image via camilla engman. quote via my book.

Outside!

I did get out cross country skiing this weekend. OUTSIDE! The weather was beautiful. The conditions for skiing were not ideal, but I managed. I skied the exact route along the creek that we used to tube down in the summer. It takes a lot more leg muscle to cross country ski that route than to leisurely float down it in a raft. :)

There's lots of pretty bridges along the creek... prettier when things are alive, but still.

Merry Mary Monday!

These images will get you excited to grow things. Sometimes the tools to do so can be just as pretty as the final product. Nice work mom.

You can read about the origins of Merry Mary Monday! here.

Nipple Twisting Good

"For wine company/brand concept playing on the idea of purple nurples (pinch and twisting a persons nipple). I was amazed when I realized how many things pinching some ones nipple and making wine had in common. It seemed like an obvious choice for the name."

Wine labels by student designer Stuart Simpson from the Art Institute of Vancouver. I love the design and I love his commentary on it. The name Nurple? Not so much love.

I have a feeling I'm going to be repeating "It's amazing how much nipple twisting and wine making have in common" in my head and laughing to myself all day long now.

found via The Dieline

Peter Clark Collage

Samplings from the "Beasts" and "Dogs" collections from Peter Clark.

Clark's collage's are made from found paper, old maps and manuscripts that are put together to create these fun animals. His book is available here.

found via animalarium.

Confession

I have a confession to make.

Sometimes while I'm working during the winter I listen to music like this.



It's a little silly, but I like it simply to remember what birds sound like. In this frozen, barren tundra we call Minnesota, it's been so long since I've heard a bird I don't think I remember what they sound like. I'm at the point in the season where I almost completely loose my mind, so chirping birds help a little.


image via this book.

Hello Friday!

Happy Friday Y'all!

It's sunny here today and it's making me optimistic for the day. This weekend is supposed to be warmer than it's been in a while, so I'm thinking King and I are going to need to get out on some cross country skies on the lakes. What are you up to this weekend?


image via Jenni Saarenkyla. purchase cards here.
found via pika land.

They smoke so beautifully on film

Painting by Camilla Engman. They do don't they?

Bowling Table

This re-purposed bowling table featured today on Design*Sponge is just awesome. Not only a fabulous idea, but great execution.

You can see the original post here and more info here.

image by alicia bock. lyrics from winter winds by mumford & sons.

Jen Mann

"My work comes from my own experience and understanding of society and how I fit into it. We forget that we are animals, we expect ourselves to not act like one or behave as one. As though we should fit into perfect molds and live up to unrealistic expectations. The series is called 'Fera' which is the Latin origin of the word feral. It's a personal escape for me. I think artists are certainly people who feel the pressures to fit into society. But we just want to be wild."

I'm loving these paintings by Jen Mann. When I first saw the series over at My Love For You Is A Stampede Of Horses, I thought that it seemed to make sense to compare a woman to a fox or a deer, but less common for us to be compared to bears. But then I thought about the fierceness with which momma bears protect their young and it made sense.

You can see more of Jen Mann's work here. If you happen to be in Columbus Ohio you can stop by the Nature Noir show in March.

Pink

Photos by me.

My favorite picture from my 2008 Sierra Club planner. They're just so sweet.

I'll let you decide

I recently got an email from a friend of mine with a link to a fabulous commercial advocating wearing your seat belt. I watched the video and then wrote back that it was way better than the one my mom and I were in when I was four.

And then I thought that we all might want to see just how much better this commercial is than the one I was in when I was four. You can be the judge.

You'll have to excuse the quality my video, I just taped it from the tv because it's on vhs. But please don't let the quality of the picture take away from the quality of the message... because when you love someone, it comes across. ;)

First up, video from youtube.





Next, my mom and I. Also known as, the end of my acting career.

Varnish in fishbowl by Medicina Rossa.


Found via ffffound.

Alice Neel

Last weeks netflix was a documentary about one of my favorite American artists. Alice Neel is known as one of the great portrait painters of the 20th century and her life was just as interesting as her work. I first learned about Alice Neel when I was in art school and the thing that stuck with me the most about her work is that people always said that she didn't just paint what her subjects looked like, she painted their insides too. She managed to capture the essence of who people were and paint it in two dimensions on a canvas. It's interesting to love an artists work so much that you wish you were the subject.

The film, aptly titled Alice Neel, weaves many images of her work, various interviews with her over the years and also interviews with her friends, colleagues, family and children. And because the film was directed by her grandson I think it has a level of depth that can only come from one family member delving into their family's history. But not just of it's history, of it's matriarch. So it becomes a fascinating look not only into Neels work, but her and her families view on her life as well.

The film covers her life, her work, her struggles as a single mother, her battle with depression and her nervous breakdown, her struggles as a female artist and as a woman who constantly defied convention. As the website says Neel,

"Reinvented portraiture by expressing the inner landscape of her sitters, among them Andy Warhol, Annie Sprinkle, Bella Abzung and Allen Ginsberg. Painting a diverse cross section of humanity from communist party leaders to art world personalities, to her neighbors in Spanish Harlem, Neel created a body of work that serves as a social document of New York and America in the 20th century."

It's a fascinating film. Some of my favorite quotes from it are below.



"A lot of people want distinction without risk. They want to be known for themselves without knowing themselves. They want to stand out in crowds, but not far enough to actually be isolated. She was the kind of person who I think must have been isolated from very early on in her experience of life and got used to it and learned how to stylize it and learned how to play it and learned how to use it as a medium. Distinction was a medium for her as much as a thing to achieve."

-Robert Storr
Dean, Yale University School of Art



"I like it first to be art, so actually dividing up the canvas is one of the most exciting things for me. And then I like it not only to look like the person, but to have their inner character as well. And then I like it to express the zeitgeist, you see I don't like something in the 60's to look like something in the 70's and they don't, it's amazing."

-Alice Neel



"In the fifties all the men took their wives out to the suburbs and the women conformed more. There's a tendency in the human race to make people alike and the whole thing is to homogenize the world. I saw the world as difficult, I saw the pressures as terrific because you know the pressure to be normal, besides everything else that you have to do, they invented these frightful shirts that have to be laundered and buttoned and you're even supposed to put on a tie. But all those things were very difficult for me, you know, to keep up with your clothing, to keep up with all the things that regular life make you observe."

-Alice Neel



"When I sit in front of a canvas I don't think about all the notice that I've gotten, I don't think that they think I'm great, I don't think anything of that. All I think of is 'will I be able to do this' and that's a very good attitude to have for painting. It's not good for the rat race, but it's good for painting, and I would rather paint than anything."

-Alice Neel



"I think some people may be embarrassed to look at pictures like that, but the fact is that she was not embarrassed to look or paint in that manner, so the space between her understanding and the viewers understanding is the space that the painting essentially invites the viewer to cross."

-Robert Storr

"Starring at an individual that is looking at them fully frontal, eyes wide open, engaging them visually is very intimate and very demanding. We do no ordinarily engage at length individuals face to face who look at us as we look at them. We tend to look away."

-Richard Brialliant

Sunday night sunset walk

Photos by me.

Sunday night sunset walk

Photos by me.

Pot Hole Gardens

Pot hole gardens by Pete Dungey who said about his work,

"If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the road."

An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain's roads.

I was thinking if we did this project on 54th street in Minneapolis and then took an aerial photo there would be more flowers than asphalt. It would be pretty, but wouldn't make it any easier to drive. As much as you don't want to hit pot holes because they'll damage your car you wouldn't want to run over flowers because you'd damage the flower. I guess conditions are just as bad in Britain.

Found via Cup Of Joe.