Inspired by an obsession with the ocean and a fascination with extravagant interiors of old churches, Adam Wallacavage transformed the dining room of his South Philadelphia Victorian Brownstone into something from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. Teaching himself the ancient art of ornamental plastering, Adam evolved his new found skills into making plaster cast octopus shaped chandeliers as the final touch to his underwater themed room. Not content with leaving the chandeliers to his own home, Adam continued his experimentation by making more and more. He changed the shapes and colors and even collaborated with famed jewelry designer, Tarina Tarantino, who supplied the beautiful pearls for his pink glitter chandelier featured in his first showing at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in June of 2006.Beyond making chandeliers, Adam Wallacavage is also an accomplished photographer, documenting artists, musicians, daredevils and all things weird and wonderful. His first book, Monster Size Monsters, was released in August of 2006 through Gingko Press and spans 15 years of his photography.

Living in the home country of IKEA, it is always nice to see something original, hand crafted, and AWESOME. Adam Wallacavage’s chandeliers are just that. Creating the chandelier from epoxy clay, spray paint and ‘secret sauce to give it that classy glassy look,’ Wallacavage creates extravagant ornamental sculptures crafted in a myriad of colours and designs that are often inspired by octopus (ironically, though he has an obsession with the ocean, he is allergic to seafood). He started by designing for his own Philadelphia home, which looks like its from the pages of a Jules Verne novel.Mercado los Olvidados at Pskaufman… Gallery last Friday was a little underworld of colorful, whimsical art, clothing and crafts. It was made even more surreal by the mysterious “dust storm” alert that kept going off on my phone, as I wandered through. I wanted to buy something from almost every artist’s booth, but some favorites were Adam Wallacavage’s octopus chandeliers, Jessicka Addams’s T-shirts and totes, Nicomi Nix Turner’s detailed sketches and Mab Graves’s MonsterTank with VDGN.

Photo gallery after the jump Photos by Isabel Maya and Simone Snaith This entry was posted in Animals, Miscellanious, Photo Essays and tagged cats, DTLA, embroidery, L.A. artists, mercado los olvidados, pop up art show, pskaufman, sculpture, stickers. While perusing the BellJar blog yesterday I came across these enchanting cephalopod chandeliers by Adam Wallacavage, a Philadelphia artist who made his start photographing for skate magazines like Thrasher. chandelier lake tilly and the wall lyricsThe chandeliers were born of a maritime infatuation, and sport awesome names such as Miss Fede, Dixie LaRue, and Fenicologia.chandelier paul loebach Inspired by an obsession with the ocean and a fascination with extravagant interiors of old churches, Adam transformed the dining room of his South Philadelphia Victorian Brownstone into something from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. chandelier taijitu

Teaching himself the ancient art of ornamental plastering, Adam evolved his new found skills into making plaster cast octopus shaped chandeliers as the final touch to his underwater themed room. Adam also keeps a photo and finds blog, Monster Sized Monsters, and has a book out of the same name at Ginko Press. You can find more of his work at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. on April 08, 2015 at 9:56 AM, updated When Sean Yseult told her real estate agent she was looking for a "Southern Gothic" house, she meant it in the literary sense. There is no Gothic style of architecture particular to the south, but Yseult, fresh off the breakup of her world-renowned heavy-metal band, White Zombie, and eager to make New Orleans her new home, knew she wanted the type of majestic, spectral abode celebrated in the works of artists like Tennessee Williams and Clarence John Laughlin. "I guess I was thinking something a little creepy and haunted-looking," said Yseult, who, since ending her run as bassist of White Zombie has turned her attention to other musical projects and to art.

Her photography show "Soiree d'Evolution: Tableaux Vivants et Nature Mortes," inspired by the paintings of Dutch masters and composed of eccentric objects from her vast home collection, opens April 16 at Scott Edwards Gallery. "I knew I wanted live oak trees," she said. "I loved the whole Garden District vibe." Yseult had spent years on the road, in and out of cities across the country, but New Orleans always stood out. Ever since her first trip to Tipitina's, for a gig, where heaping servings of boiled crawfish went for dirt cheap, "I knew I was going to live here," Yseult said. "I'd fallen in love with New Orleans." After the band's breakup in 1996, she got an apartment on Esplanade Avenue and spent a year getting to know the city and looking for houses. "I must have looked at one a day for about a year," she recalled. When she turned up for a viewing of a three-story, 1860s double-gallery Greek Revival in the Lower Garden District, she knew immediately that it was hers.

