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The Beautiful New of James Turrell

An exhibit of James Turrell's work has opened at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg Museum in Germany.

Two Yellow Beach Huts by Andy Bell

More wonderfulness by British photographer Andy Bell. Check out his photoblog, Deceptive Media, if you want to get happy.

Best of Banksy

Today the dudes at Holy Taco have selected their 25 coolest Banksy graffiti masterpieces. Which is your favorite?

human + love + light by sungkuen lee

A new exhibit by Sungkuen Lee is being show in Milan at the Triennale Museum. Trip to Italy, anyone?

[via designboom]

The World Beach

I found these photographs taken by mammaoca2008 on flickr. They document earth art done on the beach by people who may or may not be artists.  You can become a part of the movement known as The World Beach too. Read more about it here.

Look Up: The Anti-Gravity Garden

How does this garden grow? Straight up!

Botanist Patrick Blanc created this eight-story garden at the Athenaeum hotel in London. This living installation features 12,000 carefully selected plants and a custom irrigation system. See the full story here.  (via wired)

from 60 Morning Walks by Andy Fitch

Friday

Fearing bronchitis I slept through the alarm and didn’t get out until 9:15. From the courtyard sparrows whistled on either side. The day felt complete, a little tiring even. A police officer propped against a red door frowned when my glance made him self-conscious. It turns out the building east of mine’s a corrections facility. I’d always thought it was a school.

Sudsy water along the curb made Fifth Ave. expansive and sensual. Bedrooms projected a broadcaster’s voice. I can’t remember crossing commuter tracks. Along the James Weldon Johnson Homes a black woman pointed at a white man’s chest: You should have attended the meeting I assigned! Audiocassette tape dangled from branches. Somebody called to a seventh-floor window I’m optimistic cause they said come back on Monday. Cars proclaimed themselves Trinidadian with red-and-white-striped everything. Sparrows guarding slices of toast stayed surprisingly adept at repulsing pigeons. A dirtbike abandoned next to boxes spun its wheels.

From 125th St. people on train platforms looked glamorous and made of vapor. Asians assessed a storefront with all its wiring exposed. A woman with crutches propped herself to wait for the 101. Groups stood outside delis now that it was warm. The Bus Stop Kitchenette was packed—the diner exhaust smell made me think of families.

Pink and beige balloons had become entwined to the back of a building called TRICHA 6. Within a block the streets turned barren. Spotting stuffed animals restored my inner strength. Both contact lenses began to flutter. When loud teens approached I stared ahead with a sense of purpose. A stream poured from one eye. I feigned wiping a nostril, just to somehow gesture, then lunged bizarrely towards them as they passed.

Amidst the Abraham Lincoln Homes a statue caressed a rising black boy’s cheek. Cars veered around garbage cans wedged into potholes. Cigarettes lined the curb: McGeorge or something. A Peter Pan bus sped by en route to Boston and I remembered being sad to leave the city like this.

Where the Madison Avenue Bridge began a crushed grape jelly jar spread across pavement. I’d ascended out among tan projects. Industrial currents brought on a headache, made me feel like the product of furious whittling. When I bent I found photographs of Bill Clinton. He looked angelic. An old guy in a Yankees cap biked around construction barrels. Demolished cars below had prices chalked across dashboards.

On the trip back to Manhattan I sensed that from one New York bridge you can always see others. A man slowed, saluted, said How you feeling chief? Wondering if Bronx people are extra friendly I made a Cuban jogger frown wishing her hello. My jacket pocket swelled and grazed a taut kid’s thigh. An older Puerto Rican peddled down Madison at just my pace. His bicycle gears creaked. The harmony with my mood and general worldview was exquisite. Beside people in wheelchairs waiting for busses a woman chewed on lottery printouts. A big white Italianate house’s gingerbread drew me west. Someone around forty leaned from his van to engage a boy dropping carpet at the curb. Two guys alternated squats on a Soloflex machine. They knew everybody.

The occasional white person crossing Lenox looked relieved to have me to fixate on. A drunken blonde in drag said Honey don’t tell me you don’t have a quarter. Rice covered sidewalk but there wasn’t any church. An abandoned wheelchair blew against trash. A Jewish woman with a chihuahua in her bag asked if we were at all close to Columbus. The dog crouched (quiet and attentive).

Around 112th a Dominican man got lost imagining an argument. His voice kept coming as the distance grew between us. Beneath scaffolds I dodged dust clouds as debris hit dumpsters. By then it had to be about fifty degrees. 

by Andy Fitch

published in There Journal

Music Machine, Powered by Rain

The funnel wall at the Kunsthofpassage in Neustadt, Germany, changes rain into symphony.

(via Make Magazine)

If Grandmas Ruled the World

A grandma in Simi Valley CA collected bottles and slowly built this shrine-like village starting in the 1950s and completing it in the 1980s. See the story and photos at Inhabit.

A Jam with Frank Gehry

Originally uploaded to flickr by Ck+

I've been enjoying the Flickr collection of photographs of Frank Gehry's architecture. The photos almost look like paintings. Or like the like these massive buildings are about to start dancing.

Tapumes by Henrique Oliveira

This summer you can see an unusual art installation by Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira.  In the exhibit the artist manages to make wood seem wave-like. To quote the gallery site:

Oliveira uses tapumes, which in Portuguese can mean “fencing,” “boarding,” or “enclosure,” as a title for many of his large-scale installations. The term makes reference to the temporary wooden construction fences seen throughout the city of São Paulo where Oliveira lives. It also refers to the weathered wood Oliveira uses as the primary material in his installations.

