We are thrilled to announce ‘the improvised life’ latest giveaway: Abrams’ lush coffee table book Artists’ Handmade Houses, with text by Michael Gotkin and photographs by Don Freeman. It is a sublime collection of thirteen homes created by artists and master craftsmen, both infamous and little known. We first learned about it when we saw images…
Read Morefield of love
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…
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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.
Read Morewendell berry on ‘the real work, and the real journey’
via Reference Library Related posts: healing worry (via Anne Herbert) ‘changing thoughts, changing future’ (nannucci) the power of uncertainty -> ‘delicious ambiguity’ think-make-think what is the most powerful word in the english language?
Read Morebody as artist’s canvas
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…
Read Moreeveryday 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…
Read Mored-i-y cork mousepad
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…
Read Morethe path forward
Related posts: lynda barry’s ‘what it is’ (+ being your creative self) how to find a hidden solution a daring path making it up as you go along tool for improvising: defer judgment
Read Moreellen silverman photographs: inside cuba’s kitchens pt.1
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 Mored-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:…
Read Moreslab-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…
Read Morerecession jokes
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.…
Read Morephoto of the day: ‘leap into the void’
Related posts: photo of the day da vinci’s wings (self-portrait) a daring path the decision of your lifetime (miranda july) clear space: muley point by walt cotten
Read Moreinsoluable 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 random wisdom, overheard anne herbert’s wise + teeny…
Read Moretransforming grief to joy: jazz funerals and square dances
(Video link here.) 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…
Read MoreDrawing on furniture (like saul steinberg)
In 1951, while on tour of the Eames office, New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg picked up a brush and painted a naked woman on an Eames fiberglass arm chair. Steinberg, in effect, hacked the Eames chair, turning chair into art and cooling out the iconic look; he also broke a taboo against making any changes…
Read More(dis) connected
Our Internet service has been down all day, FORCING us to figure out how to blog on out iPad: no mean feat! Meanwhile, between that + a cold, we can’t help but hear the message: SLOW DOWN!!!!!! …as we realize just how dependent on being connected we’ve become…. Stay tuned.
Read More‘window box’ car bumper
Matt Sumell* emailed us his swell car bumper improvisation and the story behind it: …back in my college days I drove a Hyundai hatchback with a home-made wooden rear bumper. I graduated with an English and Environmental Science Degree, which prepared me for nothing at the time, so I took a job in the local…
Read Moreadiós clarence clemons
We were sad to hear that Clarence Clemons, legendary saxaphonist in Springsteen’s E Street band, passed away. He’s left an legacy of great riffs in the world and in our collective psyches, including this one from Jungleland. The story of how he and Springsteen met is some kind of amazing, about how two people can…
Read Moreneil gaiman on how ‘to do it’
From a teeny, illuminating interview with Neil Gaiman that we stumbled on in TimeOut New York: Q: You once said that your biggest influence, for your writing, was punk rock—the idea that you could do something just by doing it. It still is. You have to be willing to make mistakes, and you have to…
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