The Dreads By Jonathan Franklin

| Apr 26, 2012
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Origin of Cool: Chicago, USA
Origin of Cool: Chicago, USA 41.878114, -87.629798 The Dreads: Mop Head Sculptures 

Jonathan Franklin has always been a recycling fanatic passionate about reusing and reinventing abandoned or discarded material. As one might expect, it was just a matter of time before he found a weirdly beautiful use for some old mops that he collected. From these he created a number of portraits called “the Dreads“.

Franklin originally came up with the idea for a Chicago exhibit celebrating the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe. After that he created a full cast of characters for another Chicago show called Shakespeare Interpreted in which Richard III is surrounded by the dreadlocked disembodied mop heads of his formerly living enemies.

Franklin’s immense body of work is eclectic and varied, but his pieces consistently find a perfect balance between the unnerving and the cheery that adds a unique voice to the art world and is one of the most captivating artistic expressions around.

 
three mop heads concrete background art

 

dreads black crows poe art installation

 

three dread heads mops display

To see more by Jonathan Franklin, visit:
The Dreads
Flickr Photostream
Blog
Website

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arifranklin

About the Author

Some like it hot, and so do I. I’m a series of non-sequiturs with freckles. An admittedly weird Dolittle-esque animal whisperer. I'm an expert at telling jokes and leaving half of the set-up in my head, so if you're laughing at one of my jokes that's a good sign you might be telepathic. I’ve been called a narcoleptic, a work-a-holic, a zombie-phile, a smooth operator, and a beef-witted mammet. The last one sounds most interesting so I’ll go with that one. Someday I will go on to Cracked and invent a restaurant staffed entirely by professional magicians. Right now I’m busy uniting the world with OurPangea and hunting down cool at Origin of Cool, which is ironic because I hate hunting.
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