double-duty gifts with heart (and a card)

A few years ago, I discovered that the holiday gift my friends treasured most was a simple card telling them that I’d given a donation in their name to a charity. They were happy NOT to get more stuff, and be given something that was helping someone else. It was a way I could give…

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hand as notepad

I started thinking about using my hand as a notepad, as I did when I was a kid, and began noticing people with notes scrawled and scribbled on their hands. The manager of the local fish market had phone numbers running up the back of his hand in blue ball point. At the Bauhaus show…

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pop-up urban lunch (and other) counters

In my Inbox this morning, the ever-illuminating Manhattan User’s Guide alerted me to a new blog called Pop-Up Lunch. It explores ways New York’s nontraditional public spaces, like sidewalks, steps, and fire hydrants can be transformed into places to eat lunch. Writes blogger AP: “This blog follows a series of Pop Up Lunches I have staged…

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thomas ashcraft: artist as electroreceptor

Could the planet finally be ready for Thomas Ashcraft? He’s been called an “artist-scientist-philosopher”, “inventively creative almost beyond belief”; a “scholar-mystic“; “a romantic visionary”; “inveterate experimenter, artist and extrapolator”; none of these words do him justice. I’ve known him for many years and followed his work closely, so I was happy to hear a profile…

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d-i-y spring blooms in winter

Photographer Maria Robledo emailed me this picture of a winter crocus taken with her i-Phone, with the message: “Needs nothing but light to illuminate us.” She was given crocus bulbs bought from the local farmer’s market as a house-warming present. She had only to place one root-side down in a bowl and expose it to…

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origami’s cosmic potential

On December 8th, PBS’s Independent Lens will air Between the Folds, a film that chronicles ten fine artists and theoretical scientists who have forged unconventional lives – often abandoning careers – practicing the unlikely medium of origami. They use paper-folding to explore new ideas about science, mathematics and creativity. Judging from the trailer, the film…

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