And the Grammy goes to…

This Sunday the 51st Grammy Awards will air on CBS. I will be keeping close tabs on this year’s celebration and it’s not just in the hopes that Radiohead will be recognized for their tremendous album and innovative video for ‘House of Cards.’


I will be rooting for fellow paper engineer, Renee Jablow, who is in the running for “Best Recording Package” this year for her beautiful CD packaging design for ‘Summer Rains’ by The Ditty Bops.
I met Renee years ago when I tried begging for a job from her at Intervisual Books.

Nowadays she is a freelance designer in California where she can be found creating interesting dimensional products and movable books like last year’s collaboration on “Birdscapes: A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound.” Let’s cross our collective fingers and hope that Renee will be bringing home a mini gramophone this weekend!

- Kyle

Baia or Bust

An important film in the history of the world and maybe universe itself has recently come to my attention. That film is 'The Three Caballeros'. Basically, it's Donald Duck's birthday and all of his South American bird cousins send him a package about the different countries they come from.
Now, I am not a big fan of Donald Duck, in fact I think he is kind of annoying, but this movie is so epically awesome/weird/trippy 1945 animation, that it makes up for being so Donald-centric. Plus, it's the first time Disney put live action and cartoons together.
In these clips Donald's parrot cousin from Brazil is talking about the wonders of the city of Baia. So he decides to take him there.

Enjoy.





-Simon

PS: there is a magic pop-up book that takes them there.

Good dog!

I'm a big fan of Rex the Dog - UK electronic musicians/producers/remixers with a late 70's/early 80's flair. The latest video from their album The Rex The Dog Show for the single Bubblicious is quite brilliant. Cut paper models animated to a fabulous electro-tune that samples the renowned 80's band Yazoo. Watch it below!



That's pretty much how things happen here in our studio everyday.

XO MR

SoCal So Cool

Those who know me know that I absolutely L-O-V-E color! And I absolutely L-O-V-E shoes! Now Pantone has collaborated with SeaVees for a collection named 09/63 (the date Pantone debuted!).

http://men.style.com/news/blog/2009/02/pantone-gets-it.html?mbid=mdn

Using vintage colors from the Pantone archives, they created a line of shoes that have a 1960s Southern California feel.And if I had the chance to pick some Pantone colors for a line of kicks, well, I'd chose these below! I'm not sure what feeling I'm going for, but it's definitely bright!

-Jess

Robert Sabuda & Matthew Reinhart on Babble.com

Parenting website/magazine babble.com interviewed Robert and Matthew recently at the studio. Check out the interview, complete with pictures and video!

It’s The Thought That Counts

I was able to catch one of my favorite artists last week during the closing days of a month long exhibit at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Chelsea last week. Peter Callesen is no stranger to the folks here at the studio. We have received many email forwards regarding his marvelous work in the years past and even featured him on Robert’s website a while back.

This show, titled ‘Folded Thoughts’, focused on less than a dozen recent works, all of which almost carried a dream like quality. One of my favorites new pieces is ‘Five Forgotten Thoughts’ where the paper that was cut out to create the cloud shapes in negative space were used to form the intricately molded brains. This more intimate work (and an amazing apple representation) really stole the show from the more eye-catching skeleton formed on a life-sized scale. Decide for yourself when you check out the slideshow from the Perry Rubenstein Gallery and keep up to date with the Peter Callesen to see if he is coming to a gallery near you.

- Kyle

Mass Transit Art

In the 1970s Bill Brand, a young artist and filmmaker, set out to create a zoetrope inside the New York City subway (A zoetrope is one of the earliest moving picture device shown below). He approached the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about this motion picture and the MTA approved! Hooray! This zoetrope was named "Masstransiscope". This was also before MTA's Arts for Transit program, so as a part of the NYC art history "Masstransiscope" is one of the first official underground pieces of art!



The piece of art is one long light box next to the subway track (I believe the Q and the B trains going into Manhattan). There are slits and paintings on the light box to create panels or stills. And because of the moving train, the images begin to move!

From the 1970s through the 1980s millions of strap hangers experienced "Masstransiscope". Now after nearly 2 decades of decay and layers of graffiti it has been restored to its original state!

You can see the zoetrope here:


I have yet to see this masterpiece on the Q/B trains, but I'll make a special trip to see it!

