Protected: Re:Writing the Resume
My City’s Keeper
Nostalgia, it can be a wonderful journey through the past, where faint memories find a form more colorful, sensuous, more gripping than the actual event. It’s why the lament, “the good old days” so often finds itself on the lips of those who traverse down memory lane. Its mesmerizing influence has the potential to plant seeds of inspiration grown stronger in foreign soil. But like all things in nature, it has an equal and opposite contingent, which can be a suffocating grip, immobilizing the romancer and crippling the very environment that spawned its vitality.
Nowhere more do you see this phenomena embodied than in a city like New York, where for the past two centuries, with the constant influx of new people, it has become a powerful influencer worldwide in everything from the currency you spend to the clothing you wear.
Look at me, you know what you see, you see a bad mutha…
I’d come across Jef Aerosol on the Wooster Collective blog, at first scan I had actually thought it was Bansky..in any case, it prompted me to dive a little deeper. Turns out he had his New York City debut at the Adhoc gallery in Brooklyn just this past week, the show which opened on January 29th will go through till February 21.
While I would have to say his work lacks the serendipitous/deliberate combination and context that is so marked in Bansky’s work, he’s equally skilled in the art of the stencil. The Brooklyn Street Art site actually shows the steps of each stencil for his latest portrait, a tribute to the Empire State, featuring Jay-Z and a testament to the man’s painstaking skills.
As an aside, what’s the deal with Carlito Brigante aka Charles le Brigand for the Godfather of Soul?
Never Can Say Goodbye Exhibit & Panel Discussion
It begins as a throwback, something of a mirage-like homage to music history. In the former spot of Tower Records is a small sign outside, a faux cd cover entitled “Never Can Say Goodbye” by No Longer Empty. It’s the introduction to Never Records, a record store that never was but is, replete with record bins, posters, flyers, merchandise for sale, even a cash register, with individually painted dollar bills and calling cards of artists swapped out for change. Each item, from cardboard box to employee of the month sculpture, recreated and repurposed with the theme of invoking the history of how music was represented in a time when record stores could turn a huge profit. Composed by Ted Riederer, Never Records (a befitting moniker), is in actuality a record of 40+ artists whose displayed work has never had anything to do with music recording prior to its inception for the show.
Travel down the rabbit hole…
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It’s a scratchpad for ideas…want to join, get in touch 908.917.7273
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ASAD A smile a day: The effects of smiling drawings and sketches
What’s on your Desktop – a foray into the creative space analog to digital and back again
Life of the plastic bottle on multiple planes of time (inspired by Einstein time) mumbai
Ideation: the genesis of the idea via the family tree
Redesigning the tarot
A Musing Fool
My brother once described Mr. Larry Young as his “cheat sheet to life.” Granted this was after he’d gotten over the fact that Larry was dating our mother and after he no longer searched for his picture posting on the bulletin at the post office for America’s most wanted. And while the comment was made in passing it is, in my eyes, one of the greatest compliments and one that is rarely bestowed because it’s seldom deserved. It’s not as if Larry has any secret short cuts or special tricks, he lived and lives a full life, one that enables him to impart that crucial nugget of information that makes things go off in your head and connect the dots. And like any good cheat sheet he does so discreetly. If you were to meet Larry face to face, you’d think yourself in front of an unassuming country boy, silver from years of living both the high and low life, but still colorful and with a muted southern twang to boot; his blue laughing eyes the only part hinting at the deep ocean of knowledge just a story away.
Brooklyn Mobile
I’ve never actually seen the setup in the street and just happened to find out the creator is something of a neighbor, since his office is 3 floors up from mine. Regardless the contraption caught my attention and I snapped a couple shots from my iPhone thinking it was a fun little idea. But low and behold with the power of google, flickr, youtube, and wordpress a whole new side, much more elaborate lay behind this seemingly innocent cardboard facade.
2009 Year in Review: Favorites, Best Of’s and Top 10′s
With 2009 coming to a close, it seems like everyone is making a list and checking it twice…from the high-brow to the low a smattering of findings below:
Proportion and the Golden Ratio
I’ve always been in love with building blocks, deeply drawn to the idea of starting with a simple form and adding to it, building and constructing something far more complex from a single element…it’s also not intimidating. Try to add to an existing fort and it’s possible to witness it crumble having barely touched the thing. To start from square one, on the other hand, well if you didn’t like the placement of the first block, it’s not exactly difficult to start over.
To try and understand the whole of art history (in all its forms) and its influence on design is, to say the least, a tall order. I’d recently stumbled upon the writings of Jack Cheng, whose facetiously titled posting, 51 Ways to Change Your Life, bestowed only a single, but very poignant lesson (inspired in part from the 43 of Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth)- learn in moderation.
When you find yourself saying “that’s a really great idea, I should try that,” stop reading. Pick one thing from that list of fifteen. Don’t worry about finishing the rest of the book. Try it. Practice it, repeat it, until it becomes routine. Remind yourself to consciously think about it on a regular basis. When you make that one item a habit, you can come back to the source and learn something else. Then, every time you practice the new thing, you’ll be reminded to keep practicing all the old ones.
Moderation is key. The more we try to learn everything, the more we learn nothing.
So in the spirit of learning in moderation intermingled with my love of building blocks, it’s back to basics, exploring some of the most elementary principles of art and design, mainly of composition. Be it music or literature, painting or poster design, composition is the very basic building framework of any creative work, the combining of different parts to make a whole. How one consciously puts together the elements at their disposal- the first block.
Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations.