…but you need to be reading this website.
I love this man. He’s a designer with some serious snarky snark. I only wish I had the steel gonads to write the responses he does. Here are my favorites:
http://27bslash6.com/missy.html
http://27bslash6.com/easter.html
http://27bslash6.com/p2p2.html
I’m constantly on the prowl for new and exciting illustrators and artists, mainly because I feel like I am perpetually inundated with crappy stuff, so when I see something that stands out from the crowd of mundacity, I get excited and I feel the need to share it with others. Here are two of them.
El Mac is a street artist, predominantly focused on portraits, who does the most amazing work with spray paint. We are all familiar with the typical ways spray paint is used and we’ve all seen some stellar graffiti work. What makes El Mac different is the way he handles gradations by layering the spray over and over in arcs until it reaches the tone he’s trying to achieve. I’ve never seen anything like it. Also, he often works in conjunction with another artist, I don’t know his name, who does these calligraphic elements all around the El Mac faces. It’s a terrific collaboration.
And his phenomenal tonal work is equally impressive in his fine art. He does these painted portraits with a brush and a limited palette of colors. El Mac makes these lines and swirls and by using different thickness of brush stroke he carves light and dark out of the surface. It reminds me of those sand paintings by Tibetan monks – the patience and the precision. And it looks like he freehands quite a bit, which blows my mind.
And the other artist is Audrey Kawasaki. I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about her before. I am a huge fan. HUGE. I love her work. She does paintings on wood, using both a glazing of oil paints and occasionally colored pencils, often allowing the grain of the wood to show through. Most of her images include a sleepy-looking nymphet with natural elements around her in some way. There’s a great deal of art nouveau influence and traditional Japanese art in there, but it’s a style all her own.
I will never ever ever own any of her work for two reasons: one, every time she has a exhibition, her work is snapped up long before it opens, and two, since it is so popular, it goes for insanely high prices. So I must enjoy Audrey’s work from a distance. Sigh.
Flower show, people! Very exciting! I don’t know if they had a cohesive theme this year like they have had in years past; it seemed a bit hodge-podge. But I’m not complaining. As always, all kinds of plants with bright colors and textures, oh, it makes me so happy.
The entrance was a bit eh in my opinion, all fake flowers slapped all over the walls. And in the window boxes were plants with cakes in the middle representing the different fairy tales.
I gravitated towards the succulent window as usual, and the wee succulents were delightful. If I lived in a desert climate, I would pour all my money into my garden for sure.
So, whoever was in charge this year was not afraid of the spookier plants, because as you came in and turned into the bag section – blammo! – you were confronted with giant freaky pitcher plants dangling in your face. They were so big and had so much presence when I almost bumped into them I said, “Excuse me,” to them.
Nearby these monster pitcher plants was the aye-aye of the plant world. The were a thick, fleshy, reddish, pointy plant covered with whitish fur. It looked like someone with white back hair got a bad sunburn.
That wasn’t the ickiest part though. It was the petals creeping out of the pods. All I could think about is every horror movie where they show a door, and sloooooowly dirty fingers with jacked-up nails come around the edge of the door, and you know OH DEAR GOD HORRIBLE DEMON A-COMIN’ and then you cover your eyes with your hand (if you’re me).
And then cactus cactus cactus.
All kinds of cactii. I love cactii and succulents so much because I think they look like totally alien creatures, very Dr. Seussian. And there’s such a variety of sizes and shapes! I never cease to be enthralled by them and their wackiness.
Also, orchids. Really stellar ones this year.
And, of course, no flower show would be complete without a picture of a papyrus plant with the little sign written in Papyrus font.
Additional flower show photos: woman exhausted and sleeping next to the jewelry section.
And the panderingest pandery thing ever: the jewelry case totally devoted to the look of former Princess Diana’s ring, now Kate’s ring. Here’s a pic of the ring.
And here’s the case.
I am a bit obsessed with Laura McCabe lately (I’ve blogged about her before) because when I was in Michael’s a few weeks ago, I saw her book Embellished Beadweaving. I then lost my mind and decided to make a lariat for myself. I had no human conception of how freakin’ long it takes to make one of these things. Holy Moses, it took forever. I just wanted a long green plain lariat with sparkly bits at either end, but I used a very stiff stitch called herringbone stitch, so when I finished it (several thousand hours later) and put it around my neck, it looked like I was being slowly choked to death by a garden hose which, shockingly, was not the look I was going for. So I sat there pensively trying to figure out how to solve my problem. I decided to snip the lariat right in the middle and put a beaded something-or-other there to act as a hinge, and then I made a beaded doothangy to bring the two sides together so they wouldn’t migrate to my armpits. Finally, after like a month of non-stop beading, I am done with it and I must say it turned out pretty well. Hooray for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever make one again.
