London pics...as my camera dies!

You can watch it get worse:


All's well in the food halls at Harrods....


My shoes at the edge of "Shibboleth" at the Turbine Gallery (too lazy to link at the end of the day on a Friday....you saw them all before the other day anyway)


As I get closer to the crack the camera shrieks in purple


The purple haze takes over in the last picture that doens't look like snow!

Believe it or not we also spent time roaming around Hyde Park in the mist, visiting my friend who works in vintage in Notting Hill (ha, in vintage), and walking up Upper St as we used to when we had little ££ & lots of time. We didn't make it to many favourite old spots (Primrose HIll, Chalk Farm, Camden, Shepards Bush (oh how I would have loved to spend some time thrifting if the $$ wasn't so crap!), but it was a short trip so it didn't sting too bad. And now I need to buy a new camera so it's probablt for the best.

London ephemera

So I just came back from a trip to London of the short, hectic and super-fun variety. I lived there for almost 2 and a half years up until this time last year. So it was with a bit of a heavy heart that I came home on Monday. I miss it a bit over there. Strangely, visiting felt as if time had stood still this year. J & I visited friends, ran around town, reminisced, and basically were sleeply and awake at all the wrong times.

Here are some of the bits of paper I brought back with me:


These first ones are all from Tate Modern....



Postcard from a Gillian Wearing photograph from the series (see previous link) Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say



Dan Flavin 'Monumment' for V. Tatlin
I think the image results page on Google is the best link for him!



The back of the flyer for Doris Salcedo's piece for the Turbine Hall Shibboleth. I have some photos that I'll post of this piece later this week. In looking up a link for Salcedo, I found this from the Istanbul Biennial. Wow!




These two are the packaging from a Louise Bourgeois tea towel. Apparently I have now started a home furnishing art collection. (Post on The Thing is still outstanding!) I'm sad to report we did not see the show though....also sadly missed the V&A Couture show that everyone is raving about. I was only there for a weekend people!



Note to self: Look up Meredith Frampton's work....



Who can resist a proper Dracula? Really just brought it home to reference good films to look for on Netflix....



My lovely Selvedge magazine, that is just too pricey in the US (maybe I'll get a subscription!)

Spacing out loud

Boy, am I feeling blah today....I've got a dozen posts half written, and none of them seem interesting enough to finish. Work is slowing down so I don't even have the excuse of being super busy. A trip to London is on the horizon, as well as another visit to Denver. I wish I could say I was just looking forawrd to relaxing and visiting some favorite art museums and favorite pieces of art, but I'm just feeling quite empty-headed.


Last visit to Denver I went to see the new building of the Denver Art Museum, but I found I still prefer the Gio Ponti building. Maybe it's because the beautiful identity system launched with the Ponti building was my first love in my first graphic design job. I kep finding pieces of it in the archives, but it was presented in shambles (and now it's sadly completely done away with). If I can, I will upload a shot of one of the marks I used in a mug design. I love that piece.


I hope to hit the new New Museum very soon here in NYC. I have a super love for those guys because they were one of the first places to carry mine & Justin's book (which I've mentioned before, but don't really have online anymore).


(credit)
A trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver is also coming up for me, but to tell you the truth, after just dicking around on their website to find an image to post (found my picture elsewhere, click it for credits) I have my doubts....I also did some graphic design work for them when they were just opened so I'm pretty freaking curious too.

Also it reminds me a bit of the ICA Boston, which I visited last winter:

We're getting The Thing!

I've signed up for The Thing! I'm supposed to still be eligible for the first piece by Miranda July. I'll post pictures when it arrives. I am so excited!

love at first site

Oh! Joy just posted some pics of Mina Perhonen's FW07/08 collections and I'm totally smitten (with everything!):

Living in a mall

Secret apartment in a mall in Providence RI.
CNN gives the mainstream view.
Kind of the total opposite of Monday's post.

Jolie laide?

