Jesu Cristo

Sometimes the level to which street art is taken is just downright sticky genius. Case in point: Jesu Cristo assembled out of sticky notes in Chile.



originally posted on Wooster

Nomad's Lookbook

The Nomad lookbook is live. check it.

sneak peak

On Sunday I played stylist...

I'm very excited to see the all the photos go up any day now, on NOMAD's online lookbook...

stay tuned.

Falling in Love

reblogged from Wooster

au naturel

I just read an article reviewing the Abington (Pennsylvania) Art Centre's Sculpture Park. From what I understand the concept is installation art in natural (outdoor) space. The full article is at the Philly Inquirer. However, I just had to post this one picture.



Above is "Episalla's large scrim photographic mural printed on semitransparent vinyl mesh. Hung between two trees in the woods, the mural depicts a vastly enlarged color picture of the Grand Tetons that Episalla found in her late father's office"

As the article also points out, "[t]he mural will be interesting to see in November against a barren backdrop of leafless trees... but it's plenty amusing now". Indeed.

Very poetic, that mix of natural and human made when it's done just right. Similarly, thanks to the mavens at Eyebeam Reblog, I just found a site called Organisms: making art with living systems. Very interesting - most of it theoretically, more than visually but I like this one.



Cress growing in a keyboard.
It reminds me of that Swedish all women design firm called Front. They credit a lot of their work to living animals that've assisted their designs. Like what?

Well, like snake hangers, that were sculpted by snakes coiling around logs of clay...



a mold of a rabit hole-made-lamp...



and rat wallpaper (made of the rat scratchings, turned into a repetitive pattern)






Also, in keeping with 'au naturel', coffee table made of branches


For more on Front Design check out IDO and Design Boom.

Picture Perfect

I've recently come across Philip Toledano, a photographer who's series entitled Hope and Fear makes very curious statements. Here's a selection from the series:










I find 'Hope and Fear' interesting because while the costumes are bizarre, infact bordering on silly, the facial expressions and lighting demand to be taken very seriously.


I also really enjoy his landscape and architectural shots from other series. As I browsed his multiple styles I was struck by the fact that I liked every one of them. I think it has alot to do with his use of cool color, but also with a kind of sophisticated tension in his lighting that is both dramatic, and calm or restrained. The following are from the set entitled Nightfall.





These are all best viewed within the context of their full series; visit Toledeno's site to get the bigger picture of his photographic brilliance.



And in a curatorial spirit, I invite you to view the following SPIKE JONZE short. I see it as a short, as opposed to, say, a new Adidas ad - but anyway... I think it works with Toledeno's photography. Not so much in subject matter, as in a kind of surreal, dreamy feeling. Also they use a similar range of cool colors, a pallette that makes me drool! (Notice how they match the steel grey of this page background. yup, basically my favorite color).

View the video here, but prepare for heartache over how sweet it is.

BBC's Gay Appointment

Alas, the BBC has declared that "Gay" means "lame" or "rubbish"!

I, for one, am relieved that the colloquial use of ‘Gay’, being far from homophobic, can finally come out of the closet. After years of being misunderstood by highbrow guardians of P.C. decorum the word gay will no longer be forced into its former bi-lateral designation of either-or (happy/homosexual). As the BBC Board of Governors has ruled, the new gay order allows for a third definition: “lame” or “rubbish”; a semantic orientation that’s been flagrant for years though relayed to the margins of contemporary vernacular culture.

Get with the Times, and read all about it.

Sexy Phone

It was really only a matter of time before the teched-out newest cell phone machine got booring. Case in point; look at this NES controller-cum-cell-phone and tell me it's not the hottest ever.





Fuck blackberries man, this shit right here is the hotness.

And the sexiest thing is that it's a DIY job...dude just drilled some holes and lined them up with his own cell phone's buttons. um...Genius!




(originally from boing boing blog)

Vehicles that take it to a "Whole 'Nother Level"

Remember when I featured that hilarious knitted motorcycle? If your reaction was anything like mine it went something like:

"whoa..ahaha.. what the fuc..hehe... HEY! Is that really a knitted motorcycle!"

And remember how I was all like, it's cool but it'd be badass if it was black. Well some chick *totally* beat us all at the whole crocheted/knit- vehicle game. (I didn't realize this was an emerging subculture either, but I was sooo onto something.)

Seriously though, check it out.





Yea, that's a mother f-word knitted Ferrarri.

It took Lauren Porter 10 months and 12 miles of yarn to make her sick ass ride. Considering many of us will spend our entire lives trying to make enough money to buy one, I have to say 10 months isn't bad at all.

