(Video link here.) This video of Josef Albers‘ paintings from his series “Homage to the Square” is from a show opening at the Centre Pompidou in February. We find it a delight: refreshing and illuminating at the end of a long day. It wakes our eye to color AND gives us endless practical inspiration for applying paint in our own spaces.
February 2012
painted stones for home a la max ernst
We’ve long been a fan of keeping found rocks and stones around the house. They make visually wonderful “sculptures” and they have many impromptu practical purposes, to keep a door from blowing closed, act as bookend, smash garlic or spices or weight a butterflied chicken cooking in a skillet...
Images of Max Ernst’s painted stones we saw recently on Mondoblogo takes our imaginings to new heights. Why not PAINT our found stones? read more…
the coffee improvisations (pt 1) + oscarina’s old brazil brewing method
tattoos by jula rothman for tattly.com
I am a fanatic. Or at least I thought I was, until my fanaticism led me to meet some real fanatics. Luckily for the rest of the world, I’m not a fanatic about big things, like, say, Hitler was. I’m crazy for a tiny joy that makes me feel great every single day: coffee. (Click on the link to listen to Moondog’s ‘Coffee Beans‘ while you read.)
My first taste of fine coffee, and coffee fanaticism, began in Israel. My great aunt Sara had grown up in Jerusalem and made coffee the old Arab way, completely improvised, as befits a nomadic people. No fuss, no muss, no equipment. It was brewed right in the cup. She was very precise in her instructions, downright fanatical: read more…
miyake’s air sculpture + a great floor painting idea
(Video link here.) We love this installation at one of Issy Miyake’s stores: computer-controlled electric fans sending little gusts and sculpting an ethereal fabric. We wish we could translate the idea to home but think it’s beyond our reach. BUT we could take the idea of the etched-looking floor that we saw early on in the video, read more…
d-i-y shower curtain clips: easily removable
We had just been mulling how much we HATE the design of shower curtain rings, that make it so difficult to remove the shower curtain for washing. Then we thought: how nice it would be to have shower curtain rings with clips instead of closed loops, so we could just clip up a big swath of fabric.
As often happens when we start to mull a question, an answer appears in our field of vision, like this picture at Plastic Sans of “nouvelle” shower curtain rings made with Ikea curtain clips and binder rings. Great!
(Then we found these stainless steel Ikea curtain clips which come in separate parts – the ring and the clip. We’re wondering if there’s a way to attach the clip part directly to a shower curtain ring…) read more…
barney rosset: a risktaker’s legacy
We just read about the passing of Barney Rosset, founder of Grove Press. Founded in 1951, Grove became infamous for publishing controversial, avant-garde, and “obscene” works by writers like Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Jack Kerouac, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry Miller. Rosset’s risk-taking as a publisher was admirable, even if it was sometimes off-the-cuff; his New York Times obituary recounts his decision to publish the The Autobiography of Malcolm X
With Rosset’s vision and gumption, here’s what might not have come into the world:
help ‘improvised life’ win a homey award!!
The yearly Homie Awards recognize the best home design and cooking sites, selected by popular vote. Although we are often told ‘improvised life’ defies categories (on Remodelista’s Newstand we’re listed under ‘D-I-Y and Renovators’; in The Say100, we’re in ‘Shelter’), we invite you to VOTE for ‘improvised life’ in the Homie’s Home Design and How-to categories.
Just being in the Homie Awards sends traffic our way and helps people find us, which is like fuel to a website. Winning a Homie Award would like being shot out of a cannon.
So we’re asking you to vote; it only takes a minute and will help support our efforts. The first deadline for voting, to get us on the Top 6 Nominees list in each category, is this Friday, March 2 (until midnight EST). We’d really appreciate your support.
Please note: we are listed as Improvised Life. AND WE’VE JUST DISCOVERED, YOU HAVE TO REGISTER OR LOGIN TO VOTE. (Sorry to all those folks who got snarled up…the Homie’s are proving to be very confusing and badly organized….But we’d like to win one anyway.)
Vote for ‘improvised life in the Home Design category
Vote for ‘improvised life’ in the D-I-Y category
If you need reminders why your support is so important, here’s some of our “best ofs”: read more…
skateboard in style! (1974)
We love this guy dressed in a suit, tie shoes and hat, skateboarding his way…where?!!!!
