When I was a little girl in the sixties, my mother to used occasionally take me to the St. Regis hotel for lunch in the little lounge next to the famous King Cole Bar. Across the room, we often saw Salvador Dali lunching with his pet ocelot Babou, who lived with him in his suite upstairs. At the time, I had no concept of what I was witnessing: eccentricity in full glory, a practice I would come to admire.
Read More
Cow hide rugs are so ubiquitous these days, that we’ve gotten pretty tired of seeing them in interiors. That is, UNTIL we saw one speckled with gold. It seems that painted, spattered, striped, embellished hides have become something of a trend. Apartment34 has a great DIY that gives the gist (and there are lots of…
Read More
One of the most wondrous website’s we’ve seen lately is Cloudreporter, a site of cloud images that readers have submitted, with an unobtrusive sliding note that tells who took it, the location and date. Some of them have titles like Clouds Hanging Low or Summer in SF, or a poetic notation like “evening sky over…
Read More
When Essex Farm, my sensational CSA, delivered a fat bundle of rhubarb stalks in the midst of a crazy-busy week, I employed my super fast, super simple rhubarb recipe. It results in a rustic, velvety rhubarb stew that is divine as is with heavy cream, creme fraiche, ice cream or yogurt; sandwiched between Foolproof Cream Biscuits with…
Read More
As we scroll through design sites, we periodically spot some new gadget for keeping ugly computer wires in check: reels that wind them up, dongles that collect them behind your desk… Perhaps the BEST improvisation we’ve seen is in Christoph Niemann’s workspace. The inspired illustrator/artist/author disguised an ugly black cable by placing a black and white image…
Read More
Derek Donahue found all of the tautologies —phrases in which the same thing is said twice —from the great, gritty HBO series The Wire and supercut them into one video. When we wrote a few down, they seemed more like some seriously ‘street’, existential koans: succinct paradoxical statements used for meditation in Buddhism. Here are our favorites, ESPECIALLY the rather cosmic ones at the bottom. They can be reshuffled to form curiously illuminating poems.
Read More
Unlike many folks using recycled materials, WILL Holman of Object Guerrilla has an eye for style, as evidenced by the inspired Zip Tie Lounge Chair, above, a flat-pack armchair made of plywood panels sewn together with zip ties. His new book Guerilla Furniture Design contains chapters on Guerilla History, Sustainability, Philosophy, The Guerilla Workshop and Design Fundamentals,…
Read More
Along with the rest of the world, I’ve been watching the transformation of Olympic gold medal decathlon winner Bruce Jenner into ultra-femme Caitlyn Jenner, culminating in Annie Leibovitz’s Vanity Fair cover portrait. Having worked with Leibovitz years ago I know that, beyond the 10-hours of facial-feminization surgery, Caitlyn has been styled to-the-hilt by makeup, hair and…
Read More
We’ve posted about Japanese artist Yoyoi Kusama a number of times in the past, so taken were we with her view of art as medicine; losing herself in making art — “self-obliteration”— is her way of relieving illness. We have been especially transfixed by her repetitive use of dots in her artwork. In “The Obliteration Room”, currently on view…
Read More
A week ago, we flew across the country to see a family member who had been sent home for hospice care. We are still reverberating from the many unexpected moments of healing and beauty that occurred during this powerful time of transition. We learned to go moment by moment, responding to whatever came during the mysterious process. This quote expanded our…
Read More
When we heard the news that a dear one had entered hospice, we booked a flight, packed our bags, and started on the long journey to her, not knowing what the path ahead might bring.
Read More
Spring is parsnip season, the spicy-sweet root vegetable that looks like a plump pale yellow carrot. My favorite way to cook them is to cut them into sticks, slick them with olive oil or melted butter and roasted them to make Parsnip Fries. I learned the dead-simple technique from Anne Disrude, one of the best cooks…
Read More
Emoticons and emojis are being so widely used that we’ve been hearing news reports that they might possible become a new language: a sort of modern day hieroglyphics. Artists like Cindy Sherman have devised her own set of emojis which she’s offering as a free download. Although we love possibilities in the realm of emojis (see more below), we like the constraints of making emoticons using just keyboard symbols…
Read More
(Video link here.) Over the years, we’ve published quite a few of artist/inventor/designer Domnic Wilcox‘s brilliant rethinking of ordinary objects, documented on his site Variations on Normal. We love that Wilcox constantly challenges “normal” because “normal” is often so terribly limiting. And as Wilcox shows, its FUN and illuminating to think outside the normal box.…
Read More
Chilewich, maker of now-iconic, minimalist woven polypropylene floor mats we’ve admired, recently introduced their Dahlia Coasters. Their website shows icy drinks resting on the coaster (one with an ice bucket in the background), calls them “coasters” and claims “these functional designs will enhance and elevate your dining experience“. But at the end of the enticing copy is…
Read More
These three surprising examples of communities reminds us that community starts with one person reaching out, taking action…and then another, and another….
Read More
Need some? Here you go! via One Big Photo with thanks to Christopher Eldredge?
Read More
Pocket doors largely lay hidden UNTIL they are pulled closed. We love the surprise of this yellow-painted door: an instant volume of color to shift a space. Pink perhaps or dark dark gray? The effect works best with a simple flat panel door. And then, of course, there are many possibilities for patterns and signs…
Read More
(Video link here. We recommend watching with the sound OFF.) We were stunned to hear that artist Chris Burden died last week at the age of 69. Known for pushing limits, Burden used his own body as art material in extraordinarily violent and shocking ways, until he moved into other forms of sculpture. Just two months ago, when we…
Read More