October 21, 2010

Graffiti Safari 10/10

Been very much into street art these days - here are a few snapshots from my excursions so far...



XO - MR

Twin suns of Tatooine...

Three words describe my post today: PAPER. STAR WARS. ANIMATED. Well, actually that's four words, but you get it! Here's a paper-made, stop-motion animated music video for Jeremy Messersmith's song Tatooine.



- Jess

October 7, 2010

I Spy, Part 2...


So I went exploring again through my home town of New York and took some snapshots of the things I encountered, like...


a horse...


...shiny things...


...some fabulous graffiti...

...cool old signs...


...a pink garbage truck...

...random positive messages on signs...


...dragons on fire trucks...


...Elmo...
...a fountain...


...a cool chair...


...weird carpet samples...


...super-mod car...


...more fabulous graffiti...


...a dinosaur on the wall...


...an iron filigree...

...fiery motorcycle seat...


...three circles of string in a chain-link fence...


...and a couple of shady looking mummies.

Remember to keep a watchful eye on the world around you. Until next time!


XO Matthew

October 6, 2010

Keeping Portland Weird

It has been a very full and exhausting week. The Movable Book Society 8th Biennial Conference was a great success. Movable book artists and fans from across the globe gathered in Portland, Oregon for three days of presentations, parties and pop-ups! Portland turned out to be the perfect location for this year’s assembly. The city is delightful, with free and easy transportation, great shops and restaurants spotted along the simple grid street layout, and a funky overall vibe from the locals. We felt right at home.


There is too much info for one post so I thought I would break it down and share some details from the first day.


Our conference kicked off with a talk given by the talented book artist, Colette Fu . I have been a fan of her work for a number of years and was blown away at the subtly and depth of the narratives that exist in her one-of-a-kind paper engineered artist books. Dressed in traditional Yunnan Province style clothing, Colette detailed her process of documenting the 25 ethic minorities of her mother’s hometown in China. By combining her striking color photography with massive pop-up spreads, Colette brought a distant people to the forefront of our consciousness.



She went on to describe her process of creating a series of large format pop-ups of various spooky locations in Philadelphia and a series of collaged photographic pops that focused on beauty, materialism and the colon. At the conclusion of the evening, when our dinner plates were cleared away and the Portland skyline twinkled at us from our perch atop the Hilton Hotel, Colette shared with us a charming collection of commercial advertising that she recently collaborated on for the Children’s Medical Center. Check out Colette Fu’s website to view the 30 second commercials and videos of her other work and learn more about this up and coming pop-up artist.


- Kyle Olmon

Art discovery on the web...



Through blogs and little snippets on the world wide web, I find lots of different things. And because of that, I can't remember when or how I stumbled upon Kate Bingaman-Burt's artwork.

She creates drawings of things or services she has purchased and has done so since 2002. And they're really fun. You might think that someone taking on this type of task would draw each one within the same layout, but Kate plays around depending on what the object is (see eye brow wax picture).

Check out her website and book: http://katebingamanburt.com/

- Jess

Bright, bold & ...


Just discovered a really fantastic artist/graphic designer, Paula Scher, on one of the blogs I frequent. Her design work is really beautiful, but her paintings of maps really caught my eye. Bright, bold, and full of type!


- Jess

October 1, 2010

Kaiju Book


I was recently introduced to a killer book. It was a gift, but not for me, so tempers flared when I got my grubby mitts on the hardbound book, but fear not I handled it like the gem it proved to be.


Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts from Japanese Film was released in 2009 and compiled by Ivan Vartanian. I must say that Ivan did great job in developing this love note to Kaiju, which is simply translated from Japanese as ‘monster’. Now, I’ve been working on a pop-up project with monsters for a number of months now, but none of these bad boys ended up in the encyclopedic book. I’m talking about the ones from the 1950’s film that would play on Sunday afternoons in my youth. I’m talking about…oh my god…what is that….GODZILLA! I miss the simple pleasures of youth, yet I digress, so back to the book.


Not only is this book filled with classic movie stills and great photos but also other expressions of the kaiju culture. These include cut-away cross sections of Gamera and his gang, dissections of kaiju creations split on sheets of transparent paper, funky cut paper drawings, and a great papercraft lizard. Karikuri Kaiju was designed by Keisuke Saka who creates very inventive paper automata and some mind-boggling paper sculpture.



Anyone with fond memories of Godzilla battling Mothra would be proud to own this title, and I would be proud to call them a friend. Now let get out of this miniature cardboard version of Tokyo before he returns!


~ Kyle