Have some words:
“You may tie my hands with chains and my feet with shackles, and put me in the dark prison, but you shall not enslave my thinking, for it is free, like the breeze in the spacious sky.” — Khalil Gibran
Would you believe that this intriguing bookshelf/igloo not only stores books, but also a bed?!
It would be like a cross between one of those forts you created as a child by tearing apart the couch and making your own little play nook cave, and your own personal library. Truth be told, the Uroko bed (by Point Architects)was actually intended for children, but it seems like a pretty swell grown-up double duty bed. I know I certainly need a bigger bookshelf, and this one is handy since it stores your books, reading materials, knick knacks, etc. and also puts them all right within arms reach. It would make a great room divider should you live in an extra large multi-purpose room/studio type scenario and it would be pretty darned swell in one of the many loft-style apartments here in Brooklyn. One of those places you walk into and they pull a curtain aside point in and say “hey, this would be your room”. True story, it happened to my friend. Naturally, she said no thanks and ducked out of there quickly as possible. The idea of a curtained off room, or room with little to no privacy is certainly unappealing, but I’d certainly ponder it if I could have a little book cave of my own.
Imagine all the ways you could decorate it! While it’s shown with the all of those felt shingles, it’s essentially a basic curved sort of bookcase room which makes the decorating possibilities fairly endless:
You can create your own little world.
At the very least it would be an interesting idea to have bookshelf walls. If I remember correctly, in Jonathon Safran Foer’s book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, there was an outdoor study where the walls were made of books. Holy guacamole! I found that one bit with only a moment of searching:
“The first time Anna and I made love was behind her father’s shed, the previous owner had been a farmer, but Dresden started to overtake the surrounding villages and the farm was divided into nine plots of land, Anna’s family owned the largest. The walls of the shed collapsed one autumn afternoon – “a leaf too many,” her father joked – and the next day he made new shelves, so that the books themselves would separate inside from outside. (The new overhanging roof protected to books from rain, but during winter the pages would freeze together, come spring they let out a sigh.) He made a little saloon out of the place, carpets, two small couches, he loved to go out there in the evening with a glass of whiskey and a pipe, and take down books and look through the wall at the center of the city. He was an intellectual, although he wasn’t important, maybe he would have been important in life if he had lived longer, maybe great books were coiled within him like springs, books that could have separated inside from outside.” (126)
Spotted on Inhabitots
So, lately I’ve been noticing a bit on an on slot of faces – just faces – showing up in street art. Most of these are from my neighborhood (Bushwick), but our little blue “Beau” is from the West Village. The (err?) stenciled on brick I’m pretty sure has been there for a good while, but the others are recent. The one of the coffee bag popped up at my local coffee haunt just as I was pondering doing a face post. I think their mostly hand scrawled look is interesting, and am curious about the sudden-ish little appearance. I like how they kind of gives a personality to these otherwise inanimate objects. You can almost turn them in characters, and imagine them suddenly springing into animated life and start speaking to you.
And while these aren’t “faces”, they seem to be have suddenly shown up in my ‘hood. Saw these two in one day, and one in the subway yesterday though I didn’t have time to grab a shot. I think their scribbly monsterlyness is kind of adorable. Especially here in industrial sorts of Bushwick.
Has anybody else been seeing faces or monsters locally?
I’m sure you’ve seen the tiny trinkets (like lockets) of yesteryear with tiny little hand-painted portraits of a loved one tucked lovingly inside (sometimes they were painted with ground up hair, or perhaps included a lock of it – the very practice that inspires jewelry designer Melanie Bilenker’s gorgeous portraits). It was the best that could be done in a time before photography. But perhaps you didn’t know (because I sure didn’t) that between 1780-1830, a unique form of this practice arose: sending a loved one a teeny tiny portrait of your eye.
Sometimes this loved one could be representative of a relative or lover who had passed away; but, more often, these trinkets were exchanged between living lovers. Sometimes secret lovers.