- Jess

These aren't your ordinary paper snowflakes

Last year I (accidentally!) stole Kyle's Kirigami Day Calendar and had a lot of fun with it, so this year I got a new one of my own! Every day has a different thing to fold and cut. I have a bunch of the best designs pinned up around my desk here in the studio.


What's more, I'm a big origami fan, so whatever I don't cut, I can fold into whatever I want.

-Shelby

Rumble in the Jungle

This is a wacky book called "La carrera de la selva", (The race of the jungle). I found it in our extensive pop up library. It was made in 1967 by George Pavlin and has beautiful 60's illustrations.


All the animals in the jungle have a big race to decide…something. I haven't really finished it yet. My Spanish is so so.


The pops are really simple but it works very well with the graphic style of the art.


I will let you know who wins the race when I find out.
-Simon

I Go Pogo

I am a big fan of comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes and Krazy Kat, but in my opinion, the best one is Pogo by Walt Kelly.



As a young man, Walt Kelly worked as a cartoonist and reporter in Bridgeport, Connecticut before moving to California to work for Walt Disney from 1936 to 1941. While there, he contributed to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia and Dumbo, among others. Later, he began his main career as a political cartoonist and comic strip artist. In Pogo, he combined political satire, social commentary, beautiful artwork (with brushwork influenced by his time at Disney) and slapstick comedy into a masterpiece that spanned 27 years.

You can read some Pogo strips at the official website:
http://www.pogopossum.com/

And more about the strip on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comics)

- Shelby


P.S. Look out Churchy, Friday the 13th lands on a Friday in both of the next two months!

West Coast Gallery Show

Out on the west coast, Gallery Nineteen Eighty Eight is hosting 'Under the Influence: The Official Art Tribute to Beastie Boys'. 100 artists, 100 pieces all paying tribute to the Beastie Boys! Either inspired by snippets of lyrics, music video images, and/or pictures of the band art was created!

Check out the link of the gallery:
http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/entry/home.html

For you illustrators and lovers of music, this Beastie Boys gallery show is for you! And those on the west coast, definitely go check out this show (it ends this Thursday!)



xo!
Jess

Foreign Fairies

Our publisher Candlewick Press sent two large packages to the studio this week. We get a lot of deliveries to our door, but we get extra excited when they are from overseas addresses. Everyone streamed out of the offices and clawed at the boxes like it was Christmas morning. Robert always hopes they contain pounds and pounds of chocolate, but this time it was our book, ‘Fairies and Magical Creatures’ in almost a dozen foreign languages. That is almost just as good! This studio has been fortunate to have many of the titles translated into many different languages, but we often never learn of the results. Very few folks in America get to see how our books look in translation so I created a mosaic of covers for you to enjoy. Let’s see if you can match the covers to the countries:

Canada (and US)
French Canada
France
Spain
Italy
Portugal
Greece
Germany
Slovenia
Denmark
Korea



It’s funny how the color of the cover changes with different countries. My favorite is the Korean version with the additional fairy in the upper left.

- Kyle

Truly Visionary

This week the studio received a copy of “Visionaire 55”. “Visionaire” is a multi-form album of fashion and art produced in limited edition of 4000. Only published three times a year, this holiday issue as the theme of ‘Surprise’ and houses 12 pop-up portfolios in a large dark purple cloth-covered case that has a very inventive magnetic opening device.

One of my favorite artists, Cai Guo-Qiang, is represented here in a pop-up devised by Bruce Foster. The single spread references a large scale installation called ‘Head On’ that I had the great pleasure to see last year at the Guggenheim Museum. I got a great kick out of seeing the arching wave of wolves twist and curl across the page.


There are many other excellent pop-up compositions to be found inside the collection. So be sure to visit the website below to learn more about this creative publication.

http://www.visionaireworld.com/index.php

- Kyle

Sabuda Sweets

As the mail was delivered today, we at the studio were blessed with a gift. A Martha Stewart Living magazine! And not just any issue, one filled to the brim with CUPCAKES! And we love cupcakes here in the studio! Check out the awesome cover of simple cupcakes with shades of icing! Just for color alone the cover is a standout (and I'm pretty sure they taste yummy too!). Take a look at these two choice ones: a hedgehog and a bee on a flower cupcakes! They're so fantastic! Little pieces of art. A few of us then decided that if we weren't pop-up makers we'd probably be bakers... I mean Robert has the plan all drawn out in a previous blog post!

