Unusual Life

Nit Wit Ridge is a house built entirely of junk located between San Francisco and LA near the Pacific Ocean. It is considered a fine example of folk art and is a California State Historic Landmark. It was built by one man (Arthur Harold Beal) over the course of 51 years.

Art began his creation in 1928 by digging out a hillside in Cambria. He used rocks, abalone shells, wood, beer cans, tile, car parts and other assorted junk to create his “Hearst Castle”.

Nit Wit Ridge is in Cambria (881 Hillcrest Drive), about 20 minutes north of Cayucos. Tours are available from the owners (Michael and Stacey O’Malley) by calling 805-927-2690. To get there, take highway 1 north to Cambria. Turn right at Main Street and continue through East Village into West Village. Turn right on Cornwall Street and then right again on Hillcrest Drive.

Via Weird Universe

Instead of throwing those glass bottles away, many folks have wondered how to recycle and build with these ubiquitous items.

This photo show walls being constructed on a build in New Mexico by Mike Reynolds at one of his “earthships”.

Apparently back in the 60’s Mr. Heineken came up with the idea of makeing the beer bottles and size and shape of bricks, while concerned about the about of litter and wastage beer bottles were causing. They never came to be, however.

Building with bottles has often been a choice of folk artists, early settlers and the poor in some countries, as they used whatever resources they had to build shelter. Agility Nut has a wonderful website featuring bottle houses around the world.

The Airlie Gardens Bottle House was created by a local artist, Virginia Wright-Frierson in 2004. It is officially named the “Minnie Evans Sculpture Garden Bottle House” after an artist/gatekeeper that worked at Airlie for many years. This bottle house is also referred to as the “chapel”. Frierson used bottles of all shapes and sizes as well as cement and chicken wire in its creation.

Beer Bottle Chapel created by Martin Sanchez of Riverside California

Ann’s Bottle House B&B in Arizona

Tom Kelly’s Rhyolite Bottle House

The Bottle Houses of Prince Edward Island

I wrote an article for this months issue of MAKE Magazine (http://www.makezine.com/) about folk artist Martin Sanchez and the environment he created out of found objects (including a beer-bottle chapel) and I’m going to be featuring some of those photos with commentary this Thursday 4/10 at See Sound Lounge on 1st and Blanchard in Belltown at 6pm.

Pecha Kucha Night was conceived in 2003 as a place for designers, architects and artists to meet, network, and show their work in public, and it has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world.

Give a mic to an architect or an artist and you may be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor.

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/seattle

http://www.UnusualLife.com

Artists and presenters for the evening are Marlow Harris, Alex Steffen, Cameron Hall, Sage Saskill, Elizabeth Buschmann, Karen Lorene, Jesse Harris, Dawn Clark, Ross Leventhal and Michael Franz Horner

For those heading to Baby Tattooville this weekend, be sure to check out folk artist Martin Sanchez’ incredible art installation he created on almost an entire city block in Riverside, California, just a few blocks from The Mission Inn.

Pictured here is his amazing chapel, built entirely out of beer and soda pop bottles and other assorted found objects.

More photos of the Martin Sanchez art installation on Unusual Life.

Restaurant-owner and folk artist Martin Sanchez has created an urban oasis, a garden of Eden, hidden behind shrubs, trees and a wrought-iron fence inside Martin’s Tio’s Tacos restaurant on Mission Inn Avenue in Riverside, California.

Detail of the exterior of the beer bottle chapel dome.

Relatively undiscovered, Mr. Sanchez has been working on his creation for almost 10 years. Patrons of the restaurant can walk underneath cooling streams of water flowing from a fountain garden made of broken pieces of clay and old pipes, discarded bicycles, dolls and other items. While we were there, we found Mr. Sanchez’ relatives helping him work to expand his garden paradise.

Using beer and soda pop bottles, Sanchez has created a light-filled folk art chapel, with his version of “stained glass”.

Detail of the interior of the chapel, resplendant with Virgins, crosses and saints.

There is topiary wire filled with Barbie dolls, perfume bottles and pipe elbows. There’s an incredible path through an archway lined in tubing pumping water, creating an obstacle course of water, where one can walk without getting wet.

Inside the restaurant, Sanchez has created tile mosaics of sea creatures such as lobsters and marlins. The mosaics are everywhere, covering the tables and floors.

Detail of beer and soda pop bottles imbedded in the walls.

Detail of the hand-painted bottle chapel dome.

RIVERSIDE CALIFORNIA FOLK ART INSTALLATION

LOTS MORE PHOTOS - CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE TO PAGE 2

All artwork by Martin Sanchez. All photos by Marlow Harris and JoDavid.

Aluminum Siding 12 Ounces at a Time!

Who doesn’t love a frosty mug? John Milkovisch does. He consumed 39,000 cans of beer over 18 years to create a magnificent Homage to Beer at his house in Houston, Texas. He linked pull-tabs into long streamers to make curtains that chimed when the wind blew. (Thanks to Boing Boing)

Take a tour of the Beer Can House.

Jeff Lebo’s “House of Beer Cans”

Here are a few photos of the “House of Beer Cans”. The building and displays were constructed between 1998 and 2001 with the help of Jeff’s father Fred, friends and other family members. The collection, which numbers in excess of 50,000 different cans, is the second largest of it’s kind in the world. The collection is divided into geographic regions, with seperate rooms for each region. Thanks to www.OffbeatHomes.com

Take a tour of Jeff’s Beer Can House.