Don Freeman
We are thrilled to announce ‘the improvised life’ latest giveaway: Abrams’ lush coffee table book Artists’ Handmade Houses
June 2011
book giveaway: artists’ handmade houses
field of love
"Many" by Alexander Calder, Courtesy of The Calder Foundation
The message telling us of our friend Mary’s passing described her has having been”surrounded by a tremendous field of love”. We imagined all the people who were part of that field, all over the world, near and far, sending their love in all kinds of ways, some as real as sitting by her bedside or doing an errand done or cooking dinner, some not tangible at all, but there all the same.
After we left the spare message on ‘the improvised life’ saying why there would be no posts for a day, we felt the emergence of another field of love. Through comments and emails, we received messages from friends and strangers, of comfort, condolence, wishes, healing, and concern…to powerful effect: we felt better. Then we realized that ‘the improvised life’ had become a field, too.
We don’t know what a field of love looks like, but we know what it feels like. We know that it’s possible to make one in any moment: read more…
…
A very dear and amazing friend passed away today, so we are taking some time off. The world is a very different place without her and it’s going to take a while to find words. Right now we’re just going to remember her.
We’ll be back on Thursday.
body as artist’s canvas
Robert Picault
We have long loved to draw and write notes on our hands, but only occasionally have imagined the possibilities for drawing on the rest of our bodies. Then we found these two unattributed pictures from Under the Sun and really GOT IT, first with a charming Picasso-esque image (It IS Picasso) and then the wildly-liberated pint-sized artist’s scribblings below read more…
everyday brancusi: mailbox, lamps, platters…
?
“Throughout his life, Brancusi made the furniture, utensils, tools and objects he needed and which, along with his sculptures, made up his everyday environment. He did the same for his friends and relations. There was to be no rupture between his work as a sculptor and his surroundings.” –Pontus Hulten quoted here.
“There was to be no rupture between his work…and his surroundings”: An amazing life principle. Check out Brancusi’s sublime lamps… read more…
d-i-y cork mousepad
Tara Mann
We found this great looking d-i-y mousepad on our friend Tara Mann’s Tumblr. We love Tara’s description of her eureka moment:
My friend Phillip recently had cork flooring put in his kitchen, and as I was shoving a cheese covered baguette down my throat, staring at the floor, I thought about how nice that material would look as a mousepad.
So I asked Phil if he had any extra cork, and he had quite a bit laying dormant in a closet. Anyways, I measured and cut the cork in squares of various sizes. They look great on desks and work really well! read more…
ellen silverman photographs: inside cuba’s kitchens pt.1
Ellen Silverman
Our friend Ellen Silverman traveled twice to Cuba in the past year, and came back with some amazing photographs of daily life there, in particular the kitchens of families she met. They are invariably improvised, deeply makeshift spaces, reflecting extremely limited resources coupled with extraordinary resourcefulness and spirit. Ellen’s images tell the story. read more…
d-i-y pegboard headboard
When we saw Design Milk‘s recent post featuring Room 39′s lacy throw made of dye-cut felt, we were instantly smitten with the headboard made of painted pegboard. We’d never noticed that when pegboard is used in a NON-utilitarian way, it acts as a wonderful design element. This curiously modern headboard would be easy to make: buy a 4′x 8x sheet of pegboard at a lumber yard or online (we love that encompasses the whole bed area, not just the bed), paint it, and anchor it to the wall.
Swell!
slab-and-pillar table inspiration from casa malaparte
Recently in a wordless post called simply Casa Malaparte, Atelier featured some elegant, elemental tables made by placing a flat surface-on-pillars-or-stones; they reminded us of our favorite Le Corbusier table, a slab of concrete on a concrete block base. It sent us rooting through our file of slab-and-pillar tables, a great formula for oddly chic d-i-y tables. Pillars can mean many things, like the oil drum-and-wood-slab-table we clipped from Style Files some time back: read more…
recession jokes
Sodahead
We recently got an email from a friend that had been forwarded by and to a long chain of people we didn’t know. We were happy that it didn’t threaten us with years of bad luck if we didn’t pass it on. And we were delighted that its silly recession jokes actually made us LAUGH. When so many people we know have been hit HARD by the recession and are still feeling it – some have lost their homes, others their careers – and everybody has $$ on their mind, it is amazing that people think up jokes and laugh about it, ANYWAY. Who was the mastermind of this cheery anonymous email that somehow made us feel better? Where did it get going?
The Recession has hit Everybody…
I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
Wives are having sex with their husbands because they can’t afford batteries.
CEO’s are now playing miniature golf. read more…
insoluable problem -> interesting solution
From the great Anne Herbert at Peace and Love and Noticing the Materials:
“It’s insoluable! Yay! That means there will be a really interesting solution.”
Related posts: a reminder, via anne herbert (open doors!)
healing worry (via anne herbert)
what to do when things don’t go as planned
saying goodbye: jazz funerals and square dances
We recently came back from our second memorial this year in the town of Helvetia, in the West Virginia Appalachians. It was a party, really, to celebrate the big fat life of our friend Eleanor Mailloux, who passed away recently at the age of 94. Out in the meadow next to her house, two make-shift cookers were going, grilling spatchcocked chickens and corn, and a 20-foot table held huge bowls of Eleanor’s favorite foods. Beer from her grandson Willie’s brewery flowed alongside homemade wine her friends had brought. Music blared at just the right pitch.
Often in Helvetia after a family has buried a loved one, the community puts on a covered-dish supper, and a square dance may follow, as it did for our friend Rogers McAvoy. Dancing and stomping and swinging and drinking out on the porch of the community hall helped Rogers’ friends to find read more…