Sean Yseult and Chris Lee's Greek Revival Garden District home "I saw this house from a block away and started running to it like it was a long-lost friend," she said. After buying the house, Yseult met Chris Lee, guitarist and frontman for the rock band Supagroup, as well as a screenwriter. The two wed in 2008. Lee said Yseult's strong personal style and collecting habits drive the look of the home, but what comes across in every room is a shared, abiding love of all things weird, grand, macabre and playful. The couple who fell in love with New Orleans before falling in love with each other share their life in a home that could only exist here. "I'll never forget seeing them for the first time, those grand boulevards with those huge oak trees and mansions," Yseult said of her first trip to the Crescent City, in 1988. "I just fell in love with the architecture and the whole look of this place right away." Fancy parlors are not uncommon in New Orleans, but Yseult's is truly a marvel, combining high Victorian style with a menagerie of antiques, instruments and oddities.

Most noticeable are the human skeletons, one hanging above the grand piano like a chandelier and the other standing near the floor-to-ceiling golden damask drapes. Yseult's penchant for dark decorative arts is matched by her skills as a thrift shopper. While on tour, she would routinely head to resale shops and flea markets in search of curious goods. At the time, she said, "nobody else really wanted" weird or kitschy items, such as the armadillo-shell lamp shade, the paw of unidentified origin, the old "poison bottle," the stuffed rattlesnake and dried seahorse that now rest on her living-room mantel. Those items mingle with bird skulls, containers bearing both her parents' ashes and the typical New Orleans trophies of Zulu coconuts and a Muses shoe. Today, taxidermy has made a resurgence in decorating circles, with hip boutiques carrying whimsical stuffed wares, but Yseult identifies with an earlier generation. "The Victorians were very into taxidermy," she said. "They called it their curiosities."

One wall of her living room bears mounted tarantulas, a bat and beetles. One winged beetle was a gift from her father, who used to take her on walks "in the woods, looking for things," she recalled. "We would read about animal bones." The parlor is set off by vertically striped walls, which appear lavender and puce but are actually the same color in glossy and matte finishes. "I went to school for design (at Parsons the New School for Design in New York), and if you look at the same Pantone color in matte and glossy, it looks different," she explained The parlor's Victorian chaise, 19th-century Burmese teak chairs -- adorned with elephant heads and wildcats -- and brass stag-head chandelier were all sourced from local antiques shops. Yseult spent a lot of time at Harper's Antiques, now closed, after buying her house. "There were these two older gentlemen, always wearing seersucker, who were so nice to me," she said. "I'd always liked antiques. If I see it, and it's just kind of weird and different, I like it."

Yseult spotted her circular dining-room table and sway-backed chairs, ornamented with carved ram's heads, on an antiques store's display floor and immediately purchased the entire set. "The room is a perfect square, and I wanted a circle for the middle of it," she said. The dining room is crowned by an enormous vintage lithograph advertising Carter the Great, a competitor of Harry Houdini. To the left stands a vintage English coffin -- different from a four-sided casket, which is the norm in the U.S. -- that Yseult purchased in Los Angeles, and to the right is a semicircular curiosity cabinet filled with porcelain skunks, black cats and cherubs. Upstairs, Yseult's keen sense of color tells a story in every room. The master bedroom is painted a deep blood red, a custom hue created by a painter friend. The bed's headboard is accentuated by a black Japanese folding screen, and overhead, a trio of bulbous hanging lamps provide a golden glow. "I love the way these look," Yseult said.

"They so bubbly, like little planets." The adjacent master bathroom carries over the black of the bedroom with black tile, yet is light and luxurious with a Tiffany-blue wall color and gold-leaf ceiling. The ceiling and the Jacuzzi, along with Yseult's back-yard swimming pool, were among the first things she added to the house after purchase. The hallway outside the master suite serves as a kind of homage to Yseult and Lee's impressive circle of artistic friends. Adam Wallacavage made the custom octopus chandelier, with green tentacles sprouting from a pink tulip-shaped top. Among the artists represented on the hallway's walls is Panacea Pussycat, also known as Miss Pussycat, who, with Lee, is currently working on a development deal for the Disney Channel. The upstairs TV room is where the couple likes to relax. "This is kind of the jungle room, with all the green and brown," she said, referring to the chartreuse wall color and brown leather furniture. The lion-skin rug had been a dream of Yseult's for some time and serves as the room's centerpiece.