I am still in awe that my photo was chosen to be a part of this gallery show. Photography continues to be a favorite medium of mine and this may be proof it's time to purchase that next tire of camera. Come see for yourself and have a glass of wine.
Join me this Friday June 24th from 6-9pm
3180 17th Street @ South Van Ness
Like many, The Bay Citizen's Jay Sacher has admired Paul Madonna's elegant drawing series, titled "All Over Coffee," which appears weekly in the SF Chronicle. Last Friday, Madonna showed off the original pieces in an exhibit that coincided with his latest collection, "Everything is its Own Reward," published by City Lights. As Sacher notes, Madonna is a busy guy: he also does a strip called "Small Potatoes" for lit-site The Rumpus.
SF is lucky to have a store where people can sell their handmade goods including publications. Their jewelry is great and I wanted most of it. The dresses in the window made me want to steal. N&P reminds me of Graphic Design Matters in NYC except N&P has DIY goods in addition to small publications. Both stores are a great place to go in search of inspiration. This store gets a thumbs way up from me.
Below is their official 'About' section:
Needles and Pens is an emporium of zines, d.i.y. goods, and an art gallery. Located in San Francisco's Mission district, the space aims to provide an affordable place where like minded people from the community can display and sell their own home-made goods, home-published zines, and art work. The items we stock are predominately recycled, silk screened, cut-up, re-sewn, photocopied, hand-made, and hand-published.
It's a great love story. Think of it as my gift to all of you for Valentines Day.
~nicole
********
Animated on location at a beach, in snow, and underwater, this stop-motion short details a transoceanic conversation between two characters via objects in a bottle.
Written, directed, animated, edited, and sound by Kirsten Lepore
After returning from Central America for two months I felt the need to get involved in a large scale art project. A friend was writing an ariticle on this project and told me the Temple of Flux was recruting volunteers. We checked it out and instantly fell in love with the project. I vividly remember walking into American Steel warehouse and marveling at all the huge art pieces going up. Radiohead was wafting in the distance along with the sound of compressers and power tools. WIthin five minutes of walking up I was drilling bench supports together with gloves and goggles on.
I returned every Tuesday from early June through mid August. Committed volunteers we were given free tickets to attend Burning Man early and help build the Temple in Black Rock City. I didn't even plan to go to Burning Man. This had to be an extrodinary experience in the making. Since I had the time I took the opportuntiy and started planning for a three-week adventure. A construction project in one of the harshes desert climates was not easy to plan for. To go I had to jump in with both feet. The art went from extrodinary to mediaore and everywhere in between. For someone who would not call herself a 'burner' I had a great time experiencing the hard work and innovation that goes into the week of Buring Man. I don't know if I'll go back or not, but I would say it restored my faith in humanity. I learned about construction, communication, creativity, hard work and community. Truely a remarkable experience.
My nephew Rian is a rock star in the making. My brother in law Joe, took this photo of Rian when he was only a few days old. I recognized that face when I saw it. I found this photo of Syd Vicious and combined it with his new look look alike, Rian, and then sent it to the new parents. They got a kick out of the photo.
Can you believe Rian was born with so much hair?
You must experience this using Google Chrome or it won't work correctly. I must have rewatched this five times. Paste the link below in a Google Chrome browser.
Ratatat - Drugs from More Soon on Vimeo.
Leave it to Ratatat to make Getty stock video footage awesome: The new Drugs video, directed by Carl Burgess, and produced by Blink Art & Colonel Blimp. It gave me a Darren Aronofsky creepiness feeling that got under my skin. What is this? How bizarre. Getty, where did you find these people? How much did you pay them? If you think this photo is disturbing watch the whole video. I watched and just shook my head back and forth.
Click to see the full article & check out the photos. Really beautiful work.
‘Graphic Design for Fashion’
By Jay Hess and Simone Pasztorek
Design byBOTH AKA Jay Hess & Simone Pasztorek
Photography PSC Photography
As the title implies, Graphic Design for Fashion opens the door to the world of graphic design for fashion bringing together a well-curated selection of contemporary work, accompanied by interviews in which the studios reveal something of their process for expressing themselves creatively and exclusive insights into the projects themselves – similar to the way I do things on SI.
It’s nice to see more focus on women in the industry. Read article below or click on the link.
**************
Beat That If You Can! Slanted #12 Women, Typography, Graphic Design is a stage for extraordinary and intelligent projects by women. This is not a very special thing. For our focus on visual culture its all the same whether a (typo-) graphic work has been realized by a female or a male being. But its undeniable and strange that still only very few women are visible in graphic design (more) and typography (less). We want to contribute to more visibility for at least some female type and graphic designers design by women is at least just as well. Beat That If You Can!
