Latest news with #Koons
New York Post
07-07-2025
- Climate
- New York Post
Survivor of 1987 Texas camp flood recalls eerily similar experience to Camp Mystic horror
A former camp counselor during the devastating 1987 Texas floods told The Post on Monday that the tragedy was eerily similar to what happened to the young campers on the same river last week. The Rev. Richard Koons was a youth pastor at a church camp in Comfort in July of that year when a sudden rainstorm dropped 12 inches of rain in just 45 minutes — flooding the Guadalupe River with 25 feet of water in less than an hour. Just like Camp Mystic — the girls' Christian camp which was swept away during torrential rains at the cost of nearly 30 lives Friday — Koons' camp was located on the banks of the Guadalupe and found itself inundated with water and scrambling to evacuate. 3 The flood levels at Richard Koons' church camp in 1987 were eerily similar to the levels at Camp Mystic on Friday. National Weather Service A caravan of buses raced for the gates, but one carrying Koons and over 40 campers and staff was cut off by a wall of water. 'That river for us went to about 35 feet deep really, really quick,' Koons told said, recalling how campers first climbed onto the bus roof before helping each other to the branches of nearby trees. Some people stripped off their pants and tied them together into a rope to help haul kids up to safety, he said. And all the while the river was raging away beneath them. 3 The 1987 flooding cut off an evacuating bus full of campers, leading to 10 being swept away and killed. National Weather Service 'The water that day was traveling 70 miles an hour,' Koons said. 'There was a guy, I remember, who jumped in the water trying to rescue somebody. And he had just got back from Colorado with Sweetwater Rescue. And he broke his ribs and had to be rescued. That's just how fast it was going.' Koons' wife was also with the group and struggling to hold on for safety — and wound up getting swept away but miraculously survived. 'One of our young men started crying and told me he had my wife but he couldn't hold on to her. She went a mile down the river. Nobody went that far and survived,' Koons said. 'She wasn't rescued by helicopter, but four guys in a boat got to her. She thought she went under the water. Everything went dark. She thought it was over. And the water just pushed her to a pile of debris.' 3 Camp Mystic was ravaged by flooding Friday, with at least 27 campers and staff now confirmed dead. AFP via Getty Images After nearly two hours, Koons and the survivors were rescued by helicopter — but 10 teens by then had been swept away and lost their lives. Similar chaos unfolded early Friday at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, not far from Koons' old camp. As the Guadalupe River rose during rains overnight, most campers were evacuated — but more than two dozen people including some staff were left behind and swept away as the river overtook the campus. At least 27 campers and staff have been confirmed dead as of Monday, with several more still missing. Friday's flooding slightly outdid the 1987 floods, with the Guadalupe River rising over 26 feet this time around. More than 100 people have been confirmed dead in the flooding, and that number is expected to rise as search and rescue crews continue scouring the ruined countryside.
Hypebeast
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
Jeff Koons' 37-Foot 'Split-Rocker' to Blossom at LACMA
Summary After stops at Versailles and Rockefeller Center,Jeff Koons' 37-foot-tallSplit-Rockerwill call the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) its permanent home. Gifted to the museum by art collectors Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the large-scale artist proof will be planted outside the new David Geffen galleries later this year, and will anchor the new outdoor public art program integral to LACMA's freshly completed expansion. Koons marries two halves of children's toys for the flower-forward piece – his son's rocking belonging to his son and a dinosaur – evoking the cartoonish, nostalgic charm at the heart of his most famed works. Planted in its metal skeleton are 50,000 native succulents, perennials, annuals and other blooms. According to theLos Angeles Times, the acquisition and attuning ofSplit-Rockerwas years in the making, as Koons and LACMA consulted a team of local horticulturalists for the selection of drought-tolerant flowers fit for the SoCal climate. The Peter Zumthor-designed Geffen Galleries, which will house the museum's permanent collection, include a new building and outdoor spaces spanning 3.5 acres across both sides of Wilshire Houlevard. Additional works to look forward to feature the likes of Diana Thater, Mariana Castillo Deball, Liz Glynn, Pedro Reyes and more. Split-Rockerwill be seeded later this summer with hopes to be fully bloomed by next April. In the meantime, Kamasi Washington and his 100-person ensemble are taking over the 110,000-square-feet Geffen galleries for a run of performances on June 26-28. Head to the museum'swebsitefor more details.
