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Art-o-Mat really started something with their repurposed cigarette vending machines! Altered Aesthetics has gotten in on the act, too!

Altered Aesthetics is a non-profit community-based art gallery and arts advocacy organization located in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. We believe artists represent a voice of society and our mission is to support and expand a vibrant arts community.

Over the past six years, we have stayed true to our mission by hosting over 50 compelling group exhibitions, showing the work of over 1,000 local and international artists. In 2009, we drew over 2,000 people into the arts district to attend 14 engaging exhibits. We were also an active part of Art-A-Whirl, which helped to draw over 20,000 people into the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. (source)

An art vending machine seems like a great way for such an organization to extend it’s outreach. It’s both an art gallery and arts advocate that works 24/7. It works in a format that is inviting, approachable and interactive and can reach people who might never give art a second thought.

This article from The Daily Planet (I know, right?) describes the project in much greater depth than Altered Aesthetics does, and concludes:

…It happened on my turn too, but I patiently re-fed quarters into the beast, yanked on the pearl handle and received my numbered piece by St. Paul’s Jeffery F. Morrison. After showing it off to all my friends, I went home and put it in a place of honor. It’s honestly the only original art I own.

That, to me, is what it’s all about. Getting people to interact with art in ways they never have before. Jennifer Thomsen, the article’s author, now has a piece of original artwork in her home that she’ll see every day. Maybe it will inspire her to buy more art, or maybe to create some of her own!

All we know about the Bubble World Corporation is this: Bubble World Corporation was founded by Jason McLean & Marc Bell. It existed as an art-dispensing vending machine in Vancouver B.C. from 1999-2003. That little bit of information came from Hand Model, a Canadian hand model who models exclusively with art. It’s a wonderfully cryptic website, with no explanation of who the model is, or why she’s doing what she’s doing. She does a great job, though, truly instilling a sense of desire for the objects she’s holding. In one section, she’s holding capsules:

I’d love to know more about Bubble World Corporation, but all Google search results lead back to Hand Model.

The Itty Bitty Art Committee is in Leeds, England, was started by Sophie Ashcroft and Beverly Cottrell:

“Itty Bitty Art Committee is a collaborative project which aims to create itty bitty art galleries in unusual spaces.”

One of their galleries is a toy capsule vending machine! It’s fun to watch their progress with the machine. It arrives here.

“Here is the wonderful vending machine that has arrived today along with a large sack of balls to be filled with our tiny art creations!”

From there you can follow along as they create new things to put in the machine and take it to shows and so on.

Sophie and Beverly seem like cool people who are having a lot of fun with the “small art” idea. Great work, you two! I’m looking forward to see where this takes you!

Check out Anne Stone‘s gorgeous art vending machine!

Unfortunately, this is the sort of machine that devours a bit of your soul every time you use it. Fortunately, it only costs a nickel so I guess it all evens out.

From Anne’s website:

The Cap Art Vending Machine is an alternative distribution network. Inspired by Distroboto in Montreal and Outsider-art-in-a-box more locally, Capilano now has its own art- and chapbook-vending machine. Inside a given capsule, you may find a tiny chapbook, a poem, or an art project produced by a Capilano student or alumni, faculty member, visiting writer, or artist. For one nickel, these tiny art- and word-bearing capsules are dispensed from a refurbished clown’s head vending machine housed in Capilano University’s Writing Centre.

The Erasing Borders: Passport to Contemporary Indian Art show ran from Feb-June 2008 at the Indo-American Arts Council in NYC and featured “Art Vending Machine” by Asha Ganpat:

This is all we know about it:

Title: “Art Vending Machine”
Using the typical vending machine seen
at the exit to the grocery store,
It invites spectators to own a miniature
version of a work of her art for a mere dollar.
Every artist should have one of these.
Price: $1.00 each / $300

I’d intended to follow up on Nick Ilton’s Art-Vend project in Melbourne Australia sooner than this, but you know me…

Art-Vend is up and running, and it looks gorgeous! Congrats, Nick! The machine has been touring, and will be in two more locations before Nick takes a rest:

We just went live with a new issue in Orono! I’m particularly proud of the front cover:

During the First Friday Art Walk, it made us very happy to discover a new art vending machine in Maine. Portland Pins is now selling “Affordable, wearable, one-of-a-kind local art at random.” They’re vending 1″ pinbacks at 25 cents a pop, just like we did back in the day (I’d link you to that, but those entries got lost when this blog ate itself). Portland Pins have a much better way of generating content than we did, though (design everything ourselves). They keep pre-printed button templates near their machine so anyone who’s feeling inspired can contribute. This gives them a steady flow of infinite variety. You can also contribute via their website.

Portland Pins is currently at Space Gallery, which is also home to the wonderful Art-o-mat®.

The condom vending machines at MadGirlWorld were not the first foray into condom publishing. I bought three used condom vending machines on eBay. Well, the machines were used, they didn’t vend used condoms as far as I know. They were totally hardcore, made of thick stainless steel that you wouldn’t have been able to get into if you’d attacked it with a crowbar. Evidently someone had done just that on one of the machines. It made me wonder, were they after the money? Or were they just really horny and didn’t have the four quarters? Anyway, one of them still had the original artwork on it, obviously done in the seventies. It had weird stains on it and someone had scrawled “THIS GUM SUCKS” on it.

My initial plan was to clean it up and vend refrigerator magnets from it, since I found some fridge magnet blanks that had the same form factor as  condoms at the Christmas Tree Shop. Then I realized that the thing was already perfect. There was absolutely nothing I could do to the machine that would make it any better than it already was. So the machine wound of vending fridge magnets with pictures of itself on them.

I can’t imagine why more people didn’t buy them!

Next I’m thinking of building a photo booth that takes a picture of itself from the outside while you’re sitting in it.