November « 2020 « design-newyork.com

Archive for November, 2020

Been craftin’.

Monday, November 30th, 2020

It had been a solid two years since I made a new purse. In case you’re new here, I liked one type of purse in 2007. It’s a simple messenger bag and I since I have no shoulders I have to wear a messenger bag so it stays on my body and doesn’t gently shimmy down my arm. One day I found out the company that makes this messenger bag was going out of business so I bought their entire stock. Which was about sixty bags. So now I must wear this brand of purse until I die. I’m not upset about it but in case anyone thought I would use a different one ever, I will not. I draw and paint on them, here are some past examples.

See? Fun. After allowing my last one to descend into complete decay (strap ripping off, stains of various shapes and sizes, a color found only in British bogs, probably mold) I got my act together and painted a new one. I used some high-class glitter chunks I bought on Etsy and now it’s a pretty little number.

I’ve also made The Happy Pear. Lemme tell you about The Happy Pear. Snorth’s niece drew her a picture of a terrifying being with a considerable ass. When Snorth asked what it was the niece said, “It’s a happy pear!”

Snorth then had to arrange her face to be like “Yeah, it sure is!” when we all can see it is not. If anything it’s a demon pear. The eyes turned to the viewer and the pointy teeth, while smiling, do not convey happiness what so ever. Plus the niece decided it was Opposite Day and in an attempt to convey that she wrote “AS” on the left to represent Aunt Snorth and then crossed it out. One family member said, “What kind of voodoo sh*t is that?” The second I saw this I felt compelled to portray it through sculpture. It didn’t turn out how I wanted but I had spent three days working on it and that’s exactly as much time as I wished to devote to this pear. My proportions are off and I should add more meat to the badonkadonk but I’m done.

Please enjoy The Happy Pear.

I needle-felted the body. I really like needle-felting. You add stuff by stabbing and then if that doesn’t work you cut stuff away by slicing and then you add more stuff over the scar from where you cut it by stabbing. It’s very cathartic. Plus it makes a little crunching noise like a hamster eating crisp vegetables so there’s unintentional ASMR there too. I traced the eyes and mouth using purple and blue glitter pens because why not, then I resin coated them and attached them via screws I had left over from an Ikea project. They ain’t never coming out.

I created two Shrinky Dink charms that swing from the bottom of the pear. Shrinky Dink plastic is hard and very unlikely to break. One is the barfing fish from the top of the drawing and the other is a voodoo doll with AS crossed out. They are both covered by resin mixed with glitter.

I hope Snorth likes her Christmas present. I will update her response.

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The Stranger and Models.

Friday, November 20th, 2020

I am, like most everybody, binging TV like it is my job. I blast through whole series in a matter of days, sometimes day, singular. I enjoy a good British police procedural or a whodunnit so I stumbled on The Stranger. The official description:

“A mysterious stranger tells a man a secret that has a devastating impact on his seemingly perfect life. This Stranger is a woman in her 20s with a baseball cap, and is learned to be correlated with more secrets as the series progresses. This secret affects the man’s wife who goes missing as a result.”

It was a fine show, nothing special. I wouldn’t recommend it but I wouldn’t not recommend it. There were only two things that really stuck with me. One, the lead character has really great tiles in their foyer. Every time the entryway came on screen I didn’t hear what was happening, they could have told who the stranger was and I would have missed it.

Two, odd opening sequence. It starts like your typical show of this nature: Drone footage of gloomy countryside, closeups on small items that will be important, etc.

But near the end it took an odd turn. A llama plays a small role in this show but when you’re watching the first episode you don’t know that so out of nowhere this creepy-as-hell 3D llama head shows up. The camera zooms in on its giant wet globular eye and a bonfire is reflected. Again, a bonfire plays a role in this show but you don’t know that. It gives the impression that an all-seeing, all-knowing llama who may or may not be a satanist / terminator is a critical part of this British countryside mystery thriller. I think I audibly said, “What’s this now?”

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is this trend to have very “real” looking models. Like, not unattainable beauty, but all manner of beauty. Sephora has been really good about showing this.

Gucci is also on this bandwagon which is great. The only problem is it seems like they’re going out of their way to make the photos as unattractive as possible. One of them came up on my Facebook feed and I was like, “Nope. Too much. Too close, too bright, all the ‘too’s.”

Either the models need to be appealing or the photography style needs to be appealing. You can’t have neither.

Update 12/21/2020: Gucci. Gucci, stop. Just stop.

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Fun times with the Third Reich.

Tuesday, November 17th, 2020

Since my father passed away we’ve been going through his belongings and the man had books. So, so many books. Dad was a professor and one of his classes was on WWII. I guess someone had a book and gave it to my dad and we found it and oh my goodness, what a panoply of unpleasantness it is. I’m going to take you through the more interesting elements.

You ready?

It’s a coffee-table-sized book about Adolf Hitler and what a nifty guy he was.

This says something like “Merry Christmas from your Uncle Karl and Aunt Kamila.” It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

“Adolf Hitler – Photos from the Life of the Fuhrer.”

I was really hoping it would be like: Wake up. Eat chocolate with meth (yup, a real thing, see picture at the end). Yell like a lunatic at your generals. Paint a watercolor. Kill some gays and communists. Take afternoon nap, etc. but it is more pastoral and patriotic than that.

First thing, this font. Why? I mean, I get that it’s super-German but it’s also super-illegible. The whole book is like this. I would have pushed back on this. Also, a forward written by Goebbels! The book is a nightmare.

A lot of children smiling and waving at Hitler ‘n’ Pals.

The picture at the bottom with everyone doing the arm salute? Bone-chilling.

Honestly, Hitler’s art wasn’t bad. I don’t know why the art school dumped on him so hard. That’s excellent perspective right there.

Wasn’t it the SS? With two SSs? One S, does it stand for “Protective” or “Echelon”? You could totally fit both lightning Ss on there if you tried. I love how most people would be like “How horrific that so many teens were brainwashed into this mindset of hate” and I’m like “They could have done a better job with their logo layout, branding matters, folks.”