I’ve spent this entire week both working and prepping for a big family get-together, so I have nothing particularly interesting to share. However, I do have charts for you to enjoy. And I’m working on some creative things that hopefully I will share soon. In the meantime, charts.
Last weekend I saw the move Exit Through The Gift Shop and I feel a need to talk about it. First of all, it’s an excellent documentary. It got great reviews and is well-worth watching, and it’s streaming right now on Netflix, so go see it. That being said, I was infuriated by the last third or so of it. Here’s the basic plot summary (don’t read this next paragraph if you want the film to be a surprise):
There are street artists. No one has ever documented their actions. There is a crazy French vintage-clothing-store-owner named Thierry (Terry) living in Los Angeles who is obsessed with videotaping everything. His cousin is Space Invader, a well-known street artist. Thierry films his actions and is introduced to other street artists, including Shepherd Fairey. Shepherd introduces Thierry to Bansky, the most famous street artist ever. Other stuff happens. In order to edit Thierry’s heaps of footage of both Banksy and other street artists into a film without Thierry being involved, Bansky tells Thierry to make some art and have a small show, basically to get him out of Bansky’s hair. Here’s where I start to fill with rage. Thierry, who has no artistic training or skill or experience, rents a gigantic building in L.A. and hires a massive staff to make his “art”. He is clearly crazy, his artwork is utter pointless crap, but he understands hype, so he hypes the hell out of his show. When his show opens, tons of people show up, people who are desperate to be “cool”, Thierry sells all his crap art and rakes in a million dollars. Jessica bursts into flames. The end.
Here’s the deal, people. Artists aren’t the people who come up with the ideas, okay? We all come up with ideas, all the time. Good ones, dumb ones, weird ones, etc. “What if blah blah was a blah blah blah?” The artists are the people who pluck ideas, theirs or others, out of the ether and make them into something we can see and touch and feel. They are inspired by something and the make something in the hopes that you will feel the same way they do about that thing. I’ll give you an example from my own life. I worked with a guy named Jd at BBDO, and he mentioned to me that every time he went to a new job, shortly after he started everyone else was fired, a whole new staff was hired and everything started anew. Apparently this seemed to happen every time he switched jobs. It was a joke with him and his friends that he was like Kali, the Hindu God of Destruction and Rebirth. I thought that was a funny idea, so I made a ink drawing of him as Kali.
I did not have the idea. I heard it, I liked it, I executed it. Who’s the artist in this situation, Jd or me? So when you (and when I say “you”, I mean you, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst) hire a big ole staff and you wander in and say, “Wouldn’t it be cool to cover a skull with diamonds?” or “I think a giant sculpture of a balloon animal would be neat,” and then you leave the building while your staff actually makes the thing and you touch nothing, but then you go and take credit for all the work, that doesn’t make you an artist. That makes you a hype machine. Your staff is the artist. And I hate you.
By the way, I love the skull covered with diamonds and the giant balloon dog. That’s not the point.
Let’s look the leftover photos I have from the London trip.
Cricket and I were walking past the Millennium Bridge and we happened on this weird neat-o fountain. It looked like a ship with all kinds of wacky alchemy stuff attached to it. My favorite part was the figure in the back who looked like a giant-nosed Napoleon with an umbrella on his head.
St. Martin-in-the-Fields (real name) Church is one of the best churches you could have the pleasure of visiting. They turned their crypt into into a lovely tea room with stellar cafeteria-style food service (like lamb shank and roasted root vegetables, yummers) and you only feel slightly horribly guilty for enjoying tasty snakkies on top of the graves of people. You can also do bronze rubbings and listen to different kinds of live music. Cricket and I took the time to go up into the actual church-area and I was surprised at what I found. Their main window is clear glass, and in the center is a milky-white-stained-glass egg that is lit by special lights, so it looks like it is glowing. I think that is genius. Instead of having the whole bible story mapped out, they left a little to the imagination. And darn it if it doesn’t look ethereal.
