Music for the Labo(u)r Day invalid.
I'm heading into Labor Day weekend with a case of tonsillitis, which I haven't had since I was, oh: eight years old? Apropos of nothing, let me present Max Richter's 24 Postcards in Full Colour, two dozen pieces of music accompanied by black-and-white photographs meant to be experienced in any order you wish. A good, simple idea, and good music if you like Brian Eno's Music for Airports, which I do. The juxtaposition of music and simple image is just, well, good somehow. A simple idea, executed in a simple manner, but it lights the old imagination right up. Via Very Short List.
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Art | 29 August 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
0.33ppi
Via Portland advertising agent (and this correspondent’s early mentor) Jerry Ketel comes this account of artist Christoph Niemann’s tiling solution for two bathrooms in his new house in Berlin. Recommended reading for any post-digital individual who is no longer able to look at bathroom tile without seeing pixels. Treat yourself to the story’s comments thread to find out what the morlocks think. (My favorite: “Talk about idle rich.”) Related – and also recommended – is a story the Times ran a couple of months back about Niemann’s sons and their obsession with the New York subway system.
Oh, and a housekeeping note: Bespoke accepts comments again. Somehow, when we switched servers (which we’re about to do again), the governing templates were overwritten by earlier, non-inclusive versions. Bespoke regrets the error.
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Art | 24 August 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
Hanging type: Jaume Plensa's lettered curtain.
We hadn't seen this piece from Catalan sculptor Jaume Plensa. Titled Silent Rain, the "curtain" is iron, in eight parts with texts by Baudelaire, Blake, Dante, Estelles, Ginsberg, Goethe, Shakespeare, Williams. Forget what I said below about accumulating. I want one. Via design:related, via Design Muse.
Posted by Eric Hillerns in Art | 02 July 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
The god of fountain pens.
Of particular interest, I would imagine, to our friend Timothy Leigh, who also makes pens: a profile of fountain pen nib-maker Nobuyoshi Nagahara at PingMag.
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Art | 02 July 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
Smaller is better.
The Portland Art Museum’s first Contemporary Northwest Art Awards soft-opened a week ago Saturday (the official public opening is later in July, though you can – and should – go see the show now). It’s an uncommonly strong exhibition; in fact, I can’t remember a denser or more interesting contemporary show in my twenty-odd years of attending the museum. During the preview, I felt as if I might be at the Henry in Seattle: historically, PAM has had a timid hand when it came to contemporary work, regional or otherwise. So: kudos to Jennifer Gately, the museum’s young curator of Northwest art, who put it together; and especially to Whiting Tennis (who took home the first Schnitzer Prize), Jeffry Mitchell, Dan Attoe, Cat Clifford, and our own Marie Watt, each of whom put together disciplined, considered and largely brand-new bodies of work in almost no time (six months is nothing when you work at the scale that these people do).
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Art | 25 June 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
Tuesday Flickr Set: Motor art.
We stumbled upon this fine Flickr set while researching a future post on Aussie moto-brand, Deux Ex Machina. While that write up will deliver in due time, we couldn't help but provide this little morsel from Lockwasher Design; a collection of fantastical transportation objects assembled from repurposed and found industrial ingredients. 40's-era Electrolux vacuums, plumbing flanges, vintage ice cream scoops. And while we're also quite smitten with the cutest-ever army of robots, it's the motor art set that got us a bit revved.
Our Flickr voyeurism ignited a spark (again with the lame play on the motor theme?) for what we hope will become a regular department here at Bespoke. The weekly Flickr post. Tuesday seems as good a day as any, we'd suspect. With that, we promise to do our best in staying current, but we will need your help. If you are especially fond of a Flickr set that you'd like to share with your humble correspondents, do let us know. Won't you?
Posted by Eric Hillerns in Art | 20 May 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post (1 so far)
Each draw of thread.
In Sunday's edition of the The Oregonian, Inara Verzemnieks stitched a warming account of Marie Watt's most recent sewing circle. The artist (and mother of Mr. McIsaac's daughter, Maxine) sustains her blanket dialogues; this time titled, "Forget-Me-Not: Mothers and Sons." Ms. Watt and her phalanx weaves a woolen web of handmade portraits of every Oregon serviceman killed in the Iraq War, while honoring women passed as remembered by her male associates. The fellows of Pinch, including a young Logan Hillerns, are, as always, proud to be involved.
Posted by Eric Hillerns in Art | 07 April 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
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