Long time massage therapist Dale Favier’s take on bodies will dispel any judgements you may have been carrying around about your ‘imperfect’ body.
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Fab New Yorker Cartoon Commentary on Minimalist Interiors
As we look at ultra-minimalist home design publications, we totally get with New Yorker cartoonist Rick Stevens really apt commentary. And we know from experience, that less is not necessarily more. In a renovation, minimalist often costs way more than traditional styles. via Susan Dworski
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mindfulness moment: reading signs of change
On the cusp of Halloween, before the covens of tiny witches and goblins descended at dusk, I vowed to take the day to observe any signs and portents that, in the words of poet Dylan Thomas, ‘the weather had turned around‘ and Fall had finally arrived, despite what the thermometer read. Perched on the front door, peering through…
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peter beard: learn how to benefit from accidents and chances you take
Peter Beard: A Wild Life is a lovely little film of photographer Peter Beard working on a collage at his studio on Montauk, Long Island. He is widely known for his photographs both of pop stars like Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol and of the tragic destruction of elephant herds in Africa. Here at age 75,…
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drink from your own well…and the current within
“Drink from your own well.” I take those words on board whenever I’m struggling to create. I believe they mean that each of us has to dig deeply into our authentic self as the wellspring for our best work. If we search outside ourselves we may neglect something that is essential to our art. Poet William Stafford‘s wrote this…
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unexpected stripes: car + parking lot (before + after)
Right after we posted Gene Davis’ Fab Striped Street’, Susan Dworski sent us this great before-and-after picture of a Rotterdam parking lot half painted with stripes. The with-and-without is quite an example of the possibilites for stipes in unlikely places. Then we found another: a brilliant striped car spotted in New York Magazine recent The Urbanist’s Warsaw:
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ever wondered what it is like to fly like an eagle?
(Video link here.) An eagle fitted with a tiny GoPro Camera by his trainer, takes us along for the ride. Very cool….. if….it….is…….real? We came face to face our own jaded, suspicious selves, wondering if certain magic CAN happen. Our friend Susan Dworski hunted down the its origins. Apparently the remarkable, very viral video is a…
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the little free library movement in action
“Trust me, some day we’ll need it and you’ll be sorry you threw it out.” That remark reverberated after viewing a segment on 60 Minutes about Todd Boll’s Little Free Library movement and the thousands of mini, hand-built libraries for book sharing that are proliferating worldwide. He was right. The wooden beer crate gathering…
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reimagined bathroom design via the new yorker
Susan Dworski spotted this cartoon a few minutes after we posted Annals of Bad Design: Uncomfortable Bathtub Surround. As usual, a New Yorker cartoon nails the zeitgeist! Thanks Susan! Related posts: xcultivating gardens real and imaginaryx xmadan kataria’s laughter yoga: laughing as a practicex
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home design strategy: finding perfection in imperfection
In many parts of the world that which is old and imperfect is more highly cherished and valued than that which is new. Brand new Turkish rugs are often abraded before selling, their colors softened by dealers eager to increase their price by having them appear imperfect, used, showing their history. In Persian, they call…
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10 rules for beginning a creative project
Found among painter Richard Diebenkorn’s papers after he died in 1993: ‘Notes to myself on beginning a painting’ (with the original punctuation). We find many to be just right for beginning just about ANY creative pursuit or project (some are mysterious). Like Chuck Close’s Notes to Self, they prove to be good advice for living:…
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cultivating gardens real and imaginary
Rooftop gardens are still blooming in cities everywhere. No matter how small or large our gardens, or how large or small we gardeners, we all share a farmer’s joys and vicissitudes, so delightfully illlustrated in this New Yorker cover by Ivan Brunetti entitled “Urban Bliss”. Poet Marianne Moore observed that poetry cultivates “imaginary gardens with real toads…
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‘always maintain a kind of summer’ (thoreau)
It’s Labor Day, the tacit end of summer. I’m wondering if after all the s’mores have melted, the frisbees thrown, the lanyards woven, the barbeques fired up, the cocktail schmoozes sloshed through, and the group hikes up a trail to see the sun rise… after all these activities, maybe what’s really important about summer is simply…
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summer collecting: improvisations for shells, stones…
Summer vacations in the great outdoors can result in some ferocious souvenir fallout: gazillions of shells, kilos of stones, and fistfuls of feathers from unidentified birds. We hoard this memorabilia like The Hobbit’s Gollum hovering over Sauron’s Ring, unable to part with our “precious”, be it a single sand-filled shell or random feather. Truth be…
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growing is no easy not matter how long we’ve lived
Growing is no piece of cake no matter how tall we are or how long we’ve lived. We progress, we fall back, we start all over again, ferblungeoning forward into our future even while kicking and screaming. The universe commands expanding, and we obey, improvising every step of the way. The side of the bookshelf at the door of…
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recipe riff: chard + other vegetables stuffed with rice, raisins, pine nuts
For many years, I wrote about improvising in the kitchen. My basic approach was to show people how to ‘see’ the basic structure of a recipe. Once you understood its essential workings, you could play with all sorts possibilities, depending on what you had on hand or were inspired to do. It’s pure liberation. So…
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yayoi kusama’s art-medicine
In The Art of the Flame-Out, Carl Swanson writes about visionary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s return to the New York Art scene after 40 years in a mental-hospital exile. But whatever you make of her retreat into a psych ward, her mantra was always “self-obliteration”—to lose herself in the work, or to the work, to save herself.…
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matisse writ large on a jungle wall
A friend living in Thailand is an avid admirer of Henri Matisse, particularly his wall-size drawings. He was unhappy with the large, barren entry wall in his house in the jungle of Kanchanaburi, north of Bangkok near the Myanmar border. He dreamed of a of wall mural to enliven the long corridor to surprise his wife returning soon…
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inspired reno: 8×10′ shed morphs into a 2-story house
Our first ‘real’ house was a midget, 1937 knotty pine beach cabin meant for weekend use, built by three spinster sister daughters of a wealthy Iowa man who had invented the snow plow. The seams started busting when two babies arrived bam bam in a year, and my husband and I were struggling to cope…
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the sf bubbleman shows how-to diy giant bubbles + why
San Francisco Bubbleman 1 by Susan Dworski @improvisedlife.com from Sally Schneider on Vimeo. (Video link here.) Some time ago, Susan Dworski emailed us about the mysterious Bubbleman she passes on Highway 101, and sent two little videos. At sunset today alongside bustling Highway 101 in Tiburon, CA, an unknown man with a boom box coaxes soap…
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