London has a Chinatown, much like most other cities do. Theirs is much smaller than the one in New York. And they have a wall dragon as you walk in.
The lanterns are a really nice touch.
And their pharmacist has this great poster in the window. The tank illustration gave us the giggles.
We visited two major stores: Harrods and Hamleys. Harrods is one of the most famous department stores in the world, and I must say it is fancy. If you do go there, make a point to go to the food court. Holy Moses, it is glorious. They have every kind of food from anywhere in the world. It was mind-blowing. For example, here is a photo of a section of their terrines. Terrines are basically patés or finely ground meatloafs.
And that’s just one little corner of the magic. Another cool thing about Harrods are the 11,000 lights on the exterior.
Hamleys is a very old and very large toy store. Here is the lowdown on the floors:
5th floor: Boys — Action figures, vehicles, and an open cafe.
4th floor: Hobbies — Model kits, remote-controlled vehicles, model railways, Scalextric, etc.
3rd floor: Girls — Dolls, Arts & Crafts, Hello Kitty, Dress-up, etc.
2nd floor: Preschool — Toys for young children.
1st floor: Games — Board games, science, jigsaws; also a Build-A-Bear Workshop and Sweet Shop.
Ground floor: Soft toys — a wide variety of stuffed animals, and also a Marvin’s Magic section.
Basement: Interactive — Lego, construction toys, Red 5, novelties and GAME (retailer).
I don’t really care one way or the other about toys or games, but I did geek out really hard when I got to (wait for it) the Harry Potter Wand Store section.
Every wand for any character from the film. So exciting! It made me believe, just for a moment, that there’s a train that could take me to Hogwarts.
Now, everyone says the British are more elegant and reserved and classy, and I am inclined to agree, based on the fact that they made an opera of (not making this up) Anna-Nicole Smith’s life. Really. And it’s at the Royal Opera House, not some avant-garde experimental theater space. That’s pretty wild. (It got great reviews, by the way. I would have tried to see it, but it opened after I left.)
Two final random shots: One, an old ship with a terrified-looking deer as the figurehead which I found really funny for some reason.
And a men’s store’s spring window display. The smallest figure is spinning while only wearing underpants. You can almost hear him saying, “Whee! I’m nakee!”
That’s it. That’s my trip to London. If anyone has any questions or queries, feel free to contact me. I have 300 other photos that I did not share here which I would be happy to show you.
OMG, museums! Today it’s the British Museum. But I’d like to start us off with some random shots.
The weather wasn’t always glorious. Some days were exactly what you would expect if you went to England.
Cricket and I split up one day: I went to the V&A and he went to the Churchill War Rooms and Buckingham Palace. Right next to the Churchill War Rooms is St. James Park, which has a lovely assortment of ducks and geese.
And whatever this thing is. Its legs make it look like it’s wearing a black unitard with a skeleton painted on it. Odd little waterfowl.
Doorknobs in the center of the door. Europe – things are different there!
Okay, The British Museum. I think when it was originally built there were a bunch of buildings in the Grecian style around an open courtyard, and it appears that at some point a large rotunda was built in the middle of the courtyard and a glass roof was installed over the whole thing, connecting all the buildings without having to go outside. It really is huge, the rotunda, so I tried to make a rough composite shot of the space. It’s very impressive.
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the British Museum because a large portion of the exhibits are stolen or looted from their place of origin, like a goodly portion of the Egyptian section, or the stones off of the Parthenon (Greece really wants those back, they’re very cranky about it). But I was just excited to see all the historical things. For example, the Rosetta Stone.
And the plethora of Egyptian relics.
These ladies were terrifying. They’re about the same height as a man, and you can feel them silently judging you.
And they have so many dead things. Like mummified cats.
And a mummified ibis next to a mummified falcon.
And canopic jars for holding your internal organs.
And let’s not leave out Ginger, a seriously dead guy surrounded by his grave-goods. Ginger died in 3400 B.C. and is naturally preserved. And dead.
I really enjoyed looking at the hieroglyphics. I kept seeing this reoccurring slug hieroglyphic. I wonder what it represents. Or it could be a startled snake, with cartoon “startled” marks around its head. I also wonder what that would represent.
