Robert L. Peters

31 May 2009

Inspiring | Andy Goldsworthy

goldsworthy_one1.jpg

goldsworthy_two.jpg

goldsworthy_five.jpg

goldsworthy_three.jpg

goldsworthy_four.jpg

Penpont, Scotland

Andy Goldsworthy is a talented British artist who “collaborates with nature” to make transient, ephemeral creations—which he then photographs for posterity (and the inspiration of others). Goldsworthy’s goal is to better understand nature by means of intimate interaction and participation. He generally works with whatever comes to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds, thorns, feathers….

“I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and ‘found’ tools—a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn. ”

“Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather—rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm—is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there.”

“I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue.”

“Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.”

“The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below.”


30 May 2009

Can anything be stupider?

war_stupider_blaise_pascal.png


29 May 2009

Signs of the times…

pp39_signs_poster.jpg

Austin, Texas

DJ Stout and his team at Pentagram Austin recently threw a fundraising party to help the homeless and to celebrate the release of Pentagram Papers 39: Signs. Designed by Stout, Signs is a collaboration with legendary Texas musician Joe Ely and renowned photographers Michael O’Brien and Randal Ford that focuses on the issue of homelessness. Donations received during the event went to the benefit of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a 501(c)(3) social outreach ministry for the homeless and indigent working poor. A good idea and nicely executed…


28 May 2009

Goering… on war.

war_hermann_goering.png


solittletosay.jpg

ratssign.jpg

(thanks, Banksy)


27 May 2009

I don’t want you to work for free, but…

vendor_client_1.jpgvendor_client_2.jpgvendor_client_3.jpg

A great little video clip here (2:19 on YouTube) regarding the “vendor/client relationship” that comes frighteningly close to the service/value conversation that we designers often find ourselves in… well worth watching.

(thanks to Cameron Cavers for the link)


war_earthquake_rankin.png


26 May 2009

I’ve just turned 55…

audienceapplauding.gif

A premonition I had in my twenties that I wouldn’t
live beyond forty obviously didn’t pan out…
(message to self—don’t bank on your intuition, OK?)

Thanks to the many friends from far and near
who have sent their regards…


25 May 2009

What goes around… comes around.

what_goes_around.jpg

iraq-war-poster.jpg

New York, USA

A clever wrap-around poster for the Global Coalition for Peace bearing a profound message… And, a timeless (also ironic) quotation by the USA’s 34th president (NATO’s first supreme commander) expressed exactly 50 years before the ill-informed and wrong-headed 2003 invasion of Iraq:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953


22 May 2009

Drones at the karaoke lounge of design…

ideasonideas.jpg

Vancouver, Canada

Eric Karjaluoto is a design-focused thinker and a very good writer—he’s also a talented and award-winning designer, ‘serial entrepreneur’, and a founding partner at smashLAB, a strategic interactive agency. Many in our field know him for the Design Can Change initiative he spearheaded in 2007 in an effort to unite designers to address climate change. A piece posted by Eric yesterday on his popular blog ideasonideas is well worth the read, here

“The invasion of design has begun, fueled by an army of talented newcomers and low-cost offshore services. This new breed trades methodology for mimicry and by doing so radically undercuts pricing, sometimes even working for free. Like it or not, supply and demand in the design industry is undergoing upheaval. Worse yet, for design buyers it’s getting harder to differentiate between good and bad design.” (full article here)

Thanks for sharing your intelligent views, and keep up the good work Eric!


Next Page »

© 2002-