Desert, in Chile.

The Hand of the Desert (La Mano del Desierto) is an 11-meters-tall sculpture, in the shape of a hand, rising up from the desert. It was designed and created by Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal, and is probably the weirdest thing you’re going to see in Atacama.

“The hand rising from the sand” theme is very common in Mr. Irarrázabal work and he has two other major similar sculptures in the US and Uruguay. We’ll add them both to our list of oddities, soon enough.

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Stan Munro has spent the last six years of his life recreating some of the world’s most important landmarks out of nothing else but toothpicks.

Most people use them to get rid of food scraps from between their teeth, but 38-year-old Stan Munro, a former television host, uses them to create wooden works of art. Stan takes between one day and six months to glue together 1:164 scale models of some of the most impressive structures on Earth.

In order to create his amazing Toothpick City, Stan Munro has so far used six million toothpicks and 172 liters of glue, but his work is far from over. Right now he is working on a toothpick replica of Angkor Wat, the most complex structure he has ever had to build. All his models are on display at the Museum of Science and Technology, in Syracuse, New York.

Photos by SOLENT NEWS & PHOTO AGENCY

via Telegraph.co.uk

Here are some of his most incredible-looking toothpick creations:

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Seven Israeli designers worked on creating a set of beautiful wedding dresses, made out of toilet paper, in celebration of the most requested wedding date in the world, September 9, 2009.

The talented designers presented their creations in Tel Aviv, as part of an advertising campaign for a toilet paper company. The idea behind the project is toilet paper wedding dresses are perfect for emotional brides as they can use it to wipe their tears of happiness or excess make-up.

These are not the first paper dresses I’ve seen, but they are definitely the most beautiful and they will be auctioned off and the winnings donated to a local charity.

Photos by David Silverman/Getty Images Europe

via Zimbio

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Featuring custom painted flames, taillights, headlights and side-view mirrors, the Harley-Davidson Armchair is probably the manliest chair ever made.

Designed and built by the guys at First Impressions, the Harley-Davidson can make anyone feel like a hardcore biker, right in the comfort of their own home. When you kick out the chair’s footrest, the chair’s speakers reward you with a motorcycle engine sound that lasts about 10 seconds. Armchairs just don’t get cooler than this.

First Impressions has created custom home theaters for celebrities the likes of Don Johnson, Vanilla Ice or Michael Winslow. The home-theaters at Neverland and Graceland are also masterpieces of the above mentioned company.

The Harley-Davidson Armchair is priced at $6,950, but you can have your custom built First Impressions home-theater, starting at $150,000.

via Gizmodo

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Created by artist Jean Shin, Chance City is made-up of $32,404 worth of discarded “Scratch & Win” lottery tickets, displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

What can you do with thousands of apparently worthless losing lottery tickets? Not much, either recycle them or use them as building material. Jean Shin opted for the second choice and created a number of urban buildings she chose to call Chance City.

The structures of Chance City are sustained only by gravity and friction, yet some of them have been around since 2002, when the project started. Back then, the design contained $17,119 worth of lottery tickets, but it grew to $24,496 worth in 2004 and plans to expand even more.

Chance City is the embodiment of failed hopes of ordinary people, while its fragile-looking, yet resilient buildings “are symbols of the American Dream representing how labor, money and resilience defy the odds of a fragile existence”.

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Judging by the amount of trash we generate every day, it’s no wonder people are beginning to build structures using it.

100 tons of PET bottles, pressed into bales, were used to create the Temple of Trash, presented at the 2007 Follydock Festival, in Rotterdam. The idea behind this project by Salzig Design is future generations might actually end up believing human kind worships the trash it produces and dumps into landfills.

The Temple of Trash was a temporary installation, but, although it’s not standing anymore, it can still be admired on the official site of Salzig Design

via Treehugger

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