Those of you who explored the work of John Divola a few days ago when I posted about his Dogs may have already discovered his As Far As I Could Get.
This idea is so simple. So tight: He visits random places, puts his camera on a ten second timer, then he runs away from it. Had one of those rare “Yup. That’s Brilliant.” moments when I saw the results. Wish I could supply a direct link, but you’ve got to visit his main page then click on his 1990 archive.
(photo by musicmuse_ca)
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Author of the Little Prince)
I had an English professor who told me art was the cultivation of the mundane.
I bought into it big time.
And when I see works like John Divola’s Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert, I’m reminded of the inspiring heights to which a competent artist can raise that which is most ordinary and fleeting.
Quite a few Americans are up in arms about Hermione getting tipsy on butter beer at the Three Broomsticks. In one of the best point/counterpoint passages I’ve read recently, a concerned parent told the new york times she was “bothered by so many scenes showing alcohol as a coping mechanism,” while another parent, an advertising copywriter (why am I compelled to point that out?) responded, “in a world where dark wizards are kidnapping or killing people on a regular basis, a little under-age drinking is the least of their problems.”
If you’re familiar with the Harry Potter universe, you know that other popular ways wizard youth deal with stress include vandalism, risky behavior and pyromania.
Which is where Nicholas Saunders comes in. Mr. Saunders had the dream job of collaborating on the naming and design of packaging in the Weasley brothers joke shop. Here’s some of his work for the Weasley’s delightfully dangerous wares.
Unclear on the wizard status, but Rosemarie Fiore sure can make things go poof. Her firework art is splendid. (View only under close adult supervision.) The art form involves lighting fireworks on a horizontal surface then covering it with a bucket. I personally love any artistic endeavor that requires a fire extinguisher to be on standby.
go read this blog post by the amazing maira kalman. one of her best. and that’s saying a lot. really.
Unintended Consequences: The Accidental Meadows of Windsor, Ontario
In brief, the city union laborers of Windsor, Ontario have been on strike for a really long time (started April 15, 2009). And every place you look it seems to be getting uglier.
Except in a few places. Given three months vacation from mowers and clippers, the city’s parks have grown from unkempt green spaces to veritable meadows. And while the good citizens of Windsor took the lawn into their own hands at a few parks by cutting the grass themselves, no one could keep up, and mini-prairies currently dot the landscape.
Now, there were a number of places that looked quite nice to the people at Broken City Lab. So they did what great designers do best: they merged vision with opportunity and came up with this “Naturalized Area” sign project, embarked upon, in their own words, “in hopes that these signs might momentarily allow residents of Windsor to look at these naturalized spaces for what they are—that is, wonderful additions to our urban landscape—instead of the result of a politically-charged issue.”
Best case scenario? Strike ends, eyes open, minds change, meadows stay. As my boss says, more on this later.
While there’s a tale of lemons and lemonade to be told here, more importantly, I think there’s a point about paradigms emerging (for those of us who don’t have garbage piling up on our curbs and do have the time to intellectualize about these things). When we’re all talking about building green spaces, what do we mean by green space? Sustainable green? Or just green green?
My hunch is we think of green green grass, and that we confine our thinking to grass, and give the powers that be the impression that grass is a number one boffo idea. Now that I’ve seen what’s happened in Windsor, my hunch is we settle for grass, maybe because grass is the easy get in a short attention span world. Or maybe because grass comes in rolls that look like Ho-Ho’s.
Mmm. Ho-Ho’s.
What’s the argument in favor of grass? in the spring it’s green. In summer it’s a wonderful shade of green. then in the fall it stays green. then in the winter you can’t see it.
This is Gold Medal Park in downtown Minneapolis. A huge victory for the city and the Guthrie Theatre, et. al. considering the land’s enormous value to residential developers. And it is a beautiful, complete transformation (that hill wasn’t there) designed from corner to corner. I often wonder, though, if they went a little crazy with the sod, considering the namesake of the park, Gold Medal Flour, which I’m told used an awful lot of…wheat.
Is there room for a little wheat space in a green space this big? Leaving room for frisbee and wiffle ball, of course.
The events in Windsor remind me to think about how a positive buzzword like “green-space” can actually limit our vision if we aren’t careful, and how we designers can use our knack for questioning convention, for shakin’ the cage, to effect change…if we just pay attention.
I won’t be able to drive past a green space without wondering what it would look like if a portion of it were left wild. What if your fair city stopped mowing the lawns? Where do you think the loveliest accidental meadows would pop up?
Thanks to Wooster Collective for the post that got me all introspective.
Peter Funch's New Twist on Time Lapse Photography
Since I couldn’t find proof to the contrary, I’m going along with the possibility that these are unposed photoshop aggregates of bunches and bunches of photos taken on the streets of New York. Does Peter Funch set out to take pictures of people in white? or does he just shoot away and look for common threads later? So clever, so curious.
Thanks to Mark Adamson for posting this link on his blog.