51-State Flag Revisited

June 15th, 2011

Maybe I was just looking at this all wrong. (See my post of a year ago.)

Homes

June 14th, 2011

Most people don’t usually think of their yards as containing any structures other than their house, their garage (if it’s not attached to their home), and perhaps a garden shed. The nest in this pine tree got me thinking about how many buildings are actually on my property. I’ve tended to think of the animals and birds I’ve seen as visitors just passing through, though with the woodchuck, I think that’s just wishful thinking. Once you begin to look, you see that there is quite a range of design choices!

 

Rules

June 8th, 2011

After a wonderful evening of listening to free improvisation at the Outpost in Cambridge last night, I took part in a discussion about the phrase “you have to learn the rules before you break them.” It was agreed that it was a relatively meaningless phrase. However, the beauty of the music that proceeded the discussion showed that certain rules were indeed in play. Perhaps a better way to describe it is that they all shared a language that allowed everyone there to mine possibilities and construct some rather varied “instant compositions” without unintentionally stepping on the feet of the other musicians. I say unintentionally because there was some rather purposeful stomping going on. I guess the idea is that you have to know which rules are in play to take advantage of them, because—whether you like or not—there are always rules.

A Concert in Cambridge by a Dane Recommended by Swedes

April 27th, 2011

We are certainly living in a different world. Why did it take a heads up from friends in Sweden to know about a gig at a venue I frequent? Poor advertising? Certainly.  But it’s also a story of how we share information these days. It’s not just friends around the corner, but those in different parts of the globe that often provide us with timely missives about things they know about. As my wife says, we are truly living in a transnational village.

The concert? Jacob Anderskov on piano with the Americans Chris Speed on sax and clarinet, Michael Formanek on bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. They played pieces from last year’s Agnostic Revelations, released on the ILK label. Squeezed in between a couple of other performers, they managed about 45 minutes of telepathy and interplay. Anderskov’s somewhat angular, and at times economic, style pointed to his Scandinavian jazz roots though the group clearly has forged their own identity. If you didn’t make the gig—and there weren’t many us there—get the album, and look for his name next time he comes around.

Yes, let’s.

March 3rd, 2011

Virtual Letterpress for the iPad

March 2nd, 2011

Kickstarter is a website that helps creative projects get off the ground with their online fundraising. Many of these you’ve never heard of—and probably won’t, even after they’ve successfully raised funds and launched.

One project that I think you will is from a company called LetterMpress—they are working on a virtual letterpress for the iPad. The interface mimics the actual process of this old way of setting and printing type, resulting in a great “print” when you’re done.  Even if you don’t have an iPad—I don’t—you should check out the video on Kickstarter—you might be inspired to contribute!

Different Strands: Sheila Hicks and Fred Sandback

March 1st, 2011


In recent exhibitions in the Boston area, we were able to view the work of the artists Sheila Hicks and Fred Sandback, both of whom use various types of thread, yarn, and string. Though they share similar materials, their work couldn’t be farther apart.

Hicks makes work that has a real physical presence, sometimes with relatively flat woven pieces that take advantage of insights gained from her travels around the globe, at other times with huge colorful tendrils that fall from the ceiling or with coils of fiber arranged in loops on the floor. Over a long career, she’s explored many ways to employ the same materials to articulate different understandings of form. Sometimes the color is paramount—not surprising since she studied with Josef Albers, though exposure to Alber’s wife Anni, a textile artist and printmaker, might have had a lot to do with Hicks’ original move into fiber. At other times, texture or patterns are more important. A lot of the work explores the tension between two dimensional work and sculpture.

The show, at the newly reopened Phillips Academy’s Addison Gallery of American Art, also included some of the commercial pieces which paid the bills and an engaging video of the artist commenting on her work as she arranges photos for the book that became the catalog for the show. As a whole, the exhibition revealed a keen explorer of her materials.

Sandback, on the other hand, describes space without really taking possession of it—in the show at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum his geometrical shapes made of acrylic yarn and acrylic cords ask viewers to reevaluate their relationship to the spaces around them without something massive in front of them. He is essentially drawing in space, using the line of the cord to react to architectural interiors and asking us to reorient ourselves. In one piece that stretches from the fifth floor to the second, we come to understand the building as a work itself instead of just a box of art. In fact, I briefly considered lines that were part of the ceiling as works by Sandback.Though he once spoke of using yarn like a No. 2 pencil, it is often the contrast of his pieces with their surroundings that make his “lines” act as edges of 3-dimensional spaces. One might think of these pieces as being simple—and in terms of materials they are—but the range of expression from a few simple colored lines in space in his hands is tremendous.

Unfortunately the Hicks show is no longer at the Addison, but it can be seen at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania beginning on March 24. The Sandback show closes on March 6.

Iranian Typography

February 21st, 2011

A recent posting on the imprint: EXPANDING THE DESIGN CONVERSATION blog calls our attention to a new book on Iranian typography. As a designer practicing in the United States, it’s often easy to forget about opportunities provided by letterforms different than the ones we use every day. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to see some posters—I believe from Iran, as well—at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery. Some of these took advantage of the idea of type as object—certainly not unfamiliar to audiences here—but with the calligraphic feel of the Persian characters, the effect was often profoundly different.

The catalog is the result of a relationship between Iranian designers and the Basel School of Design, showing 50 years of logo design and posters from the Iran. That’s a lot of history, especially when you consider that the first examples come from a very different world—one in which the country was under the rule of the Shah and much more connected to interests in the West. Looks like this book is worth a good look. More information from the publisher is here. Copies can be ordered from Amazon here.

Characters: Poetry at the beach

February 15th, 2011

Crane’s Beach, Ipswich, Massachusetts. 2.13.11

Intellectual property or ATM machine?

January 21st, 2011

Balloon dog bookends sold by imm-living.com.

The news that Jeff Koons has sued a gallery in San Francisco for copyright infringement—based on his claim that a pair of bookends is a copy of his”Balloon Dog”—I think throws a spotlight on the real “engine” that has driven a good deal of his work: money. (See the New York Times article In Twist, Jeff Koons Claims Rights to ‘Balloon Dogs’) In an earlier age where irony was king, he discovered that copies of popular culture icons and symbols had the appearance of a serious artistic approach and established a process for cranking out piece after piece. An artworld focused on flash enabled success, even though most of the work was yet  another iteration of the same joke.

Both Marcel Duchamp—with his readymades—and Andy Warhol—with his Brillo soap boxes—were making their audiences rethink the relationship between Life and Art, and the artist and his work. However, with Koons, a knowing smirk seems to be the desired response to many of his pieces.

 (Photo by Criesca.)

In this light, one has to wonder whether “Puppy,”the giant sculpture made up of flowers in front of the Guggenheim Bilbao, was an accident. It feels like a winner on so many levels: scale, the changing nature of “permanence,” and sheer visual delight among them.

To claim ownership of the idea of a ballon dog though seems like the problem with patented genes—when something is so much in the public or natural domain, how can an individual or corporation claim property rights that bring with them a financial reward? It’s as absurd as corporations being able to exercise “free speech” in the form of unlimited campaign donations. (Oh, I forgot—they can.) I hope this bubble bursts.