One of the beauties of the internet is that it contains so many hidden mysteries.  Not unlike a thrift store or junkyard, there are endless treasures buried underneath all of the worthless and fly-by-night bullshit.  Through monitoring the traffic that each of our articles generate, I’ve discovered the randomness in both the timing and focus of the people that find and read the shit posted on here.  An article that I post today may not get any more than 2 readers this week but, 3 months from now, there may be a sudden interest and that traffic will spike through the fucking roof.  Today I have found one such hidden gem that, although it may have been buried for a few years, I hope to exhume this like Ed Gein constructing a living room set.

The image to the left is a piece of art created by a New York artist by the name of Steve DeFrank.  It’s an older work of his, but I only just discovered it through the official website for the Smithsonian Institute‘s National Portrait Gallery.  This piece was a finalist in the 2006 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and was part of the subsequent, related exhibit held at the gallery.  DeFrank‘s work did not “win” the competition, it is only one piece in a group with the work of other finalists’.  It is, however, a piece that stands out amongst all of the various life-like and detailed works, for both it’s medium and it’s subject matter.  The 5 foot tall portrait is titled, “Mom and Dad” and is a pointillism piece constructed entirely out of Hasbro Lite-Brite pegs. Read the rest of this entry →