June 2014 - Page 2 of 4 - Improvised Life

Constantino Nivola’s Open Air Solarium

Among Constantino Nivola’s inspiring outdoor garden rooms is his open air “solarium”, designed with high, white walls to reflect the sun “to such a degree that nude sunbathing was possible even in the winter.” And an artful solarium it is.

Mister Rogers for Adults: Life Has No Laugh Track

(Video link here.) We didn’t “get” Mister Rogers until we were introduced to Paul Zelevansky, an artist, writer and teacher who created the YouTube series “Mister Rogers for Adults”, provocative 60-second shorts made up of video clips from Rogers’ shows and interviews. Zelevansky challenges the assumptions that Mister Rogers was a sweet, milquetoast cornball. In Zelavansky’s view,…

15 Seconds of Gorgeous from Tom Ashcraft

Tom Ashcraft “Artisan, Naturalist, Electroreceptor and Scientific Instrument Builder” is a man who completely defies categorization. He’s got all sorts of gear that constantly monitors and records wondrous things that are going on in the sky all around us. His lovely little film is like watching the night sky out in the country…

Stylish Affordable DIY End Grain Block Flooring

When we were hunting for a affordable flooring solutions for the Laboratory, we came across a wood floor we had never seen before in a store in Soho: it was made from tiles cut across the grain of hard wood beams: end cuts placed in a grid to make an unexpectedly beautiful pattern. The lighting in…

Cool, Practical Flat File Beds

Tobias Wong’s inspired mattress on a grouping of pushed-together 2-drawer lateral files has long been an inspiration for our imaginings and phanta-designs for beds built on file cabinets. But, until recently, we hadn’t considered possibilities in the realm flat-files.

Where do you find “clear profit?”

Clear profit. We DO have that in the sky, friends and our daily interactions with our readers, who always surprise.Can that profit pay the bills and all that goes into making Improvised Life? The jury’s out. It makes us wonder: What IS this stuff called money, really? Our friend Holton Rower makes art out of it!

Motown Break via rdio —> What Happened to the Brilliant Rdio

Working hard? Why not take a break and listen to what the guys hanging out under the trees on 124th street in Harlem listen to on summer nights: Motown. You’ll findthe Complete No. 1’s HERE at rdio. SORRY, THE GREAT RDIO CLOSED IT’S DOORS IN 2015. You can read all about the inspired site…

How to Keep Cast-Iron Cookware Naturally Nonstick

We love cast-iron, the endlessly-useful, impossible-to-destroy cookware. It provides the even heat of heavy copper cookware at a fraction of the cost…If properly cared for, cast-iron will build up a naturally nonstick surface that can take the place of commerical nonstick cookware, about which there are health concerns. Here’s our tried-and-true method and favorite pans (and recipes).

Nomad Designer Transforms Found Furniture Each Time He Moves

Netherlands-based Designer Francois Duquesnoy is a nomad at heart. Instead of moving heavy furniture everytime he changes living space, he prefers to use whatever discarded items he finds in his new surroundings and transmute them. Sometimes, he splices objects together. More often, he simply paints what he finds, every detail in the same color. As with…

Daybooks with Custom Covers to Mark Where You Are or Are Going

Marella Consolini, former Chief Operating Officer of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, is one of the many very interesting Improvised Life readers we’ve come to know and be amazed by. Somehow years ago, an email exchange started and continued until we feel like she is an old friend, who we happen to have never met in person. In…

A Strawberry from Flower to Fruit (with Recipes)

We recommend turning the music off while you watch this tiny miracle: a strawberry comes into being from flower to fruit. Since strawberries are in season (and went through such an amazing process of becoming), here are our favorite ways for enjoying them.

Wine Wise Guy Anthony Giglio Answers Your Questions About Wine

EVERYONE we know has questions about wine and the best person we know for answers is Anthony Giglio, aka The Wine Wise Guy, an Improvised Life contributor and of late, wine blogger for Details. Here’s some essential advice.

Nathan Frey’s Briliant Modular Workspace

The Frey Desk is a flexible modular workspace that quickly transitions from sitting desk to drafting table to standing desk to easel. It is decidedly brilliant and, to us, pretty homely. Nevermind. We LOVE Frey’s design thinking…

Tear Off Wallpaper in an Art Installation and at Home

Italy Ohaly’s installation of colorfully-painted walls covered in black paper invites wiewers to scratch off the paper to make unexpected colored patterns in the walls. We were wondering how that could work in a house when we found Tear-Off-Wallpaper.

An Elegant Pig’s Lesson in Reveling in the Moment

(Video link HERE.) In this marvel of a Sesame Street video, an elegant pig sings about the exquisite joy of a its existence, most particularly mud. We don’t know when we’ve seen anyone revel in the sensuous, divine moment as this pig counting its blessings. Counting and FEELING blessings is practice to emulate… What if we remembered to take full…

Phillip Glass: Renowned Composer, Taxi Driver, Plumber (with Music)

Composer Phillip Glass Glass worked his make-a-living-job while still making time for composing. Here’s his compelling story + music from Einstein on the Beach, which he wrote while driving a cab to pay the bills.

Annals of Bad Design: Hammock-Shaped Bathtub

After we posted about Calvin Trillin’s imagined “sling contraption” for a walk-in tub, we started hunting for images of what that might look like. Maybe there was such a thing already. Instead we found a tub that has made the rounds on design blogs: an elegant, sleekly-shaped fiberglass tub modeled after a hammock (a sling, of sort).…

DIY Fab Paint-Spattered Jumpsuit

At Design Boom, we stumbled on an art installation called Third Eye by the band, the Krrrrr, and artist Anya Muangkote. Barbarians that we can be, we couldn’t really wrap our heads around the art, but are smitten with the paint-splattered jumpsuits. Now there’s a swell outfit that would also be quite thrilling to make.

What our Big Leap Feels Like, and Why

When we saw the image of a person sitting on the very edge of Norway’s Trolltunga, we thought: THAT’s how we feel 14 days after having launched our Friends with Benefits Subscription program and charging a tiny amount after our readers have enjoyed ten free reads per month. We’ve likened it a LEAP as we risk finding out whether our many readers will pay 5 or 6 cents a day to keep what they say they love going. The gist: we can’t live without you.

The Transformative Beauty of Ad Hoc Street Art

We recently stumbled on a wondrous painted wall in the Bowery, the work of Bronx graffiti artist Cope2. We felt as though we’d suddenly walked into a different gravitational field, due to the riot of seriously joyous color. It is on the same concrete slab wall that artist Keith Haring and a number of other artists decorated over the years, to change the view.

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