Sydney, a design production associate for Blueprint magazine posted on the mag's blog about a brilliant portrait she had commissioned. She says in part:

Throughout history, portraiture has typically aimed to make the sitter look his or her best (if not drastically, unrecognizably better). But I'm tired of the same old 'smile and look pretty' shtick. It's time to get ugly.

She hired Reverend Aitor, a Toronto-based artist and member of art collective Misanthrope Specialty Co. whose "Unflattering Portraits" series is just that. In the best way of course. You can see all of them here.

Simple ideas

I love projects that are based on a simple idea, like this one by Steve Lambert:



Ronald's Crisis
[via]

Fiesta in Pamplona

Last night I rewatched the movie Talk to Her and it reminded me of this book about Pamplona that Justin picked up in a charity shop. The book and the movie are just full of great images of the clothes and the ritual that surrounds clothes in bullfighting.



The beautiful fabrics and rigid silhouettes affect the form of the bullfighter... and the state of mind as well, I'd bet.



And look at this guy! Just the regular Joe-about-town at the Fiesta.


The book, Fiesta in Pamplona has a cover of a Picasso drawing/engraving. The photographs are all by Inge Morath.

Conflux

This year I celebrated Labor Day by laboring over my work. Which was difficult because of the unbelievably perfect weather, but was very necessary and actually felt really good. One of the ideas I've been working on is for the 21 Cities Performed project by Nat Slaughter & Hope Hilton for the Conflux Festival in two weeks.

The 21 Cities at Once Performed project is "a performative, global network where invited participants create public intersections to occur simultaneously around the world." I love Slaughter & Hilton's interest in "wireless network systems existing not only through the use of computers and the internet, but through a human awareness of simultaneous participation and collective consciousness." Some of my very first projects with clothing stemmed from an interest in connecting to other people. I often hope my work is a two part process. Part one being my creation of a piece, and part two being someone else's use of it. I really enjoy the idea of thinking of this connection as a wireless network.

The other great thing about the 21 Cities performance is that anyone can join in and particitpate. if you go to the website you'll see you can still enter your own idea and perform on September 14 at 6 PM EST. I'm going to be doing a piece with Justin Hardison in an airplane over New York.

Great Eastern Hotel

you make my heart go boom boom, Reception desk at the Great Eastern Hotel


The Great Eastern Hotel near Liverpool Street in London does not have a website of it's own. You can find a desription of it at the Hyatt website, of which chain it is a part. But that information doesn't really do it justice:

LUXURY LONDON HOTEL The five star Great Eastern Hotel, located in The City, London’s financial district, is a quintessential English modern hotel, housed in its historical building adjacent to Liverpool Street railway station. Conveniently located nearby the....blah blah blah blah

The really great thing about the Great Eastern Hotel is the arts projects they support and take part in presenting.




The first project I read about was Adrienne's Room Service by Adrian Howells in June of 2005. The hotel put Adrienne on the room service menu and "A tick in the appropriate box will indicate service with Adrienne included. Adrienne will deliver your order, serve you where required and spend an hour in your company eating or drinking with you." Above image is Adrienne from An Audience With Adrienne.




In 2005 there was also Stay curated by Cherry Smyth. The artists from the show include Giovanna Maria Casetta (image above, and who I adore!), Richard Dedomenici (whose website I can't make sense of to save my life, intrigues me nevertheless), and Emily Cole (who does amazing hot landscapes).




The unusual Cast Party Event took place in 2006. This project intended to make parties and social events more accessible to the visually impaired by going beyond the usual meaning of access (physical barriers) and touch on the difficulties in socializing and networking for the visually impaired. They used mobile phones in an experiment to provide each visually impaired guest their own live, remote commentary of what will be happening at the party.




And Julie Henry's Dyed in the Wool exhibition was on display in May & June of 2006. Henry worked with football supporters to design and knit a cardigan representing their clubs. The show includes team cardigans, photographs and interviews with fans and the outfits, as well as the original knitting patterns. The work references 1970s home-made precursors to the kit fans buy from stores nowadays. I love most this idea that if the kit is homemade it carries more meaning.

