M.J. Rose

This art is so deeply strange and oddly intriguing – are the installations permanently marking real locations commemorating history from an alternate reality? Or are the markers temporary art pieces placed strategically for short periods of observation? Either way, the work touches on the concepts of memorials, travel, geography, and history in a way that gets our imagination soaring…

THE BELIEVER – NOVERMBER/DECEMBER 2009

Discover Kymaerica

The brick courtyard was adjacent to the railroad tracks on Atlanta’s industrial west side—and part of a structure that had been transformed from its industrial roots to become the home of a five-star restaurant. I must have taken a wrong turn, because instead of finding the bathroom, I ended up staring at a bronze plaque that had been welded into the concrete abutting the building’s electrical boards. It looked just like one of the historical markers scattered throughout the South to mark every scrape and scuffle of the Civil War…

They even have their own travel guides.

More about this here.

With a tip of our hat to BoingBoing from whence many of these links originated, enjoy the mysterious beauty of abandoned amusement parks from around the world…

Eerie images from the lost amusement park in New Orleans here.

The beautiful decay of River Country, Walt Disney World’s first waterpark. It opened in 1976, and closed  in 2001. All the attractions remain in place, slowly being overtaken by nature and neglect… here.

Berlin’s answer to the creepy and wonderfully abandoned amusement park here.

Gorgeous photos of an abandoned park in northern Japan, here.

And last but not least, the incredible and abandoned cheap Japanese Disney knock off – Nara Dreamland! (Here too.)

What are these paintings conveying? Are they beautiful or are they just strange? How do they make you feel? I find them to be gorgeous, but mostly I love the way they make me feel like I am reading a story about something odd, suspenseful and exciting – to me the experience of looking at these is so much like reading something that you simply cannot put down because it’s so riveting…

The Organized Chaos of Tatiana Kazakova

by Tracy Jones