Los Angeles Times
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Jeff Koons outdoor sculpture ‘Split-Rocker' will anchor LACMA's new building
A new acquisition has bloomed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is expected to announce Monday that Jeff Koons' monumental topiary sculpture 'Split-Rocker' will anchor the east side of the campus at the new David Geffen Galleries building. The 37-foot-tall living sculpture, created in 2000, is designed to nurture more than 50,000 flowering plants and will be seeded in August with the hope that it will be fully established by April, when architect Peter Zumthor's new poured concrete building is scheduled to open to the public. 'I couldn't be more thrilled than to have a piece of floral work in Los Angeles where — horticulturally — there's such a wide variety of plants that can be used in its creation,' Koons said in a phone interview from his New York studio. 'I hope people going back and forth on Wilshire Boulevard, and people visiting the museum, are able to enjoy and experience the change in the piece.' The acquisition and continued maintenance of 'Split-Rocker' was paid for by the foundation of longtime LACMA donors and Koons supporters Lynda and Stewart Resnick. It's been in the works for years, during which time LACMA and Koons consulted with a team of area horticulturalists who zeroed in on which plants would thrive during which times of year. Koons said he's excited to use native succulents and drought-tolerant plants as well as perennials and annuals that will provide a richness of color. The sculpture features two toy rockers— a horse and a dinosaur — that are split in half and paired unevenly down the middle for an angular Cubist effect. It's made of steel armatures and outfitted with an internal irrigation system. 'Split-Rocker' will be the first outdoor work of art guests will see driving west on Wilshire from downtown. It will sit across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits' tragic woolly mammoth family, adding a playful bit of fantasy architecture to LACMA's 3.5-acre park space. The sculpture will join the museum's other highly recognizable works of public art, including Chris Burden's 'Urban Light' and Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass,' as well as a newly commissioned children's garden sculpture of a whimsical UFO by Shio Kusaka and Mariana Castillo Deball's 'Feathered Changes,' which stretches over three football fields of raked, carved and imprinted concrete composing the museum's plaza. LACMA is also reinstalling Alexander Calder's monumental 'Three Quintains,' which was commissioned for the then-new museum complex in 1965. Tony Smith's massive 'Smoke' sculpture already has been installed. 'From the day I landed, I obviously knew I wanted to focus on L.A. artists,' said LACMA Chief Executive and Director Michael Govan. 'But then I wanted to just bring a little New York too.' 'Split-Rocker,' like Koons' only other topiary sculpture, 'Puppy' from 1992, was created as an edition of one, plus one artist proof. LACMA has acquired the artist proof, which in 2014 towered over visitors to Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Edition 1 of 'Split-Rocker' is currently installed at Glenstone, a museum in Potomac, Md. The artist proof of 'Puppy' famously greets visitors to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Edition 1 is at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Conn. 'Out of those four cities, L.A. is the only place where there's good weather all year round, and it doesn't have to go to sleep in the winter,' Govan said of 'Split-Rocker,' noting how excited he is to see it change with the seasons. The idea for 'Split-Rocker' came to Koons when he noticed his son's rocking horse in one corner of a room, and a rocking dinosaur in another. 'And I thought, oh my gosh, if you would just split those two down the center and then put their two profiles together, it would be kind of like a Picasso piece,' Koons said. 'Because the one eye of the dino would be looking one way, and the eye of the pony would be looking completely in a different direction, and their profiles would not line up perfectly.' When Koons began creating color schemes for the piece, he divided it into five different shading groups, with the dinosaur imbued with a different color range than the pony. 'When you plant it, you try to take control, and you're able to put certain colors and certain plants in certain areas,' Koons said. 'But at a certain point you have to walk away, and it's in the hands of nature.' Govan said he believes in the power of public sculpture and hopes 'Split-Rocker' and the other monumental works on the LACMA campus will serve as beacons to passersby, beckoning them to explore further inside. They also are powerful tools of social media marketing, as guests photograph themselves and essentially promote a visit. One of Govan's earliest memories, he said, is visiting his grandparents in Chicago and seeing the Picasso in Daley Plaza out the car window. 'It was was one of my first entry points to art, and art in public, as a very young person, and I never let it go,' Govan said. 'Kids should see something on the street that's art — not a building — that makes them want to get out and go back.'
