We recommend turning off the sound and playing both videos at the same time. We came upon them when we were reading blogs the other morning, and were blown away by this kismet-ish reminder of simultaneity.
art
on things not going as planned (addendum)
James Thurber
As often happens, soon after we posted What To Do When Things Don’t Go as Planned, we found an example that fit it EXACTLY, which we’ve come to consider the norm: ‘like attracts like’. In the New Yorker’s recent Back to the Harbor (Seals return to New York), Ian Frazier describes cartoonist James Thurber’s process in making one of his most famous cartoons – a clear case of “asking questions forward.”
“One of James Thurber’s most famous cartoons is of a man and woman lying in a bed, and the woman is saying to the man, “All right, have it your way–you heard a seal bark!” Meanwhile, behind the bed’s headboard, and partly hidden by it, a large seal looks off to the left…The drawing came about by chance. Originally, he was trying to draw a seal on a rock looking at two small figures in the distance and saying to itself, “Hm, explorers.” When the rock Thurber produced looked more like a headboard, he adjusted and kept going.”
Related post: what to do when things don’t go as planned
inspired electrical cord safety (tapedown with warning)
Annaleena's Hem
Spotted in Annaleenas HEM: taping down an electric cord with a charming warning…the opposite of the usual mass of gaffer’s tape. We’re thinking this would encourage people to step OVER the cord rather than stepping on it as gaffer’s tape does. We’re wondering how long it would stay in good shape.
It also makes us think about taping down electrical cord with a multitude of colored tapes in stripes or other designs that are not about hiding what’s going on, but making it a design element. Artist Jim Jambie‘s wonderful floors come to mind… read more…
experience a pour painting LIVE + calder, yves Klein, wegman + more (12 hrs of inspiration)
Holton Rower
This Saturday afternoon in New York City, The Calder Foundation is sponsoring a twelve-hour one-day event that presents a continuous series of artist film screenings, performances and music. It takes its name from Alexander Calder’s response to Work in Progress, his 1968 theatrical production, Maybe I should have called it ‘My Life in Nineteen Minutes’. An extraordinary group of artists will be showing work, Calder, Yves Klein, Eva Luna, and William Wegman to name only a few. Holton Rower, whose wondrous Pour Painting we posted about last week (the video went seriously viral) will be doing a “live pour”, guaranteed to be an unforgettable experience (we know, we once watched him make one).
“….Influenced by Calder’s investigations into improvisational performance, appropriated materials and continual change through the development of his iconic ‘mobiles,’ Maybe I should have called it ‘My Life in Nineteen Minutes’ will traverse history by reading it through the present moment, zigzagging through different scenarios via the slippage of time and space. It will engage an active audience through different media and temporalities via numerous set-changes, playfully interrogating life’s intermissions.
…Inspired by the long history of improvised DIY art performances as cultural strategy read more…
theo jansen’s new forms of life
Dutch artist Theo Jansen has worked for over 20 years trying to make “new forms of life”, mechanical beasts made of PVC pipe, whose power to move on their own comes from the wind. He calls them Strandbeests.
“The breeze gives it life…I want to put this out into the world where they can live in the future…And they don’t have to eat because they get their energy from the wind…
…What I’ve find about this experience of making new forms of life is that you discover all the problems that the real creator must have had creating this world.”
His words make us wonder if that is what all creative people are doing: making new forms of life, echoing the process of discovery and problem solving that has been in play for eons.
Check out Jansen’s website.
Thanks Holton, Christopher, and others who kept reminding us via email of this amazing guy!
roy arden’s blog: james brown’s dance lessons and homemade ferris wheels…
We are completely smitten with our latest find in the blogsphere: artist Roy Arden‘s UndertheSun. Totally visual, with variously-sized, in-your-face photos and video, Arden posts riffs whose connections can start out clear and then veer into wild territory: this is blog as artwork. This crazy good video of James Brown’s dance lessons (which makes us want to DANCE) followed a groove on makeshift and human-powered ferris wheels, among other things. We love how it surprises us and shakes us UP. Maria Robledo described Arden’s blog perfectly:
“roy Ardens blog is inmensly compelling with these rich juxtapositions.
I lost myself.
Lovely.”
inspiring space: brancusi’s studio
?
The great, eccentric MondoBloggo has decided to celebrate sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s 135 birthday by posting 30 gorgeous (unattributed) photos of the amazing artist, his work and his studio. The studio is a space we covet and dream of; we wonder how differently we’d think if we lived in a space like that…and then…is it possible to build some of that sensibility into an ordinary urban space…? read more…
non-valentine’s day valentines
Maria Robledo
Since Valentine’s Day, we’ve gotten some wonderful emails of Valentine’s images and stories, so we thought we’d share a couple (and save the others for later). Maria Robledo made this improvised valentine for her husband, artist Holton Rower whose wondrous Pour Paintings we blogged last week. Since Holton uses clothes pins for his artwork made with money, she wanted to get him some much-needed new ones, and decided to make a Valentine out of them.
