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A Head-Turning Idea (& gift!)



Talk about a unique custom personalized gift!

Turn Your Head created beautiful wooden "Piros" (as they call them...short for pirolettes) carved from an individual's profile image.

Just like the famous optical illusion of two vases or two profiles.

Who came up with this neat idea?

Tom Beshara aka Dad; Born in Deadwood, SD; Year of the Dragon; Aries

Lorie Beshara aka Mom; Born NY, NY; Year of the Tiger; Capricorn

Cortney Langenegger aka Cort; Born Denver, CO; Year of the Snake; Leo

Ryan Vera aka Ry; Born Denver, CO; Year of the Goat; Gemini



Below is taken directly from their site, www.turnyourhead.com.


Vis-age (N. the face or appearance of a person)

At Turn Your Head, we fill the space between two opposing profiles of your face. By spinning that space into a three dimensional “visage” that follows the outlined silhouettes of your two profiles, we create the "Pirolette".

Place the “Pirolette” to your face and it will match your profile. Locate it near a wall and the shadow of the "Pirolette” will be your silhouette.

Your profile captured forever in an object of art. An optical illusion of shadow and light, each one unique because it’s you!



The Keepsake Pirolette is an option you can add for $20.00. A hand made wooden bolt can be unscrewed to reveal a 2" to 2 1/2" deep hollow space to store your most precious keepsakes.

The Keepsake Pirolette includes a small black velvet draw string pouch and two small ziplock bags:



Also Available is a cherry wood base with glass dome for display as seen below:



How do they do it?

It Starts with a block of wood......



...which comes from the north and eastern part of the United States. Our suppliers cut, plane, and glue-up the blocks to our specifications. These blocks are about six inches square and nine inches long and weigh approximately six pounds.

The process of making a Pirolette begins with you and the images that you submit to our web site. Once an image is received, they are sized and enhanced to reveal only the outline that will later be used to turn your Pirolette on the lathe. Once an outline has been created, a paper cut out of your profile is used to determine the angle of the profile that will be cut into each Pirolette. We then transfer the profile to a metal template, which is cut by hand into a metal guide, and then used to create the Pirolette.

When setting up for the actual turning, each block must be sanded flat on both ends, the centers found and marked, then mounted into the lathe. Then template must also be mounted to the lathe to facilitate the accuracy of each piece. The cutting then begins.

We first do a rough cut, which removes about half the weight of the block. Next in the turning process is the shaping of the top of the Pirolette, which we make into a slightly peaked cap for the Elegant, or shape to the Chic and leave flat for the Earthy style. After the rough cut, the sanding begins. This process is done with eight steps. First we begin with an extremely coarse sand paper, depending on how the rough cut goes. Then we work our way down to 500 grit sandpaper. This process takes three quarters of an hour to complete. The sanding is followed by the oiling process. Your Pirolette, is removed from the lathe and mounted into the drill press where the center is drilled out for a plug to fill the hole where the block was mounted in the lathe. Then the top is rough sanded, finish sanded, buffed and the second coat of penetrating oil is applied. This must be allowed to dry for 24 hours. The next day the Pirolette is sanded again, this time with fine steel wool and oiled with an oil called tung oil and allowed to dry overnight. The Pirolette is now ready to be gift boxed, packaged and shipped.



Their Portrait's

The “Portrait” is hand crafted from American Black Walnut, Cherry or African Padauk 1/8" (est.) veneer and is hand polished to a natural luster.

Each Portrait is housed inside a Dark Cherry Stained, 10 X 13 inch frame. We have made it easy for you to transfer your "Pirolette Portrait" into another frame if that's what you desire.

*The Portrait to the left has been customed framed. Turn Your Head does not provide this service but we wanted to show you what is possible.*


In addition to the 3D version, you can have a wall mountable version (with or without the shadow, as seen below):



I just think this is such a great idea for a unique gift. And the prices are reasonable.

To learn more, or to order your own, click here.

Test Your Broadband Speed

I found this convenenient and free utility today.
An online test of your broadband speed, uploading and downloading.
It's still in Beta, so the results may not be totally accurate.

Just go here and take the test!

Today's results for my Mac G5 2.25gHz below:

When you think Angela Adams, Don't Just Think "Rug", Think "Floor"



Angela Adams
, well known for her fabulous textiles and mod carpets, now designs concrete floor tiles for Ann Sacks. Check them out below.



