The Brooklyn Diorama Club

summer hiatus officially OVER!

2006-11-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

the age of convenience never happened, but there was a final age-themed meeting last week which featured only two dioramas: the age of going on vacation to the island in maine, and the age of some sort of hellish gore-splattered dementia from alex's brain. unfortunately i have pictures of neither.

i have been informed that we're moving on to classic or influential albums beginning with Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!

AGE OF CONVENIENCE

2006-05-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 9th
The Age of Convenience
Conveniently located (for me) at John Mark & Lindsay's place.

next up?

2006-05-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

i don't think we got out of the last meeting with
a) a theme
b) a date

c) a location

john's prohibition speakeasy

2006-05-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

so you come up to the door marked 'private,' someone pulls away the slat in the door and there's a bouncer there (above). you give him the password or whatever and he backs up from the opening.

by this point you already have the headphones on (see ayla above) which is playing jazz with a track of bar chatter laid over it, and when you look in the opening, this is what you see:

totally sweet.

joel's age of prohibition

2006-05-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

joel's gin still (with actual gin!). uncle jesse would be proud...alex approves of the drinkable diorama.

ayla's age of prohibition

2006-05-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

ayla has a knack for making unphotographable dioramas, but we were able to get around it this time. this is the inside of a radio station making public service announcements condemning the evils of drink.there's alex checking it out. i just want to take a moment to recognize meredith's awesome horse lamp that figures so prominently in all these pictures. big ups, horse lamp.

there's a baby getting wasted.
and some old guys getting wasted.

if you look carefully in the back right, there's a squirrel getting wasted.i think that's sara. she's probably wasted by this point.
horse lamp! woot!

lauren's prohibition

2006-05-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

a tribute to healthy living, this is lauren's rendition of ayla scuba diving, and then the guide, who had a name i forgot, fell out of the boat and ayla had to resuscitate him. or something. i was a little far gone already when this was explained. there is a beer label there, but i'm not sure why?

horse lamp!

sculpy magic.

in da club

2006-05-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

lauren, joel, meredith
alex, sara, elisa (sp?), ayla, and eric
rule of thumb: whenever people spontaneously bust out a 3 part harmony version of michael mcdonald's i keep forgettin', then alcohol is definitely involved. a precursor to the breathalyzer test, this was actually the most common way of measuring drunkenness during prohibition times.
meredith later regaled us with a 1 part whispered harmony of the ying yang twins' wait, confirming that her blood alcohol level was hovering somewhere between .20% and crunk.

john mark's age of prohibition

2006-05-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

john mark thought he had heard at some point in his life that because it was illegal to drink alcohol during prohibition, people would give each other wine enemas. but a quick search on google after the fact didn't turn up much but a movie on imdb and this medical journal abstract about a guy who killed himself with a wine enema. so, uh... let that be a lesson to you.

alex's age of prohibition

2006-05-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you have one ramshackle house out in the countryside with chickens on the porch.
sheriff confer comes a-knockin' on the door to see if anyone's home. and proceeds to tear open the floorboards on the porch to see what lies underneath.
...and continues to tear up the floorboards...
almost there.
under the porch there was a dead body--in the form of the wolverine (foreground)--and a half-pint of whiskey (below). good sheriff confer brought the hooch back to the station and we all had a shot.

meredith's age of prohibition

2006-05-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

meredith's prohibition diorama takes us inside the bible factory where women (in hairnets, as per osha standards at the time) are crossing out any positive references to wine and alcohol. note the altered painting of the last supper in the background. there are prohibition-appropriate motivational signs on either side, but i can't remember what they said.

sara's prohibition

2006-05-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

sara's prohibition diorama came from a personal story: as a child her grandfather was hit by one of al capone's "milk trucks" used for delivering bootleg liquor. that would be grandpa under the bumper, a capone thug standing over him, and jugs of sweet, powerful, amber-colored milk spilling out of the truck.

french onion dip + dioramas + beer + horse lamp = good times.

new date for prohibition!

