An N.C. 54 restaurant emerged victorious Wednesday and will keep its larger-than-life photos of UNC coach Dean Smith and basketball superstar Michael Jordan.
Chapel Hill's Public Arts Commission voted unanimously that the window art does not fall under the town’s sign ordinance, land-use management ordinance or Community Design Commission rules.
Commission member Nancy Kitterman said it also doesn’t meet the town’s public art mural guidelines, because the photos are posted inside the Tobacco Road restaurant’s windows.
“If you put a giant sculpture on your front yard, I can see it every day. It’s your property. It’s your business, and basically, if I don’t like it, I don’t have to look at it,” she said.
The town’s review started with a Glen Lennox resident’s letter to the editor. Restaurant owner Brian Amra said the 12-foot by 22-foot vinyl photos block a view of the kitchen and will be there a long time.

It took over 350,000 Post-its and the creative labor of 25 animators to make this stop motion video on the facade of the Galeria Melissa, in São Paulo, Brazil. Visitors left more than 30,000 messages on the notes.

YouTube

Art exhibition at the Wendell Woman's Club will be worth your time this weekend.

"YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video," the first curated search for videos of a higher brow on the popular Google Inc.-owned website. From among more than 23,000 submissions from 91 countries, 125 videos were shortlisted for the inaugural biennial.

Kiel Johnson is the creator of an incredible collection of cameras crafted from cardboard. The american artist has constructed SLRs, point & shoot, Polaroids twin lens and a retro 8mm camera.

Capitol Broadcasting pulled out all the stops on Tuesday when it unveiled its plan to convert the basements in two American Tobacco buildings into an office complex for startups.

The announcement, held at Bay 7 on the American Tobacco Campus, included an elevated stage made to look like the set of a talk show. Acting as host during the event was Michael Goodmon, Capitol's vice president of real estate and the son of CEO Jim Goodmon.

Michael Goodmon interviewed his father about the new space, which has been dubbed American Underground, as well as a panel of guests that included Durham Mayor Bill Bell and Rick Weddle, CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation.

He also gave introductions to a number of prepared videos that were shown on a large video screen.

One of those videos included a cartoon version of Jim Goodmon from the future. Asked in the video what the future was like, Goodmon said there were Plensa installments in every home.

The Plensa line could be viewed as a not so subtle dig at Raleigh officials.
 

Thirty people collaborate to throw a birthday party for a random stranger. Filmed with a hidden camera and mics, the man starts out confused, but then rolls with the make believe role complete with an ex-girlfriend looking to reconcile. When its over, he describes the psychotic bending experience to be like a scene out of Fight Club.

Magic Collage creates photo collages automatically in a few clicks.

In this video, Artist Karl Lautman called this creation Ouroborus after the mythical serpent depicted swallowing its own tail to represent the cyclic nature of the Universe.

This fits nicely with this week's Valentine's Day theme.  This spectacular glasswork by Eva Milinkovic is genius.