Expanding the overwhelming success of our angela adams program, we have expanded the collection to include concrete flooring tile. Angela brings her modern and graphic shapes and vibrant palette to concrete for a unique flooring option.


The Concrete collection extends the modern appeal of angela adams to a unique flooring option. Concrete tile patterns include Manfred and Argyle; available in a vibrant palette of 9 exclusive glazes (see chart below).





The angela adams for Ann Sacks tiles are available to consumers and design professionals through Ann Sacks showrooms nationwide. To view the entire collection of tiles and to locate a showroom near you, please visit annsacks.com or call 1-800-278-8453.

All Aalto, All the Time:
Finds Inspired By Alvar Aalto


Above: Alvar Aalto's "Savoy Vase"designed in 1936 and is still inspiring products today.

I've always been a fan of Alvar Aalto's classic web furniture and wonderful vases. Since his death, many things have been inspired by the famous "Savoy" vase shape of his design.

And here are just a few.

Just click on any of the items below and you'll be directed to their place of purchase


It's All About Aalto!

See more of my It's All About Aalto! list at ThisNext.

About Alvar Aalto:
Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland. He studied architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology from 1916 to 1921. He returned to Jyväskylä, where he opened his first architectural office in 1923. The following year he married architect Aino Marsio. Their honeymoon journey to Italy sealed an intellectual bond with the culture of the Mediterranean region that was to remain important to Aalto for the rest of his life. Aalto moved his office to Turku in 1927, and started collaborating with architect Erik Bryggman. The office moved again in 1933, to Helsinki. The Aaltos designed and built a joint house-office (1935-36) for themselves in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, but later (1954-55) had a purpose-built office built in the same neighbourhood. Aino Aalto died in 1949 and in 1952 he married architect Elissa Mäkiniemi (died 1994). In 1957 they designed and had built a summer cottage, the so-called Experimental House, for themselves in Muuratsalo, where they spent their summers. Alvar Aalto died in May 11, 1976, in Helsinki.


Above: Early portrait of Alvar Aalto

Although sometimes regarded as the first and the most influential architects of Nordic modernism, a closer examination of the historical facts reveals how Aalto (while a pioneer in Finland) closely followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar Asplund and Sven Markelius. But what they and many others of that generation in the Nordic countries had in common was that they started off from a classical education and were first designing in the so-called Nordic Classicism style before moving, in the late 1920s, towards Modernism.

In Aalto's case this is epitomised by the Viipuri Library (1927-35), which went through a transformation from an originally classical competition entry proposal to the completed high-modernist building. His humanistic approach is in full evidence there: the interior displays natural materials, warm colours, and undulating lines. The Viipuri Library project lasted eight years, and during that same time he also designed the Turun Sanomat Building (1929-30) and Paimio Sanatorium (1929-33): thus the Turun Sanomat Building first heralded Aalto's move towards modernism, and this was then carried forward both in the Paimio Sanatorium and in the on-going design for the library. But though the Turun Sanomat Building and Paimio Sanatorium are comparatively pure modernist works, even they carried the seeds of his questioning of such an approach and a move to a more daring, synthetic attitude.

above: Alvar and his wife, Aino

Aalto was a member of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne; attending the second congress in Frankfurt in 1929, and the fourth congress in Athens in 1933. It was not until the completion of the Paimio Sanatorium (1929) and Viipuri Library (1935) that he first achieved world attention in architecture. His reputation grew in the USA following the critical reception of his design for the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, described by Frank Lloyd Wright as a "work of genius".
It could be said that Aalto's reputation was sealed with his inclusion in the second edition of Sigfried Giedion's influential book on Modernist architecture, Space, Time and Architecture. The growth of a new tradition (1949), in which Aalto received more attention than any other Modernist architect, including Le Corbusier. In his analysis of Aalto, Giedion gave primacy to qualities that depart from direct functionality, such as mood, atmosphere, intensity of life and even 'national characteristics', declaring that "Finland is with Aalto wherever he goes".

Aalto's awards included the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects (1957) and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects

For More About Alvar Aalto or Aalto products and design, see the links below:
Wikipedia
Buy Aalto vases and products
The Alvar Aalto Museum
Aalto's Architecture
More info and products from Scandanavian Design
Design Museum info

Light & Loneliness: Edward Hopper's Work

Personally, I have always respected Edward Hopper. His masterful handling of light as well as his poignant subject matter and capturing of intimate moments has made me a lifetime fan.