Aside from the Egyptian section, there’s a whole bunch of other neat stuff that we saw. They have an excellent collection of Assyrian wall art (probably stolen). I studied the Assyrian artwork in art history class. That’s where I learned something interesting about large guard-sculpture’s legs.
The stonecarvers wanted him to be able to look like he was guarding both to the front and to the side, so he has five legs. Go ahead, count them. Five.
I also had to study all these wall carvings with themes like lion hunts and battles and the like. Say what you want about the Assyrians, but they could relief-carve a lion and a horse like no one’s business.
Other things from the British Museum that caught my eye: The death mask of Napoleon.
An impression bead where the animals look like “Where The Wild Things Are” characters.
A Celtic helmet with horns.
And a Roman mosaic of a duck. I liked this especially because it used all kinds of random colors, but if you stand far away from it, your eye blends the colors correctly for you, totally anticipating Pointillism by 2000 years. Go Romans.
That pretty much covers all the musea that I hit up while in London. In the next few days I will finish up the remaining dribs and drabs of photos and then we can get back to business as usual (whatever that is).
More museums! Can’t get enough! But first, a couple of random photos.
Pret A Manger (or Pret, as it’s often referred to) is from England, and I found this window cling very pleasing for two reasons. One, I like alliteration, and two, I happen to know (don’t ask me how or why) that the tool used to stir porridge, the one you see in the bowl there, is called a spurtle.
I mentioned earlier when I was talking about the play Warhorse how creepy I thought it was to have war stories for children. Apparently Warhorse wasn’t enough, oh no! Let’s have a whole freakin’ exhibition of traumatic tales for tots! Nightmares for everyone!
Did everyone read the book The Witches by Roald Dahl? If it’s been a while, let me refresh some points for you. The witches don’t blend into normal society. They have long claws, so they have to wear gloves. They are bald, so they have to wear wigs. They have blue spit, which makes their teeth have a bluish tinge. And finally, they have no toes and their feet end in blunt stumps, making wearing modern pointy shoes extremely painful for them. I used to love that book and read it over and over, and to this day everytime I see super-pointy shoes, I think about how uncomfortable those must be for witches to wear. Imagine my glee when I saw these shoes in a shop in Greenwich, in the land that the book The Witches takes place in.
This proves it! The story is true! Witch shoes!
This is a poster from the subway for a drug exhibition. I didn’t go, but I loved the words chosen for the poster.
Now, the V&A Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum of Art and Design is my most favorite museum in the whole wide world. If I lived in London, I would be there once a month. You simply can’t see everything, even after many visits. It’s a beautiful building in itself:
Which still has shrapnel scars all over from the bombings of WWII.
And inside is rooms and rooms and rooms of every kind of design you can imagine – architecture, garments, jewelry, housewares, armor, etc. Check it out.
You want a room full of Greek stuff? You got it.
How about Early Christian? Not a problem.
Medieval, perhaps? We have a room for that.
How about a long hallway completely filled with every kind of ironwork? Okeedoke.
Seriously, it’s intense. Here’s a picture of a giant super-snazzy Baroque wall of a house. You can’t appreciate it in the picture, But the red parts of the wall is transparent red glass over mirror shards, giving it that extra tackiness. Sparkly!
I decided to focus on the Japanese items on this visit (last time I focused on the art glass section). It was really dark in the Japanese wing, but I still tried to get some decent shots.
The Japanese traditional clothing did not have pockets, so the Japanese originally used little hanging boxes called inro, like little wooden purses. The toggle bead holding the cords of the inro together was called a netsuke. The inro and the netsuke were often exquisitely carved small sculptures made from ivory or hardwoods, accented by metals.
Often natural elements are used in the pieces, like wee beasties or plants. Here is a tiny curled-up rat netsuke.
And here is a snail on a leaf netsuke.
But my favorite, without a doubt, was this one.
A badger wrapped in a lotus leaf?! With a little rain hat? How effin’ cute is that? I totally squee-ed.
Interestingly enough, the thing that blew my mind the most in the museum wasn’t anything I expected. I was walking up to the fourth floor when I passed this enormous wall drawing. It had to be 10 feet by 14 feet. It was huge.
It was an isometric drawing of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Here’s the deal, though: Every single detail is in there. Drawn with pen. Probably a pen with a nib that you have to dunk in an inkwell. It might be one of the most humbling things I’ve ever seen. Since it’s so tall, I could only take pictures of the lower half, but you get the idea.
