The kind folks over at Ponoko.com recently featured HyperQuake’s own “Create Your Own Environment” poster when they posted a feature on their blog entitled “Put the X-acto Away”.
Tes One — laser cut paper
The post features 39 posters from 20 different designers for your viewing pleasure. It’s definitely very cool to see how others are using laser cutting techniques to bring their poster designs to life. Weather the canvas is cardboard, ceramic, wood, standard poster paper, wood and even stainless steel (yep, stainless steel!), laser cutting is helping bring designs to life in some refreshing and inspiring ways.
We’re honored that the crew at Ponoko saw our poster and included us in the feature. Thanks again Kristen!
Make sure you go over to check out their post and take a look at some of the other designers work. And if you aren’t familiar with Ponoko.com and what the site is all about, let’s just say if you are interested in ‘making’ something, the site might come in handy.
Every time I see amazing photos of or collateral for a hotel, it’s invariably one of the Ace Hotels, with locations in Portland, Seattle, New York and Palm Springs.
Ace Portland
Ace Palm Springs
Imagine you are staying at your really cool designer/musician friend with really great interior design taste’s apartment. That is the Ace Hotel, which somehow manages to appear both impossibly cool AND approachable at the same time.
The Official Mfg. Co in Portland, Oregon created some of the most beautiful things for the PDX location, and Ace NYC is filled with murals and original art (I know because I did one). The Ace’s own blog is as inspiring as any design blog, and the rooms are surprisingly not outrageously priced. Highly recommended.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- from “Leisure,” by W.H. Davies
Yesterday’s Play Me, I’m Yours post has inspired me to share my very favorite article with you. It is about an experiment to test people’s capacity for beauty, and it won a Pulitzer prize. It’s a long read…takes me about a half hour, but I highly recommend it if you have the time.
Essentially, The Washington Post wondered what would happen if you placed a world-famous musician playing renowned classical works into the context of DC’s morning subway rush hour. The musician was Joshua Bell and the location was L’Enfant Plaza in the DC Metro. Here are a few excerpts:
In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
…the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.
The song that Calvin Myint [a passerby who did not notice Bell] was listening to [on his iPod] was “Just Like Heaven,” by the British rock band The Cure. It’s a terrific song, actually…It’s about failing to see the beauty of what’s plainly in front of your eyes.
…John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.
But not everyone was so distracted.
Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch.
“Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day.”
“It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Furukawa says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters!”
I wonder how different the situation would have been had they also asked Bell to play the evening rush, where people are theoretically less pressed for time and more receptive to breaking their routine to watch a street musician.
But as is probably not unexpected, the subject matter of Fairey’s pieces have been pretty seriously divisive here in the middle Midwest. Some responses have been positive and thoughtful:
“Many people, when they saw [the Silverton mural] and we talked about what it meant, thought it was beautiful,” Wade said. “We talked about how depicting disturbing images is not the same as condoning them.” Source
Fairey’s Silverton mural, pre-paintover
Other responses have been with outrage and paint. Both the Pike Street and Madisonville murals have now been covered over with white paint. Amusingly, while the Pike Street removal was carried out by the owners of the building the mural is on, the Madisonville mural was NOT authorized to be painted over, and the incident is being referred to as vandalism against the mural. So, wait…is Shepard a vandal, or are the people painting over his work the vandals?
“I think adults will see [the Pike Street mural] as a commentary on war, but kids will see it as a school kid carrying a big rifle,” [one local resident] said. “On the other hand, I think its removal is a travesty. It’s an awful commentary on the lack of tolerance in our society.” Source
Apparently everyone’s favorite stenciling Brit has been busy on the West Coast in recent weeks in promotion of his new film, Exit Through The Gift Shop.
“I’m thinking of quitting the art world. I want to do something a bit more creative.” Check out TONY’s interview with Banksy here.
Stenciling conjures up images of floral and fruit patterns in my head.
I think I can safely attribute this to the type of old-schools stenciling I believe I’ve seen my grandma do in the past. Not that stenciling of that sort is bad, it just isn’t necessarily my cup of tea.
Well, I stumbled onto a Tweet out in the Twitterverse the other day that shows that stenciling is more than just a bunch of pastel flowers or pretty images of fruit.
Old-School Stenciling
This tweet I stumbled upon was about Sten and Lex; Italian street artists that utilize an approach to stenciling called ‘hole school.’ Apparently, they cut a huge stencil, basically paste it on a poster (it appears the canvas they use is primarily wood as far as I can tell), paint over the whole thing in black and then peel everything away leaving behind a negative image. Through the removal of the stencil, scraps are left behind as the stencil is destroyed. From there, the scraps are actually left on and are allowed to become part of the art. The resulting stencils are just awesome.
Sten & Lex Stencil
If you want to see how the whole process goes down, check out the quick video below. And if you find yourself in Brooklyn in the fall, you might want to look up their showing at Brooklynite Gallery.
Next up: More around-town murals, this time provided by The London Police.
“Born in Chelmsford, Essex, The London Police founders, Chaz and Bob, moved to Amsterdam in 1998. Recognized for their iconic LADS characters and precision marking, TLP is universally renowned as “pivotal voices in the history of street art.” Their acclaimed works include: murals of titanic proportion, (The largest can be found in Kreuzberg, Berlin a mere 6 story outdoor installation.) coveted original canvases, short films and even shorter music quips of high regard.” – BLDGrefuge.com
Fresh from across the pond, they have been drawing murals and completing pieces for their opening at the BLDG gallery in Covington this Friday, 8-11pm. Come on down and watch me, Julie Hill, and a few other local illustrators join the London Police lads to rock out a final mural, live and in person.
