sundance

Interview with Nirvana baby, now working for Shepard Fairey

Nirvana Baby, Spencer Elden from Barry O Donnell on Vimeo. Check out this short interview with Spencer Elden, 19, who is better known around the world as the baby swimming on the cover of Nirvana’s seminal Nevermind album. In the interview, he explains that at that time, his parents were in art school with Kirk [...]

MetroCard art show

A group art show, “Single Fare,” is on display through May 12 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the unifying theme centered around the useful, yet temperamental New York City MetroCard which is utilized by various artists as a blank canvas. Organized by Michael Kagan and Jean-Pierre Roy, this event was inspired by one of Roy’s students [...]

Matthew Albanese: Strange Worlds

The exhibition that opened earlier this week at Winkleman Gallery in NY, a group show of young American photographers, could very well have passed you by as much of the work looks very young indeed. One photographer hasn’t yet outgrown his David Hockney polaroid phase while another is inexplicably stuck making Rorscharch tests. The one standout is Matthew Albanese (previously mentioned by Matthew Rodriguez), whose staged, model-based photographs arrest and confuse the viewer for that one extra moment it takes to really get hooked by an image. (To clarify, model-based meaning a physical model of an environment not a human model.)

Green tech finds (5/13/10)

AbundantWater.org [An Open Source Approach to Clean Drinking Water] from AbundantWater.org on Vimeo.

Cajun-style oil spill clean-up, solar powered iPod speakers, and beer cans that convert to cups… your green tech finds for the week.

• Low-tech oil clean-up: Louisiana shrimper Alex Pellegrin didn’t wait for others to come up with ideas for cleaning up the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Using shrimp netting and “blue roof” tarp, he designed a prototype for an oil skimmer.
  
  
• Mayans were the OGBs: That’s “Original Green Builders.” Archaeologists, with help from NASA, “…have ‘unearthed’ a complete ancient Mayan city that employed a system of green urban architecture.”

Christian Marclay’s remixed album covers

New York multimedia artist Christian Marclay aligns record sleeve covers, including some iconic ones, to create unlikely compositions that are simultaneously playful, as well as “artistic.” This also looks like a fun project to do!

What we talk about when we talk about boobs, part 2

On Monday here we introduced the book Uncovered by Jordan Matter, and featured four of the women in the book. Today we feature four more portraits and interviews.

Em & Lo: How did you two end up taking part in this photo shoot?

Mike: I heard about the project somewhat based on my working as a figure model, as a male, I would clearly not qualify but mentioned it to Mary. She agreed to pose and wanted me to pose with her as well.
Mary: And I am always up for a trip to NY.

Slipping and falling women: PLEASE GIVE

I’ve seen too many main stream romantic comedies that show its female lead literally slipping and falling on her face, to the point that this physical pratfall seems totally cliché. I’m all for women doing ridiculous things – but really there’s so much to draw on out there. Let’s try for more meaningful, complex and embarrassing stuff. The kinds of things we women do that on reflection make us cringe so deeply we’d like to just implode into ourselves. Nicole Holofcener is still making films her way thankfully and PLEASE GIVE satisfies all these needs. What a relief to see imperfect women on the screen whose actions are not defined by their male counterparts and who do not totally reform by the end of the film in simplistic two dimensional ways. They are complex characters. They are selfish, vulnerable, loving and misguided in subtle and not so subtle ways. They are often gloriously ridiculous…

The corporate garden: good CSR, or cheap employee benefit?

It turns out colleges aren’t the only ones jumping into the community garden craze: according to yesterday’s New York Times, companies from PepsiCo to Best Buy to Kohl’s are putting in gardening spaces for employees to use.

So, what’s driving this movement towards corporate gardens? A push from employees? Sometimes. A desire for fresh food for the company cafeteria? Occasionally. But the big motivator? “As companies have less to spend on raises, health benefits and passes to the water park, a fashionable new perk is emerging: all the carrots and zucchini employees can grow.”

Mercury in retrograde: Time for self-medication

You’re letting all the cold air in… I am writing this column from my sofa, under two down comforters because…DAMN! It is cold out! Of course, we get this “never happened before” frigid blast from winters past the week after I put all my fall/winter clothes away. To get to a warm jacket and something [...]

