Fun and games with garbage!

Picture of the ball run from art at the dump on flickr.

Ah yes, the joy of being the dump's residence artist.  So Paul Cesewski, San Francisco's City Dump artist (NY has one, too!) has created a bunch of carnival games with scavenged junk from the dump.  Apparently they are opening the dump to the public for some fun this weekend!  This guy has my dream-job!! 

Fine artists and their mainstream commercial endeavors

So last night I'm hanging out at a friend's place and I pick up the most recent issue of The NY Times Style magazine (supplementary reading for those who don't really need to know real news). There I come across an ad (ok, I was looking for the good ones) for Gap, more specifically Gap's new t-shirt campaign (hopefully that (red) crap is over).  So the deal is that Gap has gotten all of these "influential contemporary artists" to do limited edition t-shirts to benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.  I must admit that the list of artists involved is impressive, some of my personal favorites being Marilyn Minter (the shirt at the top of the post), Jeff Koons, and Kiki Smith.  

I tend to have mixed feelings about established "fine" artists getting mixed-up in mainstream commercialism.  This was a big issue in my thesis.  What does it mean for an artist to create an image for the sake of a product, as opposed to for the sake of the image itself (or an idea, even)?  Marilyn Minter (who shows up in my thesis a good bit) creates these incredible images which seem to be critiquing the beauty industry through these intense paradoxes of beauty and the grotesque.  Is the criticism lost when the image is printed on a t-shirt and sold to the masses?  What about a skateboard? 

(Supreme has a bunch of artists on board, including Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, designing decks.  The one above is by Marilyn Minter)

 I guess Barbara Kruger puts in her 2 cents right on the Gap T: "Computers, sunglasses, watches, furniture, houses, art" they are all just products for consumption. 

Galliano's Ready-to-Wear for Fall '08

I love when haute couture designers do "cheap" ready-to-wear lines.  I'm not sure if John Galliano knows how to do practical designs, but (if I had the money) nothing could stop me from owning this coat.  His 2008 line calls to mind about a million classic children's story references (from "Alice in Wonderland" to "Arabian Nights"), which I love.  Something about the one above makes me think of the Scarecrow (with a crow feather headdress!!) from "The Wizard of Oz."  The outfit below is so obviously the Mad Hatter.  I'm thinking I could totally knit a hat like that...

Style.com has a slide-show of the whole line from the Paris Fashion Week premier. 

Mondrian-esqe Bookshelf

I was just cruisin' around on the upcoming (NYC, May 17-20) International Contemporary Furniture Fair site.  I like to fantasize about all the wonderful bookshelves I will have in the future.  I like how this one (by Meridiani sas di R. Crosti & C.)  has spots for stacks of books (I bet they would be especially good for magazines), along with the traditional row sections, and little nooks that would fit knick-knacks.  

RIP Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg died Monday night (May 12, 2008) at the age of 82.  First, Albert Hofmann (d. April 29, 2008), now Rauschenberg: this year has already seen the passing of a few of the great minds of the 20th century.  Rauschenberg's art truly mediated the evolution from Abstract Expressionism's formal concerns to Pop Art's inclusion of everyday references.  I joked many times, while working on my thesis, that I was going to track him down (he lived just South of Sarasota) and ask him to be my mentor.  

Here's a link to the New York Times obituary.

Look what I made!

Just testing out my graphic design skillz. Logo for www.sugarpillmusic.com

Testing!

Paloma and I at the opening reception for our Theses Exhibition