When we wrote about clipped-together cardboard box shelving a while back, we mentioned wanting to paint the cardboard boxes – coat them with something to change their look (we were thinking rubber paint) – knowing that the cardboard would swell slightly and become….something else: not smooth but sculptural, possibly even stronger once it had dried. After a few comments to the effect of: “bad idea…YOU CAN”T paint cardboard”, we put the idea aside. Then we saw Andrea Zittel’s wonderful cardboard construction, with its cryptic blurb:
“For the last year there has been a teetering pile of cardboard boxes precariously stacked against the dining room wall. Today the masterpiece was finished and installed…. Walla!”
Look at that!!! we thought as we sailed from one website to another discovering Andrea Zittel. FOR YEARS she has been following her imaginings and exploring ways to define and organize space, question assumptions about it, experiment with new ways and systems for living.
Zittel’s not-quite-finished website is all about her work as a – WHAT? -, an installation artist-designer-sculptor-lifestyle thinker and investigator… She is the driving force behind A-Z West,”an institute of investigative living”read more…
Since it’s high cherry season, we thought we’d reprise last years recipe for Warm Fresh Cherries (with Leaves), in honor of the Fourth of July. Too lazy to pit and stem some fresh cherries, a friend and I tried quickly sauteeing them as-is with butter and sugar, to discover the the stems and leaves provided unexpected delights:
“You picked a cherry up by the stem with your fingers, dunked it in crème fraiche and popped it in your mouth, working the fragrant flesh off the pit and stem; we dropped the spent leaves, pits and stems into little bowls set around the table, as you would olives pits or mussel shells. We ate the sublimely messy, almost primal dessert like children, savoring the cherries one-by-one and licking our fingers.”
It is the perfect dessert for however-many-people you may have to serve: easy to make, with a summery hang-out-and-spit-cherry-(or watermelon)-pit thing going on. Here’s the recipe, with our wishes for a wonderful Fourth of July:
Recently at You Have Been Here Sometime, we found two really great posts (among a lot of good stuff): The first: a post called A Possible Yellow with two paintings and and interior that use various yellows: POSSIBLE yellows to consider for …where? ….a room?….a sign?….a dress…the side of a building….? We love the idea of collecting POSSIBLE colors, ideas, patterns… for use… somewhere.
“From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and you [sic] ability; the work you are doing sounds very good “Drawing-clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger and bolder… real nonsense.” That sounds fine, wonderful – real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense.
“Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor. You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistant [sic] approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end”
You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!”
Since we posted The Oil Spill: What You Can Do, we’ve seen lots of websites offering solutions that echo a common sentiment: whether we like it or not, we are all in this together; the risky actions of oil companies are fueled by demand, which we all contribute to. That reminded J.P. Townley of the World War II strategy of conservation in a time of crisis, when EVERYONE had to pitch in, cut back, live with less. Posters asked “Is your trip necessary? Needless travel interferes with the war effort.” “Is your trip necessary” applies now more than ever, so Townley designed an updated poster..
We view “Is your trip necessary” as code words for an even bigger question: read more…
Knowing we have a serious thing for concrete, Lydia Wills sent us this picture of a light fixture designed in 1960 by Le Corbusier for the Chandigarth Zoo in India. It’s massive – about a yard across, a yard high and 22 inches deep – yet wonderfully graceful. We’d buy it if had $36,000 to spare (what it went for recently at auction) and could move it. But we’re happy just to have seen it: our view expanded about the possibilities of cast concrete (as Marcel Breuer did once with concrete block).