I hope the management and staff keep doing this great work as a supporting venue. Personally I love the idea as hotel as venue, it seems so rich with possiblities, and I always have a little inkling in the back of my mind when I develop my own work that maybe something will come together that really belongs at the Great Eastern.

we feel fine

Via PSFK I have been looking at We Feel Fine a website that I can only describe by copying and pasting a blurb from their website (much as PSFK has done) and slap up a few screenshots. It's impossible not to spend hours on this site once you start to dig around.....

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.)....The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day.

So fun to get caught up in sorting and searching for where feelings happen and when. It feels like such a well of delicious raw data. I hope swimming around in it will be inspirational.

The mess of feelings:


The top three feelings are 1. Better, 2. Bad, and 3. Good!


A few about feelings and clothing came up while I was on:


I've also been on the Learning to Love You More website today, which is another sort of repository of raw emotion. The project is all assignments for other people to complete and the results are displayed on the website. The assignments are still listed on the website and you can still participate. Some of my favorites:

I wish I had the guts to do this one!


I would love to do a whole collection like this...


I wonder what my family's responses to this one would be...ha ha!

vvork

I love the work on vvork. The site is a bit of a mystery to me, I've emailed mail@vvork.com and I clicked on the links in the links sidebar and looked around, but I'm still not exactly sure who does all the work to find all this magical stuff. But it's really varied and really really great. Some of my favorites:


Shoes by Galogaza


Construction wallpaper by Antoine & Manuel


Abandoned suitcase sculptures by Piek!


Picture People by Kristofer Paetau (all kinds of cool photo projects & you can sign up for a mailing list)


Digital Cocks by Matthias Herrmann

Patina Power

Marriage Shirt (just a few weeks in)

A great post about Designed Deterioration on designer Khoi Vinh's site Subtraction. Very excellent comments as well that mention Wabi Sabi (and a recommended book about it), Isaac Asimov, and Nazis....

Hi + Low

An new addiction: Hi + Low by art director Abby Clawson Low. First, let me say I love her categories! Simple and useful where my labels feel messy and I'm still not sure how helpful they will ever be to me.

Some of my favorite posts so far:


ART


DESIGN


HI


LOW


NEW


OLD

Audience participation

Photo by J.J. Tiziou

In art magazine Esopus I read about a dance performance called CELL put on by the Headlong Dance Theater. It attempts to create a performance for one audience member at a time. The piece asks some really interesting questions like 'Who is part of the performance? Why is everyone always on their phone? Am I being watched?' The performance culminates with the audience member engulfed in a private dance that is all their own. The piece premiered at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival in 2006. There were 200 audience members overall (which means the piece was performed 200 times!).

I think there are a lot more interesting questions that this piece addresses like: Why is the connection between maker and audience so important?
Why is this group trying to heighten or change that connection?
Where is the line between performer and voyeur (presumably the audience of one is still watching to some degree although s/he is also participating)?

link round up

so. many.

When I started writing online, I thought I would post something everyday that inspired me, or was relevant to my interests (that I would normally just bookmark and never look at again). But I'm finding that there are dozens of sites and links and posts every week that I want to remember and I can't do justice to. There's no time to properly write about them all. I think every Friday will have to be a link round up of all the other pages I'd like to write more about but have just run out of time. Because there will be a whole new crop next week....



Máquina desempolvadora
Adriana Salazar interviewed by Régine Debatty (lovelovelove)

...a girl who creates delicate and elegant (but slightly ludicrous) machines that smoke, tie shoes, pull thread through the hole of a needle, relentlessly measure walls, switch the light on and off, on and off, on and off, dust walls, cry while another one dries its tears....

I am a rabid convert to Style Bubble!






