Thursday, July 23, 2009

Trunk Show! Call for Participants.

I'm organizing a group show here in Chicago, for young and emerging artists.

Opening October 23rd at the Barbara & Barbara Gallery in Ukrainian Village.

Contact me if you're interested.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Tree Theory Bags


These bags are really, really cool. Tree Theory's website is here. They are a Chicago-based company, an offshoot of Chicago wife and husband designers Sharon and Ted Burdett. Their larger design group is called Strand Design.

The Tree Theory bags are made from all recycled materials found around the city of Chicago (except for the stainless steel hardware holding it together, which is custom made), mainly recycled vinyl billboard material and recycled car seatbelts. The construction is folded, like origami, so there is no labor/ time-intensive sewing involved.

In terms of aesthetics, because the bag material is composed of billboard advertisements, the bags are graphically appealing, with bright colors and large abstract shapes. Each bag seems to be unique in its composition and color palate.

I like this one:




I'm impressed!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Art Institute visit







Visited the Art Institute very briefly this afternoon with my parents, stopped by the Cy Twombly show again. I couldn't resist buying the catalogue: here. It is a lovely publication, compact, with the green of the artwork on the cover as a loose half-page faux dust jacket. Looking forward to curling up with that tonight.

This time I looked more at the sculptures, which I didn't enjoy before, but they're growing on me. There was one piece-- an upside down dark brown wooden crate beneath a painted white box form, and on the top were two dark brown oar-shaped forms. The depth of color in the wood was so rich and intense, I couldn't help but keep walking around and around it. There was also a curious upside down figure of a late 19th century man walking engraved into the box, which I couldn't quite figure out. I also was drawn to a sculpture that was primarily a ~2" x 4' white board with blue painted script starting at the top and fading as it ran down the plank. I'll read more about these and see what I can glean.

The Prints and Drawings Dept. show, Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper was also simply excellent. They have so much space now! I loved that Oyvind Fahlstrom and Arturo Herrera made appearances.




Savoir Adore

I've been liking this song over the past few days: Early Bird by Savoir Adore. The recording is more polished, obviously, but this is a charming SXSW live performance, a pretty good quality video/ recording.

Faber and Faber Poetry Series




This is a Miriam Rosenbloom's blog post on Faceout Books detailing her process designing the amazingly lovely covers for Faber and Faber's new 80th anniversary classic poetry series (artwork created and illustrated by contemporary artists).

Faber and Faber's site on the books is here.