We like surface pattern designer Leah Duncan‘s play on the much-blogged clothespins-strung-on-pretty-cord to display pictures. She uses them to display leaves or other found items…as well read more…
May 2011
kramer’s coffee table book (imaginary d-i-y)
We always thought Kramer had a great idea there….But we’d make it with a really BIG book, like Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splendid Sundays, Volume 2
taking the day off!
?
…and wishing you a great, cooled out, refreshing Memorial Day.
‘dark side of the lens’….why creative people do what they do…
DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.
Waylon Lewis, the powerhouse behind Elephant Journal sent us this: a gift video for a long weekend. See you Tuesday sometime!
Related links:creative pursuit as deep sea dive
cream biscuits: easy, foolproof and divine (recipe)
Sally Schneider
This morning ‘the improvised life’s essential-to-its-being assistant Sarah* walked in with a surprise gift: a basket of warm cream biscuits that she’d baked herself and brought on the train from Brooklyn. Everything stopped! and we pulled out the French butter laced with fleur de sel and slathered it on… then we tried the biscuits with the Grapefruit and Smoked Salt Marmalade that Sarah also thought to bring, from Brooklyn-based Anarchy in a Jar (“the revolution starts in your mouth”).
The biscuits were airy, almost ethereal with the richness and flavor only butter and cream can give, and a slight crunch outside. read more…
let’s get lost: yale’s vast fabulous archive available online
We’ve just gotten lost….in the Yale Digital Commons, the wondrous archive that they’ve recently started making available online, for anyone to browse and USE without limits. We’re talking seriously amazing images here, from Brassai’s famous images of Paris and artists in their studio to obscure, rarely-seen snapshots and children’s book drawings by Andy Warhol. So far, 250,000 images have been uploaded to their new collection catalog, with more on the way.
The Yale treasures that are now accessible under the new policy are as wide-ranging as the collections themselves and include such diverse items as a small limestone stela with hieroglyphic inscription from the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a Mozart sonata in the composer’s own hand from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a 15th-century Javanese gold kris handle from the Indo-Pacific collection of Yale University Art Gallery and a watercolor by William Blake from the collection of prints and drawings in the Yale Center for British Art.
We instantly fell into their photography archive, wandering by Matisse Drawing a Nude Model at Villa d’Alésia read more…
d-i-y door upgrade: painted edges and hinges
Magnus Anesund
Remodelista recently featured this picture in a post about chairs with unfinished legs. We’re looking at and loving THE DOOR BEHIND the teal tonal chair, with it’s surprising orange-painted edge. What an easy d-i-y way to jazz-up a door with a little paint. It made us think of the black hinges-on-a-white-door we saw at a friend’s house recently… read more…
repurposed swing set = hanging garden
P.R. Hovland
Pamela Hovland, who always has her eyes WIDE OPEN to what is around her, sent us this photo from a recent trip to Minnesota: an old swing set repurposed into a hanging garden. Charming and great! (And there’s still one swing to swing on, whenever/whoever feels like it…)
Thanks Pamela!
Related posts: think-make-think
itzhak perlman: “making with whatever we have left…”
this way or that way? what is the better way?
top: David Shrigley...bottom: Martin Barré
One of our great morning pleasures is Rolu, Matt Olsen’s blog about art and artists that is simultaneously both illuminating and mysterious. Its recent post segues perfectly with ours from yesterday quoting John Cage’s A Year from Monday. Olsen posted “arrow” works by two different artists with these words:
“this way or that way? what is the better way?”
Experience the rest of the post here.
Related post: bathroom read: john cage’s “a year from monday”
‘they draw and cook’, the visual recipe site
One of our new favorite food sites is They Draw and Cook, where every recipe is illustrated, for totally appealing, graphical how-to’s. Some are done by professionals, and some are done by amateurs who submit their work to the site, but all are charming and one-of-a-kind. Somehow, having the recipes in this form loosens up the vibe into a more improvisational one. And it makes us want to DRAW what we cook, rather than just write a recipe.
You can search for recipes by ingredient, meal type, illustration style or even where in the world the artist is from, OR use the fun Dial-a-Dinner option for a great random menu…. read more…
bathroom read: john cage’s “a year from monday”
John Cage’s A Year from Monday
We find this one to be quite a nugget, scanned from our ancient, dog-eared copy: read more…
“get up off that thing”: improv exercise for home or work
We’ve gotten a little lazy of late, since we dislike going to the gym (yellow walls with black floors under florescent lights) and we spend so many long hours at our desks. We could get stymied by our slide into laziness by comparing ourselves to all those buff self-disciplined people that faithfully climb onto the treadmill at the crack of dawn. Instead, we took a cue from this New Yorker cartoon, and decided to improvise a workout for ourselves at home, to just START with something simple, and work up: a bit every day. We figure doing something is better than doing nothing. And who says we have to work out a gym: the right way is what’s right for us.
A trainer we know has been showing us exercises we can do at home, with no special equipment, using chairs, walls, floor, steps. (We’re planning to write a post about it, once we know more.) We’re amazed at what we can do at home IF we just get off our butts and start.
Which we did, today…doing a few reps of light weights, some squats and some wall push-ups, after we’ve warmed up with skipping-rope-without-a-rope. We’re going to try to build working out INTO our workday, read more…
vase-less flower arrangement (right on the table)
Sally Schneider
Our friend Maria Robledo LOVES her garden and makes the most astonishing, impromptu arrangements from her cuttings. We were charmed and delighted by the arrangement we found on her dining table recently: no vase, no water, just a spray and a cluster of flowers placed directly on the tabletop. The flowers stayed fine throughout several hours of dinner, and Maria gave them to us to take home. We put them in water and they are just fine, two days later. The gist: read more…
the world is change (and change is not apocalypse)
Courtesy of the Calder Foundation
A few hours after we posted REM singing “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) as an antidote to Saturday’s crazy apocalypse drama, we found a message from our friend Fern Berman on our answering machine:
“I think it’s the end of the world as we know it every single day. I mean…every day everything changes as we know it, right?
The reality is, the world changes. It doesn’t mean it’s going to end; it just changes.”
Perfect.
Painting: Pinwheel and Flow by Alexander Calder, courtesy of The Calder Foundation.
Related post: a new year’s wish spirals on
it’s the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine)
