Life before Death

Amazing video.


This is Water - Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace

Chelsea Fringe

It has been called best thing to happen to urban gardening with exhibits such as pimped pavements, gardening in a toilet, a Floating Forest and a gnome invasion. The Chelsea Fringe provides a quirky counterpoint to the annual established RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The Fringe is all about harnessing and spreading some of the excitement and energy about gardens and gardening. The idea is to give people the freedom and opportunity to express themselves through plants and gardens, to open up possibilities and to allow full participation.

Its events encompass everything from grassroots community garden projects to avant-garde art installations. Their ‘open-access’ principle means that just about anything goes – as long as it’s interesting and legal, and on the subject of gardens, flowers, veg-growing or landscape.

http://www.chelseafringe.com

Travis Jefferys of Pot Black Ceramics

Through his company Pot Black Ceramics, an Australian-based ceramicist, Travis Jefferys supplies handmade crockery including plates, bowls and cups to some of the Melbourne's swankiest restaurants. He likes “playing with mud” as he calls it, and has studied pottery for 20 years. After working as a Landscape Architect and Interior Designer, he got back into spinning the wheel after realizing he was “taking things out of the world, and wanted to put something back”.

Working from his studio, Jeffreys exclusively uses Australian clays. Each piece of clay eventually becomes a bowl, plate or cup that is slightly different, imperfect and unique. The potter used to try and make every piece as uniform as possible, but now realises the small differences are what gives his work it character.

He believes people are drawn to hand-made products because they capture a part of the maker. “There’s an energy or an essence that you’re sharing. It’s subtle, even subconscious, but I think we yearn for that. Through hand made products we can tap into that connection.”

http://potblackceramics.com.au
http://vimeo.com/38678698

A Day In India

The Perennial Plate is an online weekly documentary series dedicated to socially responsible and adventurous eating. Chef and Activist, Daniel Klein and Co-producer/Cameragirl Mirra Fine are traveling the world exploring the wonders, complexities and stories behind the ever more connected global food system.

About this episode: "It’s hard to put your camera down in India. With so much beauty and filth, food and poverty, happiness and stress: its an overwhelming (and wonderful) place to film. We came back exhausted, full and still overwhelmed (this time with the task of editing all the footage into a short video). Because India is a big place, and each area varies dramatically, we attempted to construct a day across India: from north to south, from dawn till dusk."

Check out their other videos: http://www.theperennialplate.com

Ragnar Kjartansson

This past weekend I saw an interesting gallery show in Soho. Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson took a piece of poetry written by his wife and set it to music. The solo exhibition titled “The Visitors” is made up of a group of 9 musicians to each featured on nine separate screens, all simultaneously playing the same piece together. It was recorded in a decaying 200-year-old mansion in the Hudson Valley. As you wander through the darkened gallery space, you listen to each individual musician, with their part highlighted on a screen.
The piece begins with Kjartansson in a bath strumming on a guitar. The 8 other screens are from  different rooms in the mansion. Each room is soon filled with another musician and soon they are all singing and playing a beautiful song. Filmed in one take, the film makes you feel like you're actually in the house watching this as it happens.

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/exhibitions/ragnar-kjartansson_1
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/ragnar-kjartansson/

a favorite link: Remodelista

Beautiful interiors to drool over. Interesting and often unusual architecture. Always fantastic photographs.

Check out Remodelista: http://remodelista.com

British Vogue's take on the site: "This sexy interiors website is part magazine, part sourcebook, with the best style details, plus shoots in real people's houses. It's addictive, partly because it is so forensic about all the detail you really need, and then you can click and buy if you feel the urge. The scoop on everything from trestle desks to loo roll holders."

doodle sofa

the original doodles

This sofa design was inspired by the act of doodling! The Swedish design studio, Front, who designed it for the Italian furniture company Moroso, used actual doodles that were drawn by the team during their design meetings. These automatic drawings are what make up the pattern on the leather couch. The doodles capture, in leather, a part of the subconscious creative mind at work. I'd love to make one out of my doodles!!

From Moroso "We doodle absent mindedly - doodling is a kind of half-conscious creative work. It is both a distraction, and also thought to help you concentrate on whatever you are doing at the same time. All three members of Front used doodles they had made during design meetings to create the sofa's pattern. The decoration is a kind of by-product of Front's creative process, inscribed onto the folded half circle of the sofa's form."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101727048

http://doodlemeanings.com/2011/04/12/doodle-meanings-what-do-the-doodle-shapes-mean/

artist Nikita Nomerz

 

Russian street artist Nikita Nomerz travels around different cities to find abandoned structures and bring them back to life. By adding eyes and facial features he makes old buildings laugh, smile or scream. He started working in graffiti during school but later became more interested in street art.

"Now basically I like to play with space and objects. I am inspired by the place itself. I love watching the city and finding an interesting point. Usually I do not spend so much time to create one work, sometimes less than an hour. But it all depends on the size of the object and my ideas. I have been called an underground artist, but if you're doing street art you've not underground. It is public art. It would be nice if people started paying more attention to what is around us. These walls are alive. I love them all!"

website: http://www.nomerz.com

Libra birthday

My October birthday horoscope!

Kate MccGwire

London-based artist Kate MccGwire uses feathers and wishbones in huge numbers to create amazing pieces of art. She originally started to collect the feathers from a shed taken over by pigeons situated next to her studio. The process is slow and methodical but the outcome is fantastic. She creates intricate patterns that give her pieces flow and movement.

"There are so many reasons I began working with the feathers. I think one of the most important is their sense of otherness. When you find one on the ground they always look so utterly separate from the bird they've been discarded by. It's difficult to imagine when you look at a quill that this flesh-less stem was once attached to a bird. It's part of the mechanism that helps it fly and keeps it warm but seen in splendid isolation a feather becomes detached from these physiological concerns and becomes
something 'alien', an object, and a carrier for meaning in its own right."

"I am not morbid but death is never very far from us. My studio is on the river Thames – everyday I am very aware of the elements and the wildlife around me. It’s a constant battle. A swan laid its eggs right next to the barge. When they started hatching, crows surrounded the nest and stole away the cygnets to eat. Crows also fly low over rabbit burrows, as soon as a young rabbit (Leveret) pokes its head out of the burrow crows come down and swipe them, fly them up high into the sky and drop them to kill them prior to eating. It’s a brutal world."

http://www.katemccgwire.com/index.php?pid=1