Below is an art review of his retrospective at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.



Above: Cape Cod Morning by Edward Hopper

ART Review (NY Times)
By HOLLAND COTTER


BOSTON, April 30 — A certain slant of light was Edward Hopper’s thing. And he made it our thing, hard-wired it into our American brains: white late-morning light scraping across a storefront; twilight, plangent with heat and regret, settling over a city; slabs of late-night lamplight chilling the walls of Lonely Hearts Hotels everywhere.


Above: 11am by Edward Hopper


Hopper once said that, as an artist, the only thing he ever aspired to do was to paint “sunlight on the side of a house,” and that, in essence, is all he did. Is this an accomplishment weighty enough to support an “American master” title? Sometimes, yes; often, no, at least on the evidence of “Edward Hopper,” an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts here.


above: Hopper's Hotel Window

The show is billed as a retrospective, but it isn’t. Significant pieces of Hopper’s output are missing: the paintings done in Paris from 1906 to 1910; all but a few of his many drawings; and most of what he produced as a commercial illustrator in the long years before he became a star.

To some of us, Hopper was an illustrator from first to last, a just-O.K. brush technician, limited in his themes. His main gift was for narrative paintings with graphic punch and quasi-Modernist additives: Manet touches, de Chirico props. And like any shrewd storyteller, he knew the value of suspense. Reveal just so much of a plot — no more. Mystery keeps an audience hanging on.

Unfortunately, there’s not much suspense or mystery in this show, which travels to Washington and Chicago. Museums are risk-free zones these days, spooning up boilerplates of what audiences are expected to like. On the whole, “Edward Hopper” fills that bill too well. Still, it gets off to a strong start and comes to a striking close.



Above: Hopper's Ryder House


It opens with a single oil painting, “Hodgkin’s House,” done in 1928 when the 40-something Hopper, his career finally on a roll, was summering in Gloucester, Mass. In the picture, late (or very early) sunlight hits one side of a white clapboard house, leaving the rest of it in shadow.

There are no figures; none are needed. Illumination and architecture engage in an expressive exchange. The house, with its two high-arched windows, seems to greet the light with shy consternation, like a prim Victorian Danae startled by a shower of gold.

This is the Hopper Effect: the impression of everyday life touched with secular sanctity. And the show’s first gallery gives a good idea of how he developed it. In a 1908 painting of a locomotive stalled in a field, he suppresses anecdotal detail to make a prosaic scene inscrutably monumental, even a little sinister.

In the coarsely brushed “Summer Interior” (1909), the first of a long series of pictures of women in bedrooms, he introduces narrative ambiguity: is the seminude woman crouched by the bed hurt, embarrassed, at rest? And he turns light into an object: a sourceless rectangle of it sits on the floor like a Donald Judd box.


Above: Summer Interior


Light is inseparable from architecture in a 1913 stage set of a picture called “New York Corner, or Corner Saloon.” The mood they generate is the main character on that stage. All these elements would be combined in famous later paintings like “Nighthawks” (1942) — the show enshrines that one in a room labeled “Icons” — but the mechanics were in place three decades earlier.

After giving the initial impression of a restless artist who resisted settling into a groove, who might have gone this way or that, comes a long interruption in the form of galleries devoted to a lot of Gloucester watercolors and others done in Ogunquit, Me., through the 1920s.


Solitary souls, vacant spaces: Edward Hopper’s “Summertime” (1943).

The show seems to argue that in these pictures of sun-bleached lighthouses and village rooftops Hopper was trying to come to grips with depicting light. In fact, he had already done so a decade earlier in Paris. Anyway, the New England pictures are far from experimental. They’re blandly virtuosic tourist-brochure illustration, Chamber of Commerce Modernism.

Maybe watercolor was too easy for Hopper — he was good at it — and maybe the 1920s artist-colony summers were too relaxing. He needed resistance, and in the awkwardness of oil painting, the grit of the city, and the Great Depression, he got it. In the 1930s the work toughens up and turns strange.

In the country he tended to paint houses as if they were public monuments, from a respectful distance. In the city no distances are respected. Hopper’s eye is everywhere. He peeps through apartment windows, catches people undressed, depressed, lost in thought, just plain lost. He looks over shoulders, down women’s dresses.


