(Video link here.) Matilda Klein is 94 years old, and danced during the World War II big-band era. She’s still dancing, in competition no less, with her dance partner Danny Maloney. We love the videographer’s – and Matilda’s – message of defying expectations and stereotypes about age – or anything else. via Neatorama! Related posts: vivienne…
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Lately, we’ve come across some extraordinary uses for OSB – oriented strand board (also known as waferboard) – a cheap, strong, durable building material made from pressed tree chippings and resin. It’s generally been viewed as garbage, something to use for structure and hide, until open-minded designers started to explore its potential and beauty. Architect…
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At Pinterest, we’ve been creating collections of images – boards- under specific categories like Lighting, Storage Solutions , Art and Artists, Food and Cooking – even Shipping Pallets!. They allow you to navigate ‘the improvised life’ through its images, so you can poke around our vast archive in freer, more organic way. When you see an image…
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This gif via the great DVDP, which was inspired by this (Playing with Water Sheets in Space), made us wonder “What have you been making today?” Related posts: peep show gif: funny, risqué, slightly x-rated mind shift: the great bell chant we mashup attenborough’s ‘what a wonderful world’ reminder: shooting stars all around us (gif)
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Today Remodelista featured Garde, a new shop in Los Angeles that sells “stylishly understated” housewares. We are smitten with the poplar-top table’s Garde’s owner Scotti Sitz designed to display her wares, and which are available by custom order. The bases appear to be an ingenious use of simple copper plumbing pipe. We’ve thought of all…
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We recently came across a photo essay of a home decorated with vintage fruit boxes. We’re talking some kind of obsession here. They’re all through the house as furniture and storage solutions, like the bed and shelves above, and this kitchen island on wheels… …and this desk, made strangely chic by the lines, with…
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(Video link here.) Of the many episodes of The Little Rascals produced in the ‘thirties, this clip has to be one of the best: the poor, ever-resourceful, uninhibited, unsupervised gang of kids make a cake filled with prizes, following the recipe in a completely original way. The backstory: Dickie’s abusive dad is so mean to Dickie’s…
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We are smitten with this room divider featured a while back on IkeaHackers: it is a rather visionary transformation of a simple material by Marloes van Heteren of SOLUZ and Remco Wilcke of CUBE Architecten. Clear glass Ikea rectangular vases, in two sizes, were painted white inside, to make reverse-painted glass, a compelling material we posted some…
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Ouno recently compiled quotes by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood that SO totally fly-in-the-face of the usual fashionista view, we were knocked out: it is fashion-as-liberation, self-expression and NON-consumption. Our favorite Westwood quotes: “Wear a towel instead of a coat, it’s very chic. Or your husband’s boxer shorts with a belt, or something from your grandmother.…
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After photographer Beatrice da Costa sent us her virtual flowers in an email, we went poking around her website. There we found a trove of images of interiors, each, though uncaptioned and mysterious, holding some cool and inspiring idea, like the extraordinary choice of wall colors, above. We are smitten with this corrugated tin ceiling…
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(Video link here.) This morning, we found several emails from readers alerting us to this video that is flying around the internet like wildfire. It’s about 9-year-old Caine who devised an elaborate arcade out of cardboard, great quantities of packing tape, plastic toys – whatever he could find – over the course of a summer…
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We’ve always loved Yves Klein‘s shirt printed with hand prints, foot prints and question marks: a mysteriously chic, primal cosmic design that makes us want to get some plain white shirts and paint whatever comes to mind. It would be like wearing a flag of a personal country. Mondoblogo reminded us of it. Related posts:…
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We came home last night world weary after a long day. In our Inbox we found…a virtual bunch of flowers from our friend Beatriz da Costa… …and our whole mood changed! Bia sent us her own photo, but it’s easy enough to do with found ones to brighten someone’s day or wish them “SPRING ….PRINTEMPS….PRIMAVERA…..Happy days…
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(Video link here.) Vicki Celestines, one of our readers, sent us this great compilation of “compelling TED Talks on Money.” Together, the eleven videos make up a unique “crash course in economics and personal finance” which we can certainly use. They cover topics such as putting a value on nature; raising kids to be entrepreneurs; poverty, money,…
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Today, not for the first time, we mistook an artwork for a household object – a mirror actually. We saw this work by Winston Roeth at YouHaveBeenHereSometime right after seeing some images of mirrors and our brain said: “Wow, what a great deeply-orange painted mirror! Why don’t we make one of those?!!” Then we scrolled down…
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Sue Anderson, an ‘improvised life’ reader, sent us a link to this GREAT video of artist Chuck Close‘s powerful, simple, forthright words-to-live-by from an ongoing CBS series “Notes to Self”. It’s well-worth suffering through the 30-second commercial for its memorable four minutes of pure wisdom (don’t bother with the last minute of news anchor blather).…
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Even though it’s not our fault, the vast amounts of junk mail we get makes us feel frustrated and guilty. So much paper going to waste. Try and warp your head around this: the Wall Street Journal reports that 82.5 billion pieces of “advertising mail” were delivered by the U.S. Postal system in 2010. Years…
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In The Selby’s recent photo essay of Coffee Supreme in Auckland New Zealand, we spotted some very cool uses for pegboard, a material with which we’ve become enamored when we saw a pegboard headboard. Practically, pegboard is masonite (tempered hardboard) with holes punched in it to hold metal tool holders. Visually, pegboard is polka dot masonite that…
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Usually we hear people talking about Google StreetView as a virtual armchair travel tool. You can “visit” all sorts of exotic places you’ve never been to without actually traveling to them, like Stonehenge and other UNESCO World Heritage sites. With the exception of artful manipulation like The Wilderness Downtown, for me these visits remain mostly…
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Another shift of view from Maria Robledo: a fish pond illusion graffiti spotted in San Francisco. The graffiti there is very different than the often cryptic signage we follow in New York. It’s still reverberates with sweet 60’s-ish light:
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