• Acne (here)
• Sruli Recht (here)
• Nova Magazine
• Couture Lab (here)
• I'm not sure I agree with her definititon of label-ista (I would say it's someone who cares only for labels because of their cache not because of any meaning a label carries)
• This one reminds me of my own wardrobe documentation for my MA research
• I love the way she talks about this jacket & memory


I've been reading PSFK a lot lately too. They post a lot, and while it's not always stuff interesting to me, when it's good it's very good!
• The WHY (my personal favorite...)
• Objects that age (my personal fave....no really!)
• Why looks matter
• Kate Betts on how fashion trickles up
• Smart Fabric




Just pretty from Kako Ueda via Phantasmaphile



The beauty of scale

I like the juxtaposition of these two artists

Nostalgic Technology
by Svetlana Boym
Her website was a little difficult for me to navigate and make sense of at first, but as I poked around I became more and more enamored with the way Boym approaches technology/machines.

******



Volksboutique
We make Money Not Art presents an interview with Christine Hill. While Hill's aesthetic is lovely, I enjoy more her writing and turn of mind.

P.S. I don't even know why I use these tags. I hope they turn out more helpful than they feel right now. hmm.

Emotion—why did I title it this?

Last week I mentioned this article about the divide between science and art. And how "I'd like to write a bit more about this one...." so I'm trying to be inspired to write a bit about some pages I think are related. ahem:

Basically the Boing Boing post reviews an article in the Guardian that talks about the division between science and the humanities and whether there is a "third culture" that bridges this divide. They review a website, two books, and a writer. Natalie Angier's comment "Science is rather a state of mind" reminded me of this article I wrote about before. But it makes me look at that article from Business week in a different way. Nussbaum talks about "Design Thinking" (his caps, not mine), in a way that makes me wonder what is 'humanities thinking'? Is there such a thing? Or is it the same as "design thinking" and those are the two sides being talked about in the Guardian article? Maybe "design thinking" is the third culture referred to in the article? Sorry for all the quote marks....

Boing Boing also recently linked to a Douglas Adams lecture titled "Is there an artificial god?" that made my head spin (in a nice way) similar to the article above. It feels like such a lovely way to consider ideas about god and consciousness and humanity. Sadly, perhaps, it makes me want to totally live in my head and stop making things. Funny how doing a lot of in-depth reading can put me off of physical objects....it's almost like there iis a real divide between intellectual thought and physical action (hey.....) that happens so very naturally that its unstoppable. Good thing I have studio space this month or I could feel myself heading into a downward spiral of creation (or is that anti-creation?)

Moving on....a nice pair of articles that I really enjoyed finding together:

From Boing Boing, "Love, Internet Style" Clay Shirky's keynote speech from the Supernova conference in San Francisco that posits love as a predictor of technological success.

Usman Haque's own keynote speech titled "I Hate Technology" reported on We Make Money Not Art (aside: one of my very favorite blogs). Truth be told the LOVE/HATE theme doesn't exactly work because the speech was for the We Love Technology day on July 12 in Huddersfield, GB.

Gilbert Austin, Chironomia (1806), plate 9.

Finally, and totally unrelated to anything about (so much for my circular mind melt) is an article from Cabinet Magazine about gestures lost through time

“By the end of the nineteenth century, the gestures of the Western bourgeoisie were irretrievably lost”: so writes Giorgio Agamben in his 1992 essay, “Notes on Gesture.”

This is a pet love of mine. I did a couple of garments related to Alexander Technique in my first year of grad school. Unfortunately I don't seem to have any pictures handy, but maybe I will find some and revisit this. I love the body/garment connection.

P.S. A new blog I just started digging around on....hmmmm!

studio time

Today I'm in the printshop working on projects of mine and of others. So today will not be the day for thoughtful critical writing that I'd hoped for. In fact, it won't even be the day for a wall paper round up (all my nice links I've been gathering aren't handy). Just pretty pictures today....


Bryan Voell [via]


Sweet tops [via] I want this one!


Lise Lefebvre's aesthetics of domestic sound [via]

Good Make!