The Verge
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Lexon turned Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog sculptures into functional art.
The collaboration between Koons and Lexon Design sees the artist's most iconic creation turned into a wireless speaker with touch controls delivering 360-degree sound and a lamp that uses tubes filled with color-changing LEDs to recreate the appearance of neon lighting. Pricing isn't known, but both will only be available in limited quantities later this month and hopefully be much cheaper than the 10-foot Balloon Dog sculpture Koons sold in 2013 for $58 million. 1/3 Image: Lexon Design
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Chrononutrition guide: Is when you eat as important as what you eat?
Americans have long heard about the health benefits of adhering to diets rich in fresh produce and whole grains and low in red meat and processed sugars. But they may not be aware of how meal timing can affect their health. A recent publication from the UF/IFAS department of food science and human nutrition describes chrononutrition, an emerging field of study that connects eating with circadian rhythm, the body's 24-hour internal clock. How someone schedules meals throughout the day can impact their weight and body mass index (BMI) as well as increase their odds of developing cardiometabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, according to the authors of the publication, an Ask IFAS guide. 'Healthy eating is not only what you eat but also how much you eat and when,' said doctoral candidate Kaylyn Koons, the publication's lead author. Franz Halberg, a Romanian-born physician, introduced the idea of chrononutrition in 1967. The concept is based on the premise that the sleep and wake cycle regulates bodily functions, including metabolism and digestion, so the timing, frequency and consistency of food intake affects health. There is a broad range of eating behaviors that influence chrononutrition, according to the UF/IFAS guide. One of the key behaviors relates to the 'eating window,' the time frame between the first meal of the day and the last. Optimizing that window — typically between 8 and 12 hours — could realign food intake with the circadian clock. In fact, a systematic review of studies on time-restricted eating with an eating window of 12 hours or less found an average weight loss of 3%, along with reductions in fasting blood glucose, systolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and LDL cholesterol levels. Many eating behaviors related to poor chrononutrition center around evening food consumption. Eating at or after 8 p.m. is associated with weight gain and metabolic disorders, for example. Potential reasons include the prevalence of poorer food choices at night and late eaters' propensity to stay up late, which can negatively impact sleep. Evening latency, the amount of time that lapses between eating the last meal of the day and sleeping, can also play a part, according to the guide. It describes a 2023 study of Malaysian college students which found that those who didn't observe a delay between eating dinner and sleeping were more likely to be underweight. 'This finding may seem counterintuitive because you might expect this behavior would reduce energy expenditure and promote weight gain rather than weight loss,' Koons said. 'But it could be associated with other adverse chrononutrition habits such as skipping meals or irregular meal timing, which lead to an overall reduced calorie intake.' Koons recommends anyone desiring to improve their chrononutrition examine their eating behaviors and identify chrononutrition-related behaviors that may be negatively affecting their health. Then they can set attainable goals to reduce the frequency of those behaviors. Patience is key, however, she said. 'Eating habits tend to be ingrained in routine and become habitual,' Koons said. 'It's important to remember that behavior change is difficult, and it takes time.' This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: When you eat may be as important as what you eat
