So you’re standing in front of a beautifully refurbished vending machine; you put in your golden token, make your selection, pull the selection knob, listen to the delightful “clunkity-clunk” that means your selection has arrived in the vending tray; you reach down and pick up your… art?

Yes, if the vending machine is one of the over 90 classic vending machines around the US and Canada that have been converted to Art-o-Mats, vending machines that dispense original works of art.

I first wrote about Art-o-Mat in 2006; the idea was started in 1997 by artist Clark Whittington. There are now over 400 participating artists, creating small cigarette-pack size works in various media, and selling them inexpensively (usually $5 US) in Art-o-Mats.

On the Art-o-mat website there is a list of machines by location, as well as a selection of images of various Art-o-Mat machines and a list of sample works by various artists, linked to pop-up images of some of their Art-o-Mat works.

There are also guidelines for artists who would like to participate.

For those who wish to purchase Art-o-Mat art, but can’t get to a machine, you can now order an Art-o-Carton of 10 works online for $99.

There is also now a Flickr gallery of Art-o-Mat related photos.

Hey, can I bum five bucks? I need to get a pack of art.

(Images above, below the machines: Lindsay Matthews, Paula Griffin, Lee Fenyves, Julie Armbruster, Asya Soloian, Janie Reavis-Cox, Carrie Price, Jessica Guptill)

Making lines in sand or earth with a stick is probably the oldest form of drawing practiced by human beings; followed, perhaps, by using a burned stick to make marks on rocks (charcoal drawing!).

Many of us (myself certainly included) still love to make drawings in semi-wet sand at the shoreline; making exquisitely brief marks to be erased by the surf of sun in a matter of hours or moments.

Jim Denevan is an artist who makes his works in the sand and earth, but in a much more elaborate and large scale manner. He makes his marks with a stick or rake, stirring up the sand to make it darker and walking carefully while making the pattern.

I didn’t come across an explanation on his site for how he measures the patterns out on a large scale.

As large as his beach drawings are, they pale in comparison to the size of his earth drawings, one in particular.

The drawing shown in the bottom two images is wider than the island of Manhattan (you can see it superimposed in one of the images). Denevan made it by driving in circles on a dry lake bed (where driving is permitted by the government and some land speed records have been set). The smaller circles were made by hand with rakes.

There is a zoomable version of this piece on his News page.

This work, like all of Denevan’s sand, earth and ice works, was fleeting and no longer exists.

Ars brevis.

Dan Hillier is a UK artist working in the tradition of Max Ernst’s Surrealist collage (see my post on A Week of Kindness, also here).

Using similar source material from reproductions of Victorian engravings, Hillier combines various images, and unlike Earnst, adds some pen and ink modifications of his own, to create disconcerting, horror-tinged images.

There is a gallery of his “altered engravings” on his site, along with pen and ink drawings and other works. Hiller also has a blog in which he posts about his most recent work, including the piece above, bottom, which is a still from an upcoming animation in collaboration with Tom Werber for an indie single by Losers.

An interesting aspect of Hillier’s work is showcased in a blog post about a number of people who have chosen Hillier’s images as subjects for tattoos.

[Via BoingBoing]