Woooooow. Here’s the info card next to the drawing.
I might have stood in front of that drawing for fifteen minutes. If you go to the V&A, make sure you check this out. It’s at the top of the stairs to the fourth floor as you enter the architectural section.
(And here’s a nice photo Cricket took of the Millennium Bridge with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background.)
Did I mention that we went to theater? ‘Cause we did. We saw four pieces of theater and some stand-up comedy. Let me run through the theatrical stuff real quick-like for you.
1. Warhorse. It’s going into previews at Lincoln Center right now. It was fabulous, one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend it. That being said, it is also a total cry-fest. Ooooh, you’re gonna cry, possibly forever. It’s based on a children’s war story. What the hell, England? War stories for kids? You read that material to them at bedtime? “And then the grenade exploded, and Michael was blown to smithereens right in front of his childhood friend Alan. Alan then had the metallic taste of Michael’s blood in his mouth. Nighty-night kids!” Anyway, the roles of the horses are played by giant, horse-size puppets run by three people each. You can see the puppeteers, but after a while you don’t even notice them there. The horses breathe, and their ears wiggle back and forth, and they snort and slap away flies with their tail, it’s just amazing. It’s going to be one of the best pieces of theater you’ll see in ages. Here are some pictures I found online.
Quick recap: Phenomenal theater, you will cry until your face puffs up and people think you got punched in the face in a brawl over syrup.
2. The Woman in Black. This is spooooooooky bit of theater. Since you’re never going to see it, I can give you the plot summary. Woman A has baby out of wedlock. Her sister, Woman B, offers to take the child and raise it as her own. Woman B is a lady of means who lives in a big house surrounded by spoooooky marshes covered by spoooooky mist. Woman A is distraught but has no other options, so she agrees. Woman B says Woman A can visit the boy, but must not reveal her true relationship to the child. When the boy is six, Woman A, while waiting by the window of the big house for the boy to return from an outing, sees the pony and cart that the child and a caretaker are riding in. She then sees the cart, pony, child and caretaker fall into the marsh and get sucked under. Woman A is completely emotionally destroyed, develops a wasting disease and dies. Her ghost now haunts the big house her sister lived in. If you see her (woman dressed all in black, skeletal face), that means your child will die shortly after. Everyone in the nearby village avoids the house because – hey, shocker! – they don’t want to bump into her and have their kids die in unpleasant ways. But a young lawyer goes up there to close out the estate and organize the finances and creeeeeepy things happen.
Anyone who knows me knows I do not like child-based terror. This show had all the things that make the skin on my back get icy and leave the room. Rocking chair with no one in it? Check. Music box that no one opened but is playing anyway? Check. Flashlight zipping around a room filled with children’s toys and clothes? Check. M. Night Shyamalan-style build-ups of silence and suspense following by loud screaming that caused me to crap my pants? Check.
Quick recap: Spoooooooky.
3) The Children’s Hour. It was meh. It had lots of famous people in it (Carol Kane, Ellen Burstyn, Kiera Knightley and Elizabeth Moss), but some of the people are just not very good stage actors. Combined with a script that is not exactly riveting (Are they lesbians? Aren’t they? Who cares?), it made for a very tepid experience. And at no point did Carol Kane say, “LIAH! LIAH!!”, which was a disappointment. But the good thing is that you can drink beer outside. Here is Cricket drinking beer outside the theater.
Quick recap: Meh.
4) The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Okay, I admit, this is a wholly American show, but I love the hell out of it and I wanted to see how the Brits handled such New-York-y material (answer: really freakin’ well). Since it was the first night of previews, Cricket and I had front-row seats, which was exciting. I was reminded how great a show it was and if it ever comes back to this area, I highly recommend you go see it. I have rarely laughed so hard.
5) And the stand-up comedy. It turned out to be terrific, but I won’t lie – Cricket asked me to pick some stand-up, and I picked this one solely based on the fact that it was being held at a place called The Slug and Lettuce.
If you go to London, go to this show. It’s called Soho Ho, it’s held at The Slug and Lettuce on Saturday nights, and you get a discount to go to an disco down the street called The Loop with a real light-up floor a la Saturday Night Fever in the basement. We did not go to The Loop because we were coming down with Travel Plague, alas, but had we been healthy, we would have.
