Next stop, Monroe County Fair

We arrived in Indiana in time for the County Fair.

Well, I'd been to the New Jersey State Fair which did prepare me a bit...there was 4H livestock everywhere! Miss You-Know-Who was in wonderland here. We're lucky we didn't go home with a goat!



Some amazing looking prize animals (yes, that's a rabbit),


and as expected, some great signage!

Mattress Factory

We were lucky enough to visit The Mattress Factory while we were in Pittsburgh—it's the preeminent installation art museum in the country. One whole floor is devoted entirely to James Turrell, who does site specific work with light—he plays with the interchange between created space and actual space. The light installations actually seem to extrude and then recede . . . when you walk up to them and put your hand out it's surprising to find out there's a hole there with light in it!


This one is Danaë, 2003, shot by Florian Holzherr (it's so impossible to get a good snapshot, so I had to borrow).
Here are R&N playing in the blue hole:


We also got to play in Yayoi Kusama's Repetitive Vision from 1996, and got some fun (if not predictable) shots!

Change?

Glad to be back in NYC and surrounds. We had a great trip to Pittsburgh, PA and Bloomington, IN. Let's start with the Pennsylvania part of the trip. No good road trip is complete without a stop at Bob Evans, but wow, even they have embraced Gotham. It's so darn recognizable!

Legitimized Street Art

The Keith Haring wall at Bowery and Houston has been replaced by a magical mural by two Brazilian brothers (twins) with the moniker Os Gemeos. The New York Times
reviewer overdescribed it, so I'll simply show some lovely details—along with folks on the traffic island snapping away. Can an inanimate object have a gaggle of paparazzi? As lovely as the new mural is, it doesn't have the power of the Haring.

Town vs Gown

By now, Suzanne, Rob and Nina have probably arrived at the home of famiglia in Bloomington, Indiana. I’m keeping Suzanne's vacation in mind while keeping up with the news. One current discussion notes that the fracas between Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley may be less about race and more about class—or "Town vs Gown." Such a divide makes me think of "Breaking Away," my favorite (OK only) movie set in Bloomington and made back in the day (1979). A coming of age story, the movie focuses one young dreamer of a cutter (townie) who overcomes his fear of going over to the other side and becoming a gownie. Indiana meets Italiana. Wonderful soundtrack. Charming Dennis Christopher. Oh-so-young Dennis Quaid.

Trailer
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3787129113/
Weird html trivia: Drafting a blog entry in InDesign, with Smart Quotes as part of the program's preferences, confuses the html, which won't create viable links.

The Golden Triangle

Here's a shout-out to one of the hot spots that Suzanne, Rob, and Nina will visit on their vacation. Which hot spot? The Golden Triangle. Not the one in Asia. Better. Pittsburgh—shown in non-precious metal on this ash(?)tray from the Wendell August Forge in Grove City, PA. How odd and wonderful to see something that was hand-made 50 miles away from the souvenir locale. I love the vernacular hallmark on the back of the ashtray, along with the outline of the keystone, the symbol of Pennsylvania, The Keystone State.

The history of the Wendell August Forge seems to echo the history of Pittsburgh itself—i.e. moving from manufacturing to a new life. On the Wendell August Forge site, check out the video from Antiques Roadshow about the keepsake (Yikes) from the Hindenburg's Millionaire's Flight. Big thanks to Martha Cansler, Artist Awesome, who gave Pat this memento of Pittsburgh.

Holy Toledo!

A must-see: the Isabel Toledo Exhibit at FIT through September 26.
The lemongrass ensemble worn by Michelle Obama on Inauguration Day is the least of it. Sure, The First Lady embodied chic in the gorgeous creation by Isabel Toledo, but believe it or not, that famous dress pales when compared with all of the other soft scuptures—aka high fashion—currently on display. Normally, the FIT installations are a bit dark and dead. This particular show has a lightness of being, animated by Ruben Toledo's lively, lovely fashion drawings. The space was crawling with guards making sure that no one took photos (including me)—but photos don't do justice to Toledo's creations.

Inspired, I saw draping and detailing in everything on my way back to the subway.

Take the A Train

Not design exactly, but I took the A train out to Broad Channel, Queens (one stop before Rockaway Beach) and took a hike through the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Them there's some osprey in this photo. Broad Channel is like Venice in that the subway goes across the water and drops you off—weird, but recommended!

Illustration 101

I'm sorry for so many NYTimes related posts lately, but this illustration by Tucker Nichols for the Op-Ed piece "The Day Obscenity Became Art" is just brilliant.

The same but different

Sustainable as the aforementioned way-cool dumpsters, this Temporary Trees Project, located not too far from the store Delice Dell'Orto in Vicenza, made me think of Worldstudio and AIGA's Urban Forest Project.

The sign crediting Alessandro Mendini includes the sponsor I heart EC. Was the logo okayed by Milton Glaser? To be continued . . .

Cannot Complain Enough

Speaking of meerkats, or more precisely, lemmings (actually imprecisely, since lemmings don't actually do the thing that we all credit them with)—GRRRRR. A whole article in the NYTimes talking about how hipsters and the uninvited blogosphere is abuzz with secret pool parties in Gowanus where people are swimming in cleaned up DUMPSTERS?

