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Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum’s New Exhibit
Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum in Orlando can be found on International Drive. It has a collection of extraordinary and bizarre exhibits, and you can’t miss it if you drive north along International Drive. For a start, the building looks as if it is about to slip into a hole!
This astonishing museum now has a new addition, and for any mum who uses a tumble drier it will provide a whole new way of looking at the fluff which collects in the filter every time you use it. This most recent acquisition is an absolutely amazing picture of the Last Supper, recreated from the famous painting of the same name by Leonardo da Vinci. But it’s not painted, its made entirely of fluff gathered from the tumble drier of artist, Laura Bell from Michigan, and is described as made from lint.
This new picture is huge – 14 ft long, and 4 feet high! It will hang in the museum for an unspecified time, and it is sure to cause a stir, as after all, who would have thought that a humble ball of fluff from a tumble drier could become such an amazing and colourful picture?
The artist, Laura Bell, says that she was inspired by another picture which she first saw at the Wisconsin Ripley’s museum. She began to work on her picture in 2009 and has only recently finished it. She believes that it has taken her between 700 and 800 hours just to do enough tumble drying to produce sufficient fluff to make her creation. The final picture took over 200 hours to complete.
So how did she do it? Well, she had to create the right colours of fluff for her picture, and as we all know, towels produce loads of fluff, so she had to buy towels in the colours she wanted to use, and then wash and tumble dry them separately. She could not use fluff from a Laundromat as that was not suitable, as it was usually too grey in colour, and often had too many dog hairs in it. She had to experiment to get just the right colours for her artistic work.
The whole thing was started because she wanted to compete in ‘ArtPrize 2010’ and when it was completed it was snapped up by Ripley’s Museum. It is not known how much the museum paid Laura Bell for this unusual work, but she did, apparently, treat herself to a new washing machine and tumble drier with the proceeds!
Ripley’s Museum has two other pictures made from tumble drier fluff – or lint – but this is the biggest one. They also have the Last Supper on a dime, toast, and a grain of rice.
It is simply amazing that anyone could create an art work so fine using something as everyday as tumble drier fluff, or lint. I will certainly view the fluff in my tumble drier filter in a different light from now on!
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