With great pleasure we present the work of Ariane Spanier (Berlin), Julia Born (Amsterdam) and Verena Gerlach (Berlin), the photographic essays Brides of Krishna by Kalpesh Lathigra (dmbmedia / London) and Female Marines from the archives of the U.S. Marine Corps as well as contemporary typefaces, illustrations and graphic projects by female designers. Type essays by Laure Boer (Berlin) and Gerda Breuer/Julia Meer (Wuppertal) are dealing with the role of women in graphic design and typography and outline a corresponding history. Numerous interviews with Verena Gerlach (Berlin), Ariane Spanier (Berlin, Nadine Chahine (Bad Homburg), Veronika Burian (Prag), Laura Worthington (Washington), Kapitza (London), Geneviève Gauckler (Paris), Esen Karol (Istanbul), Akiko Kanna (Tokyo) and Susanne Baer (Tokyo) as well as the second part of the Tokyo report by Ian Lynam (Tokyo), a musical travelogue and a paper report round up stuff to read.
Slanted Magazine #12
Women, Typography, Graphic Design
Autumn/Winter 2010
148 pages
It's nice to see more focus on women in the industry.
Very cool.
In Grass Valley I noticed this rock outside my tent. I was wearing this sweatshirt at the time of the discovery. An ordinary moment became exhilarating.
One of the many dreams in my life is to create my own urban farm. I am lusting over these chic chicken coops. If only my landlord would let me have a chicken coop! Imagine fresh eggs daily! This coop has a live roof and an attractive coop design.
What's the best way to learn? To study what others have done? Or to plunge right in yourself? We think it's time to bring back the apprenticeship model.
Once upon a time, we learned only by doing. A quality education meant finding an expert to take you under his or her wing. Whether you wanted to be a blacksmith or a shoemaker, the ultimate break was ultimately a relationship. In exchange, your capacity would be stretched. You would learn in real-time, soaking up the knowledge through trial and error. You would learn the trade in practice rather than theory. You would also build a network and gain respect based on your performance rather than any sort of degree.This era of apprenticeship is now largely a relic of history. Somewhere along the line we decided to economize and scale education. Given the time-intensive and intimate nature of apprenticeships, we sought to train more people at once with a streamlined curriculum. As we moved more and more learning into the classroom, we compromised the intense learning that happened in the field. We traded experiential learning for a more standardized but less potent education.
I believe the classroom underserves us. We become dissuaded by theoretical lessons, disenchanted teachers, and a reward system that is all about the grade and not at all about the trade. If experiential education is so important, why don't we give college credits for what happens outside the classroom?
As we moved more learning into the classroom, we compromised the intense learning that happened in the field.
Unfortunately, undergraduate education is centered on the classroom experience and takes extracurricular activities (clubs, etc.) as an
afterthought. Many schools provide credit for internships, but they don’t stress them as an integrated aspect of the overall program. What’s more, the schools usually play little to no role in coordinating the internships, so it’s very hit or miss: A student could have a life-changing experience, or spend a semester fetching coffee and sitting on the sidelines.
Most of the passionate creative people I have met are motivated more by a genuine interest than by money. We are driven by our pursuit of an expertise in what fascinates us. The Holy Grail for most creative careers is becoming a leader in your interests and making an impact. Experiential on-the-job learning is the most natural conduit for developing such an expertise.
While working with Steve Kerr, the legendary leadership development guru who helped found learning initiatives at GE and other top companies, I learned about the 70/20/10 model for leadership development. The model suggests that, when it comes to training leaders, only 10% happens in a classroom through formal instruction, 20% is all about feedback exchange and coaching, and a whopping 70% is experiential. With this premise, some companies create "stretch assignments" for employees - bold projects that purposely push comfort zones and maximize exposure to lessons learned the hard way.
Experiential on-the-job learning is the natural conduit for developing expertise.
We need to bring back the apprenticeship model. And if we can't do it in the system, we need to do it for ourselves.
For those of us that are experienced practitioners, we should be serving as mentors. Apprenticeships are mutually beneficial. Aside
from the benefit of willing labor, many teams develop their greatest employees from internship experiences. Your mentees will also broaden your network. I’ll bet you anything that some of them become your future customers – or perhaps your managers.
When it comes to a rich education that sticks, it seems "old school" is the way to go. Let's start exploring the apprenticeship model and find ways to build our expertise by actually doing what interests us most.