As it happens, in 1784 Maria Fitzherbert met the young Prince of Wales at the London Opera. He was immediately smitten and proposed to her tout de suite. She accepted, reluctantly, and then left the continent hoping that he’d forget the whole ordeal. He did not, however, and when sent her a letter proposing marriage once more he included not an engagement ring but a portrait of his eye, saying:
“I send you a Parcel…and I send you at the same time an Eye, if you have not totally forgotten the whole countenance. I think the likeness will strike you.”
She accepted, went back to England to marry the Prince, and had a portrait of her own eye made as a gift for him.
It’s a quite charming gesture isn’t it, the gifting of ( a portrait of ) one’s eye? As windows to the soul, as they say, they’re also sort of a peak into the heart. There’s just something so lovely and intimate about looking into the eyes of someone you care about, and sometimes it’s hard if you’re feeling shy. So much can be revealed. And so, it’s oh so sweet to send a portrait of your eyes; it’s kind of like saying “Hey, it’s okay. I don’t mind if you see me, in fact, I want you to.” And it’s like a piece of their heart right there.
Love this short film by Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey Terri Timely entitled (and inspired by) Synesthesia, that fascinating condition that makes you experience your senses in interesting ways. It also jives with that fabulous little everything is everything piece/concept I wrote a few months ago. Art = science; music = color, etc. The video is an interesting visualization of the different ways you experience and process things. You don’t have to (officially) have synesthesia to “get it”, really.
I’m thinking of how the woman is cutting up the words/recipe and baking it; to me, it calls to mind one of the many reasons people enjoy cooking so much (beyond the food=good part): the passing down and sharing of recipes among family and friends. The stories that go into and come out of the meals we share together. In terms of the food eliciting different sounds as the boy plugs into them? Well, every ingredient has a flavor and texture to it, and each adds to a dish much like all the many different notes mix together to form a song. Music, scent, and food dig such deep niches into ourselves and our psyche. Hear a song, smell a perfume and you can instantly be taken back to a moment. Maybe you hear a certain song, and it transports you back to a vacation when you were young. Through the song you’re back on the beach, you can almost smell that salty air and feel the wind rushing passed you, the sand on your feet. You hear that song and you see the blue of the ocean, and the blue of sky, etc.
It’s all connected really. I’m sure if you think about it, you can rustle up some of your own examples of the many different and visceral ways we experience the world in a way that veers off the textbook.
Conspicuous consumption; we all know that it’s just not cool anymore. So, now when you buy a fancy schmancy iPhone (because they are awesome, after all) you can buy a cover that takes it’s sexy appeal and brings it down a notch or ten. No sir, no need to buy a super pretty art cover when you can make your phone look like one of our former favorite phones and music devices that have been tossed around a little or a lot; like some old gadgetry you’ve taken apart and has a steampunky appeal; like a piece of the city’s sidewalk! I’m definitely a bit sweet on old-school Gameboy reminiscent cover pictured above by Michael Sison. I like how it has a hint of girlyness. Reminds me of my old gameboy on which I used to play my super rad Little Mermaid game.
We’ve got the zweiPhone stickers, which use photos of old, used mobile phones to “bring back a piece of classic design history on the back of blank and impersonal iPhones.” Their motto: downgrade today.
Paul Burgess’ Urban Dirty Collection. The grime and decay of cities can be beautiful. Dress your phone up with a grass/moss tinged sidewalk crack with“Greenary”, a “Grimey Grill”, or a rusty lock with “Got it on lock”.
The 80’s have long gone, but the era has been bopping around in fashion lately. Now you can have that boombox-to-your-ear look without the weight of the out of date real deal by using Lyle Owerko’s Boombox or Boombox II stickers. Oddly enough though, I’ve still seem a few fellows carrying around a smaller sort of boombox blasting music while lounging in Washington Square Park.
Steampunk-y renditions by Colin Thompson with his “Steampunk” ( the gears, perhaps of a steampuk phone revealed) and Underworld (the “interface”, perhaps, of said steampunk phone) stickers.
And, of course, you can always go for the straight of motherboard look. For the true tech-y. By Derek Prospero.
Intriguing little trend, is it not?