Like so many things that come our way, the photo of Le Corbusier’s extraordinary light fixture sent us following one idea after another…we started learning about cast concrete, wondering if we could do it ourselves…envisioning not just a Tobias Wong-inspired door stop made by using an Aalto, or other vase, as a mold for concrete…but something BIG (why haven’t we seen any concrete slabs as bed frames? yes, yes, too heavy, we know….)…we were wondering how to get hold of bigger-than-a-doorstop molds for concrete and discovered the Smooth-On Liquid Rubber that can be poured, brushed or sprayed onto whatever you want to make a mold…hhmm… read more…
One of the details we loved about Lydia Wills’ apartment, featured yesterday, are the folding stools hanging on the wall in the foyer. They look great, take up no space and are perfect for a million uses, as extra chairs for a dinner party, side tables, a place to sit and take off your boots…On their own, they are lovely little sculptures. They were designed by Roger Tallon in the late ’70′s. Lydia described how she stumbled on the stools and what she discovered about Tallon:
“Roger Tallon started out as a product/industrial designer (watches, electronics, typewriters), but his big thing is that he was a TRAIN designer, very well known for the Mexican underground, a trans euro train, and his biggest deal, the TGV Atlantique (!). I found this stool because he also made a little chair that was designed in a similar way that was an even more beautiful sculpture when folded, but it was too expensive on Ebay, so I just entered his name and then these stools came up one day. Since he did trains, no wonder he came up with these little useful folding chairs.”
Here are images of Tallon’s work (including trains, watches and a spectacular staircase)…We came across the little folding chair that led to Lydia’s stools: read more…
Improvisation requires focus and time, two commodities few of us possess. And when you’re waist deep in alligators, it is hard to remember you came to drain the swamp. How can we get focus and time?
Many people we know have read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. The title appeals to our inner escapist; we dream of an easier life where the focus is on what we really want to be doing, on our family and friends, on what matters most in our lives. The book describes how anybody can be a Lifestyle Designer, and fund their life with only four hours of work a week. That seems a stretch at best. If you have a “hot cakes” book and an online supplement business like Ferris does, maybe it’s plausible. But we’re too distracted and exhausted to start a business. Is such a radical shift necessary to be happy?
We think the real value of this book is as a set of tools that can help you make time to improvise a more enjoyable, less stressful life. Here are our favorite, truly do-able ideas to fight off the alligators and keep focus on what matters: read more…
At a dinner party at wine writer Anthony Giglio’s house one evening, we saw him scribble the name of each guest on their wine glass with a white marker: a chic way of helping guests keep tab of their glass in a crowd (and avoiding unnecessary pours – and washing – of fresh glasses).
There’s a brilliant idea, we thought. So we asked Anthony what that marker was and where to get it.
Here is the story of his big fat improvisation, and the many ways you can use it :
“The China Marker is my secret weapon: I bring them to dinner parties as host gifts.
It is not really a marker; it’s a wax or grease pencil - sort of tacky when you write on paper with it – and writes perfectly on glass or china.
Our feeling of powerlessness over the continuing oil spill in the Gulf Coast has made us feel just terrible… Until today, when the ever-wonderful Manhattan User’s Guide has published a long list of actions you can take in response to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill “large and small, short- and longterm”, from participating in a Hands-Across-The-Sand Protest to texting WILDLIFE to 20222 to make a $10 donation to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF says 97% of the donation will go to Gulf region recovery efforts), to supplying life vests needed by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Volunteer Program. Check out the whole list here.
Last week, we sent out a call for help in creating a tagline for ‘the improvise life’ and were knocked out by the response we got, both as Comments and as emails: an amazingly wonderful and wide array of descriptors and points of view + some disagreement (which we embrace). Pamela Hovland, who has been an essential part of the website from the start wrote : “Taglines are so…… conventional. Why not let people explore the blog until they figure out what the site is about? Perhaps the investigation/perusing/discovering is more in the spirit of the blog”
We totally agree that “investigation/perusing/discovering ” is deeply in the spirit of the blog. Our thinking is that a tagline might invite folks who are moving fast to slow down and do just that: discover what is here. We thought we’d try the idea out and see what happens: our evolution is trial-and-error and learn-as-you-go…Perhaps the question is: Would having a tagline do any harm? (As always, we welcome your two cents…)
Here’s the list of the taglines contributed over the last week (please let us know if we missed any) in addition to our original one …resourcefulness as a daily practice… With big THANKS for your help and thought: read more…
Periodically we like to feature the messy workspaces of artists as a reminder that being creative often means making a mess…We see it as an antidote to the shelter-magazine vision of a nice neat life that has infiltrated our heads over the years.