Jump around: parkour extraordinaire

Watch Damien Walters’ breathtaking, supernatural highlight reel of some of his new stunts and parkour-ing. How is this guy not an action movie star? As my photographer buddy Jerome put it tweeted: “Jumping…We were all doing it wrong.” It may be time to put my health insurance to work because I really wanna learn how [...]

Dead or Alive

Landscape I and III by Levi van Velew The words “organic art” may induce cringing. A new catch phrase, you dare ask? No, just a convenient way to talk about the latest exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design, “Dead or Alive,” which showcases over 30 artists whose work is made from once living [...]

Music video: “LookListenFeel” featuring narration by Isabella Rossellini

LookListenFeel from Broken Antler on Vimeo. I like this zenful music video for Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra’s “LookListenFeel” featuring narration by Isabella Rossellini (Sundance Channel’s Green Porno) of a poem by Laura Archera Huxley. The visuals were created in a collaboration between UK designer Broken Antler and Ben the Illustrator. [Hat tip: Christopher!]

Hiking for the global water crisis

According to Denver-based non-profit Water for People, 884 million people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, and 6000 people die every day from water-borne illness. That’s a bit overwhelming, but a father-son team from Independence, Missouri has decided to do something about this crisis… by hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Steven Spydell and son Matt began their journey along the 2178-mile trail on April 5th, and are using their hike to raise funds for Water for People. They’ve set a goal of $10,000, but will likely surpass that: a graphic on their Hiking for Water website shows over $9400 dollars raised already… and they’re only into Virginia at this point.

Paper Cut

“Paper Cut,” just one part of the Graphic Design Festival in the Netherlands, is a survey of designers and artists working not just on paper, but with paper as the primary medium. From simple and playful pieces made using the basic techniques we all experimented with in grade school like cutting, folding, gluing and collage to [...]

Christina Aguilera replaces “vajayjay” with “woohoo”

We’re predicting the big pop hit of the summer is here — and it’s a going to be an anthem for girls nights out all over the country. For Christina Aguilera’s new song “Woohoo” featuring Nicki Minaj (from her album Bionic out this June) is all about the joys of cunnilingus. Best line ever: “All the boys think it’s cake when they taste my (woohoo), you don’t even need a plate, just your face, ha.” Ha indeed!

Saying goodbye to a-ha

Growing up gay in the 1980s I often listened to techno-pop in my room and dreamed of escaping. The souring falsettos of bands like Erasure, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and a-ha kept me grounded back then. I escaped into music.

Unlike the other aforementioned bands, a-ha all but disappeared from American radio and record store shelves by the 1990s. But not so in the rest of the world. In the 2000s the band scored massive hits all over Europe. The Norwegian supergroup remained relavent everywhere else across the globe. With synth stabs and the Morten Harket’s soaring falsetto, the greatest pop’s ever seen, the band made infectious and tightly-produced records.

At their New York show this past Saturday night the band did not disappoint.

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST: Lazy Teenager

(L to R) Surfer Holly Beck and Josh Dorfman in The Lazy Surfer.

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST airs Tuesdays at 8PM E/P.

In Lazy Teenager, I’m trying to green Gabe, the “cool” kid at his high school who is class president and who a lot of other students respect and look up to. Like many teenagers, Gabe is into looking stylish, attracting the ladies, and communicating constantly through at least a couple of electronic devices. I know that if I can green what’s important to him and get him to make more environmentally responsible choices, then through him I can influence his peer group to go green as well.

The power of kids to serve as role models for great causes and influence others is awesome. I’ve personally been involved with a couple of organizations that do an amazing job of supporting kids who want to make a difference in the world. But not only do they support them, they also honor them and help spread awareness of their achievements.

New-Old designs of 2010

New York Magazine’s recent Home Design issue highlight 21 designs for the home that embody the “Neo Classics” aesthetic which refresh old iconic and classic designs with new materials, edgy colors and styles. I’m particularly enamored with this “cyclone lounger,” a Le Corbusier inspired chair from Red Hook furniture company Uhuru’s Coney Island line which [...]