A round up of my recent favorite finds via Make, like yesterdays faves from Boing Boing. Tomorrow, something a bit more critical, I swear!


The breath powered USB charger by jmengel from May 16. I can't even begin to describe the ideas this piece gives me. It's top on my list to make!



"Fabber" the homemade 3D printer (1/10th the cost of a store bought one!) by roboticist Hod Lipson on May 30. This one might be a bit out of reach for my tech skillz....but maybe I can recruit my dad (although there's still the $2300 to be found!).



Brilliant wallpaper idea (the photo doesn't do it justice!) on June 13. Really such a brilliant idea, I can't believe it hasn't been done before now. I'm so into wallpaper lately, I should do a follow up post of some of my favorite wallpapers (note to self! ha). There's so much interesting work.



Sarah Hood's beautiful landscape jewelry on July 5. Of course this is something I wish I had thought of. I just want to eat that little tree.



Artist Ma Jun makes beautiful low tech electronics from China on July 7.

Kosuke Tsumura

One of my favorite web magazines Ping recently interviewed fashion designer Kosuke Tsumura. They talked about his most recent work where he designed 9 ensembles for 9 specific women, as opposed to designing for the market at large.

Now Ping described the project as "Tsumura would interview 9 women. Afterwards he would fantasise about them and would project things onto them – and create a dress based on these fantasies for each of them. Then, photographer Hiroyuki Matsukage would document the women wearing the dresses." But when I looked up the gallery's site, they described it as "he suggested to create the clothes exclusively to women who appeared in his mind. Based on the imagination, he selects the model. Having presentation and discussions with the models, he expands imagination and the fantasy more and creates a dress just for the model." To me, those are two very different scenarios.....but I guess, either way I find the project quite compelling.

I was surprised I'd never heard of Tsumura before, this project seems so relevant and interesting. But when I poked around his website and looked through his FINAL HOME work, I wasn't so surprised. It's a line meant to dress people up for urban survival. Sort of a practical take on the refugee/apocolyptic/natural disaster scene, without the power of Lucy Orta or the vulnerability of Hussein Chalayan. I'm not saying it's "bad", just that it's aim seems to be to really sell the work and reach everyday people and sometimes things like that don't get lots of press.

In some ways this project, I hesitate to call it a collection, felt flat to me by the way it was seemed more of a shallow fetishization of the female subjects. It was a bit too surface, in some ways. Tsumura said he only chose women because he couldn't "expand his imagination" on members of the same sex. Eh, I like someone who's not so afraid in that way. That said, the basic idea is a sound one that I won't forget.

The project is available in book form Fashion Mode to Order as well as being shown at Nakameguro’s Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo

In my explorations, I also found the bilingual art magazine ART iT (that origiinally commissioned the project and am in love!

Design III

The David Report writes recently about the dearth of good design, especially noting the Milan Furniture fair, and suggests:

"An adequate question to highlight is if we should call it design, art or design-art or if we have to invent a new category and word for these experiments. Some people call it neo-surrealism or expressionism-design, but we would prefer to refer to it as Vulgarism."

They posit that there is no intellectual base from which the current trends in design can grow. They charge that contemporary designers "are more or less just doing extravagant objects. A kind of design on dope."

Oliver Ike suggests that designers are out to make quick money by being fake artists in their design work. that be dropping the functional aspect of design (a big no-no) they are left with "vulgar pollution" that they sell as art. He also tries to explain under what circumstances design pieces should rightfully be commanding high prices (as objects important to the history of design, not as art objects).

The article includes a great quote from Core 77, “This rising tide of disaffection tends to share two themes: a distaste for the superficiality of design’s media-celebrity nexus; and a growing discomfort with design’s role in generating ’useless stuff’. These two complementary critiques could be abbreviated as Anti-fluff and Anti-stuff.”

