1. I have been getting a great deal of positive feedback on my new purse with the bird and the branches on it, so I think I’m going to make a few to sell. Look for them in the coming weeks. Reminder: it looks like this:
2. You know you’re a word nerd when you see this poster, and not only do you not gloss over it, but you want to print it out and hang it on the wall for reference.
3. More infographics! Hooray! I love a good infographic.
I haven’t written anything in the last week because nothing particularly interesting has happened, but I am friends with the International Polymer Clay Association on Teh FaceBukk. They just announced their big conference (Synergy 2010), and it reminded me how amazing polymer clay is. When most people think of polymer clay, they think of childlike sculptures and millefiore beads on hemp bracelets. Which is fine, but polymer clay is much more than just that. It is so versatile and so under-appreciated as a medium. You can shape it by hand or use tools. Then you can bake it and sand it and carve it like a carving block, then add more clay and bake it again. It comes in a gazillion colors and there is a clear version. You can make a piece and then make a mold of that shape and then make all kinds of mass-produced pieces. It can resemble a myriad of other materials: semi-precious stones and dichroic glass, bone, stained glass, enamel, wood, raku, metals – almost anything you could imagine. However, it is a perfect mirror of the artist’s level of skill: if you are a poor artist, you will make poor pieces; if you are a phenomenal artist, you will make truly amazing pieces. Here are a few of the more stunning examples I found on the internet and in a book I have called 400 Polymer Clay Designs.
And if anyone wants to join me, I’m going to go to this polymer convention. Gonna learn new stuff, meet nice people.
When I went to Africa, I bought a beaded baobab tree, about two feet tall, which made it too large to carry home. A friend of my mom’s said that she would ship it back with a cargo shipment of hers, but it would take months to get here. And now it is here! I am so happy.
The guy who built it put in an extra wire piece in the inside of the trunk so I can turn it into a lamp. Giant glowing baobab! Hooray! I got it from the same store that had the GIGANTIC baobab lamp with flowers.
When I set up the cords and lampy bits, I will take a picture and we shall all enjoy the glowing beaded tree together.
Threadless is a t-shirt company that sells over the internet. It is, however, not like the other t-shirt companies one comes across in one’s travels on the internet. You, the graphic designer, come up with a cool idea. You submit it to them, and thousands of people vote if they like it or not. If it is well-received, Threadless gives you a monetary prize and then prints the shirt and sells it. It’s all community-involved. I own about twenty-five different shirts from them. Here are some of the more betterer ones:
Here’s one based on The Cure song Friday I’m In Love:
And here’s one called Nice Boobies! (get it?):
They also do shirts with words, and sometimes they are very clever.
Even though I am a supporter of all things Threadless, I am by no means a hardcore fan. There are people out there who LURVE Threadless SO MUCH. I just found a guy who started Threadcakes, where people make cakes to look like their favorite Threadless designs. Some are technically very good, and some not so much so.
But some people took initiative, took the t-shirt designs and expanded on them instead of just copying them identically.
So go check out Threadless.
Nude no more!
I love Wilhelm Staehle’s work. His work, well, it’s hard to describe. Ummm, he makes cartoons using antique paintings and the art of the silhouette to create witty pieces with a distinctive vintage feel. That’s pretty good. Here’s some of my favorites:
Ha ha! He is so very jovial! Here’s his website, where you can buy all his pieces framed. Framed! How marvelous! Because framing is a pain. So, yeah, they come framed! Hurrah!
1. After seeing Marty the Sock Puppet Portrait-Maker, I was reminded of an artist I saw a few years back named Travis Louie. I don’t know much about him, except every time I see his work it makes me feel good all over. He’s famous for doing black and white slash sepia-toned Victorian-style portraits of people that aren’t quite… right. This wouldn’t work as well if Travis didn’t have such excellent painting skills. He really captures the misty quality of those early photographs. And he captures it with horns. And fangs.
I’ve really been wanting to make vintage-looking work lately (see failed attempted at pirate tugboat and sea monster) and after seeing the sideshow posters at the Meadowlands Fair and remembering Travis Louie’s work, I’m going to try my hand at something in between the two. I don’t want to talk too much about it, mainly because I’m not really sure what I’m going to do, but keep an eye peeled for stuff of this ilk.
2. A few years ago, I was paging through a Martha Stewart Weddings magazine and I saw a great cake covered with little ferns and mushrooms made of marzipan and buttercream. I absolutely loved the little forest elements and decided someday, if I ever get married, I will have a cake similar to that. The other day, while perusing one of my design blogs, there was a link to something on Martha’s wedding site and I thought, well, since I’m here, I should see if they have that cake I liked. And they did! I was so very happy.
I don’t particularly like how squat the cake is, or how rounded the edges are, but the forest elements continue to be awesome. While I was looking at cakes there, I saw this forest cake as well. I am a sucker for branches (I like them in flower arrangements and wreathes and paintings and jewelry, just about everything) so, sho’ nuff, I liked this cake.
I would now like to amend my earlier statement: If I ever get married, I would like the branch cake, but with fewer branches and with moss and ferns and mushrooms and a couple snails and ladybugs and a few birds on it. Because it will be my special day, and if I want a cake that resembles a compost heap in the middle of the woods, I can have that. Thank you.
I was walking through Union Square this past weekend, and they had a wee art show but I was meeting Z. for lunch, however afterwards I made a point to check it out. I saw one small booth that caused me to laugh. It was for sock puppet portraits, but what caused the tittering was that underneath the primary sign was a secondary sign saying, “The Ultimate Gift of Love”. That was it. I now had to purchase some portraits. I got to meet the portrait-maker, Marty. This is Marty.
Marty has maybe the best hawker thing going. The sock puppets, while lovely, are not anything revolutionary. What makes them oh-so-special is that each one has a name, and a tale to tell, and a MySpace page. (As Marty said, “Even though MySpace is an all-but-defunct social networking methodology, it is still the place for sock puppets.”) I chose three nerdy portraits (Shock! Surprise! So out of character for me! Sarcasm!) which I will share with you now:
– Charles Darwin (from the “Three Guys Named Charles” series, the other two are Charles Dickens and Charles in Charge)
– Herb Bloomquist (a professor of something-or-other)
– Harold Speculex (an accomplished scientist and a model-plane enthusiast)
I must say, going to their MySpace pages and learning them is fine and dandy, but it is so much better to have Marty explain their life stories to you face to face. I believe he’s rockin’ the art booth scene in Union Square on the weekends all summer – if you get a chance, go check him out.
And here’s his site: www.martystuff.com
Oh, and here are pictures of my wee sock portraits:
This past weekend I went on my first business-related trip, to Orlando. I hear there’s some kind of amusement park there, but I wouldn’t know, because I was driven directly from the airport to the Dolphin Hotel Resort and Conference Center of Gigantitude. Seriously, it was a big big building, like the size of the entire Palisades Mall. To walk from your room to the conference area required thousands of steps to be taken. On my ride to the hotel I saw many pine trees covered with Spanish moss, some egrets, bog-type things and housing complexes. That’s it. The only way I knew I was near Disney-anything was when I saw people in the hotel wearing Mickey ear hats. Did you know there’s a variety of ear-hats? I saw someone wearing a pair that was covered in pink fluffy material and had a veil in the back, because apparently this woman was on her honeymoon or something wedding-y like that. Here’s the sad thing, though: the veil wasn’t white. It was an unpleasant shade of light yellow-brown, like it had been soaked in tea. An even more depressing possibility is the veil-n-ears were fifty years old and the lady wore it all the time, all delusional and out-of-touch. “I’m a bride today!” “Yes, yes, Grandma. We know, today you marry Pop-Pop and drive around in the turquoise convertible Chevrolet. Whatever you say.” I would like to talk to the marketing guy who thought that was a good idea. “Well, we could have a white veil, but everyone does that. Let’s make a color that looks like someone tinkled on it, that’ll really complement the faux pink fur.”
So, due to the fact that I was there for work, I saw nothing, not even the fireworks, so I can’t tell you anything about my trip that’s interesting (the hotel has carpeting! And complimentary soap! You can get room service if you want!), but in a semi-related point, I make a great many charts of various things here at my place of employment. That means I am always on the lookout for new and awesome ways to express information through charts. I’ve found a few ones on my travels through Ye Olde Internette that I will share with you now. They are from a website called Good.
And not from Good, but a personal favorite of mine:
I saw Up, the new Pixar film. And it was… weird. Very weird. Like, it was good, but it SO wasn’t a kid’s film. Within the first ten minutes I said, “Whoa, I feel for the parents in the audience that have to explain the topics touched upon already.” It felt like an independent film, not very Pixar or Disney at all. And yet, there were parts that were total slapstick and very funny. It was a confusing film. I felt some parts were weak plot-wise, and then some parts were too strong and poignant. And sometimes these feelings overlapped. I made a small diagram to explain that:
Each color represents a different emotion I felt. Go see it, you’ll see what I mean.
The most important thing I was reminded of was how much I love the Pixar shorts. I’ve always looked forward to those. And, as usual, the short for Up didn’t disappoint. Because it’s still in the theaters I won’t link to it now, I’ll give you a chance to go see it properly, but some of the others I will share that had a specific impact on me.
This was the first thing I ever saw of theirs, Luxo, Jr.. I saw it on Sesame Street as a wee tot and was totally captured.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1pVidZtnPE
Then, when I was in college, A Bug’s Life came out with Geri’s Game as the short and I became a hard-core lover of Pixar. PIXAR 4 LIFE (insert appropriate gang sign here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFiHP8TImOo
My favorite of all time came out soon after that, For The Birds. It came out with Monsters, Inc. Still, to this day, I can watch it and laugh like a little schoolgirl.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnX7V8eG8is
Another one that really was sweet and amusing was the short for Ratatouille, called Lifted. Terrific, sweet, funny. I like how the student alien can swivel his eyeballs without the rest of his face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cv5-SgANG8
And finally, the short from WALL-E, called Presto. I have rarely laughed so hard in my life.
People, I present to you… The Sashimi Tabernacle Choir.