We love this beauty of a costume: the Horseman from 1960 Jean Cocteau film, ‘Testament of Orpheus’. And with it we wish you H A P P Y H A L L O W E E N!
Read More2 shacks built entirely of repurposed, reclaimed materials
We usually turn to Cabin Porn to feed our escapist fantasies. Two recent images of cabins were built so obsessively from salvaged materials, they made us realize that there is no limit to the theme or possibilities of repurpose and reclaim. At top someone’s hideaway in California; at bottom, a fishing shack in Central Baja, Mexico.…
Read Moremindfulness practice 101: hang a reminder you’ll see first thing
Not being the best of meditators, we rely on Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh to gently guide us in mindfulness practice, which, he points out, you can do anywhere, anytime: washing the dishes, walking, cleaning the house, listening to a friend. In The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation, he outlines…
Read Morebauhaus costumes for halloween inspiration
Need some inspiration for a Halloween costume? Check out this inspiring slideshow of costumes devised for Oskar Schlemmer‘s Bauhaus fetes in the 1920’s. Quelle imagination! We especially love the clever illusion, below. Could there have been florescent paint in those days?
Read Morerepair or chic-up your wood floors with tiles
What do you do when you’ve got a parquet or hardwood floor with patches that are broken or in generally terrible repair? We found a surprising solution via artist Mathias Kiss’ installation Banquise: replace wood rectangles or slats with tile. You don’t have to just stick with rectangles. Paola Navone made a fabulous patch using…
Read MoreHow to Create Something Bigger Than Yourself
We love this comic by Grant Snider, “Creator of Incidental Comics by night and Mover of teeth by day,” explaining the Art of the Self-Portrait. Whether or not we think of ourselves as visual artists, it’s likely we can all relate to the daily process of evaluating ourselves in the mirror and figuring out how to…
Read More100 Ways to Serve Pizza
We love Lauren Manning’s 100 Ways to Serve Pizza sketched on paper plates (a novel sketchpad): her imaginings and improvisations got our brain working. Wouldn’t it be swell to have pizza paint, or a slice of hot pizza pop up out of a tissue-dispenser-like device…or decorate your tree with festive slices…?
Read Morehow to stretch tight shoes: 5 fails yield one great solution
Having invested in a pair of expensive Jimmy Choo shoes I thought would take me everywhere, I was dismayed to discover, after wearing them out a few times, that they were painfully tight. I went on a quest to stretch them and discovered that much of the accepted wisdom about how to stretch tight shoes DID NOT work. Here’s the one that did.
Read Moreshaolin monk: through practice you can skip on a wall!
We are knocked out by photographer Tomasz Gudzowaty‘s beautiful black-and-white-essay of the practices of Shaolin monks, found at IndigoJaws. We especially love this one of a monk skipping on a wall — a variation on our favorite subject of leaping and flying — made possible by rigorous and repeated practice. Lesson there… Thanks Vanessa!
Read Moreblackout poetry, a zennish practice you can do anywhere
We recently came across a great example of blackout poetry, poems made by blacking out words in an existing piece of writing, to forge a poem or song with what’s left. Tasha S. tried her hand and “saw a love story between a ghost and a mortal”. Tasha’s “first crack” made us realize that blackout…
Read Morewooden crate obsession yields cool diy furniture ideas
Desire to Inspire’s recent 20+ photo post about an apartment made out of wooden crates — from makeshift walls and a kitchen island base, to night stands, a coffee table, and a bathroom vanity— made us think TOO MUCH!. This is one over-the-top crate obsession. Although living in that crate-filled apartment would drive us crazy,…
Read Morerick owens’ step-dancing big girls fashion show
(Video link here.) Fashion designer Rick Owen’s blew fashionistas away with his rad fashion show in Paris recently, where models were real-girl step dancers. They brought fierce energy and Africa-rooted moves to the usual fashion show venue. They also showed that Owens’ designs work just fine on all sorts of bodies, breaking the usual svelt…
Read MoreHow to Avoid Everything — Irresponsibility Made Easy
As committed to many projects and life paths as we are, we periodically come to a stop. We can’t take one step more, and really want to avoid our obligations, be irresponsible, and…wander.
Read MoreLeslie Koch’s Spaghetti Vegomatics + Other Rules for Creating
Leslie Koch, director of the Trust for Governors Island, a magical 172 acre island/public art space in New York Harbor, is one of the most brilliant innovators we know. Somehow, she now only ‘gets’ great ideas, she makes them happen on a really large scale, as witnessed by her extraordinary transformation of the former island…
Read Morecuriously chic, bracket and wooden board bookshelves
Last August, we went to The Hole Gallery’s Summer Reading show in the Bowery, a group exhibition and transformation of the galleries into a giant art book reading room. The Hole’s spacious rooms were lined with shelves to hold over 5,000 books, with comfortable and very cool looking chairs to lounge about on. Interspersed were some…
Read MoreInspired Maps and Books from Our New Sponsor
We’ve long been fans of Princeton Architectural Press, a seriously intelligent publisher of books about architecture, design and….life. The Press specializes in content that defies easy categorization (like us). So we are thrilled that it has become Improvised Life’s first sponsor, of October’s posts. Its 1000+ titles surprise, inspire, and inform about the visual world;…
Read Moremuseum of 4 in the morning + insomnia solutions for creatives
(Video link here.) The Museum of Four in the Morning is a crowd-sourced collection of ‘four in the morning’ references from art, culture and elsewhere. It got me thinking about ways people handle being up at that hour of the night/morning that seems somehow like the farthest point on the clock: the quiestest, most alone time, when…
Read Moretall vertical stacks of pictures on walls ‘heighten’ ceilings
Another bit of brilliance from Swiss artist Not Vital found in the New York Time’s recent T Magazine Style Issue: In his studio in Sent, Vital place images high on the wall stacked vertically. It occurs to us this could be a good trick to make lowish ceilings look higher. We’re going to file it in…
Read MoreNot Vital’s Toupee solution: hair sculpture hats
Swiss artist Not Vital devised a very strange, er, hair sculpture, an inspired wighat much better than the trying-to-look-like-a-full-head-o-hair-but-definitely-ain’t matted ‘rugs’ we see on occasion.
Why not toupee sculptures?
origma hut: off-grid retreat made with crazy smart materials
We are smitten with the Origma Hut, custom-designed and built by by Gary Warner and Philip Sticklen in Sydney, Australia. We admire it not so much for the way it looks but for the thinking and materials that went into it. The description posted on Architizer is potent and to-the-point (our favorite bits bold-faced): Origma Hut is…
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