Above: Hopper's House At Dusk

If Hopper’s rural work can be too simple, his city scenes can be fussily overcomplicated, illustrational in a different way. But when the balance is right, they’re great. In “House at Dusk” (1935), a woman silhouetted by light stares from a top-floor apartment window, unaware of the darkening park and glorious afterglow sky behind the building. She sees nothing; we see it all, from a God’s-eye view.

We’re back to light. If art reflects the sensibility of a time and a culture, it also creates that sensibility. Hopper’s light gave Depression-era Americans, and many others thereafter, a glamorous, even heroic image of themselves as solitary and tragic, persevering, deservedly nostalgic. Some people think he invented this, but he didn’t. American landscape painters were there before him.


Above: City Sunlight

Hopper grew up in Nyack, N.Y., just up the Hudson from Manhattan. From the bedroom window of his childhood home he had a panoramic view of the river. And in essential ways he is direct heir to the 19th-century Hudson River School tradition, particularly the elegiac work of Thomas Cole.

As the nation’s first “official” artist, Cole was probably expected to create Romantic images of a brave and optimistic New World at its dawning. What he actually painted was a vision of a golden age of innocence already past. His art is far less about hope than about fear: fear of change, fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of the brash, crass, will-do America bumping and screeching around him.

Hopper’s art is not so different. Technically, he is a Modernist, but without a drop of Modernism’s utopian rationality, confidence and breadth. He didn’t make a dystopian art, either, one that stakes out an alternative position, as Warhol would do. He went with anxiety and longing, and made them feel-good entertaining, like Hollywood films, which he both influenced and was influenced by.

Often his most ambitious paintings feel Hollywood-fake, overproduced, overwritten. The renowned “Second Story Sunlight” (1960) does. With its Thelma Ritter mother, sunbathing ingénue and light-touched roof peaks, it is a silly, stagy, symbolic affair. You have a sense that the plot, if there is one, isn’t worth wondering about.


Above: Hopper's Second Story Sunlight


It’s when Hopper lets light take over, assume the leading role, that the late paintings work. It does so again in “Morning Sun” (1952), in which a woman — Hopper’s wife, Jo, his principal model — sits in profile, in a pink slip, on a bed, staring out a window as light hits her pinched cheeks and raw-red hands.


Solitary souls, vacant spaces: Edward Hopper’s “Morning Sun”.

You can take the picture as just another piece of Hopper shtick, with soundstage spots, an actor in place, and a director shouting for silence on the set as a scene called “Sadness” starts. Or you can take all that out and just leave light breaking the world into squares and rectangles, dark and bright, exposing it, hiding it, before moving on.


“Sun in an Empty Room” (1963) is among works by that artist covering a quarter-century, opening Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This is the essence, the only drama, of “Sun in an Empty Room,” the last painting in the show. Done in 1963, four years before Hopper’s death, it is what it says: an image of contained space. There’s a window; the trees outside it look wind-whipped, but you can’t hear the wind. Inside is all blank walls and wheat-and-honey-colored sunlight, the two things Hopper loved best and felt comfortable with. He doesn’t strain for a story here, or a sentiment, or skill, or completion, which all but the best of his art tries too hard for. Maybe that’s why this is the least gimmicky painting in “Edward Hopper,” and the only happy one, and the most lucid.

“Edward Hopper” opens on Sunday and runs through Aug. 19 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue; mfa.org. The exhibition travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington (Sept. 16 through Jan. 21, 2008) and the Art Institute of Chicago (Feb. 16 through May 11, 2008).


Permalink to Ny Times Article

Product Pick Of The Week

The Symphony Bench






The Symphony Bench


As the rhythmic rise and fall of a string of delicate notes on a tranquil overture, Symphony graces waiting and common areas with the fluidity of modern design. Set on cast aluminum legs, the formed plywood seat structure creates a visually stunning feat, spawning seating area for two to eight persons.

Symphony can also be placed against a wall for single sided seating or as an island in a larger area for dual sided seating.

For more info, click here.

5 Star Hotels Have Gone To The Dogs: LA Dogworks



They say that all dogs go to heaven.
Well, here in LA it seems they can spend their life on this earth in heaven as well.


LA DOGWORKS is Los Angeles’ first exclusive dog Mecca. Our state-of-the-art, 7,500 square foot retreat boasts:

• 2,500 square foot indoor dog park


• exclusive spa treatments: aromatherapy and hydrotherapy




• dental hygiene

• grooming



• unique retail experience



• education

• training


• car service


• day care


• boarding


Recruiting leading industry professionals to create a pleasant and contemporary aesthetic; LA DOGWORKS is equipped with ultra-modern technology to ensure the highest level of health and safety for dogs of all shapes and sizes.