2006-05-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

hey folks, so instead of having diorama club last night, we're gonna have it on the night of 5/21, over at sara and chris's place. more likely to have some bbq-worthy weather anyhow. and as a reminder, the topic is still prohibition, so show up thirsty.

field trip?

2006-04-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

apparently the museum of natural history is getting their diorama on. click here for more links and stuff.
hmmm....

next meeting: PROHIBITION

2006-03-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

dioramists: the next meeting is on sunday, may 14th at 5pm-ish at sara & chris's house.
the topic is THE AGE OF PROHIBITION.
if all goes as planned, there will be sunshine, the grill will be going, and people will bring dioramas to look at.

The Roman Age!

2006-03-27T08:12:00.000-08:00

some pictures of dioramists... be sure to click on the pic above for the full sized version and check out alex's mummy heads. we had a nice greco-roman spread befitting astoria and the theme of the meeting.

Sara's Roman Age

2006-03-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

there was some debate over whether this was mt. etna or mt. vesuvius, but i think we decided it was etna.

John Mark's Roman Age

2006-03-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

we're about to catch rome on fire.

the fire started in the circus maximus, apparently with lots of matchheads and flammable rubber cement.

fire!

more fire!

after 6 days of burning, rome was finally stomped out and doused with schlitz.

Alex's Roman Age

2006-03-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

more crappy photos. sorry, flashes and white sculpy just don't get along. i missed alex's explaination of this one because i was looking for my camera. maybe he can explain in the comments section.

Johanna's Roman Age

2006-03-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

forgive the crappy photos, but this was johanna's partial diorama of priam begging achilles (not pictured--imagine that the beer is achilles) for the body of his son hector at the end of the trojan war. technically greek, johanna would like to remind everyone that the trojans went off to found rome afterwards.

the dioramist in repose

2006-02-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

no one brought a digital camera to the RAPTURE, but it was one of the best ones yet. you'll have to use your imaginations. in the meantime, here's a picture of some drunk dioramists, and random other things. next up, the ROMAN age or era or empire or whatever...

John Mark's Middle Age

2006-02-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

john mark went for middle aged instead of middle ages, so here we have a lonely man in the september of his years parking his sports car in a back alley and soliciting a rather buff prostitute.

John Mark's Middle-Aged mishap

2006-02-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

at his 30th birthday party, coincidentally enough, john mark was blind drunk and wanted to show his dioramas that live above the kitchen cabinets to a wandering poet in attendance. the john's car rolled off the cardboard and landed in the birthday cupcakes, at which point he started yelling about how "this is the coolest thing i've ever seen, where's my camera, someone get me my camera, i have to take a picture of this."

Meredith's Middle Ages

2006-02-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Someone help me out on this... I think this had something to do with a superstition popular at the time that it was good luck if you found a flea on your baby combined with the irony of the bubonic plague spreading through rat fleas. At any rate, check out the fleas on that medieval baby....

Alex's Middle Ages

2006-02-01T13:16:00.000-08:00

okay, not technically a diorama, but Alex definitely got medieval on this shit...

Johanna's Age of Exploration

2006-01-26T07:09:00.000-08:00

A little girl finds a giant squid washed up on the beach...
Johanna--being the comparatist that she is--would be happy to sit down with you to gloss the psycho-sexual undertones implicit in her diorama.

Meredith's The Exploration of Hip Hop

2006-01-25T15:58:00.000-08:00

So the Age of Exploration was giving people trouble and we had to reschedule a couple times and The Age of Hip Hop was drawn from the belly of the Buddha and offered as an alternative. Meredith's diorama was kind of a synthesis of the two and was put together like a two stage rocket, complete with a script (with moving lips) and a soundtrack.

It began with Meredith & Sara hanging out in front of high school (2nd pic) and talking about how some booty rap tape was so awesome, then when the tape comes on, the dancing begins (1st & 3rd pics). And they moved. Amazing.

