Drawn In

I can’t wait to get my hands on this book of images from the sketch books of 44 artists and designers put together by Julia Rothman, who is an amazing artist in her own rite! Such a fun and personal peek into the creative process.

Images via Swiss Miss and Amazon.

Keri Russell’s Brooklyn Brownstone

Loved these shots from this month’s Elle Decor feature on Keri Russell and her husband Shane Deary’s home in Brooklyn. Deary is a contractor and craftsman, and the two renovated the 1860′s building themselves, including restoring the floors, which Deary pulled up plank-by-plank, numbered, refinished, and replaced in their original location. Um, wow.

I was obsessed with Felicity (I think it’s one reason I transferred from UNC to NYU– I re-watched the entire series during my first semester at UNC, and in the show, Felicity attends the fictional “UNY”…), and now, I’m obsessed with Keri Russell’s actual life.

Long-Exposure Flight Paths

Fascinated by these long-exposure shots of airport runways and the airspace above them.

via How to be a Retronaut

Like No Other

There’s no way this video/ad won’t put a smile on your face. It made me so happy I almost cried.

Maybe y’all have already seen this, as it was on TV, but I don’t watch TV really (except whatever my dear roommate has on in the background while I blog, or series that I get way obsessively sucked into via Netflix instant, but then there’s no ads) so I miss out on all the ads that get raved about. And I don’t really care if you’ve already seen it. Watch it again.

The team (who I think are brilliant) behind this spot for Sony Bravia TVs wanted to connect people to the product in an emotional, rather than rational way, which is SO smart– it’s what Apple does all the time.  TVs are traditionally sold by bragging about the specs and high tech this or that. This spot said absolutely nothing about the product other than “Color like no other,” as part of their larger “like no other” branding campaign, and they made you feel something instead of telling you something.

I also loved this behind the scenes/making-of video, as I was very curious about the details! Here are the basics: 250,000 bouncy balls, 23 cameras. (Tangentially, did anyone else get really thrown off when the theme music from NPR’s On Point came on??)

Also, the images at top are available for purchase as prints– photographer Peter Funch was at the scene and captured these amazing shots.

PS- Happy birthday to my sister Kaki and my niece Ginny! Festive post for your birthday, no?

via WTF

L’Amour Fou

Really looking forward to the new documentary on Yves Saint Laurent, L’Amour Fou.

The NYT did a great review of the film that convinced me that L’Amour Fou is about precisely the parts of Saint Laurent’s life I am most intrigued by — his love (and collection) of art and homes and his relationship with his partner in business and life, Pierre Berge.

Previous documentaries have focused on the fashion (which is, of course, amazing), but I really became intrigued by Saint Laurent during the time of the Christie’s auction of his estate when photos of his homes and art collections began to surface, and this documentary centers around that event.

Oh, btw, the auction netted $484 MILLION. See what I mean? He had one hell of a collection.

For more images from his estate, check out this Vanity Fair article and the beautiful black and white photos by Hedi Slimane.

Before I die…

Installation artist and urban planner Candy Chang is a believer that “our public spaces can better reflect what’s important to us as residents and as human beings.”

In her own neighborhood, she created a very literal interpretation of this idea when she turned the side of an abandoned building in her neighborhood into a chalkboard (after obtaining many permits) with the statement “Before I die …” with blanks for people to fill in repeated over and over.

According to Chang, the response was overwhelming. People were constantly filling in answers, and each time the wall filled up, Chang would document all the answers, wash the wall, and let the process begin again.

The home has now been purchased, but the couple who bought it are fans of the project and have agreed to let it continue while they obtain permitting for renovation.

But even once construction begins, the project will not end. People around the country have emailed Chang asking her to do this in their cities, so she is putting together a kit that people can purchase with all the materials and instructions for how to execute the project on their own.

Lustlist: Red Pants

Bright pants have never really gone out of school in the South, but apparently this season they’re catching on everywhere!  I love it!

It’s cool for guys too:

Images via Garance, The Sartorialist, EmersonMade, and more…

The Festival of Holi

The images above and the video below are from the Festival of Holi, also called the Festival of Colors. I really cannot claim to know anything about this festival (despite some basic research) other than that it is a Hindu tradition that involves throwing colored dust everywhere (awesome) and on some level celebrates the arrival of spring.

There are other, more complex and religiously-based parts to it also, so I don’t mean to over-simplify, but I have to be honest– the colors are the part I like.

And I have to believe that some of the 50,000 people that show up to the temple in Utah– yes, Utah– seen above to celebrate the festival might be there mostly for the colors too. (The temple doesn’t seem to mind the tourist/commercialization aspect, they sell t-shirts saying “I survived Holi, Spanish Fork, Utah.”)

Video (and stills) by Brian Thomson, and the music in the video is by cellist Zoe Keating.

If you need to see more of this thing (I did), there’s another good video of the same event here.

Also, it’s official, I have a thing for colored dust in the air (previously: 1, 2; and there’s another related post in the works!).

50 and 50 Now Complete

I posted a while back on the project 50 and 50 just as it was getting going, which asked graphic designers and illustrators from all over the country to create artistic representations of their states’ mottos, and it is now complete!

Three things I love about this project: 1) Seeing the way different artists interpreted and used various aspects of Americana (denim, cowboys, diner-esque lettering), 2) Discovering lots of designers I didn’t know before, and 3) Reading state mottos… I’d never heard a lot of these!

The new ones above, from left, clockwise are: Indiana by Jeremy Paul Beasley, New Mexico by Jon Ashcroft, Wyoming by Seth Neilson, Nevada by Katie Lee, and New Jersey by Maayan Pearl.

I also still love these (posted previously):

For the rest, check out the 50 and 50 website.

Myeongbeom Kim

These surrealist installations by Myeongbeom Kim that point out the vast distinctions between our manmade world and the natural world, and strict boundaries around the ways that we expect them to interact, made me look. I love the touch of humor. I would be so thrilled if elevator doors open and there was a Christmas tree planted inside.