The COVID-19 pandemic presenting the greatest risk to life on the planet in the last 100 years.

Safe with Art is working with some of the worlds most celebrated artists to create a rotating gallery of limited edition personal safety gear. Their website says,

“It is our hope that by incorporating art into the practices of staying safe we can find some beauty and inspiration, essential even in times of struggle. We hope to allow individual expression of style in the ‘new normal’ …”

The masks are made with recycled, sustainable fabric, washable and designed for repeated use. Use of reusable cloth masks is the environmentally friendly option.

Screen Shot 2020-09-27 at 12.05.11 PM.png

A portion of the proceeds go to the charitable initiatives of each artisit choosing.

(Photos, Marilyn Minter, Safe with Art)

Artist Rob Pruitt is showing as art something I might have featured in a project I tried to get off the ground 5 years ago. Along the same lines, in 2012 I created a prototype for art magazine called THEM, turning artworld figures into celebrities. See cover below...

At this years' Art Basel Unlimited Pruitt is pairing pictures of the art world’s most powerful players with their celebrity look-alikes.

It was started as a project on the artist’s Instagram and is now gathered in a book, called Rob Pruitt’s Official Art World/Celebrity Look-Alikes.

The series also comes with some gallery history: a decade ago, Pruitt’s dealer, Gavin Brown showed art-world photographer and Wowlebrity Patrick McMullan’s society pics.

Brown also shared a booth at Frieze New York a few years back with his own celebrity doppelgänger, Mark Ruffalo, who incidentally contributes a text to Pruitt’s new book. They are buddies.

Pruitt was ruthless with some of these matches but check out his look-alike, he wasn’t kind. Btw, RuPaul‘s look-alike (and vice versa) is handsome artist Mark Bradford.

Here are a few snaps of the series but you can see a lot more on ArtNet News.