I’m kind of smitten by Stephane Halleux’s found object robot-esque creations:
“I like crazy mixtures, unlikely associations, advanced technology mixed with mechanisms of long ago. I’ve always been fascinated by robotics, its advantages and contradictions. The importance of robotisation and its increasing influence on mankind. Who never dreamt of owning a robot able to do the dirty work. But where are the bounds? How far is a robot useful to men and when does it begin endangering their life ? That’s what I want to make: caricatures of robots that have gone beyond the limits, all that with a fanciful vision of the future. The future we imagined some years ago: big computers full of cables with warning lights everywhere. That’s what I like: an old fashioned universe’s future.” -Stephane Halleux via
Frankly, I love that: an old fashioned universe’s future. I kind of want to adopt it.
They look like they popped out of some amazing fantasy stop motion film. They would be amazing in something like that because the amount of character and life in his work truly sets my heart aflutter. I really love the found objects and metals combined with the stitched together leather. Seriously, swoon.
The level of work that went into these is phenomenal. Please do go to his site where you can see them (and many, many others) in further detail.
Not too long ago I got all googly eyed thinking about:
And lo and behold, out comes two new (killer) iPhone apps:
Sherwin Williams Colorsnap
and
Benjamin Moore ColorCapture
I immediately swooned and downloaded both applications and have played around with them both a bit. And, voila, here are a few initial observations:
Sherwin William’s version is nice because it gives you the RGB numbers (always helpful), and the color picker is a little easier to use as it has a little arrow and box so you can more easily see and pinpoint exactly what spot you’re picking from. When you save the primary color, it includes swatches of the secondary colors. I find it a bit annoying that, at least thus far, it only gives you one palette set to go with each primary color.
Benjamin Moore’s version give you the option of looking at the primary color with a palette of varying colors that might go with it, as well as looking at a palette of the primary color you chose with a palette in similar hues much like you get in a normal paint chip. It’s nice because it also has a color wheel you can play with, so you don’t necessarily need a photo in order to peruse colors. When you save a color, just a swatch of that particular “primary” color is saved and you can add notes for your own reference. Also nice is that you can click a color so that it fills the screen so you can sort of have a large paint swatch at your disposal to hold up to walls or what-have-you. At the moment, I’m a bit let down by the actually “color picking” – you just scroll your finger around without the definition of an indicator to see which exact spot your picking from. Granted, if I hadn’t seen Sherwin William’s picker, I’d probably have no complaints. I also wish it could access RGB info for each color – probably my main complaint, as otherwise it’s pretty awesome.
Super Simple Summary: Overall, they’re both nice but Benjamin Moore’s ColorCapture has more features to play around with so it’s a bit more useful perhaps as an all around tool for color lovers; Sherwin William’s ColorSnap is definitely great at it’s prescribed task at being able to extract a color from a photo, which is all some people might need. It could be an easy decision if you prefer one brand of paint to the other, and are strictly using it to hunt down a particular shade – for this use, each application also will use the iPhone’s GPS to direct you to the nearest retail location.
I wish, for either and/or both of them that you could create your own palettes, be it by picking individual colors, combining other “saved” colors, or being able to extract multiple colors from a photo and save them as a palette (which could be pretty handy), etc.
Regardless, I’m exceptionally excited that these two application exist. Dreams do come true!
Much love to Design*Sponge for the heads up!
Do you remember way back in January when I posted about the Free Encouragement collaboration project between booooooom and designformankind? Users submitted words of encouragement like
for the first part, and for the second artists submitted their artistic interpretations. And now! It’s over! And you can buy them as postcards over at the projects etsy shop.
Check out some of the adorable results:
If you spend a lot of time starring into your computer screen, spending hour upon hour cavorting through Adobe Photoshop, you’ll find the above picture very, very familiar. We all know that once we get up from the computer we like to indulge in real world delights, sometimes scorning the computer completely after too many mind numbing hours of work; but, after all that time things start to look a little weird without some of the features of our digital world to which we’ve become so accustomed, which is where this Photoshop frame by Irina Blok will come in so handy. Now, when you come home or leave your studio and you start to feel anxious because in the real world you have no windows to click in and out of, no erasure tool to clean up that spilled spaghetti sauce you can look to your Photoshop frame to give you just a little bit of ease. It’s ok, because now the digital world can be a part of your real world. And it’s damed hilariously awesome if you ask me.
