Manchester, UK
The hell of war comes home. In July 2009, Colorado Springs Gazette published a two-part series entitled ‘Casualties of War.’ The articles focused on a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, who since returning from duty in Iraq had been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping, and suicides. Returning soldiers were committing murder at a rate 20 times greater than other young American males. A separate investigation into the high suicide rate among veterans published in the New York Times in October 2010 revealed that three times as many California veterans and active service members were dying soon after returning home than those being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home.
(from wearedorothy) Read the ‘Casualties of War’ articles here.
Images: plastic moulded toy soldier figurines with bases, 7cm high
Ortisei, Italy
Willy Verginer is a Tyrolean woodcarver, living and working in the picturesque Val Gardena, surrounded by the Dolomites. His stunning, life-sized wooden sculptures are highlighted with a vibrant palette of acrylic colors…
See more of Willy Verginer’s beautiful figurative work here and on his own website (well worth the visit), here.
Algerian Sahara
From the sloping dunes of the Sahara comes a groundbreaking design process that turns waste from refugee camps into jewelry as beautiful as the intentions behind it. Royal College of Art student Florie Salnot collaborated with Sandblast, a London-based nonprofit that works with the Saharawis of Algeria, to find a creative yet economic solution to raise awareness about their cultural displacement. Old plastic bottles from the refugee camp are collected and repurposed into remarkable faux-gold jewelry that reflects their local traditions.
Read more of this story (with additional images) in the Ecouterre article here.
“These stunning pieces prove that
upcycling can be synonymous with
sophisticated and inspired artisanal work.”
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Thanks to the many who came out to visit Evelin Richter’s studio ‘What Clay Art & Curios’ as part of the 10th Wave Artists’ Studio Tour over the past two days. The weather was outstanding and the exchange with visitors was stimulating. Among the guests who attended, my Circle colleague Adrian Shum decided to document his impressions photographically by means of his iPhone—view an online Flickr gallery of what he captured here.
Thanks Adrian!
Images: thumbnails from the Flickr gallery; the ‘What Clay Art & Curios’ studio, workshop, and Ev’s house as seen from the street; some of the completed sculptural pieces on display in the “workshop gallery;” “Piercings” jewelery pieces of Ev’s (on sterling silver chains); and the ‘Domestic Goddess’ weather-vane I made for Ev a few years back…
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This is the “award-winning” logo designed for the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission by Gerry Kano in 1974.
Perhaps the 1970s really were simpler, gentler, more innocent times (?)… and it can happen that designers at times “get too close” to their own work to “see the bigger picture”—yet it seems hard to believe that no one in the decision-making and client-side approval process saw just how badly this could be interpreted.
Steven Heller offered some astute comments on this design in an AIGA article (from 2009): “On some occasions, logos are more than marks of failure or malfeasance; sometimes they unintentionally illustrate the foibles or folly of a company or institution all too vividly… the unfortunate pictorial relationship between the priest and the child, given our collective awareness… suggests a much too ironic interpretation. It’s a challenge to see what this positive/negative image once suggested, a guardian protecting the innocent, since the benevolence of its subject is no longer black and white. When a good design signifies bad deeds, the result is, well, a really unfortunate logo.”