Cupcake cannon

If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like to see an ecstatic group of people getting smacked in slow motion (700 fps to be exact) with cupcakes of all colors, sprinkles, and flavors shot out of a steam-punk pneumatic cannon, then watch this fun video from Johnny Cupcakes. Who knew getting hit in the [...]

Got stuff? Give it away on Saturday…

Why Saturday? Because May 15 is now Give Away Your Stuff Day.

The brain child of New Yorker Mike Marone, the event is based on a simple premise:

Many of us own valuable stuff we just don’t want anymore. But instead of giving it away or selling it, we allow it to clutter our households and businesses. Billions of great items are just wasting away, taking up space.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could magically shift ownership of this stuff, in one weekend, coast to coast, with zero effort, little time, and at no cost?

What we talk about when we talk about boobs

We have to admit, when we first heard about Jordan Matter’s book Uncovered — topless portraits of more than 80 normal women (i.e. not models), all shot in public in NYC — we were cynical. First of all, it’s hard to get past the fact that Jordan Matter is a dude, who spent six years photographing topless women. Sure, some of the women are old enough to be his grandmother and there is an impressive range of body types featured. Still, we found it hard to get excited by the whole “embrace your body” message coming from a guy. Plus, while some of the jokes in the photos work, like the woman standing topless in front of a street stall selling knock-off bras, some — like the woman walking home from the office, topless with pearls from the waist up, corporate from the waist down — gave us second-hand embarrassment.

But then we started interviewing the women who participated in this project, and reading their personal statements that accompany their portraits in the book, as well as the awesome forward by Susan Seligson, author of the memoir Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front (who, to her surprise, ended up posing as well). And our cynicism started to crumble. Also, turns out it’s legal to be topless in the city — who knew?! Seligson writes in the foreward:

“For all the lusting, leering and hooting my breasts have attracted, exposing them of my own volition seemed to shift the power base. When I remove my top and bra on a city street, if anyone is the aggressor it’s me alone. How can I be the victim if I stage a pre-emptive strike? The experience left me feeling upbeat and somehow victorious, and the effect lingered for days.”

A Q&A with a-ha’s Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

a-ha, Norway’s techno-pop icons, played three nights in a row last week in NYC and are currently touring the US, for the second and last time. They’re calling it quits after this year-long tour. The band’s songwriter, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, answered some of my questions prior to the show. A review of the show can be found here tomorrow.

You’re touring the world one last time, including three nights in NYC. What has been the crowd response to your farewell tour?
We just did a month down in South America which was really quite special. We went in thinking our last show would be in December but of course, every show is the last show. A lot of people go out of there way to show what we have meant to them over they years.

During the first decade of the 2000s you recorded some brilliant albums (Lifelines, my fave) and were treated to success all over the world, but your music was hard to find for US fans. Will the American shows feature the albums that may not be as familiar to US fans?
Yes, the show will feature songs from all our 9 albums. We’ve recorded well over a hundred songs by now and it’s getting tricky to pick what to play. For some reason or another, we only toured the U.S. once. This is our second tour. I’m glad we got the chance to come back.

Richard Meier’s Model Museum

Multi-award-winning American architect Richard Meier is best known for his mostly white, supremely modern buildings like the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Indiana Athaneum and most famously, the Getty Center in Los Angeles. It is not so well known that he is one of very few architects working today who still uses physical models and not the more popular 3D models generated by a computer. But not only does Meier use models during his design process, he uses multiple, intricately rendered models of varying scale made mostly of wood.

American Gallery of Juror Art

The American Gallery of Juror Art features sketches, doodles, and photographs snapped by artists during their breaks when called in for jury duty. For example, during the voir dire process at a courtroom in Montgomery County, Maryland, John Borstel sketched some of his fellow prospective jurors.

Chinatown couple saves Banksy

There’s an irony that has accompanied Banksy’s fame which makes his graffiti a target for churlish defacement, as seen in this recent example where someone splashed yellow paint on one of Banksy’s newer pieces in San Francisco. It’s reminiscent of the anonymous splasher who riveted the New York street art community and the blogosphere back [...]