Power to the Poster

This is a pretty cool poster project: easily accessible (downloadable actually) artwork to make blank walls say something meaningful.


I came across this site, when checking out thirty grunge web designs at Sixrevisions. It brought me back to an interview I did over the summer with Favianna Rodriguez and Josh MacPhee, who had just released the book Reproduce & Revolt, a collection of social art across genres for activists worldwide to use as a reference.

Said MacPhee in that interview:

"We now have access to technology that allows us to easily and inexpensively distribute images around the world. What that has led to is people taking and evolving images and ideas nearly instantaneously. An artist in Buenos Aires will create a stencil against the war and put it up on the street – within twenty-four hours a photo of that is put up on the Internet and someone in Europe pulls it down and makes her own version of it and prints it on a flyer and sends it to a friend in another country and she takes it out and does something else with it. People are making the graphics just like they were a hundred years ago, but now they have the tools to shoot them halfway across the world in an instant."




You can read more and learn more about social art (and how it's changed in the digital age) in the interview here.

Versailles Fashionplate

So, yes, Marie Antoinette is a symbol of decadence, frivolity and perhaps materialistic compulsion, but she's also the young teen queen of fashion. Two years ago, I was lucky enough to catch the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute's "Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century" showcasing the style Marie sported. (I also saw Coppola's movie, which was really only worth watching for the aesthetics...and shoes).

I was delighted to come across some more gorgeous imagery today via Paris Atelier, who suggests stopping by The Costumes of Marie Antoinette to make you wish you had twenty people dressing you every morning in hoops, hats, feathers, and finery...I love this seal, Marie's, that she highlights:

A perfect image to build a boudoir around?

Change in the Air

I know it's not just me. From the conversations at my favorite cafe this morning to the celebratory tone of the blogosphere to the cheering of my office mates, we're not only excited about what our new President Barack Obama will do, but how we can be a part of what he will do.

Time to celebrate freedom and change.

Get Out And...

Vivienne Westwood Does Rugs?

So I dolled myself up as Vivienne Westwood yesterday to celebrate Halloween. Imagine my surprise when I came across this gem this morning.


Then to add to my designer morning, I came across this lovely set from Missoni. Wouldn't mind enjoying a cup of tea in this vessel.

Hungarian Revolutionary (well, in photography!)

"The art of Munkacsi lay in what he wanted life to be, and he wanted it to be splendid. And it was." -Richard Avedon-


Perhaps it's because I am Hungarian; perhaps it's because I'm a fashionista. At any rate I'm quite excited about the lastest retrospective of Martin Munkasci's photography. The International Center for Photography presents a retrospective of innovative photographer's work in fashion photography (Martin Munkacsi: Think While You Shoot!; through April 29 at the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street). His introduction of action, movement and vigor to the staid fashion photography at the time, made him an innovator. As The New York Times writes:


"Munkacsi was a stylist, and he made catchy images the only way he knew how, in a modernist mode, which, being an opportunistic form, could serve any master. Shortly after that he left for the United States. On a trip to New York near the end of 1933 he was hired by Carmel Snow for a Harper's Bazaar assignment. His picture of the socialite model Lucile Brokaw running down a Long Island beach in a bathing suit and cape introduced a whole new vocabulary of vigor and action to American fashion." (NYTimes)

*Photos from The New York Times; top, "Operetta Soubrette Rosi Barsony in Her Entrancing Grotesque Dance" (around 1932) by Martin Munkacsi; bottom, "Lucile Brokaw on a Long Island Beach"(1933) by Martin Munkacsi*

"Design Like You Give a Damn"

"'Everyone else wanted to be Frank Gehry...I was kind of a black sheep' looking for low-cost design solutions." -Cameron Sinclair- (Christian Science Monitor)

In every profession it is important to realize that profession's most basic objectives: in journalism, to communicate information, in law to provide advice that serves the best interests of clients and society, and, in architecture, beyond all the multimillion (and billion) dollar projects, to provide shelter. "Strip away all [of] the ego in architecture and all the design theory, the hype, and the hot magazine articles, all we do is provide shelter. If you can't do that, you can't call yourself an architect," says Cameron Sinclair.

Sinclair, in defiance of the focus on aesthetics in architecture, is impassioned by a different agenda: socially responsible design. In his book, "Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises," he profiles such projects in Afghanistan, Brazil and South Africa. As he explains:


"Actually, the role of the architect is a political one. You make a conscious choice whether you're going to do a project or not do a project. You can say, 'It's really a shame what happened down in the Gulf Coast, but I don't really want to get involved in that.' I actually do an art project once a year, an art project for myself, just to keep my creative juices going...Just as I was coming out of college, I did a project dealing with homelessness in New York. I had located the housing to block the Statue of Liberty, and the idea that when the city took responsibility of its homeless, it'd get it's view of Liberty back, because there was this idea of 'bring us your huddled masses yearning to be free.' And here we are in New York and there were 60,000 people on the streets. So I think you as a designer have the opportunity to come up with a pragmatic and innovative sustainable response..." (Interview with Paul Schmelzer, Eyeteeth)

Take a look at Architecture for Humanity, the organization he co-founded, for more information on sustainable design projects. You can read an excerpt from the book here.