Trade in An Old Habit for a New One

With the introduction of Absolut's Pear Vodka comes a fun series of videos encouraging you to get rid of an old habit by blowing it up.

Whether you're addicted to Caffeine or Shoes (or as in my case, both), the videos are a fun visceral way to introduce this product.

Interesing Article on Paint from the NY Times

New York Times
February 14, 2007
Paints’ Mysteries Challenge Protectors of Modern Art (Abridged)
By RANDY KENNEDY

LOS ANGELES — In a sprawling, white-on-white lab here that looks like a set from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a British scientist named Thomas Learner recently lifted the top from a small box of slides, the kind that usually contain microscopic samples of bacteria or chemicals.
But this was a different kind of lab, and the slides were coated with dozens of shades of dried acrylic paint, at once as ordinary as house paint and as precious as rare isotopes. This is because the acrylics had been taken from the Santa Monica studio of Sam Francis, the abstract painter, who died in 1994 and who, like many artists of his generation, had largely abandoned the oils that had been the medium of painting for at least five centuries. Instead, he turned to their modern successors: acrylics, enamels, alkyds and many other substances that are more synthetic than organic.

The new paints, which began to emerge in the 1930s and made their way into many studios by the 1950s, allowed artists to do things they couldn’t do with oil. Morris Louis used thinned acrylic to stain, rather than coat, canvases, creating an ethereal effect. Jackson Pollock used gloss enamel because it poured and dripped the way he wanted. Bridget Riley and Frank Stella both used ordinary house paints, Mr. Stella because they “had the nice dead kind of color” that he wanted, right out of the can.

But while conservators have inherited generations’ worth of knowledge about oil paints, they know comparatively little about synthetics and how to protect the masterpieces created by using them, many of which are rapidly approaching the half-century mark.

Acrylics, for example, can leave surfaces softer than oil paints do, and so dust and dirt stick to them more easily. The surfaces can also be breeding grounds for mold. How should they be cleaned? Or transported? What should the temperature and humidity be in the museums where they are displayed? And what can institutions do — besides panic or weep — if real problems arise, if a deep red on a Mark Rothko painting slowly becomes a pale blue, for example, or if cracks appear in a Pollock easily worth tens of millions of dollars? (These two crises have arisen in recent years.)



In 2002 the Getty Conservation Institute here, working with the Tate in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, began an ambitious project called Modern Paints to answer such questions. It is only one part of a much larger undertaking for conservators of modern art, who now must deal with painting, sculpture and installation materials as strange and fragile as latex, old cathode ray tubes, whale-bone dust, fluorescent tubes, preserved sheep and at least one shaggy, taxidermied angora goat.

Over the last few years, in its labs perched high in the hills of Brentwood, the Getty has brought complex technology costing millions of dollars to bear on modern paints, building up a database of thousands of kinds of pigments, solvents, chemical binders and other substances. In the process it has helped cast light not only on better ways to clean, care for and transport modern paintings, but also on the ways that artists — some, like Morris Louis, highly reclusive — worked.


As just one reminder of the kind of lab this was, a cardboard storage box sitting on one table was emblazoned with the hand-lettered warning: “Beware!! Works of Art Below.”

Click here to read the full article

Room(s) With A View, Santa Monica, CA

The Penthouse, a new restaurant and lounge opening on Monday at the revamped Huntley Santa Monica Beach, is the latest effort to turn the hotel in Santa Monica, Calif., formerly a Radisson, into a hot spot. Two blocks from the beach, the space was designed by Thomas Schoos, above, who is responsible for the interiors of the popular Los Angeles restaurants Koi and Table 8.

The Penthouse, with a shimmering wall of Capiz shells, a glass fireplace and curtained cabanas for privacy, above, was designed to appeal to bright young things, Mr. Schoos said. But the best feature predates the designer’s hand: a jaw-dropping view of the Pacific coastline. “It’s like being on the beach, minus the sand,” he said.

Huntley Santa Monica Beach, 1111 Second Street, Santa Monica, (310) 394-5454.

Tattoo You. And your furniture. And your jewelry. And your clothes.

Tatts are back in a big way.
Instead of permanently marring your skin and risking Hep C, why not get tattoos on everything but your body? Here are a few thoughts...

just click on the images below to get more information or to purchase

See more of my Tattoo You. And This. And That. And then..... list at ThisNext.

San Francisco: No Room For Parking, But There's Always Room For Jell-O.

 

above: San Francisco's Marina made of Jell-O

 Liz Hickok is a San Francisco based artist working in photography, video, sculpture, and installation, and currently... Jell-O.