Breathe easier, Adobe Addicts.
(Now, if only you could actually play with the photos, too, even if it’s only by included a layer above the photo so you could doodle over it or something with dry erase sorts of markers, for example.)
via DesignBoom
Back when I first moved into the apartment in which I am presently living, I attempted to have a conversation with my brother about the colors I was contemplating painting this New Room. I think I got a little too intricate though, because when I said “I kind of want a purple-y mauve-y but greyed down with maybe a hint of rose so that it looks kind of Victorian-y but Victorian-y in a way that it’s like you’re visiting this old old mansion and this is what the walls look like after years and years of disuse, they used to be brighter but now they’re all musty dusty with time and memories and it’s almost more beautiful that way, y’know?!” he said he didn’t know. He had no idea what I was talking about. It was probably kind of like when I’d recruit him for help with some particularly difficult math type equation and he’d start rambling off all these numbers or variables or theories (?) and I’d be sitting there bobbing my head along like when you dangle something in front of a cat and they go cross-eyed trying to follow it. And when he was done he’d say, “Make sense?” And I would say that, no, it made no sense, you lost me about two steps in.
And this, my friends, is why a picture (or a step by step working out of an equation on paper so I can see it) is worth a thousand words. So, Mason, this is pretty much the color I was rambling on and on about…. I’m pretty sure at least.
Even if it’s not, it’s really pretty isn’t it? The light falls on it in such a lovely way. And I’m getting giddy thinking about incorporating some sage-y greens, green-ish yellows, and soft sunshine-y colors into the room….I think the bedspread might sort of had that kind of green in it. All kind of softer bright colors. Kind of French Macaron-y.
It sort of feels mildly akin to using a chocolaty brown or nice non-institutional gray. Neutral but color. But. That might only make sense in my head/my own little world. Like how in my world red can pretty much go with anything.
Yes, I get really riled up about color. *blushes*
photo by Simon Bates
I can’t really paint. I’ve tried. I even took an oil painting class in college. Alas, even though we painted balloons over and over (and then over) again, I could not make them look real. Sigh. I just can’t really make what I see in my head appear on the canvas, even when the look I’m going for is abstract. Which is why it was kinda fascinating to watch a little video of the above painting by Nigel Van Wieck being painted.
Neat, yes?! I was first attracted to the painting because of the subject matter. Sitting on the subway, slumped over in contemplation.. I’ve been there. Lots of people have been there. And I thought, hey, lets continue on theme of missed connections (from my last post) which so often occur during our daily travels.
Anyway, it’s really interesting the amount of work and layers that goes into a painting, isn’t it? I look the creation of the piece, and I’m constantly thinking, oh, interesting, because I wouldn’t have thought that such a little dab of paint, a little smudge of an unexpected color lends itself to the finished piece the way that it does. I think about how I don’t know if I have the patience for that. But, then, it’s funny the things we do have the patience for, because I can think up a piece of clothing and visualize in my head how to create a flat piece of a pattern that will assume a 3-D shape. I assumed that most people can do that, at least those involved in fashion design/patterning at least, but one interviewer at a job I was applying for complimented me on the skill, and said that not everyone can. Don’t worry, though, I’m not bragging because, hey, I didn’t get the job. But, it really can be fascinating to see what odd shapes are required to create an effect for a garment you are used to seeing fairly regularly. The sum of the parts. Once I start making stuff again, I hope to document the process for you all. Anyway.
So, I still can’t paint. But, I have gotten more into photography over the years. A somewhat less laborious medium of moment capturing; but still, the end result doesn’t always turn out the way you expected. It both captures exactly what’s there, and reveals unexpected facets to the moments.
Continuing in the moments of travel spirit, a few favorite shots from my study abroad trip through China/Japan in 2006:
A few classmates during an infrequent moment of rest on a train ride from Tokyo to Kamakura.