Houstonians can visit Tapumes by Henrique Oliveira at the Rice University Art Gallery until August 11, 2009. For more information, including video, click here.

Could School Be Cool?

I read about this plan for an elementary school in Berlin on Design Boom.  Here's the scoop:

berlin based susanne hoffmann architects created the 'die baupiloten' program to design innovative school environments. the erika mann elementary school II is one of their latest projects, designed in collaboration with the school’s students. the concept involves an imaginary landscape for the fictitious silver dragon. around this theme the architects create a playful environment that is realized in different areas of the school. the upper floor features a modular seating system  with ‘fire claws’ called ‘the snuffle of the silver dragon’. below, the ‘chill room’ features a landscape of seating pedestals surrounded by petals and the second story features the ‘snuffle garden’ complete with horizontal and slopped surface for sitting and playing.  the landscapes provide the children with unusual environments to play and stimulate their creativity. 

You can read about the firm that designed the school it here.

Invisible Houses

For the subterraneans, here's some news for you.

Typography + Geography by Ork

Here's something really cool: map meets visual poetry. Check out the complete collection at Ork Posters.

Houses (in Motion)

Click on the grid to see the photos of HOUSES posted on flickr.
This set was originally created to flickr by Amalia Versaci. Each photo is by a different artist.

Welcome to Chris Marker's Second Life

Film director Chris Marker has told the movies to move over. Check out this article about his newest "world," a virtual one in Second Life. You can see samples of his Second Life archipelago, Ouvroir, and museum, and an interview, as well.

Chips, Chips

The Diner Series, #1


Chip's (film)
Originally uploaded to flickr by Meltwater

Stencil Graffiti Master, Señor X

You can see more of Señor X's work on his blog.

(via a post on My Modern Metropolis by Alice)

iPhone as Moleskine (Monday)

Is the iPhone the moleskine of the future?

Jorge Colombo certainly makes it look easy in these sketches of New York City. You can even watch a quicktime movie of each picture, emerging, so to speak.

~~~~

Update: Here is a newer link for Colombo's work at The New Yorker.

And Then It Got Very Cool

For National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets has organized a very cool contest. Here's the announcement from their site:

Recreate a favorite poem off the page and contribute it to the Free Verse project. Write lines on a sandy beach, assemble twigs on a hillside, or chalk the sidewalk. Take a photo before it disappears and post it in the Free Verse group page on Flickr, on the Academy's Fan Page on Facebook, or email your photo to freeverse@poets.org. Include the source of your lines in the photo caption.

And here is a great example:

ashberry2
Originally uploaded by findeerror

The Irene Hixson Whitney bridge in downtown Minneapolis. As you walk across the bridge, you can read John Ashbery's poem, commissioned for the bridge.

And now I cannot remember how I would
have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place.
The place, of movement and an order.
The place of old order.
But the tail end of the movement is new.
Driving us to say what we are thinking.
It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand
and think of going no further.
And it is good when you get to no further.
It is like a reason that picks you up and
places you where you always wanted to be.
This far, it is fair to be crossing, to have crossed.
Then there is no promise in the other.
Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence,
small panacea
and lucky for us.
And then it got very cool.

A Castle Made of Snow

If you ever end up in Kemi, Finland, without a place to stay, fret not. This snow hotel has rooms for couples and singles. Sleeping bag included!  See the story on Cool Hunting to find out more.

Snow Dragon

Dragon, originally uploaded to flickr by zhaonameloc.

I've been at the AWP conference in Chicago this week. Across the street from my hotel, there's been a snow sculpture contest. It's been fun to watch the giant blocks of white turn into dragons and dogs and lotus blooms. At night, they look especially cool.

Vasco Mourão and the Secret Structure of Imagination

Architecture meets dream in the work (the world) of Vasco Mourão.

via Art MoCo

If I Wish Divide into Tiny Eternities

jenny holzer installation at guggenheim, originally uploaded by fluidotv.

Jenny Holzer's work lords over our generation like the Other Big Brother.

So Much Love

It's a Richard Serra Sunday, thanks to the fab photograph by Gaelan Macrame, found on flickr.

[Originally uploaded to flickr by gaelan.]

Rust Song

These are flickr photos of work by artist and sculptor Richard Serra.

first photo by fake plastic earth via flickr

second photo by MRY Studio via flickr

(via Silliman's Blog and Modern Art Notes)

One Day Poem Pavilion

My friend Ann Sieber sent me a link this week to Jiyeon Song's site Experiential Typography, saying she thought I might like it. I do!

"The One Day Poem Pavilion demonstrates the poetic, transitory, site-sensitive and time-based nature of light and shadow. Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilion’s surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, which–during specific times of the year–transform into the legible text of a poem. The specific arrangements of the perforations reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar...."

The poem Song chose is a sijo, a form from classical Korean poetry.  Here's the breakdown:

You can learn more about this form here or here.  And you can see the pavilion through time-lapse photography on YouTube.

Song did this project as part of a master's thesis at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Bloxes

  Bloxes 
by aikoto via Flickr

From the official Blox website:

What are Bloxes?

Bloxes are building blocks made of interlocking pieces of corrugated cardboard, folded together. Their unique shape and structure make them exceptionally strong and lightweight .

Check out their website for more information.

Move Into Your iPod

u+a + neil m. denari architects: useful + agreeable house

(via a daily dose of architecture)

Poetry and Architecture

Or, to be more precise: Lautréamont and Gaudi.

A Daily Dose of Architecture runs an intermittent series of posts comparing specific poets and archiitects.  I always enjoy it.  Here's a link to a recent one.  The idea is not to make an argument about the two artists but rather to juxtapose their work side by side.  It's up to us to make our own conclusions.