What a chic way to travel (if you can manage it)…as liberating as our favorite “leap” pictures: read more…
how-to find affordable and/or rare books online
After reading two recent post referring to out-of-print books like Calder at Home and How to Construct Reitveld Furniture, a long-time reader emailed us a great strategy for finding affordable books online using “favorite searches” on ABE books. Check out her message below to hear how it works. We are going to try setting up searches for some hard-to-find books:
…when you are looking for a used book that seems too expensive, you should try ABE books. You can save searches (including advanced searches, e.g., by price, year, ISBN numbers if you want a particular edition, hardback or paperback, etc) and they send you an email you when any book fitting those parameters come for sale on to the used book market—sort of like a favorite search on ebay, keeping you from having to constantly check if a new, cheaper copy has become available. Many of the used book vendors on amazon are simultaneously selling on ABE (stands for Advanced Book Exchange).
I find it great for books that I would like to get to one day, and so am in no rush to buy (and most of my books I get from the library anyway), or that are out of print, etc.
Related posts: how to sell your books online
65 modern art books online…for free!
what are you reading that inspires?
calder via ‘world of interiors’ + ‘the improvised life’
open art books as decoration + artwork
pablo neruda’s poetic houses (+ his ‘ode to the present’)
Last October, we wrote about our friend’s advice to start the day reading something uplifting or illuminating rather than jumping online; since then, we’ve put the idea into practice. More often than not we read poetry, often out loud, and lately have found ourselves totally smitten with the odes of Pablo Neruda
We wondered if Neruda’s life was a magical and sensuous as depicted in his poetry and in the movie Il Postino. Then yesterday, we stumbled on images of Neruda’s homes. Over the years, he had three: all with spectacular open views – charming, unique, whimsical, deeply personal spaces in lush surroundings. He named one ”La Chascona”, a Quechua word meaning disorderly or disheveled – as an affectionate reference to the red curly hair of his third wife (go on a virtual tour of it here.) We read other descriptions as we looked at the pictures we found at the Pablo Neruda Foundation, of Isla Negra and La Sebastiana. But the images speak for themselves – an insight into a poet’s personal style: read more…
‘this is my home’ will blow you away!
(Video link here.) The story behind this extraordinary video is brief and understated:
On an unseasonably warm November night in Manhattan on our way to get ice cream, we stumbled upon what appeared to be a vintage shop, brightly lit display window and all. As we began to walk in, a man sitting out front warned us that we were welcome to explore, but nothing inside was for sale. Our interests piqued, we began to browse through the collections the man out front had built throughout his life. This is a story of a man and his home.
This ‘story of a man and his home’ completely knocked us out. After we watched it, we just listened to the audio and realized that this man, whose name we don’t know, is an artist-philospher-complete original who has deeply illuminating things to say about the meaning of home, objects, age, life, engagement, joy…
via Neatorama
Related posts: advanced style: doing your thing at any age
‘ordinary people, extraordinary lives’
a question-driven, learning-centered life
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atlas obscura: a guide to the wondrous and visionary
life lessons from the olive harvest
viki2win/Shutterstock
In last month’s Atlantic, Sara Jenkins tells the story of her family’s annual olive harvest in Tuscany, which is, ultimately about taking risks and learning as you go. The Jenkins family has a rich history in food–Sara runs Porchetta and Porsena in New York City, and her mother Nancy Harmon Jenkins is the author of six cookbooks. Nancy and I spent some time traveling together in Italy, and I remember her always being game to drive off check out a market she’d heard of or wander into new places in search of adventure. It’s not surprising to me that Nancy and her family would take on the task of growing and harvesting olive trees, an indisputable challenge. read more…
cheap, great ikea find: smarta bowl
photo: sally schneider
A recent CHEAP, GREAT Ikea find: the Smarta bowl. We bought the 8″ one for $6.99 and then went back and bought the 10″one ($12.99), great for big salads. They’ve got a lovely, very modern shape and looks much more expensive than they are. We’ve found a million uses for them, like plunking in hyacinth bulbs with dirt and roots right out of their ugly plastic container (Spring is coming!)
Related posts: how to transform cheap potted plants
hacking ikea: throw away the book!
ikea find: chic black + white pillows
ikea hack: furnishings into clothes (and back again)
stylish improvs on ikea
the ikea ‘frosta stool’ saga (tell us what you think!)
‘fail better’ (samuel beckett)
We just discovered there’s an entire Wikiquotes page on FAILURE, something we write about a lot because it’s such an essential part of improvising, discovering, living… read more…
alexander calder’s inspired bathroom improvisations
photo: pedro guerrero
…a bit of inspiration from one of our favorite books, Calder at Home: The Joyous Environment of Alexander Calder