Of course there's a few quotes I'm not at ease with like this one, "Likewise we would like to quote a good designer friend of ours who refers to the Vulgarism as design for girl’s magazines (no hard feelings towards girl’s magazines though)…" Nice.

And there's the bits where the authors try to differentiate between artists and designers (quoting the British design council): “Designers, unlike artists, can’t simply follow their creative impulses. They work in a commercial environment which means there is a huge number of considerations influencing the design process. Designers have to ask themselves questions such as: is the product they’re creating really wanted? How is it different from everything else on the market? Does it fulfill a need? Will it cost too much to manufacture? Is it safe?” My instincts tell me this is oversimplified. Design requires so much more than this, and often art demands these questions be answered as well.

Overall, I respect the closing sentiment to the piece, "At David Report we believe in long lasting values as one of the best and most valuable sustainable solutions....We are producing new stuff as if our resources were unlimited. We need to buy less but better products. We need to re-use and re-cycle. The maximalistic work of the Vulgarism is unfortunately something completely different. It’s a blown up bubble of exercise in decoration offering only a hollow shell." I think this outlook is the basis of artwork already (seriously, let that thought roll around a bit), and should be adopted by all designers.

If it's not clear by now, I think art has to be the leader in all of the arenas I've been posting about these last couple of days. Simply put, I don't think money should be the biggest motivator. Maybe that makes me anti-capitalist? I still think the free-market system is okay. I just think, on a personal level, who wants to be the person who values money over everything else in this amazing world? I know we all need a certain amount to live, not contested, but I hope we are talking about after all the basic needs are being met here. I'm sure there will be more posts about this topic, I feel like I am just getting started on something here and I need to develop and refine my thoughts even further, especially in regards to my own work.

Design II

Following up with yesterday's design post, there was a recent entry on the New York Times Runway blog about Sarah Jessica Parker's new project the fashion label "Bitten". There's even a follow-up piece about it's manufacturing and production policies under Steve & Barry. I'm going to focus on the interview between Cathy Horyn and Sarah Jessica Partner, but I think the second piece has some very interesting comments too, which I've quoted and linked to below.

The thing that gets me about Parker's label, or at least the way she defends it, is that she presents it as high quality, timeless, well-designed clothing. And while Steve & Barry have a laundry list of methods they use to keep costs down (manufacturing off-season, fewer middlemen, no advertising, etc.) there is just no way you can convince me a $10 purse is well-made. I think "well-made" implies more than just "sweatshop-free". Well-made implies quality materials, good construction, and thoughtful creative design work. SJP says, in regards to people criticizing the label:

"Great. Bring it on. And tell me what troubles you about women in this country having affordable, well-made clothes. Let’s talk about it."

There is also some discussion about why high end designers don't work at mass market prices. The exchange between Horyn and Parker goes like this:

Q: Of course many designers, including Vera Wang, are now making clothes at mass-market prices. They seem to want it both ways. And some designers could enter this field but choose not to. What if Olivier Theyskens did a label like this, with jeans for $14.98? He’s hip and talented.
A: And [laughing] he has the prettiest hair.
Q: But designers like him won’t touch this market.
A: But why?
Q: Pride, maybe. Sophistication.
A: I also think they just want to drop in for a minute, like the designers did for the Gap. It’s a moment, a quick affair. But with this line, you have to be a little behind the eight ball. I don’t want it to be fashion forward. A lot of women can’t wear what Olivier designs. It takes time for their eye to adapt.

I'm surprised they didn't consider that maybe many designers don't want to work at this level because you can't make many well-crafted clothes at such a low price point. I think make all this cheapy stuff is not just about "access" as Parker contends, but about a business strategy that aims to make profit buy selling quantity not quality.

Q: Did you have any concern that maybe we don’t need more stuff clogging the planet. There is H & M and Target, and Topshop wants to open here.
A: Of course. I think I would have felt that if I didn’t understand the Steve and Barry’s customer. There aren’t H & Ms everywhere. And that’s very trendy fashion—it’s not what every woman wants. I don’t feel there is this surplus, in a way. To me, it’s about access.

