March 2014 - Page 2 of 3 - Improvised Life

War Images Transformed by Collage Flowers

Whether cut-and-paste real or photoshopped, we love how Mr. Blick completely re-envisioned a very dark subject with collage, and turned it to its opposite. It reminded us that collage is an artform do-able by anyone. Witness Mary Delay’s.

A Fab Makeshift Canopy Bed

While looking around at Constanza Algranti’s curiously modern, recycled decor, we came across this image of her wonderful bed. We know nothing about it but what we see: it’s platform made of recycled wood, the charming pink coverlet and pillow and best of all, the canopy rigged with wire or twine and draped fabric.

Modern Lines From Recycled Materials

Italian artist Costanza Algranti forges recycled material such as copper and iron into uniquely modern items for the home, with an aesthetic very different from many repurposed home design we see.

Estrella Morente and the Meaning of Olé

At a concert of Andalusian-born Flamenco singer Estrella Morente, whose often wild, incredibly expressive and complex singing is legendary in Spain, members of the audience would occasionally say “Olé”, as would Morante and her accompanists when one of them was performing particularly moving or daring passages. This is not bull-fighting olé most Westerners know of.

For NYC on the Day of a Building Collapse

This morning eight blocks south of here, two old apartment buildings had collapsed after a violent explosion, near a heavily-trafficked intersection of Harlem. I knew that for some people, as ordinary as me, their lives had been profoundly changed or lost in a moment this morning.

A Mirrored Fence to Reflect the Landscape

Spring is definitely coming —we just saw some hopeful shoots coming up in the park — and we’re more than ready for warm weather and enjoying the outdoors NOT all bundled up. Alison Schotz‘ ‘Mirror Fence” installation at Storm King fuels that dream: a picket fence that mirrors whatever is around it. Although we don’t know…

Asymmetrical Paintings, Chair Mashup + Improvised Table

There are a number of great ideas in this image of antique dealer Lars Kristensen’s Copenhagen home. We’ve blogged the essential ideas before but think Kristensen’s unique take worth checking out.

The Lifespan of Mountains Mirrors our Own

This beauty of a film by Temujin Doran is about the processes by which mountains are created and eventually destroyed. While it might seem to be about physical geography and geology, it is about way more than that.

The Wishbone Project’s First Crowdsourced Wishbones!

The Wishbone Project is Improvised Life’s campaign to crowdsource hundreds of thousands of wishbones for a monumental artwork Holton Rower plans to make out of this unusual art material. Reader BCE just sent him the first batch.

String Bag: an Endlessly Useful, Stylish Shape Shifter

I’ve long been a fan of the classic, humble string bag that changes structure according to its contents. Space-saving for the minimalist and super-light for the traveler, string bags save on plastic and paper bags – and they look great (a black one makes a great evening bag).

The Teleporter Will Beam You Around the World by Chance

Canadian artist Jim Andrews has created Teleporter, a website that will transport you to a random place in the world with a click of your mouse: chance encouners of a 3rd kind.

Dirty Pink Obsession: Arquitectonica’s Casa Andes

We’d love to come upon a dirty pink building like this in our urban wanderings. It’s Arquitectonica’s Casa Los Andes, built in Lima, Peru in 1984… …and dig its very odd, beautiful windows, fab-looking from the outside…

DIY Succulent and Cacti Cupcakes

We’re usually not crazy about cupcakes with colored frostings but find ourselves totally charmed by the succulent and cacti cupcakes Alana Jones-Mann created. She shows you how you can do it yourself in her great tutorial. We’d make ’em with homemade natural dyes.

Reno Solution: Sleek, Simple Wood Baseboards and Moldings

Our great lesson in renovating the Laboratory was how expensive minimalist design can be, and why. When you forego moldings around doors, you actually make for more work and expense, not less. Recently, we came across a stylish house that uses moldings freely while achieving a clean, modern aesthetic. Here’s how.

Productivity Practice: Do 1 Hour of Creative Work Before Anything Else

Recently, while skyping with Improvised Life’s web developer Jason Lange, he told us of a technique he had been trying out to keep work moving forward on Share, a film he was making. For months, he’d been getting side-tracked by “paying-work”, expending all his energy on it during the day only to find himself without any…

Julia Child Shows How to Edit Video Tape + More

Check out this hilarious tiny video of the great Julia Child showing how to edit video tape, a game spoof on her own inimitable French cooking show…which is worth watching on YouTube: fun and illuminating.

Fantasy Facelift Redux: ‘It is better to look forward and out’

Our recent Fantasy Facelift post got quite a response, including a number of emails from readers. One very moving one came from our friend Ellen Silverman, who has been working on photography and video projects in Cuba. Here’s what she wrote:

Annals of SMART Design: Angled Headboard to Buy or DIY

Angled headboards are much more comfortable than straight-up-and-down, right-angled headboards. Check out some examples of REALLY comfortable angles, bed frame possibilities AND a way to DIY an angled headboard yourself.

Black and White Checkerboard Floors Look Great Anywhere

Black-and-white checkerboard floors are an enduring, curiously forthright flooring material that seems to work in just about any space, from modern to classic, from Josef Frank’s Swedish modernist interior to Julian Schnabel’s New York City home Palazzo Chupi.

The Practice of Waiting is Part of Making

Waiting is part of the many steps of creating: a non-action that can very important action. But that ‘non-action’ bit can be difficult to describe, since ‘doing nothing’ can be a time of fermentation and unexpected ideas. So we looked up WAIT. The definitions we found made a little poem:

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