(Video link here.) David Saltman of The Houdini File alerted us to René Lavand, the extraordinary artist of illusion who passed away recently. His performance of the classic “cups and balls” is mesmerizing. Lavand, who has only one hand, performs with the grace of a dancer, weaving a hypnotic spell as he whispers “siempre tengo tres” (I have…
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When a friend once suggested we use 12-inch lengths of industrial steel I-beams as “brackets” to hold shelves, we couldn’t quite imagine what he was thinking. UNTIL we spotted the fabulously rusted I-beam shelving at metal fabricator while wandering through East Harlem last fall. When we saw the makeshift shelving the owner had improvised to store…
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Several months ago, two Little Free Libraries appeared in the park across the way. Since then, we’ve found a number of children’s books with big messages about the creative process. In Art for Children: Paul Klee, Ernst Raboff’s description of Klee’s painting of a treehouse opened our eyes to the many elements of the painting…
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Ever since we stumbled on a Pinterest page devoted totally to DOORS, we’ve been mulling possibilities and wondering why we don’t see more imaginative doors around New York City; most are from Europe where age and eccentricity are the norm. That is, until we spotted the wondrous trompe l’oeil door in Brooklyn (above) and this…
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(Video link HERE.) A visual poem for the day; no words needed. —Susan Dworski
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Artist, designer, inventor and “thinkeruper”, Dominic Wilcox is one of the most inspired improvisers we know, constantly challenging himself to push limits as he asks himself “What would happen if”… We are especially smitten with the “multiple brush paint brush” he made after he bought 150 paint brushes cheap and wondered “IF I could join them…
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At Brain Pickings today, we stumbled on this wonderful illustration from Oliver Jeffers’ charming kid’s book, Once Upon an Alphabet. It’s a sign we’d like to print out and hang on our wall, a quiet, potent reminder. ONWARD! is the word we find helps most in times of fear, anxiety or overwhelm — a new project or an exhausting one, an idea…
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In response to our post about various permutations on the Guest Book, Laura Handler sent us images of her friend Dennis Decker’s Guest List on a wall of his Harlem guest room. With overtones of a Haring-esque comic book, we imagine it to be compulsively readable.
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(Video link HERE.) We can’t stop thinking about “My Own Life”, the extraordinary Op-Ed Oliver Sacks wrote in last weeks New York Times upon learning that he has terminal cancer. We’ve read it several times and find his words resonating, as his “clear focus and perspective” has become, momentarily, part of our worldview. We’ve always been…
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(Video link HERE.) In this curious performance piece, famed Muppet-of-few-words Cookie Monster tours New York City museums as he shares thoughts about food that seem like…zen koans, succinct paradoxical statements to be used as meditations…
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For years we’ve wondered at the seeming impossibility of living in Philip Johnson’s Glass House — a house clad entirely in translucent plate-glass— without feeling totally exposed. We learned only recently that the house was is really just one of an array of buildings splayed across Johnson’s 49-acres of land in Connecticut which constituted Johnson and…
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We know a lot of people who work to be mindful of how precious their life is and savor each moment. And work it is, a practice, because it’s so easy to get caught up in bad moods, what we think is wrong, the stresses of each day. We stumbled on an interesting happiness practice unexpectedly while…
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I recently came a diary of sorts that I kept long ago: notations of dinner parties, what we ate, the wines we drank and the guests that were there. I’d bought it on a trip to Venice —a handmade book of days, no year — which I filled in with pencil, interleaving it with thank…
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(Video link HERE.) This is one of those astonishingly sweet, quirky videos that is heartening in ways we can’t quite describe. As farmer Derek Klingenberg plays Lorde’s Royals rather badly on his trombone, curious cows come over the hill to hear him. At about 3 minutes they look at once uncertain and compelled to check out…
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This gif, made from videographer Parker Paul‘s lovely film of seagull’s flight patterns and sky trails, is wonderful unto itself.
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There are a lot of things we like about this interior but this crazy tall, fabulously orange lampshade takes the cake for completely shifting our view of lampshade possibilities. It makes us wonder why most lampshades are so ordinary. We are hard-pressed to find a ready-made shade like this BUT know that the reliable Just Shades…
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While I was on my sudden, much-needed hiatus last week, I emailed Susan Dworski, a frequent contributor/now-dear-friend, about the heartening and supportive messages I’d received from readers. She sent the image, below, (titled appropriately “I’m Wired“), with this note: Maybe it’ll take a village to get you unplugged. She hit the nail on the head.
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We are smitten with this radical optical-illusion color block. Even without the table and chairs, there is something thrillingly startling about painting a bright, bold geometry over everything on a wall. (When we search GEOMETRY on Improvised Life, we find it a recurring theme. Perhaps because it seems like a do-able way to shift a room using…
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(Video link HERE.) We discovered performance artist Nick Cave recently and are smitten. As one YouTube commenter wrote: “imagine a world where people wore these to work … lol that would colour up our lives a little”. It’s not just the joy the his Sound Suits evoke; we’re inspired by how the first Sound Suit…
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