Our five-star membership resort, located in the heart of Hollywood, is an American Boarding Kennel Association (ABKA) member, and has required all staff to become certified pet care technicians through the ABKA.



Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, our professionally trained and certified staff will be at your dog’s bark and call.

For additional information, click here.

(323) 461-5151

Do All Those Posts and Comments On Sites Really Affect Sales?

Below is part of an article from Trendwatching.com on what they've coined as Transparency Tyranny-the effect of online consumer reviews, habits and posts in regards to marketing and sales.

Really interesting. Read on....


Remember the promises of flawless matching of supply and demand, and limitless consumer power, when the web burst onto the scene a dozen years ago? While the last few years didn’t disappoint (consumers are already enjoying near-full transparency of prices and, in categories like travel and music, near-full transparency of opinions as well), 2007 could be the year in which TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY really starts scaring the shit out of non-performing brands.

Why? For one, 1+ billion consumers are now online, and the majority of them have been online for years. They're skilled bargain seekers and ‘best of the best’ hunters, they're avid online networkers and they're opinionated reviewers and advisors (tripadvisor.com now boasts 5,000,000+ travel reviews).

1+ billion consumers are now online and the majority of them have been online for years. They're skilled bargain seekers and ‘best of the best’ hunters, they're avid online networkers and they're opinionated reviewers and advisors. And there will no shortage of future contributors and viewers, especially with younger generations weighing in heavily; those that are born to the web, to whom contributing online is a given. Simply put: there will be many more consumers posting reviews, and they will increasingly consider them an integral part of their relationships with brands and businesses.

The non-competitive and the downright incompetent have very few stones left to hide under: never before have consumers’ purchase decisions been so strongly influenced by all kinds of transparency. In fact, TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY now rules:

"Old economy fog is clearing: no longer can incompetence, below-par performance, ignored global standards, anti-social & anti-eco behavior, or opaque pricing be obscured. In its place has come a transparent, fully informed marketplace, where producers have no excuse left to underperform. TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY for some, TRANSPARENCY TRIUMPH for others."

TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY | Facts and figures

Some numbers to convince those execs in your organization who still don’t see the TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY deluge coming…

  • 80% of online shopping time is spent researching products rather than buying them. (TechCrunch)

  • 71% of online shoppers read reviews, making it the most widely read consumer-generated content. (Forrester)

  • In a test of product conversion with and without product ratings by customers. Conversion nearly doubled, going from .44% to 1.04% after the same product displayed its five-star rating. (Marketing Experiments Journal)

  • 60 percent of online shoppers provide feedback about a shopping experience, and are more likely to give feedback about a positive experience than a negative one. (JupiterResearch)

  • User-generated ratings and reviews are the second most important site feature behind search. Retailers who adopt ratings and reviews as a differentiator and retention strategy will gain market share. (JupiterResearch)

  • In a study of 2,000 shoppers – 92% deemed customer reviews as “extremely” or “very” helpful and ~ 71% used keyword searches to find products. (eTailing Group)

  • 59% of their users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews. (Bizrate)

  • Only 26% of the 137 top retailers surveyed offered customer ratings and reviews, but 96% of them ranked customer ratings and reviews as an effective or very effective tactic at driving conversion. (Forrester)

  • 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews. (CompUSA & iPerceptions study)

  • Conversion rates are higher on products with less than perfect reviews (less than 5 stars) than those without reviews at all, indicating that the customer feels that the product has been properly reviewed by other customers. (Burpee)

  • 39 percent of those who bought from sites with reviews cite the reviews as the primary factor influencing the purchase decision. (Foresee Results Study, 2006)

Doll Face. Awesome Animation By Andy Huang.


Doll Face follows a machine's struggle to construct its own identity. The machine with a doll face mimics images presented on a television screen and ultimately self-destructs from its inability to adopt a satisfactory visage. Created in its entirety by Andy Huang, Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.



Andrew (Andy) Huang is currently a senior Fine Arts major and Animation minor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Andy's past animated work has been showcased at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and his latest independent short film "Doll Face" has been selected as part of the Official Selection at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, as well as the Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston. Since the completion of "Doll Face" in December 2005, Andy, now 22 years old, continues animation work for Root Films, a production company in Los Angeles. You can see Andy Huang's other work at: http://www.rootfilm.com

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