Paella is a dish of great possibility, without rigid constraints. It was originally created by workers in the orange groves of Valencia with the elements they had on hand, commonly duck, rabbit and snails. Seafood paellas are a fairly recent adaptation, although they are the most popular. The only constants in paella are the rice,…
Read More4th of july pt 1: grill rigs + open-fire paella improvs
Every 4th of July, my friend Timothy Chegwidden cooks two huge paellas, Spain’s famous rice dish, for a gathering of friends and their children. Tim makes his paella as they REALLY do in Spain, outdoors over a wood fire — the slight hint of smoke is essential to its flavor — a Spanish-style barbeque that makes…
Read Moreart in the everyday: pear core sculpture (maria robledo)
Maria Robledo‘s instagram of a pear core looks like a fab modernist sculpture. Another swell little shift of view via Maria’s instagrams. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower arrangements object lessons: some sh*t just doesn’t matter
Read Moreisland as art space, art work, vision lesson
About a year ago, we got an email from Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island, inviting us to see what was going on at the once-army base-now-public-space a 5 minute ferry ride from the tip of Manhattan… Pretty much everything out here embodies improvised life (tree house designed by artist, goats in…
Read Morematisse writ large on a jungle wall
A friend living in Thailand is an avid admirer of Henri Matisse, particularly his wall-size drawings. He was unhappy with the large, barren entry wall in his house in the jungle of Kanchanaburi, north of Bangkok near the Myanmar border. He dreamed of a of wall mural to enliven the long corridor to surprise his wife returning soon…
Read More‘experimenting with your own life is the most fundamental medium we have’
We found this wonderful quote in a New York Times Magazine piece about Natalie Jeremijenko, an artist with degrees in biochemistry, physics, computer science and electrical engineering, whose latest work involves designing interfaces that “will facilitate interactions between humans and nonhumans”, lately fish. Jeremijenko pretty much nailed it: our lives ARE the fundamental medium we…
Read Moredavid lynch’s virtual road trip
(Video link here.) Feel like a road trip but don’t have the wherewithal right now? Check out David Lynch’s collaboration with Lykke Li. That Transcendental guy has made a meditation… Related posts: jack kerouac’s crazy-wise advice + that improv scroll 2 minute vacation: a virtual trip to paris weekend road trip: ‘address is approximate’
Read Moredeconstructed slipcovers like paola navone’s fab ghost chair
Recently at Style-Files, Danielle de Lange was mulling whether to buy the pricey ($1,000), chic or a Ikea’s cheap, rather clunky and traditional alternative, the Ektorp chair ($199), below. She inadvertently pointed out a great lesson in slip-cover assumptions: the usual, standard approach with piping or neat seams is NOT the only way to go. Paola Navone devised a…
Read Morelife lessons from an exploding egg + roz chast
This morning while engrossed in redesigning ‘improvised life’, I forgot about the eggs I was boiling on the stove. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the kitchen. When I explored, I discovered firm little pellets of egg yolk scatter-shot across the kitchen. Once the water had boiled away in the little copper…
Read Morebooks as stunning reclaimed building material
Recently we celebrated a friend’s birthday at the rarified 12-seat sushi bar at Brushstroke, chef David Bouley’s collaborative Japanese restaurant in Tribeca, NYC. Designed by the Japanese firm Super Potato, the interiors are serene and graceful, evocative of a Japanese temple melded with modernist architectural elements: stone, reclaimed timber, salvaged, weathered steel. The most stunning detail were…
Read Morefast forward’s mind-shifting finds
We like to stop in at our friend Fast Forward‘s Facebook occasionally to see what the eagle-eyed avant-garde sound artist has found in his travels. We can always count on an expanding view of things…
Read Moreinspired reno: 8×10′ shed morphs into a 2-story house
Our first ‘real’ house was a midget, 1937 knotty pine beach cabin meant for weekend use, built by three spinster sister daughters of a wealthy Iowa man who had invented the snow plow. The seams started busting when two babies arrived bam bam in a year, and my husband and I were struggling to cope…
Read Morethe power of failure, doubt and stumbling
We recently ran a New Yorker cartoon showing Noah’s Ark filled with only giraffes. The suggested caption was “Mistakes were made.” Now The New Yorker has compounded its mistakes with Malcolm Gladwell’s latest piece The Gift of Doubt. It totally convinces us that in order to find the right path, you often have to take the…
Read Morediy window boxes and planters: modern to rustic
Julie Houston, whose home reno we posted last week, sent us this image of the clever window box she made using some of Hurricane Sandy’s twig debris, glued onto plywood frames (made to order by her husband). It came just as we’ve been collecting images of the various diy planters we’ve spotted around town. …
Read Morethe first apple computer: great ideas start rough!
Dig this picture of the original apple computer, now known as the apple-1, designed and hand-built in 1976 by Steve Wozniak in Steve Job‘s garage. It’s one of a number of “primitive” early computers that Christie’s will auction in ‘First Bytes: Iconic Technology From the Twentieth Century’. It represents the very first step in Apple’s quite amazing history of…
Read Moremistakes and broken things can yield unexpected beauty
We know this was Maria Robledo‘s favorite cup. Broken in an instant, another kind of beauty came through (which the inimitable Maria ‘got’ and showed us). The handle looks like a perfect little sculpture of an ear. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower…
Read Morethe sf bubbleman shows how-to diy giant bubbles + why
San Francisco Bubbleman 1 by Susan Dworski @improvisedlife.com from Sally Schneider on Vimeo. (Video link here.) Some time ago, Susan Dworski emailed us about the mysterious Bubbleman she passes on Highway 101, and sent two little videos. At sunset today alongside bustling Highway 101 in Tiburon, CA, an unknown man with a boom box coaxes soap…
Read Morecement, not tiles, in the bath…and elsewhere
There is no getting away for my thing for cement. Fantasies of making things out of it abound in ‘improvised life’s archives and for years Working with Cement was in the stack of books on my bedside table. When I was renovating what was to become ‘improvised life’s Laboratory, I contemplated surrounding the tub in…
Read Morewalls for painting, climbing, decorating, writing poetry,
The Big Picture recently ran an extraordinary, and surprising, collection of photos around the theme of walls: They keep things out or enclose them within. They’re symbols of power, and a means of control. They’re canvases for art, backdrops for street theater, and placards for political messages. They’re just waiting for when nobody’s looking to…
Read Moresolar-powered moon lanterns for summer nights
Installing hardwired, outdoor lighting can be a big, expensive, all-too-often unaesthetic hassle, forcing you to put lights where you really don’t want them, and use commercially produced fixtures that are less than enchanting. One elegant, inexpensive solution is solar lanterns. My favorites are Allsop‘s faux Japanese shoji solar lanterns available in a rainbow of lightweight polyester that mimics silk.…
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