Then, we read this “a good little valentine story” from a sweet mama-in-law we know: one thing leads to another in connection, exchange, curiosity, joy, kismet…
Hi honey, so we went to that little Peruvian place last night, right across the street from the Prep Kitchen in Del Mar. Very small & decrepit, 6 tables all filled and all outside, in front of this little old used to be a store maybe & now a kitchen…with a few heaters. Food was marvelous, we both had fish dishes…mine a chowder that was a complete meal, & then a lime pie, but that’s not the story. read more…
ethan greenbaum’s concrete block love (and inspiration)
Ethan Greenbaum
Artist Ethan Greenbaum‘s work gave us lots of idea for home works made of concrete block. He has figured out ways to make them seem both light and somehow charming, by using plasticine and colored acrylics instead of cement as grout. Plasticine is a kind of clay that won’t harden so maybe it actually IS a good idea for certain homemade pieces where you don’t want the commitment of concrete, or it’s permanence. We love the idea of painting the cement grouting with Greenbaum’s whimsical colors, to transform a dreary block wall.
We also love Greenbaum’s plasticine-covered block structures; although the always-soft plasticine might not be feasible in the long run, it makes us wonder what would be: what could we coat concrete blocks with to give them a surprising and less heavy look, while preserving blocks’ elemental form ? And his idea of combining blocks of different sizes is a revelation, making us see ever more possibilities for “random” assemblages of concrete blocks as table bases, bed platforms, odd storage units… read more…
holton rower’s pour paintings: intention + chance, in color
Artist Holton Rower is constantly innovating, shifting, moving his work into new territory, too fast even to get an accurate answer to the question “What’s he into these days?” We’ve marveled at his works out of locks, money, fish hooks for years…Lately, we’ve been smitten with his Pour Paintings (which may in fact be sculptures), cup after cup of vividly-colored acrylic paint poured over stacked structures made of plywood, to make liquid, multiplying patterns that are truly delicious to look at. As one critic noted:
“This work is troubling. I want to lick it.”
This video by Dave Kaufman is a montage from Pours being made as Rower choreographs his assistants’ and colors, one moving in with a styrofoam cup of a new color to replace one who has just carefully poured a custom-mixed color onto the tall wooden structure. The patterns made are luminous and unpredictable, the results unbelievably sensual. It is mesmerizing.
Kaufman has a YouTube channel of videos of various aspects of Rower’s work. Here’s a video of a single “Tall” painting being made, a half hour or so of constant movement compressed into 3:12 minutes. read more…
robo-rainbow: cool video, via chance encounter
We missed the cross-town bus and shared a taxi with a stranger as much in a hurry as we were. He turned out to be a “Consilientist | Futurist” his mind going places we can’t imagine, like: “Consilience is, after its use by biologist E.O.Wilson in his book of the same name, the effort to create a unified theory of knowledge” Yikes! Jumping out first, we gave him ‘the improvised life’s card…He took one look and GOT IT, and started telling us of a guy he knew who made something out of something. We were running to make the light and yelled out “Send anything you’ve got!”. This very cool video is what he sent.
An improvised moment emerged on a street in New York City.
You can see some of the rigging and backstory to this amazing “complicated technical solution to aide in simple acts of vandalism” here. We would love to drive it around town…
Via Stuart Mason Dambrot (thanks!) via AdaFruit Industries
dreaming of a rietveld crate desk
Browsing through our archive, we found this image we’d filed several years ago of a desk designed by Gerrit Rietveld, the Dutch minimalists architect and furniture designer, known for his iconic pieces made out of ordinary crates. We were surprised all over again by the range of Rietveld’s vision for furniture made of simple pine boards. Made the early part of the 20th century, they hold their uniquely modern feel due to their thoughtful lines and colors. The 1934 desk has become a sculpture (now worth thousands of dollars).
We found it on the understated-yet-full-of-treasures blog of artist Bill Schwartz via Digital Media Tree. Here’s Schwartz’s comment:
“. . .a piece of furniture of fine wood, made wholly according to traditional methods, is shipped in a crate to prevent damage and breakage. Someone receiving such a crate at home says, at most: well packed. But it has never been established that such a crate represents a freely rendered method of carpentry aimed straight at its goal. The plain materials of which it is composed make it stronger than its precious contents. . .Therefore, there must finally be someone who chooses the crate instead of the piece of furniture.”
He includes a link to 3D rendering of the desk with which you could find your way to making one yourself. And then we stumbled on How to Construct Rietveld Furniture 
..h-m-m-m….
think-make-think
Clifton Burt via 20x200
…’nuff said…
…though the story is very cool:
‘think-make-think’ by Clifton Burt (at 20×200, Jen Bekman’s great virtual gallery of affordable art)…was inspired by a haiku graphic designer John Maeda “quietly posted on his blog…Over the next few months, that haiku often found its way to the forefront of my mind. When our studio acquired the remnants of a discarded arrow sign, it was clear to me that think-make-think was a perfect fit, both in form and function.
I have fond memories of my wife, Kate, Will Bryant and I digging through a Mississippi junk store in an old railroad warehouse on the rumor that there were arrow-sign letters in there… somewhere, if we could find them.”
With heartfelt thanks to Pamela Hovland!
Related post: what’s your ideal cookbook shelf?
francis ford coppola on risk and not knowing…
Steve Shapiro
We were knocked out by Ariston Anderson’s interview in 99% with the great director Francis Ford Coppola who made The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now among other astonishing films. In talking about film, he talks deeply about making any kind of art, and about living. Here are some excerpts (read in context, they are even better):
Our favorite: “The cinema language happened by experimentation – by people not knowing what to do….”
“An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before…” read more…
