May

Wayne White, a Chattanooga-born artist living and working in Los Angeles, buys mass-produced thrift-store/garage-sale lithographs and paints amazing 3D word-art onto them. His use of typography is stunning, reminiscent of Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library covers.

The Clementine Gallery in New York has two high-quality photo galleries of his work, from 2002 and 2004. My personal favorites: I Love the Whole Fucking World, Take Your Forms Wrestled form the Void and Get the Hell Out, Painting that Came to Life Only to be Mocked-Forgotten, and Luv Hurtz.

In his professional life, he’s an acclaimed commercial artist, famously known as the art director for Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time,” the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight Tonight,” and the Snapple bottle puppet commercials. He was also the voice of Mr. Kite and Randy on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, where he was a set designer and puppet maker. ArtForum reviewed his artwork in late 2002. More information, including more images and a bio, is available at the Western Project.

Cameron Marlow posted Audience, Structure and Authority in the Weblog Community, an excellent research paper discussing methods of determining the influence and importance of weblogs. Basically, he shows that the number of permalinks to a weblog may be a better indicator of authority than blogroll frequency. Many newer weblogs — including mine — appear to have more influence than older, more established weblogs. This theory goes against Clay Shirky’s widely-accepted conclusions about power laws and inequality in the blogosphere.

Cameron expects debate, so go read the PDF and give him your feedback.