nphoto: frank gunn/ap
This has been QUITE a year and we’re taking this week to reflect and look back (while we look forward). We start with this image of Nik Wallenda walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls from The Big Picture’s The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012; we often feel like that, in our own small way.
We love Google’s Year in Review 2012 Zeitgeist video (and bless them for including Pussy Riot). (Video link here.) read more…
photo: michael mcgillis
“Wake” by Michael McGillis is a 95-foot long pathway enclosed on both sides by brightly-painted cut logs; it’s on display at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota. Although the installation is apparently a commentary on humanity’s disruption of nature, for us (barbarians!) it’s an idea for embellishing the logs we hauled home after Hurricane Sandy, or still have our eye on out in the park…or a way to sparkle up part of a stash of fire wood. read more…
We LOVE gifs, and are amazed that a little bit of code that can animate an image, making it live. Lately, we’ve noticed gif artists applying the process to create new visions of things, like this fire hydrant that a gif-artist “saw” as voluptuous statuary.
Here’s a whole Tumblr-full of gifs from Moving the Still, an exhibition done in honor of the gif’s 25th birthday.
…And our favorite gifs from the past year:
moment of ocean and pink sky gif
banksy’s “no stopping” reimagined (twice)
an open door: gif for an improvised life
an evening gif: gratitude…
what have you been making today?
peep show gif: funny, risqué, slightly x-rated
via Nowness
(Video link here.) When commercial photographer John Dugdale lost most of his sight almost twenty years ago, he did not give up photography as one would have imagined. Instead, he started photographing in a new way, using a huge view camera and employing 19th century forms and processes. Life forced him to “see in a new way” and his art photographs became highly acclaimed.
Among his many commissions was the ad campaign for a revival of William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker. This video gives insight into his unique process and the “lesson” he took from his blindness.
“There is an alternate world out there that is as powerful as anything one might describe as normal. Whatever it is that you think is your adversity is actually your strength.” read more…
photo: maria robledo
After we posted about making wreaths of “just about anything“, Maria Robledo sent us a picture of a wreath that pushes that idea in the most wonderful and surprising way: a real bird’s nest nestled into winter branches whose leaves have dropped. It was a gift from inspired floral designer Emily Thompson, who even left bits of New York City debris that were part of the find.
Maria photographed on story on Thompson’s “wild” wreath-making for Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Wrote Maria: ”Emily’s wreaths are always naturally-shaped. Doesn’t use the pre-wreath gadgets.” We found a slide-show here.
We love that Thompson often uses found and foraged materials. Any of the materials she winds into wreaths could simply be arranged on the holiday table, instead of flowers… read more…
(Video link here.) On Ambatalia’s blog, we came across this useful little video demonstrating several ways of folding Furoshiki clothes — large squares of fabric — to make carry bags and packages. What the video fails to show is the little revelation that is scattered around Ambatalia’s site: you can WEAR Furoshiki clothes as well. Tied around the waist, they make a swell apron. When made out of beautiful fabric, you can wear them as a scarf. Molly de Vries of Ambatalia designed this “42-inch square everyday furoshiki scarf” from fine Irish linen; it’s washable and meant to be worn “crumply”: read more…
(Video link here.) Susan Dworski alerted us to this stunning video, in an email with the subject line: “ah, the improvisational human spirit”. It’s about a remarkable orchestra from a remote village in Paraguay — a slum built on landfill — where its young musicians play with instruments made from foraged trash. The village’s inhabitants eke out a living by culling saleable items and materials in the huge dump. When a half-destroyed violin was found, Nicolas Gomez had the idea to rehabilitate it using found materials; the improvisation of other instruments followed.
It is astonishing to hear the wondrous first strains of Bach’s Suite No.1 in G major Prélude played on a cello improvised out of “an oil can, wood that was thrown away in the garbage…its pegs made out of an old tool used to tenderize beef and to make gnocchi…”
…And to hear how these kids lives have been changed by music: “When I listen to the sound of a violin, I feel butterflies in my stomach.” Says Music Director Favio Chavez, “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” read more…
zero waste home
A reader recently alerted us to Bea Johnson, creator of the website Zero Waste Home, who challenged herself to wear a single man’s shirt in 50 different iterations, as part of her committment to a zero waste lifestyle:
Great inspiration, and many iterations look so wearable and comfortable. Reminds me of Audrey Hepburn and her oversize shirts with tails wrapped around her waist and tied in front. A great look and a fresh perspective at the same time.
Bea posted images of her many stylish shirt improvisations on Zero Waste Home. Unfortunately, the black-and-white photos don’t show all the detail we’re dying to see, nor does Bea describe the fabric and style of the shirt she chose: But we got a sense of it in this photo: read more…
We are smitten by the ornaments Orange Howell is making by hand-casting various macaroni shapes and gold-or-silverplating them. We took one look and thought: We want to wear them as jewelry, especially that Penne Rigate ornament: read more…
photo: AP/luigi costantini
Just about the time Hurricane Sandy was wreaking havoc on the United States’ east coast, heavy rains and high tides brought some of the worst flooding to Venice, Italy in years — almost 5 feet of water. Because the “acqua alta”, or high water, is a common yearly occurrance in Venice — and because Venice is essentially a rather temperate floating city as it is — sensualist Venetians have improvised numerous many pleasurable strategies for dealing with it. Imagine being able to swim in the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square)…or just hang out, “taking the waters”… read more…
ollson & jensen
One unexpected outcome of Hurricane Sandy for us was our new obsession with trees, after we saw some mighty ones toppled over and wondered how we could give them a second life. We hauled a bunch of huge heavy trunk parts home and have found ourselves wandering the park daily to check out the progress of the Parks Department in clearing them away, hoping to snag some slices of the massive 3-foot in diameter oak we wrote about. Most of it has been removed, save the huge trunk and roots. Today we counted the rings and figure the tree to have been around 150 years old.
A reader named Susie Flax summed up what it is that hooked us about the fallen trees in an email, along with a link to the very cool sliced tree trunk coffee table above, after our own hearts: read more…
(Video link here.) Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, we spent a couple of hours following links in Roy Arden’s ever-illuminating blog. One took us to a vertigo-inducing video of a man walking the Caminito del Rey in Spain — a narrow path in deep disrepair pinned along the steep walls of a gorge — which people mostly do as a challenge.
It got us thinking about traveling really precarious and dangerous paths, so we followed that idea and came across this video read more…
Exclamation Point (Chartreuse),’ Richard Artschwager; photo Robert McKeever
Recently, we were stopped in our tracks by this yellow exclamation point. It is by artist Richard Artschwager, whose work is the focus of a retrospective at the Whitney. Knowing nothing about him, we poked around and found this potent snippet about his amazing !.
…Artschwager’s “blps,” black punctuation-like marks..are intended to make their immediate environment, in the artist’s own words, more “see-able,” and they also offer a chance to pause and reflect.
We figure Artschwager’s exclamation points are a fitting image for Thanksgiving: reminders to pause and reflect on all the teeny miracles around us…
photo: sally schneider
Recently, Lynne Rosetto Kasper of public radio’s The Splendid Table asked Sally to come up with some ideas for decorating the holiday table. (On December 21st, you can listen to a packed 6 or so minutes of ideas). Sally went right to her local farmer’s market to “forage” for visually beautiful, of-the-season items she could put right on the table, to create an instant still-lifes in lieu of, or in combination with, flowers. For Thanksgiving, she found fragrant quinces (above), apples and tiny seckel pears. The secret of their charm: Sally carefully picks through the crates to find fruits with their leaves still attached which evoke farms and orchards… (After the meal, they can be roasted or braised.)
And playing on an idea we posted some time ago of flower-and-vegetable arrangements, Sally plunked single radishes with their leaves in glass beakers and vases, for a suprising vegetal bouquet: read more…