 
Above: San Francisco's famous Alamo Square

 
Above: Liz Hickok's Jell-O Alamo Square

News of Hickok's "San Francisco in Jell-O" series is spreading quickly. Her work has been included in such publications as The New York Times, Harper's, and San Francisco magazine, as well as on the cover of Artweek. She has been featured on several different local and national news and radio programs such as the CBS Early Show, VH1, Spark* (KQED, Bay Area), All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation (NPR). Below are more fun images of the City by the Bay in Jell-O. 

 Foggy San Francisco:
  

The Palace Of Fine Arts:  

The Ferry Building:

  

 

Twin Peaks:

   

  The Bay Bridge:

   

 Her San Francisco Jell-O creations are available as limited edition C-prints on her site. 

  Liz Hickok

Can You Take A Pretty Picture?

Communication Arts invites you to enter your work in the 48th Photography Competition.

Now is the time to promote your talent by having your work selected for the largest and most important juried competition for photography.

Selected award-winning pieces will appear in the August Photography Annual of Communication Arts magazine. More than 70,000 copies will be distributed worldwide, assuring important exposure for the creators of this outstanding work.

Deadline: March 13, 2007

Click here for submission guidelines, PDF entry forms and FAQs:
http://www.commarts.com/competition

Send A Virtual Mix Tape for Vday!

Genius execution and idea! Thanks to Kim Genkinger for bringing this fun interactive valentine by Exopolis to my attention!

Pick a song from lots of fun ones (I prefer the Pixies song), label the tape and send it cyber.

Right here, baby.

Art with Heart (free downloads)

Free Photoshop Brushes for Valentine's Day from some super talented and generous designers!

Jason Gaylor of Designfruit commissioned some folks at Blacksuits Creative to help out on some designs for this Valentine set. There is quite a mix of ideas here. Thanks to Katie Canada, Dan Spencer, and Erik Rothrock for helping Jason put these together.


There are 15 Brushes in this set. The brushes work with Photoshop CS and above. Anything before CS will require using the PNG files also available here.

Thanks guys..and Happy Valentine's Day!

Gloomy Valentine Trailer

In Honor of Valentine's Day, a sneak peek at Warwick Burton's newest film (thanks to a correction from a reader!), Gloomy Valentine.



Learn more and download fun (or gloomy) wallpapers at Dead heart studio

Funky Find of The Week: The Jet Coffee Table

above: Jet Coffee Table by Lorraine Brennan

Lorraine Brennan’s Jet Coffee Table, inspired by those paper planes most of us made in elementary school (and occasionally flung at that cute little blonde girl when no one was looking), is one of those designs we can’t help but instantly fall for. Made from 2mm steel, it succeeds as abstract sculpture, functional accessory, and whimsical design element. And the best part is you can’t get in trouble just for having one … even if you had no intention of throwing it… we swear.

Lorraine, who used to have her own design company, now is responsible for the design, launch and on-going development of French Connection Home.

Sitting Pretty: Swarovski Studded Lounge Chair

A Little Bling On Your Furniture, Perhaps?
The Vendome Chair, an otherwise conservative piece in black wool, is tufted with buttons made of Swarovski crystals.

Now that's sitting pretty!

$3,390 at Sipure Design in Miami, (305) 940-4655.

Lowbrow Artists do Highbrow Charity

Thanks to Corey Helford Gallery of Culver City, today's most respected and popular "Lowbrow" Artists (see previous article on lowbrow art here) have culled together a fabulous show benefiting The Alliance For Children's Rights that takes vintage paint-by-number art and transforms it into unique pieces of low brow art.

Granted, this is not the first gallery to promote and exhibit the idea of paintng over vintage art. To be fair, The Wurst Gallery did this years ago, only not restricted to paint by number art.

With fun original creations by such well known popular artists as Mark Ryden, Shepard Fairey, Joe Ledbetter, Jeff Soto, Camille Rose Garcia and Gary Basemen, just to name a few, these paintings are available for auction on ebay with 100% of the proceeds benefiting The Alliance For Children's rights (see their mission statement below).

Available for purchase on ebay, the auctions ending on Friday, Feb 16th and prices are already rising rapidly, so you'd better get your bids in now.

Here are just a few wonderful examples of the original vintage PBN and the finished pieces. Click on images to enlarge:

Mark Ryden:

Gary Baseman:

Ana Bagoyen:

Shepard Fairey:

Jeff Soto:


The bids are moving up quickly on these works already, so if you'd like to see many more (and you should) be sure to visit Corey Helford Gallery of Culver City or check out the auctions on ebay.


above: Corey Helford Gallery

Nonprofit's Mission Statement
The Alliance for Children's Rights is protecting the rights and futures of abused and impoverished children throughout Los Angeles County, in hopes of creating a world in which all children are able to have a safe and permanent family, access to quality health care, a quality education, and all of the support and services they so rightfully deserve.