We are UP TO OUR EARS redesigning ‘improvised life’ AND creating a bunch of mind-altering new interactions for our readers. After 4 years of posting, we’re tearing things apart and hatching plots. But doing all that AND posting 3 times a day is breaking our heads and running us ragged. So we’re taking a break…
Read Morefound: chic, little black dress of bungee cords
Over the years, we’ve relied on bungee cords for all sorts of uses, from strapping things onto a dolly or bicycle to lashing our patio umbrella to the terrace rails during a high wind (below). Having never loved the look of the old-fashioned rubber bungees that eventually unravels and loses its elasticity (EXCEPT on Rene Herbst’s…
Read Morelookbook for our next project: bookshelves + murphy bed
A year or so after moving into the Harlem Laboratory, we’re finally mulling building bookshelves and horizontal Murphy bed (called wall beds these days)…like a berth in the living room. We’ve had that forelorn space hidden behind folding screens FOR A YEAR, waiting until we could wrap our head around designing it (at bottom, with…
Read More‘surrender to a logic more powerful than reason’
At But Does it Float we stumbled on this J.G. Ballard quote that titles an exhibition of drawings by Mark A Reynolds. We weren’t crazy about the drawings, but Ballard’s words are a gift we didn’t expect. Words to live by. Related posts: sister corita kent’s enduring rules for making + her art the collected wisdom…
Read Morewhy not?: bold printed toilet tissue + unusual holders
Our minimalist self generally thinks classic white toilet paper is just about a perfect design. If you want to make it more graphical, stack it sideways to make a rhythm of its black dot/holes/sides (below) or forge a unique holder, like Alexander Calder‘s…
Read Morei qureshi’s met installation: tragedy —>hope —> growth
Please enable flash to view this media. Download the flash player. (Video link here.) This afternoon Holton Rower texted: We’re at the MET on the roof. You have to see the installation. It is fu*king awesome! So we ran to the Metropolitan Museum’s website and found this illuminating video and a bit about Imran Qureshi: Three…
Read Morereminder: play in the sand (it’s an art material)
As though wanting to pack in every ounce of summer, Coney Island has been host to a number of sand sculpture contests. Last Friday, arts instigator Creative Time headed back to Far Rockaway to host its second annual Artist Sandcastle Competition. And this Friday’s competition is open to experienced artists and amateurs alike. Artist’s sand creations can be…
Read Moredesign love: bauhausian bicycle
We look at this Bauhausian bicycle and feel a visceral WANT. We love the way it looks and its moderne hecho-a-mano rusticity. Apparently it follows the principle of the golden section. Beautiful. … though you’d have to be pretty agile to get on and off. More images and specifics on the Bau Bike: It It’s Hip It’s…
Read Moresummer collecting: improvisations for shells, stones…
Summer vacations in the great outdoors can result in some ferocious souvenir fallout: gazillions of shells, kilos of stones, and fistfuls of feathers from unidentified birds. We hoard this memorabilia like The Hobbit’s Gollum hovering over Sauron’s Ring, unable to part with our “precious”, be it a single sand-filled shell or random feather. Truth be…
Read Moreannals of tiny: elevator shaft museum
Somewhere in downtown New York City, in an inconspicuous urban alleyway, an abandoned elevator shaft has been transformed into a tiny museum, a one-room exhibition space displaying an assemblage of unconventional artifacts and found objects. The museum documents everyday human history, a quiet reminder that art is everywhere…and the human ingenuity can transform even the most lowly and…
Read Morebest of il: diy plant watering globes
www.sha.org/bottle/wine In tandem with Anthony Giglio’s summer sparkling wine recommendations, it seems fitting to reprise the idea we published a couple of years ago: using water or wine bottles as plant watering globes. These are simply inverted bottles that you fill with water and slam into the moist soil of a containered plant; they will slowly trickle…
Read More5 delish, affordable sparkling wines for summer
Ellen Silverman sent this image of the charming chairs her friend Lauren Malkasian‘s daughter made out of the wire cages from bottles of Champagne drunk during a celebratory dinner one evening. That got us thinking about sparkling wines so we asked our trusty wine/spirits/entertaining advisor Anthony Giglio for his recommendations. He sent us FIVE plus…
Read Moregrowing is no easy not matter how long we’ve lived
Growing is no piece of cake no matter how tall we are or how long we’ve lived. We progress, we fall back, we start all over again, ferblungeoning forward into our future even while kicking and screaming. The universe commands expanding, and we obey, improvising every step of the way. The side of the bookshelf at the door of…
Read Morerelax + re-envision with commes des garcon’s moving six
(Video link here.) Whenever we are in Saks or Barney’s, we make a point to check out what’s going on at Commes des Garcons, fashion designer Rei Kawakubo’s line of consistently imaginative and unexpected clothing. It always shifts our thinking about what a shirt, dress, pant, coat can be, indeed what even constitutes men’s or…
Read Morediy or buy: stylish frayed-edge linen pillows
Flipping through the new Crate & Barrel catalogue, we came across what seems like a bargain: “eyelash pillows”— big square two-tone linen pillows whose edges are sewn inside-out, to show their frayed edges. It’s a lovely play on a trend we’ve reported on quite a bit, most recently in Paola Navone’s frayed-seam slipcovers. It appeals…
Read Moremake art with your cup of coffee
(Video link here.) This little video just goes to show that just about ANYTHING can be an art material and a vehicle for expression. We don’t think we’re gonna do this with our morning coffee but love the possibility, the shift of view of what a coffee ring can be (and one degree father ‘out…
Read Moregraffiti artist’s custom tool coat for making art on-the-fly
Dig this brilliantly-devised graffiti artists coat, lined with cans of colored spray paint: genius! It is the perfect example of devising/hacking/creating tools for your own unique needs and vision. It reminds us this principle from Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth: Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even…
Read Morestudiopepe’s fab green moveable room dividers (diy?)
We are always on the lookout for moveable room dividers that we can use to define a space in many ways, as mood or need dictates. We are taken with these moveable walls spotted at Desire to Inspire’s recent Studiopepe round-up. They appear to be made of two-by-fours faced with a thin plywood panel, and affixed to…
Read More‘do the one thing you think you cannot do’
Maria Robledo sent us this very wise quote from Oprah whose ‘Fail at it. Try again.’ echoes Samuel Beckett’s great ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better‘. We especially like Oprah’s spin on it:
Read Moreour favorite eggplant recipe via mamma lucia
Some of the best and simplest recipes in my repertoire have come from home cooks at whose tables I’ve been lucky enough to be a guest. These dishes invariably teach me more than delicious flavors; I get inside information about how to handle an ingredient, or a novel technique I never thought of. And sometimes,…
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