Let us eat cake!
- Jess

A Gorey Mystery

Another favorite illustrator of mine is Edward Gorey (sometimes they laugh at me in the studio because it seems that all illustrators are my “favorites”). My first exposure to his beautiful drawings was actually not through a book, but through the opening titles for “Mystery!” on PBS. This animation is a classic exemplification of his illustrative style and subject:





Needless to say, I was very excited when I discovered a 1982 Edward Gorey pop-up book on our studio’s shelves! Take a look!




-Shelby

Hyena Hullabaloo

Hello again,
I haven't written in a while because of the holidays and whatnot. I just wanted to show a series of photos I think are really powerful and beautiful. They're from the photographer Pieter Hugo of men in Nigeria and their pet Hyenas. Pieter followed the group for a two weeks and learned about their relationship to the animals and the community.

http://www.pieterhugo.com/nigeria/index.html


-Simon

Drawing Crickets

When I was growing up, we had a pretty big stack of 1970s-1990s Cricket magazines that I would periodically work my way through - sometimes just looking at the pictures, other times reading them cover to cover. Many years later, I was very surprised to discover that my favorite childhood illustrator, Trina Schart Hyman, was the art director of Cricket from it's beginning in 1973 until 1979 (she illustrated the first cover!). She continued contributing to the magazine until she passed away in 2004.

Trina Schart Hyman illustrated more than 150 books in her career. She received Caldecott Honors in 1984 for Little Red Riding Hood, in 1990 for Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins and in 2000 for A Child's Calendar. In 1985, she received a Caldecott Award (the most prestigious children's book award) for Saint George and the Dragon.

Check out Trina Schart Hyman here...

And Cricket magazine here!

-Shelby

Visit to Cedar Rapids

Alright, this is old news, but this past summer I went to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to visit my family and celebrate my Gramma's 90th birthday. Here's my Gram, Helen Wehby, on her big day with my sister Erin (always posed, tanned and up front), my three cousins (Lori, Lisa & Lynne) and me.


Most of my mom's side of the family is from Cedar Rapids - and my family lived there when I was young. Mom, Erin and I were lucky enough to spend some time in Cedar Rapids and explore some of my old haunts, like Bever Park.


I even visited my old school - I was a student of Mrs. Semeroth's second grade class at Erskine Elementary school in 1979. The school seemed a lot shorter than I remembered it.

- MR

Welcome to the Library

Our studio space is really coming together. Our new library actually holds all of our books. It's a great resource for pop-up and picture books, both past and present.



Matthew and Robert have amassed an impressive collection of reference books, with subjects ranging from Amphibians to Ziggurats. When we need to look at the anatomy of a lion to make a pop-up of Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia or learn about the origins of Hamadryads for EM: Fairies and Magical Creatures, that's where we look!


The most important feature of the library, however, is to house our massive Simpsons figure collection. The citizens of Springfield have lived on top of our shelves for as long as I have worked at the studio - they like it there!


The only thing missing is a nice beanbag chair to tie the room together and provide a good place to take a brake with a book. There's a lot of options, but we have yet to find something that fits with the studio's particular aesthetic. Matthew may like at least one of these for sure!


- Simon

I Wanna Ghana Book!

I had the good fortune to see a great book arts show in New York recently.  In the summer of 2005 a wonderful pop-up book artist from Chicago named Shawn Sheehy traveled to Ghana to help create a paper mill at the Abba House Cultural Center in Accra.  Since that time the good people at Abba House have been teaching local children how to create handmade paper from plants and materials found in the area.  Once the paper is finished, it is made into cards, Coptic bound journals, personal storybooks, ornaments and other paper creations.

I was able to see many of these works in the Project Room at the Phoenix Gallery in Manhattan where handmade books and the cards stood on pedestals before large photos of the young kids engaged in making the paper.  In one corner of the galler y stood a large tree adorned with colorful paper ornaments folded in an accordion-like fashion.  After speaking with Linda Handler, the lovely director of the non-profit center for the arts, I learned that all the proceeds from the show went to the school expenses for the budding Ghanaian artists.  Well I was sold!  In short order, I had all my holiday shopping complete, plus Linda gave me literature on the Abba House and Cross Cultural Collaborative so that their inspiring story can accompany the wonderful works of art.

To see slideshows of the paper mill at the Abba House check out:

http://www.culturalcollaborative.org/

To keep tabs on Shawn, see the newly launched website at:

http://shawnsheehy.com

To learn more about the Phoenix Gallery go to:

http://www.phoenix-gallery.com/Nov08show.html

--Kyle