London, U.K.
Furniture designer William Warren has come up with a practical set of solid plywood shelves that… when your time arrives, can be taken apart and reassembled as a coffin. As Warren explains: “We’re all going to die and we will need a coffin in the future, so why not make your coffin from something you’ve owned and loved for years and save your bereaved family having to choose one (and pay for one) at an already difficult time?” Why not indeed.
The Shelves for Life retail for £350. (seen in a back-issue of Wallpaper)
It’s Pi (Approximation) Day today ( 22/7 ) first celebrated 20 years ago by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Pi or π is the mathematical constant which represents the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry—it’s also an irrational number (it cannot truly be expressed as a fraction, and its decimal representation never ends or repeats), as well as a transcendental number (no finite sequence of algebraic operations on integers [powers, roots, sums, etc.] can ever produce it). More on Pi here or here.
Happy Pi Day :-)
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
We’ve spent an interesting day of serendipitous garage-sailing along the lake… lots of stimulating objects (old tools, whatchamaycallits, etc.) that will find themselves repurposed and/or fashioned into art objects.
Stimulating images of reuse near and far… sources unknown.
London, U.K.
Banksy, the mysterious guerrilla artist famed for his lightning graffiti art attacks, is a 34-year-old former public schoolboy called Robin Gunningham, the British newspaper Mail on Sunday claims… to be determined: how this may affect the man’s remarkable work. I’ve long admired his satirical take on politics, culture, and contemporary ethics… and I’ve posted re: Banksy before, here and here.
Re-mixed works by Micah Wright (who seems to have disappeared from the Internet)…
(from www.silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com…)
From a remarkable French website featuring thousands of antique postcards (of every genre)… century-old photographs (from around the world), poignant illustrations (like the Raphaël Kirchner above), and delightful ephemera. (Link no longer active, sorry).
From the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago: Jana Sterbak’s Sisyphus Sport, 1997, Leather straps on granite (backpack), 132 lbs. (60 kg).
Chicago, Illinois
Ev and I are spending the weekend in Chicago, in advance of my speaking at FITC’s Design & Technology Event here. Today’s highlights: a lengthy visit to the Art Institute (even though much of the main gallery is under construction, and a sizable portion of the permanent collection is on tour); an incredible solstice evening at Olive Park beach on Lakeshore Drive (Lake Michigan).
Art: Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (110 tons of polished stainless steel); Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain; Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat; Nighthawks by Edward Hopper; where did Van Gogh go?