Boat ride through Hong Kong’s junk boat shanty town on the way to the famous Jumbo Floating Restaurant
Our lovely boat driver
I don’t know if they’re stunning on their own, but I sure enjoy them as a piece of the puzzle of the trip. The colors, the light, the delight of being someplace where you don’t know the language and the culture is so very different from your own…. I’d settle for a return to lovely Paris, though, even though I technically known the language..(can you tell I’m suffering from a bout of wanderlust?).
Oh well, it’s all a part of the process. To work (travail) and travel!
I can’t lie, I really enjoy perusing the craigslist missed connections section. In this crazy city we pass by tons and tons of people daily in the street, accompany hundreds on the subway (packed in together, sometimes, not unlike sardines), lounge with them anonymously in the parks, etc. Missed connections serves as a little spot where strangers reach out to say the things we didn’t get to say to each other in the moment because we were too shy or the constant stream of people hindered the opportunity (and so much more). The postings run the gamut from heart-breaking to hilarious and they always last only 7 days.
It’s certainly an interesting medium for expression and artist Sophie Blackall has recognized the beauty in their fleeting nature and has taken posts from missed connections and made them into art:
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
- m4w (exiting to the street)
cursive, on leaving, stepped on my foot
wish i could have stricken up a conversation
Saturday, March 28, 2009
- m4w – 19 (Uptown 3 Train)
If not for your noisy Tambourine, I would not have seen you.
Your green skirt looked terrible, but that leather jacket makes you look just right.
I was the attractive guy sitting to your left just before you got off.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
-m4m (East Village)
Phoenix w/crutches
I would love to carry you around piggy back until you can walk again…
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
-w4m -22 (williamsburg)
i bought you that milkshake
you just didn’t realize it.
Monday, March 23, 2009
-m4w (Harlem)
Remember? Uptown A train. Sunday at around 9pm. I was the black dude reading Bukowski’s Post Office. You were reading the Arts and Leisure section. You passed wind rather loudly and started chuckling. I’d like to see you again. The flatulence wasn’t a turn-off.
More of Sophie’s Missed Connections.
Ladies and Gentlemen: For the first time in years I managed to stumble into Trader Joe’s when it was not a complete and utter mob scene – and any one who lives in NYC knows that “mob scene” is its usual state. This meant that I actually got to wander around and peruse a little. And I saw this tissue box and it filled me with a bit of glee:
Charming, is it not?! I have particularly potent allergies this year, and have a tendency (historically) to catch myself a cold or two over the winter; so, I know my tissue boxes, and you don’t find ones like this terribly often. Sure, the Grand Tissue Companies have been making an effort to put a little life into the typically yawn-worthy tissue box (much appreciated) but this one adds a little humor. The Someecards aesthetic, but a little friendlier. They even remind you to check your pockets for tissues before putting them in the wash; a reminder I could have certainly used at certain points in time.
Sweet, yes? A+ in packaging design, Mr. Trader Joe’s. Keep on rocking.
You recall that I dig record players, right? Isn’t this concept record player/CD player (dubbed “Zero .1″) from designers Francesco Cugusi and Roberto Strippoli super swanky? I’d love it even more if it were robins egg blue. Or yellow. A hint of retro to deflect from the otherwise uber-modernness. Hm.
Anyway, the swell thing about this lovely creature is that it allows you to play your records by the track, just like you do with a CD. That would be pretty nifty, wouldn’t it? Granted, there is a bit a charm in just sort of having to listen straight through…. you know how you can get stuck on one track to the detriment of all the other’s sometimes? Well, having to listen straight through could prevent that. And, also, it’s kind of fun to have to search for the song manually. Oh, the sweet needle-on-vinyl screechy scratch noise of my youth/college-days-when-my-roomie-had-a-record-player.
It’s the perfect time of year to be doing the charleston around the living room to the tune of 1920’s jazz records *sniffle*.
(AND the capability to, with the Zero.1 switch right after to, perhaps, one of the cringe-worthy CDs of my early teenage-hood that I still have hanging around…somewhere)
Via Yanko Design
