Gran Poder

One of my former design students, Michael Dunn Caceres, is now a designer and photographer down in La Paz, Bolivia, where he took some unbelievably beautiful shots of the Fiesta del Gran Poder (Festival of the All-Powerful). The festival is a giant street party that celebrates Jesus and his part in the Trinity.

What's so cool about Michael's photographs is the use of black and white (in great contrast) for what you know is a totally colorful festival. This way his images focus on the composition and on the expressions of the celebrants. Great great stuff. More here on his flicker stream.
Now I just need to figure out which one I want a print of, and figure out how to get some South American mail! (update: they are available here, and mounted prints are well under $100! I am so getting one!)

Another Park

A few days after you had the perfect day in Brooklyn, I drove up to the lovely Storm King Art Center to hear a talk by Jonathan Lippincott, a talented book designer and the author of the book Large Scale. The son of the man who founded Lippincott, Inc., Jonathan slide-presented the history of the company (and of 1960s/'70s government aid to the arts) and then, walking outside of Storm King's conference room, showed some of the sculptures fabricated by Lippincott for pretty much most of America's major late 20th-century sculptors. My fave anecdote was about how Louise Nevelson worked à la collage on her sculptures, tending to move things around even after they were assembled. Jonathan wryly noted that Nevelson wore out a number of Lippincott welders.

It's the 50th Anniversary of Storm King, so the Art Center devoted space to an exhibit about Storm King's founding and founders, Ralph E. Ogden and H. Peter Stern, co-owners of Star Expansion Company in Mountainville. The display of Star's various hardware was pretty darned cool—perfect for a company that eventually became committed to modern sculpture.



Jonathan's uncle Alfred, also of the Lippincott Foundry, was at the event. When I asked if Lippincott, Inc. ever used Star's hardware, uncle Lippincott replied that they indeed used to—and that Star made a great anchor bolt.



The trip upstate whetted my appetite to both go back upstate and to stay city-side and see Storm King's presentation of works by Mark di Suvero at Governor's Island.

Sunny Brooklyn

Monday was the perfect day to run away to the newly opened sections of Brooklyn Park under the Brooklyn Bridge.

The railings featured some beautiful type and designs that echo the suspension cables of the bridge. They also cast lovely shadows along the pier.

We spotted what looked like a solar dumpster, but more research revealed that it is a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station built by the Beautiful Earth Group, a Brooklyn-based renewable energy company. According to their website, the station is the first solar-powered charging station in New York City and one of only a few in the world. Brooklyn Bridge Park will use the donated station to charge its electric service vehicles (EVs) using only the power of the sun.

[Bottom image from the Beautiful Earth Group website]

Weird Gawkery

The feed on the Gawker page format has a pic and a side blurb, and the next story is below following the same format. This accidental Sarah Palin photo mashup with the Spanx is just plain weird. #spotted

Trux redux

After reading your post about the bold art on trucks (Semi Bold, Thursday May 5) I was inspired to look for some of my own. The second is a real doozy!

Thirst for value

In cleaning out the old to make more headspace (physical space not needed!), I pruned some more magazines from the shelves. Steve Heller's interview of Rick Valicenti in Print's 2006 Regional Design Annual yielded some strong, smart and sobering thoughts from Thirst's founder—and, with Lorraine Wild and Louise Sandhaus—WildLuV's co-founder. I recycled the artifact of the magazine and, below, am digitally recycling some items worth saving (bold emphasis is mine).

Heller: Why do you hate design?

Valicenti: As much as I delight in the presence of great design in my life and community, I feel so violated by the shit that is everywhere; bad design seems to ooze into the culture at every turn. This is the design I hate, as it is a reflection of such scant respect for those who must be in contact with it. At the core of design's practice is the virtue of respect—for the process, for the craft, and for the message-making and distribution. There are only three types of messages designers are invited to help express: messages of value, messages about value, and messages of no value. Only two are really worth our time and passion, but the pressures of commerce and life encourage us to be less discerning as to where we practice design. And it is this circumstance that I also hold in contempt. Design has the means to be a healing, one-to-one exchange and be a rewarding medium that enhances, not contaminates, one's quality of life.

Moral values remain true. Value in a marketplace may change. Certain artifacts have less value than they did decades ago. The value of skills evolves—just as skills themselves evolves. The key thing is for design to be "a healing, one-to-one exchange," even as the medium changes.

The links are to 2006, but the message still works.

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If you can find a live link to WildLuV, the design collaborative, post it!