Stuart Williams

Our neighbor Stuart Williams, who lives down the hall from us, sent us a holiday e-card that he designed : a great example of swell d-i-y greetings makable with design, drawing, or photo software. Use photos or graphics to design your PDF and SEND IT OUT via email, to say HELLO to lots of folks easily.

Stuart’s card also reminded us about the connectivity of ideas that happens in an apartment building or a neighborhood, when folks start talking to each other and asking “What are you up to these days?” On elevator rides in our building, we’ve gotten make-up lessons from a professional make-up artist, and learned about the Secrets of Paris Department Stores. We became friends with Couturier de Cardboard Matthew Sporzynski, and the recipient of his stealth gift-giving.

Stopping to chat one day, we discovered that our neighbor Stuart is a site-specific, environmental artist. He created the Luminous Earth Grid, a vast array of 1,680 fluorescent lamps, which swept over the undulating landscape north of San Francisco (in an expanse equal to eight football fields), like an immense electrified quilt:

Stuart Williams

Now he’s planning a dual-city art event for Paris and New York. He envisions slowly undulating waves of light which sweep up and down the facades of two iconic structures in the center of Paris and New York.

“The pace of the rising and falling waves of light is similar to slow breathing, as though the buildings are in a Zen-like state of relaxed meditation.”

He’s going out on a limb to raise the money and follow it through, in order to make some art, and give people he doesn’t even know a new experience as they walk through their city.

Here’s a simulation of his idea (video link here):

Good luck Stuart! We hope to see your Light Plumes on the Flatiron Building!

This just in on the subject of email greetings: a tiny movie of the lunar eclipse. Beautiful.

Related posts: Leaving Secret (or Surprise) Presents
What to Do When Someone’s in Trouble
Couturier de Cardboard: Matthew Sporzynski
Give Your Gift in a Fab (Recycled) Box

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