(re-blogged from Eyebeam Reblog )



Speaking of Sick-Ass-Rides, I also came across a Hungarian car designed for wheelchair accessibility! It's about time, isn't it.




The inside of the Kenguru is empty space so that the wheelchair can be rolled right in, and locked into place. Furthermore, the Kenguru is controlled by a joystick rather than a steering wheel for utmost accessibility.

(reblogged from the The Cool Hunter

Mark Jenkins Mix Tape

Mark Jenkins, that brilliant tape sculptor street artist, has struck again.


Wooster Collective features his latest work where he built body forms out of tape, and covered them with clothing. The effect is so life-like that passers-by can't help but be stunned. Watch the video footage on the Wooster site.




I've been a fan of Mark Jenkins since I saw his more ethereal tape sculptures - sans vêtements, if you will.





He offers an alarming kind of visual poeticism, I think, amidst a saturation of street art in the modern city.





The result is sheer visual refreshment.

Air Shoe Box

A landmark in sneakerhead culture, and for any ebay shoe hound for that matter, the United States Postal Service has issued a shoe shipping box! Talk about cultural evolution; the USPS shoe box brings new meaning to mailing Air Jordans.





(re-blogged from Hypebeast)

Life imitates paint

New! Benjamin Moore ads


The new Benjamin Moore 'We'll Match It' ads really hit the mark, in my opinion. It's this genius of simplicity, we're all striving for, no? It's like life imitates paint, and paintchips imitate life...






Frida is my home-girl!



This week Frida Kahlo's painting 'Roots' sold for $5.62 Million dollars at Sotheby's in NYC. The self-portrait set the record for the most bling piece of Latin American art ever purchased at an auction.

A communist painter who rolled with Trotsky in more ways than one, Frida Kahlo must be tangled in those roots, rolling in her grave.

magnolias

This week Magnolia trees are in bloom.



I finally digitized the visual sensation yesterday, a good thing because it looks like there's just a few days left before it becomes a carpet of cascading petals.



Also in bloom this week: Get Mac ads

It was a treat to discover that Apple released their new 'get mac' ads today as it'd been a while since their last ones in 2002. Of course, they're fucking hilarious. PC is represented by a nerdy suit over 40 while mac is a smart hipster in his 20's. So classy, so witty - and it's so cliche to say but it makes me want to work for apple.

A Motorcycle Diary Entry

While I was cool hunting today I gazed up at a post-post modern art piece a la post 3rd wave feminism. (And by 3rd wave I mean all the nerdy-chic-bust magazine reading-knitting-is-the-new-feminism 90's shit).
If you know me you can probably guess that aesthetic is not my bag baby, but there was something so delectable about this crocheted motorcycle that I couldn’t quite take my eyes off it.





Now, if you haven’t realized already, the sick-ass-ride from the last post isn’t REALLY my ride… which leads me to my next point. Perhaps introducing a (wait for it) ... motorcycle... to my life is in order. Bear with me, bear with me. I’m thinking: flip the pink crochet for a black lacy doily kind of crochet. I’m thinking: Kiss of the Spider Woman meets Madonna Like a Virgin…

If any graphic designers wanna photoshop that concept up for me, I might let you take it for a spin… And of course, if I should come to make this black-crochet-lace-motorcyle a reality, you would then be reading

" Marianista: The Motorcycle Diaries "

OH by the way

I forgot to show you my new ride.



























um... yea.

CURATING MY THOUGHTS

I can’t take credit for this title; it was the title of an article in the newest issue of Dwell magazine- an utter gem by the way. Picking up Dwell magazine, which is rather routine for me, had a special significance this month because it was dedicated to spaces 1700sq feet and under. I just moved a few weeks ago from my own 600sq foot one room apt to a shared gorgeous high ceiling 1700sq foot loft.







In the process of transforming our new living space I’m enjoying my focus on the physicality of space. And the reasons for my obsession with the design of objects and interiors are being revealed. Simply put: The design of our living space represents our quintessential relationship with the physical world around us.

When we take the immediate space of our intimate surroundings and affect it in such a way, we perform a fundamental human condition. It celebrates the ability to shape what surrounds us, and reminds me that we are sculptors of our reality quite physically and literally - not merely metaphysically.