Sara's Age of Exploration

2006-01-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

Another of Sara's totally unphotographable dioramas, this one had a boat on the ocean at the end of the spyglass when you looked through it, which is what Sara is having fun doing in this picture. It was very impressive and you'll have to take my word on this one.

John Mark's Age of Exploration

2006-01-25T15:51:00.000-08:00

Admiral Byrd on the pole, doing what American explorer's do best when they reach the end of their quest: plant a flag, hit a golf ball.

Alex's Florida-- Spring break kegger alligator party foul.

2006-01-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

to fully capture the GENIUS that is alex's tall boy alligator buzz kill, you really have to click on the pictures to see them in all their hi-res glory.

Meredith's Florida-- Red state spring break.

2006-01-24T08:48:00.000-08:00

if you haven't made one of these pictures the wallpaper on your computer yet, what are you waiting for? seriously...

Sarah L.'s Florida-- immigrants and O.J., brought to you by Disney (tm)

2006-01-23T12:14:00.000-08:00

Johanna's Florida-- the fountain of youth.

2006-01-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

Sara's Florida-- in the mangrove swamp

2006-01-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

John Mark's Florida-- at the petting zoo.

2006-01-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

Chris's Florida

2006-01-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

i wish i could have gotten closer on that blood. that was a mighty realistic string of blood shooting out of the arm nub.

Summer's Florida

2006-01-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

dioramas in the news

2006-01-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

really, route 66? no shit?

"He whets their appetite with his whimsical display," Weiss says.

--and then he totally ripped some hot licks on air guitar and imagined pyrotechnics going off behind him, and he knew that tonight he was totally gonna get laid.

Ayla's Connecticut

2006-01-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

she didn't bring a diorama, but she brought the soundtrack: connecticut hip hop.
i don't know why i only have pics of jm, summer and meredith's and not everyone else's.
there were others, right? or were we just not feeling connecticut?

John Mark's Connecticut

2006-01-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

It's supposed to be Martha Stewart.

Meredith's Connecticut--Home of Naugahide (past & present)

2006-01-20T09:59:00.000-08:00

Summer's Connecticut

2006-01-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

FL and CT on the way, but first, smokey treats.

2006-01-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

Look, it's a bbq! It's also summer... and, like, two years ago... awesome.florida and connecticut are on the way.

Sara H. "It's all in your head."

2006-01-18T12:10:00.001-08:00

Johanna "It's all in your head."

2006-01-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

Jen "It's all in your head."

2006-01-18T12:09:00.000-08:00

John Mark "It's all in your head."

2006-01-18T12:08:00.000-08:00

Meredith "It's all in your head"

2006-01-18T12:06:00.000-08:00

John Mark's "Ahhhh..."

2006-01-18T12:04:00.000-08:00

...as in "Open up and say..."

Johanna's "Ahhhh..."

2006-01-18T12:03:00.000-08:00

green bicycle.

Sara H.'s "Ahhhh..."

2006-01-18T12:02:00.000-08:00

in the woods...

Sarah L.'s "Ahhhh..."

2006-01-18T12:01:00.000-08:00

Ants at the picnic.

Alex's "Ahhhh..."

2006-01-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

I can't remember the theory behind this one. Sad clowns?

welcome to the brooklyn diorama club photo dump

2006-01-18T11:54:00.000-08:00

here's a picture of sara and johanna from the new york times:
ahh, that was nice.

so i figure that this is the easiest way to keep pics of our dioramas online without making poor sara build another web page.

i have some pics in my camera i’ll throw up in a few days, but just to recap, here are some past themes. we’ll get these in order and put up pictures.

PHRASES:
ahhhh...
it’s all in your head

STATES:
connecticut
florida
utah
missouri

AGES & ERAS:
the middle ages
the space age / the age of hip hop
the age of exploration

COMING UP:
Jan/Feb 2006–The Rapture
June 6, 2006–The Apocalypse