New Work

This is a new piece of mine, destined for a summer promo. It's a bit of a different direction for my collage work as it's got more colour than I've used in a while. Time for a change.

In Praise of Slow Design

Michael Bierut has a great article in the Design Observer on how the New Yorker epitomizes the pleasures of slow design. Excellent read.

Website: World Wide Arts Resources

World Wide Arts Resources, or WWAR, has links and info on over 600 museums. Lots to look at.

Louise Fili

Great article by Ruth Hagopian in Communication Arts on designer Louise Fili, whose work I've admired for years. She's coauthored dozens of books on design with husband Steven Heller, too - their book Italian Art Deco is shown on the left.

Cool Thing: Cable Yoyo

Created by Bluelounge Design, the Cable Yoyo's mission is to bring Zen-like order to the tangled cords on your desk or floor by coiling said cords into neat flat spirals. The outer casing looks a little like a square iPod. Speaking of which, they also have a mini version that keeps your iPod cords from turning into a snarled knot in your pocket, too. Have a look here.

I'm gonna get one.

Watching Words Move

Chronicle Books has just published a reproduction of the design classic Watching Words Move by Ivan Chermayeff and Thomas H. Geismar - this time with added notes on the text by such design heavyweights as Steven Heller. Another one to add to the art and design book wish list.

Playdoh Perfume

Remember that special Playdoh smell on your fingers when making lumpy figures in kindergarten? Now you can relive it all over again, thanks to Hasbro's limited edition Playdoh Perfume, created especially for the 50th anniversary of their kneadable hit. Really.

Craftivism

'How's your hand grenade going?" asks an Amelie-lookalike in my local pub. Her friend holds up an olive-green blob and looks at her needles. "I think I've gone wrong somewhere."

Read the rest of Eithne Farry's Guardian article to find out how a new generation of women are making sewing (and knitting, and other traditional crafts) subversive. Hand Knitted Hand Grenade on the left is by Rachael Matthews.

Irrepressible

From the Guardian/Observer website: "Forty-five years ago a remarkable article in The Observer launched Amnesty International. Now, we are joining with the human rights organisation again to highlight a new threat to freedom - internet censorship. Internet users are spied on, controlled and locked up around the world for opposing repressive regimes. This is our chance to do something about it. Here Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International, launches the campaign and tells how a simple email can make a difference." Read Kate Allen's article here. Find out how you can help out with the campaign by visiting Amnesty International's Irrepressible website.

Bookshelf: The Dinosaur Hunters

"In The Dinosaur Hunters Deborah Cadbury brilliantly recreates the remarkable story of the bitter rivalry between two men: Gideon Mantell uncovered giant bones in a Sussex quarry, became obsessed with the lost world of the reptiles and was driven to despair. Richard Owen, a brilliant anatomist, gave the extinct creatures their name and secured for himself unrivalled international acclaim." Highly recommended - a history that reads like a thriller. Lots of great early engravings of bones as well as artist's renderings of what dinosaurs were imagined to have looked like, too - often quite beautiful.

Website: UbuWeb

UbuWeb describes itself as "a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts." For the thinking creative. Recent posts have included pieces on Viennese Actionist films, Jacques Lacan lectures, William S. Burrough's cut up films, Gertrude Stein audio recordings, and a short film of Abby Hoffman making gefelte fish on Christmas Eve.

Goya's Last Works

"He was old, deaf and virtually broke. But a new exhibition of Goya's last works shows that nothing could dampen his creative spirit, writes Robert Hughes." Read his review of the Frick Collection in New York here.

Website: Museum of Bad Album Covers

Pretty much a self-explanatory website. Note: Not for the sensitive, though it does make an excellent argument for the virtues of good design. And illustration. And photography.

Mid-Century Modern

Mid-Century Modern specializes in reproductions of classic mid-twentieth century furniture design by heavyweights such as George Nelson, Charles and Ray Eames, Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, and Isamu Noguchi. Gorgeous and timeless design to drool over. That's a Harry Bertoia chair on the left.

Moving Art

Grass Collective is an interesting small company that creates moving art. From the site: "If you look at televisions and computer monitors from a lateral perspective you can see them as empty picture frames. People are used to pictures in frames being static. Paintings and photographs are static art. Imagine a framed picture that’s moving. It sounds futuristic or magical, but it’s not. It’s just a different way of using computer and television displays, with a different kind of motion picture content."

Quite cool. They also offer free downloads, as a way of sampling their content.

Tomorrow's Worlds

"In the 1960s, architects thought their designs for future cities were pretty far out. But for truly radical visions, look to film directors, says Jonathan Glancey." Read Glancey's Guardian essay here. That's a still from Fritz Lang's visually stunning 1926 film Metropolis on the left.

Age Before Beauty

"On February 21st, Malcolm Gladwell gave a talk about the phenomenon of prodigies and late bloomers in art. The event was part of the New Yorker Nights, a series hosted by the Columbia University Arts Initiative and The New Yorker. " Listen to the talk on the New Yorker website here.

Microsoft Redesigns the iPod

A short video created in-house by real Microsoft employees. Funny, but I'm picturing a team of deeply embittered designers...

Bad design hurts.

Varoom Magazine

There's a brand new illustration magazine out, called Varoom: The Journal of Illustration and Made Images. The blurb on the London-based Association of Illustrators website (who publish it) sounds good, as does the impressive lineup of featured illustrators for its first issue. Looking forward to seeing it, and hope it does well, too. The striking cover illo by Sam Weber is certainly a great start.

The Roots of Modernism

"The world was in disarray, shattered by the first world war and heading into a second. Out of this chaos came the modernists - a group of utopian designers with thrilling new visions of what the future could hold. But was anyone ready for this brave new world? Robert Hughes introduces the key players of modernism - and discovers how many of their dreams still survive." Read his essay in the Guardian here. That's Aalva Aalto's Paimio chair on the left, incidentally.

Website: TypeCulture.com

TypeCulture describe themselves as "an independent digital type foundry and academic resource." Worth checking out not just for some good type design, but for all the interesting stuff they have on the site about the history of type, too. I found the (downloadable PDF) Punch Cuts, an article by Nick Shinn on the evolution of Punch magazine's cover design, a particularly good read.

Victoria Day

Happy Victoria Day! Enjoy the long weekend, fellow Canadians...

Jaime Hernandez

Just discovered Jaime Hernandez's new comic strip La Maggie La Roca in the New York Times, featuring characters I was reading about in his Love and Rockets comics way back when I was in art school in Toronto. His drawing is as gorgeous as ever, and I love the fact that his characters are older, sometimes wiser, but still very human and still having crazy adventures. You can check out his strip here. Have a look at the Fantagraphics website for more about Jaime. Be sure to check out his brother Gilbert's work, too––particularly the Palomar series, which started out as the surreal Heartbreak Soup comics.

The Architect and the Sculptor

"Great, lasting friendships are rare, but friendships that enlarge the spirit through ideas, ideals and new insights are in a class by themselves. Over a stretch of more than 50 years, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the visionary designer R. Buckminster Fuller enjoyed such a friendship, which led to aesthetic and practical achievements that left their mark." Inspiring stuff. Read the rest of Grace Glueck's New York Times article here.

Joseph Cornell's Bird Cages

Extract in the Guardian from Jonathan Safran Foer's new book "A Convergence of Birds," about Joseph Cornell's wooden bird cage constructions, their strange and at times sad history, and their strange and sad creator. Be sure to check out the link to the Guggenheim's collection of Cornell's bird cages, too.

Jenny Holzer, Beckett and Co.

Here's a show I wish I could have seen: "As part of the Beckett Centenary Festival at the Barbican, American artist Jenny Holzer presents a series of light projections on the Barbican and buildings around London including City Hall and Somerset House. Writings from Beckett and a selection of works by celebrated poets, are cast onto well-known London landmarks, allowing light and text to flow over the cityscape, creating an extraordinary visual experience." Even though the show has come and gone, you can see some photos from it on the Barbican website.

Typecast Film

"'Typecast' discusses the history of Swiss design through a novel use of video and playful motion graphics. In a series of interviews, Swiss typographers and designers from across the globe share their insights about the history and direction of current design. Now, viewers will have the rare opportunity to meet select famous designers up close and personal." See the trailer and more info on the New York International Film and Video Festival website here.

Build Your Own Rocket Ship!

Why spend all day using boring real science to build your rocketship when you can use fun movie science instead? Check out the Atomic Rocket website for complete instructions on recreating your own great looking and completely improbable retro rocket. Lots of great art from old pulp sci fi mags, too.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Pencils?

Interesting article by Adam Keiper exploring whether or not robots can be truly creative.

Website: GigPosters.com

A self-descriptive name for a great website. Check it out to see the art of band poster design alive and very well indeed. There's lots here, and the work ranges from the simple and homemade to some stunning works of art, such as this one on the left, which was designed by The Heads of State for an R.E.M. concert in Cologne, Germany.

Line Drawing

I was thinking about this today, so here it is for you to think about, too: the legendary Milton Glaser's response to the infamous Wall Street Journal article “Just Where Does an Illustrator Draw the Line?” by Tunku Varadarajan. Steve Brodner is the illustrator who unwittingly triggered the wrath of Varadarajan––check out his illustrated response in Fig. 2, on the right.

Allan Kaprow, Father of "Happenings"

Article by Barbara Rose in the Wall Street Journal about the career of Allan Kaprow, father of the Happenings movement. I think Rose is a bit out of touch with the current state of Happenings, though. She concludes with a comment on how they have become much more formalized, which is true in the arts world, but seems to have missed out on variations on the Happening such as Orange Alternative in Poland in the '80's, and the more recent flash mobs.

Top Ten Art Books

Highly idiosyncratic but interesting selection by author Jean McNeil of her top ten art books in the Guardian Online. I definitely recommend the two books by Matthew Collings, who manages to be both funny and shrewdly appreciative in his writings on modern art.

My Clutch Holiday Card

This is the card I did for the 2005 Clutch Christmas card series, which has become a popular event for us Clutchers. Proceeds from our card sales went to charity, too.

Cabinet Magazine

Cabinet is a quarterly magazine of art and culture directed toward the "intellectually curious," aiming to combine "the popular appeal of an arts periodical, the visually engaging style of a design magazine, and the in-depth exploration of a scholarly journal." Superlatives aside, it does make for interesting reading. Some of the articles from past issues are available on their website, too.

Not a Starving Artist

Op ed piece in Newsweek by J. D. Jordan, a young web designer, about his own real world education in the business side of running a creative company. He makes an excellent point about how young illustrators and designers, fresh out of art school, are frequently ill informed about how to sell their work, with the result that they're often pressured into practically giving it away.

High Tech Tattoos

From the New Scientist, a story about a new type of ink for tattoos. For the first time, you'll be able to remove a permanent tattoo without leaving behind a scar. Pretty cool, and due out sometime next year. Good news for those who tend to make bad design decisions...

Eva Zeisel

Crate and Barrel has recently reissued Eva Zeisel's beautifully designed 1950's series Classic Century in a lovely warm cream tone. It's good to see great modern pottery design continue to find new fans, but what's even more impressive is Eva Zeisel herself, who recently turned 100 and is still going strong. Considering what an eventful life she's had, I guess the whole growing old thing is fairly tame in comparison. I hope I can keep working as long as she has.

Bookshelf: To Have and To Hold

"To Have and To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting" by Philipp Blom is, (to quote the book cover blurb) "...a captivating tour of of collectors and their treasures from medieval times to the present, including a Tsar's display of teeth, a cabinet containing unicorn bones, the macabre art of embalmer Dr Ruysch, the fabled mansion of Randolph Hearst, and the men who stockpile food wrappers and plastic cups." Not only a fascinating read, but something that will strike a chord with illustrators and designers too, who, judging from their studios, are no slouches when it comes to being magpies themselves...

Still in print, and published by Penguin.

The Fall and Rise of Illustration

Excellent interview by Steven Heller with Charles Hively, founder of 3x3, the only magazine in the United States devoted entirely to contemporary illustration. "From its premiere in December 2003, 3x3 has maintained the highest production standards in keeping with Hively’s mission to promote this venerable genre."

A must read for both illustrators and designers. Don't forget to have a look at 3x3 magazine afterwards, too.

Can Artists Be Modest?

Entertaining and thought-provoking article by Eric Gibson on the history and usefulness of the artistic ego.

Rembrandt the Rebel

"This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt. On the eve of a major exhibition in Amsterdam, Robert Hughes discusses the enduring genius of an artist who broke the rules, defied convention - and brought the everyday to vivid life." Read on here.

Finding Memory in Modern Art

"Irene Copeland Brenton, 73, one of the visitors to the (Museum of Modern Art) on that Tuesday, suffers from a kind of Alzheimer's that has made it very difficult for her to read and to find the right words to say. But in front of the Wyeth and later the Rousseau, she was almost loquacious. Her husband, Myron, said that while specific memories of the museum might evaporate, she seemed to retain a kind of emotional memory long after the visit ended." Read the rest of Randy Kennedy's New York Times article here.

Dwell Magazine

One of my absolute favourite magazines. This month's issue has a great cover article on living large in small spaces, featuring some really clever and inventive solutions. Modern design for everyone.

Penguin Book Design by Germano Facetti

"Germano Facetti's...book covers for Penguin, where he was art director from 1961 to 1972, gave an extraordinary unity and unmatched visual impact to a publisher already regarded by readers as a vital part of British cultural life." Facetti also had an exemplary attitude towards design: "It is much more important that Penguin has established a high standard throughout, rather than swinging from good to bad, cover to cover, as almost all other publishers do." Read the rest of Rick Poynor's article about Facetti here.

Stunning work in the gallery of cover designs.

Storefront Confessionals

There's a story in today's New York Times about two performance artists, Laura Barnett and Sandra Spannan, who last Thursday began a performance piece called "Inside/Out," set in a storefront at 112 West 44th Street in Manhattan.

"The woman, dressed in white like a 19th-century washerwoman, put her fingers to her lips and, with a wooden clothespin, underlined the words stenciled on the glass: 'Air Your Dirty Laundry. 100% Confidential. Anonymous. Free!'"

Found Magazine

Found Magazine "collect(s) FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes..." This particular note (found on a downstairs break room door) mysteriously confirms that the work has been done and the bird has been freed. It's rather poetic, actually. Is the freed bird the maintenance personnel's (until now) caged creativity?

Freud's Art Collection

The Freud Museum, housed in Freud's former residence in London, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month (which also happens to be Freud's 150th birthday) with an exhibition focusing on Freud's huge collection of ancient sculpture. Jonathan Jones of the Guardian has written an intriguing article about the show, and goes on to examine how Freud's interest in art showed up repeatedly in his work, plus how his work in return had a strong influence on artists such as the Surrealists André Breton, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali.

Bookshelf: The Shape of Content

"The Shape of Content" by Ben Shahn was first published in 1957. It is best described as Shahn's ruminations about being an artist, creating art, criticizing art, and art's function in society, all discussed in Shahn's lucid, passionate and very personal voice. The paperback edition that I have is published by Harvard University Press, is still in print, and is beautifully illustrated with Shahn's line work. Relevant, highly readable and highly recommended.

More biographical info and works by Ben Shahn can be viewed on the George Krevsky Gallery website, too.

Edward Nicolay Artemyev

Saw the (original 1972) film Solaris by Tarkovsky the other day, which was brilliant. The music, composed by electronica pioneer Edward Nicolay Artemyev, was brilliant, too. If you listen to it closely, you can hear how much he influenced later musicians such as Brian Eno. Check out the Solaris Room website for more info.

Design geek side note: Eero Saarinen's classic white Tulip table (see Solaris film still above) seems to turn up in all the cool sci fi films...if I recall correctly, it's in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well. Someday, I hope to have one too...

Clutch

Clutch is an art collective, consisting of Clare Brennan (who thought up the whole Clutch idea), Alain Brunet, Jim Kohan, Michael Zavacky (Zeke) and myself. We've been having shows on a common theme at various venues (mostly places with good food) over the last five years. You can view work from our shows on the official Clutch website.

The work shown above is a piece I created for the Fish show at the Shanghai Restaurant. I started with an octopus engraving from an old Victorian textbook on zoology (xeroxed at different sizes), added bits from an old Chinese martial arts comic book, some random bits of text (also from the zoology textbook), plus tracing paper to make some areas softer. Then I spent quite a lot of time cutting, moving things around, and pasting. One of the things I was interested in with this particular work was contasting the natural yellowed colour of the comic book with the bright white of the xerox paper and background watercolour paper. I drew the little rice bowl (a running theme through all of my pieces for the Shanghai show) on tracing paper so it would float over the background elements.

The Louvre

The Louvre has a beautifully designed website, with a really elegant use of Flash. The interior photos look odd if you've ever visited, though, as they're devoid of people. Visiting there two years ago, Andrew and I found it crowded. This was to be expected, but what we didn't expect was the scene in the Mona Lisa room, which contained a mob armed with technology. With the continual whirr and click of camera shutters, flashes going off, and the cell phone cameras waving above the sea of heads, all jostling and fighting each other to get close enough to the surprisingly small painting in the bullet proof box, we didn't even get close. The security staff seemed both resigned and depressed, as we eventually did after seeing such madness. After that experience (and a similar one in the Musée D'Orsay in the Impressionist Room), I think cameras should be strictly banned from museums. Until that beautiful day, enjoy viewing the art without getting elbowed in the ribs.

Discovering the Classics

On a related note to the Don Quixote story, here's an excellent article examining the impact of classic literature on working class readers in England and Wales in the early 20th century, and how the classics continue to be relevant to others in similar situations today.

Don Quixote

An older story from the BBC, but still a hopeful one.

"At the end of 12-hour shifts in the city's sprawling Nezahualcoyotl district, (policemen in Mexico City) hand in their weapons and face a new challenge: reading Don Quixote, the classic 17th-century novel by Miguel de Cervantes."

Proof that great literature (like great art) speaks to everyone, regardless of time, place or situation.

Yang Fudong

Just read an interesting article in the Guardian on the Chinese video installation artist Yang Fudong. Reviewer Adrian Searle says, "Like our own journeys, the constant peregrinations in Yang's works are without arrival. They are marked by urgency and detour, waiting and emptiness. Rather than a story, his art is about a condition, an atmosphere, the unsolvable riddle and the inexplicable. In this way, his work is true to life. And true also to the way we sift our memories, recollecting, glossing and jumbling things together."

If you're lucky enough to be in London before June 9, you can see Yang's installation at the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art. If not, you can have a look at more of his work here.

Discreet Music

Not only the name of a classic ambient sound album by Brian Eno, but a good description of the Drone Zone on Soma FM, a wonderful listener-supported, commercial free, San Francisco-based online radio station. There's lots of other great genres to be found on Soma FM, too. Have a listen here. Perfect music to work with in the background, when you want to get in the zone.

Room Service

This is the result of playing around with a few elements from an illustration I did for a Globe and Mail article a while ago. It's still somewhat unfinished, but you can see the idea. Basically, I liked the little feet on the entrées, and went from there . . .

Roy Kuhlman's Grove Covers

During the '50's and '60's Roy Kuhlman designed over 700 book covers for Grove Press, publishers of some of the most important literature of the twentieth century. Kuhlman worked in an abstract expressionist style, creating visual equivalents to the work of Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco and many others. Barbara Rietschel and Jean Dahlgren have an interesting article in Voice, the AIGA journal, on Kuhlman's work for Grove Press (plus some beautiful cover samples). You can read more here.

I was particularly pleased to come across this article, as for years I've admired Kuhlman's work when I've stumbled across it in used bookstores. Fortunately Grove built their books to last (unlike today's publishers), so we can still enjoy his work, even when it's a bit dog-eared and worn.

Why Automatism?

Automatism is a term the Surrealist André Breton used to describe (to quote that very handy online resource Wikipedia), ". . . a surrealist technique involving spontaneous writing, drawing, or the like practiced without conscious aesthetic or moral self-censorship."

Artists' notebooks are essentially exercises in automatism, and mine are no exception. They contain illustration and design work, sketches, doodles, possible ideas for photo shoots, possible ideas for short films, various stray thoughts on being an illustrator/designer, plus notes on anything I come across and find interesting, all mixed in together. This blog serves as an online version of my studio notebooks.

Welcome.