Onto another curatorial thought; I was utterly delighted this week to find Kara Walker on the cover of Modern Painters magazine. Kara Walker is one of my favorite contemporary artists. I discovered her work by accident working at Book City several years ago because we stocked “Pictures From Another Time”, a book of her art. What Kara Walker’s art means to me is that the realm of sophisticated social commentary and intellectual analysis, which academic writing is considered the height of, can damn well be expressed in as poised and articulate a manner through the dramatics of visual communication.




Kara Walker is best known for her striking panoramic friezes that contain her signature medium of life-size cut-paper silhouttes in stark white on black, or black on white. The characters evoke racist stereotypes in exagerated gestures in some of the most striking and impactful visual statements I've ever seen.



The continuing legacy of slavery in the Antebellum south is a consistent theme of her work. Most recently she curated her own show entitled Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge which was inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on the mostly poor and black population of New Orleans.




Quoting Walker from the article in Modern Painters (55-61, April 2006) she says, about Hurricane Katrina:

'I was seeing images that were all too familiar...it was black people in a state of life-or-death desperation, and everything coporeal was coming to the surface- water, excrement, sewage. It was a re-inscription of all the stereotypes about the black body.'

You can read the New York Times review of the show here

Throatlaces

Anni Albers’ 1941 traveling exhibition of common object jewelry included an original piece very similar to the one shown here. (A Bauhaus artist, Albers is considered the most important textile designer of the 20th C).

















I recreated this necklace the other night with the help of the Anni Albers Jewelry Studio Kit. Produced by The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation (www.albersfoundation.org), the kit inspires an understanding of Anni Albers’ visual thinking while simultaneously engaging the user in a personal creative process. In fact, it inspired me to spend an afternoon fucking around with a slew of my old jewelry, which resulted in my own necklace designs shown below.


This necklace mixes pretty elements (pearls, a bow) with harder edged tarnished silver pieces (bottom end of a rosary w/ Christ on the cross, and a Aztlan/Cali style bull skull). Like me, it straddles layers of contradictions.
























And this one mixes heavier masculine chains, (the gold plated Dookie/Rope chain, the silver Figaro chain, and the silver Belcher chain), with feminine accents (a black little bow, a gold plated rose).

















And since the theme of the day is objects that lace the neck, I'll finish with the scarf I made a few weeks ago by altering a vintage grey cashmere sweater. Again, with the contrasting elements. In this case, the preppy clean lines of the collar and the tied "sleeves", with the drapy folds of the scarf body.

opening ceremony

So how do you solve a problem like Maria? Well I'm 'a start up an online general admission journal. You might call it a “blog” but I won't. "Blog" is a word I despise which, actually, partially accounts for why I’ve waited so long to start one.

Subject to change, the kind of stuff I’ll be posting will include: “check this out: [insert something I think is dope]” entries, “these are a few of my favorite things” entries, “look what I made” lookbook pics and descriptions. And hey who knows, when I start feeling more comfortable with the idea of subjecting myself to public scrutiny- maybe even some “deep thoughts” ;) .



This week I stayed home from work after having my cervix excavated on Monday at Toronto Women’s College Hospital in search of pre-cancerous cells. It’s a rather common procedure, no worries there. But recovering gave me all this time to have art attacks all week. Case in point, below is step one of the chandelier I’ve been dreaming about for months. I finally bought a frame, and spray- painted it white. This proved to be a “learning experience” (as opposed to a “fuck up”), since I didn’t know you shouldn’t spray it outdoors when it’s windy. Anyways, it’s a good basecoat.



Okay, so it’s a work in progress. Next.


This is one of my cervix pieces. I basically made and printed out a receipt, on for-real receipt paper, for the procedure. It has a diagram of the female reproductive organs. On the top it has the date, and time of the surgery and the institution where it took place. Then on the bottom it says: “Please keep this receipt for 30 days, at which point you may return” – since 30 days is my total recovery time.


I also made a drawring, but I’m not as good of a drawrer as simon ;). It’s blurry but it's an 8x11 drawring of my repro orgs and there are two magnified boxes- and in the total close up of the cervix box I drew little cells, and some of the cells are little skulls.
I also made some necklaces today, but the digi ran out of batteries. I'll submit the evidence tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a few things I think are precious.





This is my favorite thing in my room, which means a lot because my whole apartment is my room.

I coveted it for so long and never thought I’d really own it.

It was a gift.

It is a beautiful lamp. (Thanks Jesar!)






Below is a beautiful art piece I fell in love with and had to walk by and stare at through the window outside of Diaz Contemporary Gallery every other night when it was there. Being a writer, and a lover of contemporary art, and the general use of blue neon lights, well.. this piece makes my heart hurt.