Some time ago, Marella Consolini of the Chinati Foundation alerted us to the poignant sculpture of artist Jane Hammond. Since it is about fall and leaves, it seems the perfect time to post it. Called Fallen, Hammond’s installation comprises leaves: “each unique handmade leaf has been inscribed by the artist with the name of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.”
The work started with 4229 leaves; Hammond continued to add leaves and names as the war went on. We find that the work has greatly expanded our view of fall/change/life, and especially, what happens when we really focus our attention on something. Hammond describes it well in her Artist’s Statement: read more…
We love checking in to Cabin Porn a site which provides “inspiration for your quiet place somewhere”, which right now, is in our heads.
Recently, we became smitten with this hut overlooking Lake Bonney in the southeast of South Australia. All we know is that “it was built over 5 years with salvaged materials”; no other details were given. So we looked close at what those salvaged materials might be: we saw corrugated aluminum, windows, concrete blocks, reclaimed timber, a door, some sort of thin modern glass, driftwood…
Through small deliberate interventions, I altered these vintage images, allowing light to pass through them. (After all, photographs are made possible with light.) In a literal and somewhat playful manner, I aimed to give the photographs back to the light, hence the title of the series, Dare alla Luce, an Italian phrase used to describe the moment of birth.
We couldn’t help seeing the lights as connectors, between people, ideas, feelings, memories, the past and present: those subtle-body kinds of communication and experiences that happen all the time, that we’re made of, and out of which we make things. read more…
(Video link here.) Ever since we saw this 3 minute bit from comedian Louis C.K.’s amazing tv series Louie we’ve been looking for a video clip to post; we FINALLY found one. As Louie drives his daughters to visit their ancient aunt in the country, The Who‘s ”Who are You?” comes on the CD player. The valiant, crazy vision of Louie playing air guitar as he drives and his daughters cringe knocked us out.
Commenter named Alonso summed it up perfectly: ”this this is beautiful. natural yet risky.”
Louie totally went with the jammin’ music of his youth at the risk of making a fool of himself. As we all should, and often do. Natural yet risky.
There’s a movement afoot to change Columbus Day to Explorer’s Day. First, because Columbus didn’t really discover America (it was explored by MANY before him). And second because America has always been about exploring; it is a country of explorers. Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing-Boing says it eloquently:
….exploration is inclusive. The ancestors of Native Hawaiians were explorers who crossed the ocean. The ancestors of Native Americans explored their way across the Bering land bridge and then explored two whole continents. If you look at the history of America, you can see a history of exploration done by many different people, from many different backgrounds. Sometimes we’re talking about literal, physical exploration. Other times, the exploring is done in a lab. Or in space. But the point is clear: This country was built on explorers. And it needs explorers for the future.
Being explorers of all sorts, we’re going ahead an celebrating Explorer’s Day today.
We were AMAZED when we stumbled on this picture taken from a Sydney, Australia real estate listing : a porch with clunky, hard-to-move chaises all facing inside the house, away from the view.
We were knocked out by the insanely colorful streetscape made by a Lebanese team of artists/designers, known as dihzahyners, in Beirut.
We imagined how the the worst and bleakest urban neighborhoods we’ve traveled through would be TRANSFORMED by color. All it takes is paint, vision, collective effort: read more…
We are big fans of tattoos — permanent or impermanent — as a tool for living, and have posted quite a bit about them: to-do lists, uplifting signs, reminders of one sort or another. We recently tweeted about an 81 year-old woman who tattooed “Do Not Resuscitate” on her chest, so concerned was she about being kept alive against her wishes.
The Improvised Life’s remarkable assistant, Dese’Rae L. Stage, has A LOT of words and quotes tattoo’d on her body. We wondered if they were reminders or something else. So we asked her how she chose them, the story behind them, what they did.
I woke up this morning to discover a tiny birch tree rising amidst my city quasi-garden, having overcome unthinkable odds to float its seed over heaps of concrete and glass, and begin a life in a meager oasis of soil. And I thought, my god*, what a miracle. What magic. What a reminder that life does not await permission to be lived.
The amazing avant-garde musician Fast Forward has joinged forces with his friend Elaine Sokolof to create a charming and illuminating Facebook page ”Not Better Just Different”. (It’s public, so you don’t have to be a member of Facebook .
Fast wrote us that they started the page just to “try something out and see what happens”, our mantra.
We love it because there’s lots of quick hits that shift our view, like read more…
Holton Rower sent us this photo from his travels in Argentina. In the courtyard of Home Hotel in Buenos Aires he found a suprisingly crocheted tree. (Those crochet bombers are everywhere…)
We found this sign on French by Design last week and have been mulling it ever since. It’s a quote by graphic designer Jessica Hische, whose work if full of inventive and often very generous ideas (Check out the site, Mom, This is How Twitter Works. Also, click the heart at the top right of her website to switch modes-of-viewing. Our favorite: Teen Girl Mode.)
Hische’s quote has been making us look at the work we do when we don’t feel like writing, processing photos, taking care of paperwork, dealing with the massive amounts of ‘to-do’s on our work table…
Is the stuff we retreat into REALLY what we should be doing? It is a statement that resonates, pushing us to look farther into the idea of work and right livelihood, a question a lot of folks are dealing with these days. We’re tracking the ways we procrastinate to see if there’s a message to be heard.
Truer for us perhaps: the things we want to do when we procastinate is probably the work we should be doing…
(Video link here.) This video about the private little games people (especially kids) play in their heads reminded me of one I’ve been playing for years.
When I walk by a really tacky store–say, of clothes or furniture–I look at the display and imagine, if I absolutely had to, how or what would I choose and alter and arrange to make it appear somehow stylish. For example, when I’m in the garment district passing store windows with cheesey nylon evening gowns, I imagine which I would pick if I had to wear it to some occasion, and what would I do to make it work. It’s my own private design challenge.
It’s made for endless hours of secret design fantasy and problem solving while walking around the city.
What private little games do you play in your head?
we’ve been looking for a video clip to post; we FINALLY found one. As Louie drives his daughters to visit their ancient aunt in the country, 
