Susan Dworski

Wall Murals in Vintage Black and White

At A Cup of Jo, we spotted a terrific idea Stylist Meta Coleman employed in her son Henrick’s room at home in Provo, Utah: a black and white wall mural made from a C1900 photo. Here’s how and where she had it made:

Morning Practice: Reading a Poem…..Again

For some time, our morning practice, before email or anthing digital, has been to read a poem aloud (sometimes with a friend). Recently, we decided to try reading the same poem every morning for a week. We discovered that each day, we’d hear it differently and find something new in those same few lines, as…

Maira Kalman: Grateful grateful grateful

The Wall Street Journal has a series called “My Week” and we can think of no better to way to start off our week than a week in the life of artist Maira Kalman.

What happens If You Try and Fail?

I spend a lot of time trying things and…failing. Hmmm. Is failing even the right word? I spend a lot of times trying things and having them not go as expected.

A Family Home Full of Heart and Good Ideas

“Something boldly improvisational and cheery going on in this house in Australia” wrote Susan Dworski in an email as she described the home Ruth Bruten, writer of Gourmet Girlfriend blog, shares with her husband and five boys. It is delightfully REAL and colorful, and packed with ideas. Here are Susan’s favorites, and ours:

Community Starts with One, Saying YES

These three surprising examples of communities reminds us that community starts with one person reaching out, taking action…and then another, and another….

The Lunar Magic of Solar Lanterns + Solar Cell Stars

On the heels of our post about Staging a Summer Party with Modest Means, frequent contributor Susan Dworski sent this email about Shoji Solar Lanterns, an essential, inexpensive, mood-enhancing element that are, in her words “Pretty damned lunar at night”: Ironically, I just replaced my tattered red Shoji solars yesterday with the familiar bluebird ones. They are…

How a Computer Crash Yielded a Vacation with Rumi

My recent week-long hiatus sans computer proved to be tremendously healing, slowing things down in the studio…while giving me permission to…become deliciously – literally – powerless..

Vicarious Home Building: Blu Home’s Breezehouse

Want to see a very cool house appear before your very eyes? Watch as the Blu Home‘s team delivers, sets, and unfolds a prefab Breezehouse in one day, making it watertight before the impending rain. (Video link here.)

Celebrating Spring with Dark Ambiguity of Maximón

Easter, Passover and the innumerable rites of spring used to make me anxious and defensive. Tales of death, rebirth, joy and sorrow, suffering and salvation, history recited, vows reaffirmed, sacred foods eaten: traditions created to allow tribes to regroup, bond, and go forth again into an uncertain world. Part of me bridled; I wanted to…

DIY Idea-Capturing Desks

Kirsten Camara’s Analog Memory Desk has a holder embedded in its legs for scrolling huge rulls of butcher paper over the desk’s surface to make “a sort of tablecloth of memory”. It can record months, possibly years of ideas, drawings, doodles, mind maps, phone numbers, calculations etc. She has made detailed blueprints so you can build your own. Or you try these other methods of analog idea-capturing.

Lemesoff’s Weapon of Mass INSTRUCTION + Other Brilliance

(Video link here.) We are smitten with Buenos Aires-based artist Raul Lemesoff’s brilliant ‘Weapons of Mass Instruction’, a 1979 Ford Falcon transformed into a military-style vehicle/traveling library with a serious function of peace. Lemesoff tours through Argentina’s cities, towns and rural communities, offering free books to anyone interested in his a varied collection of poetry, novels and biographies. But…

Valentines: Digital, Analog and Otherwise

Creating a one-inch expression of love to be utilized by millions is no slam dunk as seen in this short conversation with designer Jessica Hische, who created a Forever stamp for the U.S. Postal Service. (Video link HERE.) I love the harmonious convergence of digital and analog as seen in her workspace with computer cum hand…

Snowboarding in LED’s

(Video link HERE.) Insanely beautiful and daring. The absence of any sound except the simple piano accompaniment punches up the stark black and white imagery as Sutton carves across snowbanks and threads through barren trees trailing a roostertail of powered crystals. May your Monday be this luminous. —Susan Dworski via Nowness

Insta-Meditation + Anxiety Antidote: The Endless Ocean

(Video link HERE.) On the East Coast, our attention is on the monster blizzard heading our way and the constant notices of road and transit closings and a general feeling of… DANGER. On the West Coast, Susan Dworski in Venice, California reported “80 degrees with a weird red sky and bed sheets pulled off to wash are…

A Winter Solstice Reflection on Loss and Joy

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day —and longest night — of the year, when the sun pauses on its southward trajectory, then starts its cimb north, and the cycle begins once again. Some of us wait to begin rejuvenating our lives until New Year’s Eve when the glittering ball drops in Times Square. But…

Origami Holiday Ornaments to Start DIYing NOW

Looking for something new to decorate the holidays this year, I’ve become smitten with origami decorations for the tree, to hang in the window, or place on the table. Or even to give as a small gift. I learned of the idea from my friend Peta Rimington, who had a gourmet food store and cafe called…

What’s Better: Scared or Sensible? And why?

When contemplating a life change, what’s better: scared or sensible? How does one choose? And why? After wrestling for several grueling weeks with making a radical, lock-stock-and-barrel move, I’ve decided to stay put and work on making a meaningful internal geographic instead. In many ways this kind of psychological change is a much tougher adventure, in…

Never Give Up!

I saw this old dhow (wooden boat) in the harbor at Lamu in 1988 and took a quick shot of the transom. It was a lousy photo and I always regretted not getting a better shot. Then I found this one of the very same boat in Bibi Jordan’s book, Swahili Chic: The Feng Shui of…

Trees and Foliage Inspire Street Art

I’ve been collecting a stash of graffiti images for a while. They range from cutie kitsch to angry gangbanger to political harangues. The ones I like best combine existing natural foliage with painted images and play around with scale—large and small—creating an improvised, witty, public art gallery.

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