[Yana Paskova for The New York Times]
Even if it was just me and Rob and Nina swimming around in a container in our yard with no filter, no chlorine, no oxygenation—how long would that water be clean!?
Hipster swimsuit salmonella? Rotavirus? Gangrene?
This secret club NY stuff (secret restaurants that are just someone's house, secret bars that just pretend, secret parties that are just simply private affairs)—secret plastic tubs full of water that are now secret swim clubs? I just can't take it anymore. Must we fetishize everything?
(Also, all this capital-D Dumpsters . . . are they a brand name?)

Lost in Translation?

You're still sweet on the brilliant ads in Snacklish; I'm still stuck on moments from the June holiday. While trying to be aware of signs or symbols that are clear for peeps of all nations, I noticed some communications in London that are charmingly country-specific. Humps instead of bumps is a pretty easy one to figure out.

However, the neighborhood watch sign that's prominent in Sydenham, south of London, stumped me. When I asked my friend and hostess if ferrets headlined the sign because they poke up out of holes to monitor things (lame or what? heck! I was on vacation, as was my brain), she replied that the critters are meerkats, which are universally acknowledged to be neighborly and vigilant.

In this particular case, I was clueless and in my own local head (um, I think of the meerkat as the comic relief in "The Lion King"), not to mention unschooled in the ways of the real animal kingdom. Perhaps Lord Attenborogh and his brother have educated the British public in the ways of the cooperative and generous members of the mongoose family. Do meerkats signal community to you?

Tail Tales

One of the main thrusts of the Visual Process class I taught at FIT this past semester was to discuss the importance of communicating without words. We concentrated on universal symbols, but covered other images that transmit info pronto. While sitting aboard our plane awaiting takeoff (not so pronto), I noticed that plane tails are darned good real estate for the airlines' logos (in addition, of course, to acting as crucial airplane parts). Although these tails hew more to brands than to symbols, here are a few tail/tales shot through a window murkily (a good test of how the shapes hold up). Do you think Delta and Alitalia are commercial partners because each airline uses the triangle?



NASA's info is about airplane parts is soooooo interesting, but they could use some cooler graphics.

The future has nuts and caramel

Obviously I am still not over this brilliant ad campaign from Snickers—now you can translate anything into Snacklish!
(Between now and September 7, Snickers is doing a matching grant with Feeding America, so if you donate through their portal your gift will be doubled)

Our blog:


And of course:


And:

Museum Version of Found Type?

The Tate Modern encourages visitors to write and draw postcards about their experiences at the museum. Below are murky versions of two of my favorites.



Supacoy and Sunnybunny:

Supacoy: Hey Bunny. I can't understand art.
Sunnybunny: It's easy . . . . Art is life. If you understand art you know how life works . . .

Supacoy and Sunnybunny's card affords a partial view of the poster for the Futurism exhibit. Did you know that Futurism is 100 years old? (Or, in the words of Marlene Dietrich's character in the movie "Touch of Evil," its "future is all washed up").

Apologies for lack of credits . . .

4 Noah D

I shot this in London for design & tech guru Noah Dziobecki of DzignSpace, who sent a link to a piece about the ampersand. I can't find the link (Doh!) so, here's a Hoefler & Frere-Jones piece about their middle name. By the way, did you know that the character ampersand is not allowed in a post label?!

Lights and Other Interesting Materials

Nice NICE neon. The third shot reminds me of the lamp I brought to you from New Orleans—i.e. the one made from Mardi Gras beads that combined partying hearty with wacky functionality.

Speaking of New Orleans, Susan Neely, who's made gorgeous lamps from recycled materials PLUS designed and acted as contractor for a house in NOLA's Gentilly area, recently created constructions of another sort for a group show in NOLA at the BECA Gallery. Susan's work combines painting, construction, and found objects.









As a relative, I'm totally prejudiced in her favor, but I think Susan can do anything.

Photos courtesy of Susan Neely.

City of Lights

Had a chance to walk around the East Village last night (and stopped in for some cornflake/marshmallow/chocolate chip cookies at Momofuko Milk Bar). A lovely night for neon and analog lights.

Portfolio Book, call for Entries

The fabulous minds at Under Consideration are looking for cool portfolios (and cool stories about portfolios) for their new book—anything come to mind?

Glorious 4th; glorious words

As eloquent as Obama 7 co, Jefferson & co. penned a real beauty. I've copied the text and image from government archives.

Longhand

Richard Long's hand-lettering is almost the opposite of found type. He very carefully renders a lot of the legends, captions or lists that comprise the print or verbal part of his art. When we were in London at viewing the Richard Long retrospective at the Tate Britain, I was dumbfounded by Long's meditative block-lettering, which complement Long's meditative meanderings throughout the world. Because of the vigilant guards, I was unable to sneak a shot of my faves, but I managed to shoot an invitation showing Long's pencilled, tidy, capitals.

I was also amused to see that the exhibition graphics were in—what else?!—Gill sans, the national typeface of the UK.


On a non-typographical note, like many artists, Long produced books. One accordion-folded booklet reminds me of Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip.

What does it say about our cultures that Ruscha obsesses about buildings and Long obsesses about stones?

Girlz Club

Speaking of Dell'Ortos, my young cousins (actually they are first cousins once removed, meaning that they are my cousins' children) are a continuous source of homemade notes and signs. Here's the latest "No Boys Allowed/Keep Out" sign from their club in the garage. I'm thinking of adding a zigzag exclamation point to all my handwritten correspondence!