(Video link here.) In 1975, film maker Tom Schiller made a documentary of Henry Miller. A full 35 minutes of it takes place in Miller’s astonishing bathroom after he had woken up. We found all 35 minutes riveting, though the first 3:35 give the big gist: Miller decorated his bathroom in a break-the-mold way…
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On a whim, I tried using olive paste as the seasoning for a boneless leg of lamb I planned to roast for Easter dinner – I simply slathered the meat with the paste, rolled it up and tied it. The roast was spectacular, with a Provencal savor. I did not realize that the salt of…
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(Video link here.) Cara de Silva sent us this video with a short note: “…there is something quite caring (and “scientific) about her approach.” Indeed Korean Artist Jihyun Ryou cares so deeply about our relationship to food that she has researched traditional methods of food storage used before refrigeration was available, looking for ways that might be more sustainable…
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After the protests in Tahrir Square, the Egyptian mlitary built walls around the Square and other parts of downtown Cairo that lead to government buildings. Using art as a different form of resistance, artists and citizens have been painting murals on all of the walls, the most stunning of which is above and virtually “dissappears”…
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It seems that once we start focusing on a subject, we begin to find all sorts of solutions and iterations. Lately, it appears to be shelving… Recently on Remodelista, we spotted these clamped together shelves used at Dyke & Dean, a housewares store in Hastings, East Sussex, England. It reminded us of the clipped together cardboard…
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We couldn’t say what it is about this man in a tutu that we find so powerful. Like a lot of art, it seems to possess it’s own language and logic. The story behind it remains somewhat mysterious: Bob Carey first took a portrait of himself in a pink tutu in an effort to express…
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(Video link here.) We so love to fly… (Watch full screen.) Via Discover Magazine Related posts: do you want to fly? keep flying! reminder: shooting stars all around us (gif) come along for a ride into space… the lunar eclipse (time-lapse)…
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We’re crazy about this smudged chalkboard wall – no words – that reminds us a bit of the chalky walls in Paolo Soleri’s Cosanti. And that got us thinking about how we might mix custom-colors of chalkboard paint (for writing or not) in colors that we LOVE, like an this odd green, or a rich…
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One of the amazing and surprising responses to our going “dark” last week were Comments and emails the came in from ‘improvised life’ readers – whom we’ve never actually met – sending words of support, understanding and gratitude for what we’ve been doing over the past year or so. It knocked us out, reaffirming what…
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When we saw the cover of this week’s New Yorker, we laughed out loud. THAT’S US!! we thought. We may be making a Pollack-esque painting inadvertently on the side of the house, but we’re DEFINITELY out of control and off balance. We’re juggling too much while trying to hold up our pants and keep from…
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(Video link here.) Cara de Silva sent us an email with this video and one sentence: “Four plus minutes of extraordinary nourishment for the mind, eyes, and heart.” We thought it would make a fabulous breakfast/start to your day, in the first days of Spring. (We found it to be even lovelier with the corny…
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(Video link here.) We love this 20-second finish-to-start folding of an origami rhino; For us, a simple reminder of the process of creation: a rhino that once started as a simple square of paper. Via Neatorama Related posts: origami made of anything (vic muniz’ birds of a feather) origami’s cosmic potential blizzard improvisation: divine stop-motion snow…
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Some time ago, Desire to Inspire ran a post called Room Porn. It wasn’t our idea of room porn (which we’re very into, but for a totally different sensibility) EXCEPT for the scrawled writing across the top of the room; it segues with our strange lust/love of signs. It’s do-able by mere mortals and holds lots of…
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We’ve been so impressed with Jim Denevan’s amazing sand and snow creations, that we forgot he’s also is the mastermind of a fantastic traveling food project. Outstanding in the Field is a “roving culinary adventure” meant to connect people to the land where their food originates and the people who work hard to produce it.…
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Recently, a reader sent us link to an interactive wine-and-food-pairing website called Italian Wine Pairing 101 wondering what we thought about it. You choose a food group – say beef, or shellfish or fruit tarts – then recommended wines appear in a list below. (It’s one of many food-and-wine pairing charts and sites on the…
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In a recent post about 50’s shopping centers at the Paris Review’s oddly wonderful blog, we spotted these George Nelson bubble lamps stacked one on top of another to make wondrous sculptural lighting. Copying this would be pretty expensive…but we saw an alternative in another picture. Various organic shapes of vaguely Noguchi-esque modernist paper shades stacked and…
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There are a million of us who don’t have a $6,000 built-in refrigerator with wood panels etc. And we find ourselves often mulling ways to make our homely white fridge look like SOMETHING (more on that later). We LOVE this jazzy fix we saw on Japanese Trash of a totally ordinary refrigerator…it could be done…
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Leafing through the current New Yorker, we came across this image by Aaron Siskind in an advertisement for Swann Gallery’s upcoming photography auction. It is called ‘Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #99’. Loving images of people flying and leaping, we poked around, to discover that in the 60’s, Siskind made a series of divers suspended…
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Yesterday was the first day of spring. We were wandering around in the strangely warm weather, enjoying pure spring, not realizing that it was, technically the first day, until evening. X-rays of flowers by Brendan Fitzpatrick made us think of it. Daffodils and tulips are up. Cherry trees are in bloom. We found this haiku…
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We’ve been mulling the idea of using a pegboard on the inside of a tool closet door, the cleaning closet door (to hang mops, brooms, vacuum cleaner hose) and perhaps even in a walk-in clothes closet where it would be useful for hanging jewelry for jewelry, belts etc. We can’t stop thinking about Julia Child’s…
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