sundance

Unique pottery plates

Maxime Ansiau created a four piece set of plates that puts a unique architectural-themed spin on Delftware blue and white glazed pottery.

See BYE BYE KITTY!!! before it closes!!!

The attention-grabbing exhibition “BYE BYE KITTY!!!” at Japan Society is designed to buck our modern day association with Japanese art with otaku (punk/goth/sailor moon/anime-style) and kawaii culture (cute/babydoll/victorian/Murakami-bright/happy face/ice cream cone-style). Curator David Elliot, founding Director of the Mori Art Museum, compiled sixteen emerging and mid-career Japanese artists whose work engages historical traditions in painting while “challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future.” Makoto Aida’s collages, for example, may feature short-skirted cartoon school girls, but they’ve been lampooned and are shown enacting the ancient samurai practice of ritual suicide. Yoshitomo Nara works in a similar vein with his untitled Hello Kitty memorial, complete with matching grey stone cartoon sentinels, guarding the not-so-cute tomb.

Love letters of George Carlin

I had no idea George Carlin was such a romantic as evident in these sweet love letters to his wife Sally Wade, such as the one above. The genius comic passed away two days before the couple’s tenth anniversary. The best part of this particular letter to me is just how dorky he sounds with his science references and addressing Sally as “Sallyburger.”

Green tech finds (6/2/11)

Mini electric Hummers, solar-powered prisons, and the climate risk posed by biodegradable products… this week’s green tech finds.

• Autodesk meets sustainability: Design/engineering software suite Autodesk has now added a tool that allows users to generate environmental impact assessments of their creations.
  
  
• Biodegradable products may not be climate-friendly: Turns out that biodegradable disposable tableware and such may have a real downside — the creation of methane in landfills (most of which aren’t set up to capture the potent greenhouse gas). (via @conservationval)
  
  

Vimeo of the Week: Jellyfish Lake

JELLYFISH LAKE from Sarosh Jacob on Vimeo.

Jellyfish Lake by Sarosh Jacob is a hypnotic film documenting Jellyfish Lake on Eli Malk island in the Republic of Palau. The jellyfish live in this lake without an real predators which has lead to them losing their stinging ability. More from the filmmaker below:

Recycling tornado debris: finding opportunity in disaster

As tornadoes have left wreckage across numerous parts of the US in recent months, a number of people are looking at all the debris left behind… and seeing opportunity. In Birmingham, Alabama, for instance, Southeast Renewables has set up station at the North Georgia landfill to sort our recyclable materials… a process that will make the company money, and save some for the city on disposal fees: the company claims it can recycle up to 80% of the tornado wreckage. In North Carolina’s Triangle area, individuals are the ones taking the initiative: local television station NBC-17 reported on a couple collecting scrap metal debris and taking it to a recycler… and making about $300 a day.

Awesome people hanging out together

How to Make a Blog 101: pick a theme that can be illustrated in pictures, cull (read: steal) images reflecting that theme from all over the web, caption each image (wit/irony/humor optional). Think Failblog, PeopleOfWalmart, MyBadParent, TooBigForStroller, etc. Some are more clever than others. In fact, success isn’t measured in cleverness, but in whether a [...]

The Best Street Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of

As an enormous fan of candid street photography (discovering Cartier-Bresson and Weegee née Arthur Fellig years ago was a revelation for me), I was blown away by both the background story and photographs of Vivian Maier or as Mother Jones described her: “the best street photographer you’ve never heard of.” Maier lived a relatively obscure and anonymous life as a nanny in New York City and then Chicago from the 1950s through 1990s. Never married, her constant companion through her life was her Rolleiflex camera which she used frequently, but apparently she never shared her work with others. It wasn’t until 2007 when John Maloof, 26, purchased a box of Maier’s negatives at an auction house that they came to light. Taken with the quality, he sought out others and ended up collecting more than 100,000 negatives as well as a few thousand rolls of film.

Heartwarming Japanese bullet-train commercial goes viral

Tokyo Mango shared this heartwarming Japanese commercial promoting a new bullet train getting cheered on as it made its “debut trip across the southern island of Kyushu on March 12, just one day after the earthquake.” The spot was pulled from the airwaves for fears of insensitivity after the earthquake, but it quickly went viral [...]

New York’s changing face

James and Karla Murray’s New York City storefronts project is now a book. It took them 10 years to complete the project and in that time 1/3 of all the shops photographed have shuttered. It’s a visual documentation of the loss of Mom and Pop stores across NYC. From the couple: STORE FRONT is a [...]

Chang-dong Lee’s POETRY and the world of MEN

I saw POETRY last week and was moved by many elements, one of which being the simple fact that this long, contemplative feature is about — sit down now — an elderly female protagonist. Hollywood it ain’t. Sixty-six year old Mija (Jeong-hie Yun) has two recent challenges: memory loss and a sullen teenage grandson, whose escapades with his friends, we later discover, make the trouble one hundred fold for his grandma. In fact, in Lee’s accomplished second feature, the world of men – their desires and back-room dealings — are the root of most of Mija’s problems, and her quiet strategies toward solutions are a major force of subversion, even rebellion. But does she feel like a kick-ass protagonist with a big bad agenda? Hell, no.

Dollar dollar bill y’all

photo by Jason Schmidt

When conceptual artist Hans Peter Feldmann revealed what he would do with the $100,000 award money that accompanies the annual Hugo Boss Prize, critics were split between those who thought it seemed like an obvious, even hammy approach and those who “wished it could be on permanent display.” Recipients of the prize are expected to use at least part of the hundred-grand towards a new work, but so far no one has dedicated each and every dollar of it in the way Feldmann has – using it to line the walls of the Guggenheim. And while he could have easily obtained $100,000-worth of brand new bills (much more easily, in fact), Feldmann’s $100,000 wallpaper is made up of only used bills. It’s not enough to line the entire rotunda, it’s more than enough for the second-floor gallery, where it will be on display until November 2, 2011.

Passive House next addition to Greensburg’s Chain of Eco-Homes

With the recent spate of deadly tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, Greensburg, Kansas, the town destroyed by an E5 tornado in May, 2007, has largely fallen out of public view. That’s too bad, as this small western Kansas town has made itself a model of resilience and adaptation… not to mention turning itself into a hub of sustainable development.

The way we stray today

Pamela Haag‘s new book “Marriage Confidential” has one of the best subtitles we’ve seen in a long time: “The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules.” That’s a lot to live up to, but the book delivers. And it’s getting good buzz. Below is an excerpt from the section “New Twists on Old Infidelities, Or, The Way We Stray Today”:

Naked News: San Francisco puts circumcision ban on the ballot

• Circumcision ban to appear on November ballot in San Francisco.
  
  
• New Utah law bans “lewd acts” like fondling your own breasts.
  
  
• Further East, things are a little more sane: A sex ed contraception requirement passes the Illinois Senate.
  
  

Pictures by a Reuters photojournalist of a harrowing flight that nearly crashed

When the flight he was on with his wife and kids from Singapore to Jakarta experienced a scary malfunction that threatened to crash the plane, this Reuters photojournalist calmly documented the ordeal and shared the photos and experience on a Reuters blog. During my many years of assignments as a Reuters photojournalist, when flying I [...]