Saturday, May 8, 2010

Image of the Day

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Vincent Kohler Billon, 2007
(Polystyrene, Resin; 110 x 100 x 300 cm)


Click here for more of Vincent Kohler's work.

Via Design Observer / Photos by Geoffrey Cottenceau

Friday, May 7, 2010

Pork & Beans

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Haven't posted any of these for awhile – here are some more old ones. Click images to enlarge / click here to view all.

Image of the Day

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Author and illustrator Edward Gorey, who died in 2000,
snoozing with his cats.


The Ivies score again. Columbia University Libraries announced this week that it received a gift of more than 700 drawings, etchings, and posters by Edward Gorey. The collection, donated by Andrew Alpern, a lawyer and architectural historian, includes nearly every edition of every work that Gorey published during his lifetime. (On a somewhat unrelated topic, it looks like there's a documentary on Gorey in the works.)


Gorey's original (and best) credits for PBS's "Mystery."

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

.Pay attention

6:57 AM

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Ugly Casanova "Cat Faces"
from Sharpen Your Teeth (
Sub Pop, 2002)


[photo: Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming, Spring 2007]

Thursday, May 6, 2010

One week in the new office

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It's nice to have windows.

Outside In

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The Home section in this morning's New York Times (what would we do without the Times?) had a fantastic article about indoor wall gardens. Strath and I used to talk about how great it would be to have a wall of plants in the living room but we could never figure out how you would ever make it work.

(close-up of wall above)

Apparently there's an Ontario-based company, ELT, that sells kits to do this; prices for a one-square-foot panel start at around $40. I won't even begin to explain the many reasons why we need to make this happen in our apartment.


Photos above by Moris Moreno for the New York Times; more here.

Best Foot Forward

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ChloƩ canvas and leather sandal, $466 at farfetch.com.

Runway photo via style.com

Image of the Day

. Christopher Martin Hoff The Symphony: For Ed and Mary, 2010 (Oil on Linen, 24" x 22")

Hoff's show At the Wall – In His Wake opens tonight at Linda Hodges Gallery. Read an interview with the Seattle-based plein air painter at Best Of.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Short-Listed

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The Tate has announced its shortlist for this year's Turner Prize:

1. Susan Philipsz, from Scotland but based in Berlin, records her own versions of pop songs and plays them in unlikely, out-of-the-way places.

Lowlands, 2010 (installation view).

(I really like the idea behind this work. It made me think of an installation in one of the subway stations in New York a few years ago that involved a recording of crickets. I had completely forgotten about it – I only caught it a couple of times and I have no idea who was responsible for it – but it was so nice to be surprised by it late at night on my way home from work. Even though I'd generally associate the noise with nature and the outdoors it had the funny effect of making me more acutely aware of my immediate surroundings, and it transformed the moment into something special.)


2.
Angela de la Cruz calls her creations "everyday paintings." She starts with monochrome canvases that she then rips, shreds, or otherwise mutilates and manipulates into sculptural form.

Still life (table), 2000

3. Dexter Dalwood makes "history paintings" with pop cultural references.

Death of David Kelly, 2008

4. Otolith Group, a London-based duo, create films and installations that work with "media archives, histories of futurity, [and] the legacies of non-alignment and tricontinentalism." I guess they had something in the Ecotopia Triennial at ICP a couple of years ago, but I don't remember it.

A Long Time Between Suns, 2009 (installation view).

The finalists' work is scheduled to go on display at the Tate Britain on October 4, and the prize will be announced on December 6. You can see more photos of the artists' work here, and a complete list of past years' finalists and winners here – pretty fascinating. (The Telegraph and the Guardian are both cranky about this year's selection.)

Image of the Day

. There's no particular reason I'm posting this, it's just one of my all time favorite photos by Bob Richardson... and sitting on a rocky beach, even if it's a little overcast, seems like it would be nice right now.

A book of Bob Richardson's photos came out a few years ago – get it here or from just about any other quality bookstore.

It's Not Being Filmed, I Have To Remember

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Jean-Michel Basquiat has been copied and eulogized in equally great measure, and it would be easy to dismiss another film about him. The thing is, his work continues to be exciting, and the story of his life seems more relevant than ever.

More info on
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis, at jean-michelbasquiattheradiantchild.com

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Image of the Day

. Eikoh Hosoe Untitled, 1965, from the series Kamaitachi.

Eikoh Hosoe is giving a talk and signing books tomorrow night at Aperture Gallery in Chelsea (NYC), and on Thursday the National Arts Club will present him with the Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement in Photography. Kamaitachi – Hosoe's documentation of a visit to a farming village in Northern Japan – was originally released in 1969 in an edition of only 1000 copies, but has since been re-printed by Aperture. Order the book and get more info at
aperture.org.

Superconnected

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It's a big day for Canadians and those who love them:

The New Pornographers Together

Broken Social Scene Forgiveness Rock Record

Both arriving today in the bins of your local music nerdery – go git 'em.

...
Addendum, via Pitchfork:
"When I found out our record was coming out the same day as Broken Social Scene I wanted to call Kevin Drew and shoot a little promo video, where it's like the two of us just facing each other on a windy day and then we embrace to the strains of 'Wake Up' by Arcade Fire. That would be like a dual ad for both of our albums. But I'm too lazy. I was distracted."
–A.C. Newman [New Pornographers]

Also:

Video: New Pornographers "Together" (click to play)

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Photo Finish

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In his On The Street audio slideshow at nytimes.com (as well as in the print edition of today's paper), Bill Cunningham says goodbye to the Carnegie Hall apartment he's lived in for sixty years.

For over a century, the apartments in Carnegie Hall have been home to a vast assortment of writers, designers, photographers, dancers, actors, circus performers, floral artists, and creative people of all stripes; Cunningham occupied one of five remaining rent-controlled units which are being closed down so that the building can be fully converted into a music school. When he first moved to New York, Cunningham became a milliner and assisted the fashion photographer Ray Solowinski (above right); Solowinski's wife (above left) modeled Cunningham's hats. Click here to watch the slideshow.

For people as fascinated with Cunningham as I am (he's basically a national treasure at this point, in my opinion) it's great news that he is the subject of a new documentary, directed by Richard Press and produced by the venerable Philip Gefter, entitled Bill Cunningham New York – I can't find any clips online but you can read an article Gefter wrote about it at The Daily Beast and get a little more info at the film's website.

All Creatures Great and Small

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Two Brown Pelicans (the Louisiana state bird, recently removed
from the endangered species list) stand on
the beach beyond
one of the protective booms laid just off
the Gulf Coast shore this
week.
Photo by William Colgin of the Sun Herald,
via A.P. and National Geographic.

The booms are part of an attempt to prevent the massive oil slick in the Gulf Coast from reaching the salt marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi River, as well as the rest of the Gulf Coast's fragile ecosystem (not to mention its tourism and fishing industries). The leaking sea floor oil well that is the source of the growing slick is currently spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels of crude oil per day (that's about 210,000 gallons) into Gulf Coast waters. As reported yesterday morning by the New York Times, some NOAA officials now fear that this amount may soon grow to "an order of magnitude higher than than that." The solution currently on the table to shut off the well will take an estimated "months."

Bird covered in oil from a 2006 Black Sea spill.
Via Marinephotobank on flickr.


I was going to rant further but I'm sure you know all about it by now so I'll spare everyone. While we're at it: on Tuesday British Petroleum reported that its profit more than doubled in the first quarter of 2010 thanks to rising oil prices. Congratulations. I guess that means you can afford to pay for the "clean up."