For an interactive installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, artist Yayoi Kusama created a totally white room as a palette for visiting children to embellish as they pleased with colored dot stickers; ultimately thousands of stickers were used, to make bulls-eyes, whorls, dribbles and overlapping hits of color. The results of this…
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Forbes Online recently published a piece called “How to Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps).” We love the steps (and Jessica Hagy‘s illustrations that accompany each one), we couldn’t help feeling like they weren’t really about being “interesting,” but more about BEING YOURSELF. We’d retitle it: How to Be Yourself, In 10 Simple Steps. (Being…
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On the lookout for an inexpensive bed frame, this shipping pallet bed caught our eye. It’s got a low profile rustic-modern look, though we’re not crazy about the overhang on the sides (easy to bang your shin on). It made us start analyzing and mulling what makes a really great shipping pallet bed. At Straphacker,…
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(Video link here.) This inspiring TED Talk by Britta Riley recently introduced us to the world of Windowfarms. These vertical hydroponic gardens allow city-dwellers to grow vegetables, herbs and fruits in the windows of their otherwise cramped apartments, all year long. Think ‘strawberries’! But what’s most intriguing about Windowfarms is the community behind them, constantly refining the…
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In his 2010 New York Times series, Christopher Niemann nailed what we think about everyday when we leave the house: However hard we try to weigh knowns and unknowns, unexpected “stuff happens” in our lives and in those around us. Some of what happens is swell, and some is really hard. It’s how to respond…
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So we’re smitten with the possibilities inherent in Printery & Bindery’s compact, portable self-inking rubber stamp, with a ring to affix it to your key chain, for anywhere stamping.
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We’re just a few days into 2012, but apparently the future is already here. Our resident futurist, Stuart Mason Dambrot, sent us a bunch of amazing and fun science and technology finds, making us wonder what the next year has in store for all of us. We’ve talked about vertical gardens, but a vertical forest takes the idea…
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Waylon Lewis, creator of the megablog Elephant Journal has long been a champion of ‘the improvised life’. We were thrilled when he invited us to post regularly over there…our first post ran yesterday. Elephant is, well, like an elephant: BIG. It’s worth scanning the homepage of this online ‘guide to a mindful life’ to find…
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We’ve been so busy, we haven’t given all the gifts we’ve had in mind to give to friends and family. Our fridge is still stockpiled with mason jars of Prunes in Armagnac we plan to give friends we meet up with in the next few weeks. And our favorite gift for this year, the extraordinary…
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(Video link.) A longtime reader of ‘the improvised life’ sent us this swell video as a New Year’s greeting: “3 girls singing at a kitchen table, with empty cottage cheese containers providing the rhythm section” It seems to us like a perfect, charming New Year’s reminder of just what we can do with the most…
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We thought Alexander Calder’s homemade holiday card from 1930 a fitting way to start the New Year… Like the guys in the picture, we’re back, full of beans and mischief… We’ll start posting full tilt again tomorrow… via The Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
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In 1966, Alexander Calder and his wife Louisa published this full-page ad in the New York Times; it is a fantastically bold and hopeful statement. Every New Year’s Day, we remember that ad, finding it about the most perfect wish for the New Year. Related posts: a new year’s wish spirals on a new year: 20…
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