I’m drawn strongly to the idea of flash mobs (aka smart mobs), pre-arranged surreal gatherings that look spontaneous.

Turns out there will be a wacky one in Portland this Saturday. Should I watch? Should I participate? Ah, decisions, decsions. I do suspect I’ll be there, in any case.

Via Strangechord.

It’s been an amazing night.

I’ve had a blast, and I hope everyone else has as well.

SPONSORS: You make this happen. You are changing the world. Thank you.

If you need to hear from me, it will happen in a few hours.

Okay, this isn’t really a museum. It’s one of my favorite local galleries. The Jadestone Gallery website is actually a wonderful place to learn about Chinese art and antiquities. They’ve worked very hard to make it as educational as it is beautiful.

Developed by Tiverton Museum and the University of Exeter, Virtual Victorians features a gallery of objects from the museum’s collection and a day-by-day account of a week in the lives of a typical working class family in 1874.

More credit where it’s due: astute readers will by now have noticed lots of links from both Raw Vision Magazine and NarrowLarry’s World of the Outstanding. Thanks, y’all!

Built in the early 1900s by Samuel Dinsmoor, the Garden of Eden features an 11-room “log” cabin made of limestone concrete set in a concrete sculpture garden.

Shangri-La can be found, not where you’d expect it, but in North Carolina.

“Henry L. Warren was a retired tobacco farmer who kept building this collection of 27 leprechaun-sized creations until his death at age 84 (in about 1977).

Shangri-La was conceived by Henry in 1968. The first few buildings were constructed in his side yard next to his house, and the miniature town kept growing. At the same time, he used his creative energy to incorporate 11,000 arrowheads into the walkways of his home.”

Although the official website describes it simply as “a folk art environment”, The Orange Show is rather more. Begun in the 1960s and opened to the public in 1979, the Show was intended by creator Jefferson Davis McKissack as an amusement park themed around healthy living, exemplified by the orange. Sadly, McKissack died soon after the Show opened, but it lives on through the efforts of The Orange Show Foundation. Their mission is to “preserve, present, promote and popularize the extraordinary artistic expressions of ordinary people”; among other things, they maintain a library and archive of folk and outsider art, and run the annual Art Car Show.

In about 1940, Edward James left England, to find himself situated in Xilitla, Mexico. There he built the startling environment known as Las Pozas.

“It is said that while bathing in the pools at Las Pozas, Edward saw a cloud of butterflies come down toward him through the canyon, their thickness momentarily cutting off the rays of the sun – Edward saw this incredible spectacle of fluttering wings as a sign that this was to be his home and thereafter set about to transform Las Pozas into his Enchanted Garden.”

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