To take the idea a step further, we thought it would be fun to run a picture of Sally’s hacked kitchen as it was photographed for just one such magazine (note the artfully arranged array of photogenic foods) alongside an i-Phone photo Sally took one day when all-hell-was-breaking-lose in that same kitchen… and she couldn’t keep up with all the things she had to do, not to mention close the cabinet door, or break up an Amazon box to take to the recycling bin or even pick up a paper off the floor.
A lot of that stuff on the counter are objects waiting to be photographed and half-done projects for ‘the improvised life’, amidst bills and lists and…
The truth of that kitchen is that it waxes and wanes… gets messy then neat…out-of-control then serene and collected, and back again. Real life and making and doing is a wild business: work….in….progress….
The PBS NewsHour recently issued a challenge: post your ideas for stopping and/or cleaning up the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill on their YouTube site. They received 7,000 entries, with seriously good ideas woven through jokes about calling Macgyver and using duct tape. A few of the best are collected on the News Hours site: clever improvisational thinking by public citizens, along with homemade visuals to illustrate various strategies. Most of them didn’t pass muster by ‘expert’, Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, who explained why they wouldn’t work… all EXCEPT ONE…
Two heavily drawling guys from C.S. Roberts Contracting – one dressed in overalls – did a video-demo using kitchen utensils and stainless steel bowls to show that ordinary hay could be used to soak up the oil because oil readily sticks to hay. They figured out all sorts of aspects to the problem, from what kinds of hay to use and how to get it out to see, and what to do with the oil-soaked hay. You can hear their excitement at figuring out the problem: “This is about as green and as simple as it gets…”
We LOVE and are heartened by the folks that put their creativity and imagination and knowledge to this serious problem, and spent time figuring it out and struggling with it, then pulled together a video, and opened themselves and their idea up to criticism…
Thinking outside the box can be a really generous thing to do…
We are big fans of guerrilla activities of all sorts, from the making of art and theater to gardening and marketing. So we loved stumbling on this picture of a striking guerrilla action that took place in Berlin recently: While cars were stopped for green lights, a group of cyclists dumped 13 gallons of colored paint in large puddles onto the street in Berlin’s busy Rosenthaler Platz. As the cars drove through the puddles, their tires inadvertently became brushes to spread the paint, creating a constellation of colored lines. (The artworks’ masterminds posted signs nearby explaining that the paint wasn’t harmful and would wash off with water.) Like the best guerrilla actions, this one shakes up habitual thinking and seeing (and hence maybe living) in positive ways. read more…
Maria Robledo sent this photo from her iPhone with a short, expressive email: “Holton served these cheeries w the empty glass for the pits . Liked the improvised moment”
We like the improvised moment, too and the fun, useful little solutions that mysteriously come…
We’ve noticed that once we started thinking about the idea of improvising, we began to see it happening all around us; we began to DO it ourselves a lot more. Just a slight shift in view, really, turns it into a practice…
We discovered that improvising is really about following ideas as they connect one to another, even with the most ordinary things…like a blog post pointing in many directions – to a recipe for warm fresh cherries, or where to buy the glass, or Holton’s or Maria’s artwork, OR maybe your own brilliant, unexpected idea…
(BTW, you can click here to find out where to buy the swell, thin $3 glass that Holton used for cherry pits; it is useful for many things…we often use it as a vase for a small bunch of flowers, and for individual rice puddings…and Amontillado milkshakes…)
, or other vase, as a mold for concrete…but something BIG (why haven’t we seen any concrete slabs as bed frames? yes, yes, too heavy, we know….)…we were wondering how to get hold of bigger-than-a-doorstop molds for concrete and discovered the 
by Tim Ferriss. The title appeals to our inner escapist; we dream of an easier life where the focus is on what we really want to be doing, on our family and friends, on what matters most in our lives. The book describes how anybody can be a Lifestyle Designer, and fund their life with only four hours of work a week. That seems a stretch at best. If you have a “hot cakes” book and an online supplement business like Ferris does, maybe it’s plausible. But we’re too distracted and exhausted to start a business. Is such a radical shift necessary to be happy?
(back in 2009; I’ve since written 2010 and am writing 2011). 
