Tag: steampunk

Troy Morrison

Troy Morrison, “Earth Whale”, Steampunk Sculpture

Steampunk is an inspired movement of creativity and imagination. With a backdrop of either Victorian England or America’s Wild West at hand, modern technologies are re-imagined and realized as elaborate works of art, fashion, and mechanics. If Jules Verne or H.G. Wells were writing their science fiction today, it would be considered steampunk.

Troy Morrison is an Australian sculpture who works in the steampunk mode. The whale sculpture took three years to complete. The body of the whale is made from an old Ford Gearbox while the rest of the whale comprises of copper and vintage parts from trains, WW2 planes, cars and boats.

Steampunk Bowling Alley

Steampunk Bowling Alley, 5621 North Figueroa Street, Los Angeles

Billed as Los Angeles’ oldest bowling alley, the Highland Park Bowl opened in 1927 as a multi-use facility that also included doctors’ offices on the second floor. During Prohibition era, customers would visit the doctor to receive a prescription for medicinal whiskey. After filling their prescription at the pharmacy located downstairs, they could also go bowling.

Joseph (Mister T) Teresa, an Italian immigrant who owned a nearby liquor store, bought the property in 1966. The bowling alley renovated with paint, wall coverings, and drop ceilings. Later, the bowling lanes were hidden behind a curtain and the space transitioned into an iconic live music venue called “Mr. T’s”, which was frequented by students from the nearby universities.

 The 1933 Group, an restoration organization which renovates drinking establishments with a vintage flair, took the property over in 2015. They removed the mid-1900s elements, esposed the existing bow-truss architecture, and repurposed old bowling machines as bar shelves. The newly revitalized Highland park Bowl now transports its patrons into a different era with a steampunk flair.

Pierre Matter

Steampunk Sculptures by Pierre Matter

French sculptor Pierre Matter’s body of work thematically revolves around the surreal idea of featuring a combination of organic and mechanical materials in one entity. His sculptures reflect a robotic evolution of living beings and animals, transforming their likeness into multilayered cyborgs. The artist’s mythological, mechanized creatures re-evaluate the way one interprets lifeforms in reality. The artist says, “Even the cows of the mountains are nothing more than milk machines.”

Matter adds, “The way I blend cogs, pistons, integrated circuits and other accessories of the industrial world into beings, bodies or faces, my sculptures, directly follows from the way human life has evolved in recent times. Of course, we are only at the beginning of an era where the use of machines or micromachines embedded within living beings may well become widespread, but it is already the case that modern life is completely unthinkable without technology.”