Figure 1.

WINCHESTER MADNESS
Heiress Sarah Winchester and her Winchester Mystery House— the 160-room Victorian mansion she built in San Jose, Calif., to defend herself from the ghosts of those killed by the rifles that made her family rich and famous—are the inspiration for digital artist (although he prefers the term “painter”) Jeremy Blake’s spooky suite of animations, the Winchester trilogy. Employing hand-painted imagery, . lm footage, and vector graphics, Blake offers a hallucinogenic experience of Winchester’s madness. Similar to the color-morphing abstract projections he provided for the film Punch-Drunk Love, the images of Winchester resemble psychologically demented inkblots with a flair for bazookas. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art until August 14. www.sfmoma.org

Figure 2.

MAPQUEST DRESS
Technically she’s not a fashion designer; however, Elisabeth Lecourt (a French student of art and design in England) is turning heads with her intriguing line of map-wear. She folds and cuts individual maps by region to produce clothes not to be worn but rather hung. To date she has pressed and ironed 60 pieces of faux garments, mostly pleated parochial dresses and button-down shirts made out of modern maps. Universal by nature, her work is popular wherever shown. This summer “les robes géographiques” will travel to Brussels, London, and New York. Named 2004 Best Newcomer by BIDA, the British Interior Design Association, it should be interesting to see which direction she takes in 2005.www.elisabethlecourt.com