Parker tries to dodge the question I think. I do believe the world is small enough that fine goods are available to most everyone in first world circumstances that wants to find them. I know many won't agree with me, but between ebay and thrift stores and trades and freecycle, you can pay with time (in searching) and not money if you really want nice things and don't have tons of cash.

The one valid point I think Parker does make is about size range. Bitten is offered up to size 22, and many high quality brands don't go past 10. Especially the way Horyn describes the line:

"My own feelings about the label are that the basics are solid, especially the jeans and the striped T-shirts and cropped hoodies, but that it needed more surprise. That may come with time."

While basics are "important", I bet the clothes become more trendy over time, more H&M, and less styles available in that size 22.....but maybe I'm too cynical.

comments to this article I found interestin:

Also, a $20 coat is no bargain if it falls apart after it is worn a couple of times. LJG

“What troubles me is that her clothes look a lot like Old Navy, are priced similar to Old Navy, and are positioned as a panacea for the faltering self image of American women - as sold to us by a size zero, faux blonde starlet glued to a pair of $500 heels." Faran

Mrs Parker attends fashion runway but for “us” designs something worth 9.98?? Please.Margherita

"Having purchased quite a few Bitten items, I say hurray to SJP for making nice, very affordable clothing for the masses of women who do not fit or can afford designer clothing. While I could well afford, and have purchased designer clothing, I have grown to be opposed for ethical reasons, to buying expensive clothes. There are people starving in my city, and squandering money on items that are temporary is just ridiculous."Dwarrior

"I love the idea of getting great clothes to the masses at an affordable price, etc., etc., but the subtext of this interview — and of the other interviews with SJP I’ve read — is that the masses don’t really deserve something beautiful (that word is never used), just something workable. Just “simple American sportswear.” .......What this basically amounts to is a star who is known for wearing expensive clothing, in a massively overdone gesture of noblesse oblige, offering linen pants and tank tops to the masses, those poor ignorant people who don’t have access to Narciso Rodriguez and whose untrained eyes would be blinded anyway if they even chanced to look at anything that wasn’t a hoodie." Irina

"I live smack dab in the middle of America and am able to find plenty of stylish and cheap clothes at Old Navy, Target, etc. That is not what I want. What I want is to pay an $20 for that $10 bag knowing it was manufactured responsibly. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that even on my middle American income I would be willing to pay more for a garment if I could have more peace of mind wearing it - kind of like that feeling I get when I eat food grown from the local grower at the farmer’s market vs. eating the cheap produce at WalMart."lemissa

comments from the follow-up article:

"Someone was comparing it to the Bauhaus, or at least connecting it to that school. First, yay Bauhaus. Now that that’s out of the way, I don’t think it’s a legitimate comparison. The work of the Bauhaus was a major development in aesthetics and social ideas, in addition to being high-quality and quite long-lasting....Bitten is nothing like that; it may be cheap and available to the masses, but what sets it apart from any other pile of clothes at the discount store? THE PRESENCE OF A CELEBRITY NAME. It’s trash fashion." Anjo

"Jil Sander is too “smart”- elitist maybe? Lanvin too? But, to me, they seem so solution driven! These are two designers who appear to be thinking and really addressing women’s needs in their own way. But for some damn reason, it’s the Millys, Rebecca Taylors, DVFs, Tracy Reese’s etc that are what the mass market are looking for....Yes, not everyone has money (as most people say is the primary reason for not dressing how they “want”), but don't sit there and tell me that when instead of one pair of 400 dollar shoes, you have 30 (no, seriously), 30! pairs of 20 dollar shoes. No money? It’s that people like the cheap thrill and they like not having to stop for a minute and think about what they want to say with their clothes." J

"I don’t buy that we’ve grown used to “overpriced” goods…if anything we’re getting used to cheaper & cheaper–as a result of labor or technology or importing from “friendly countries” or “the country du jour” that is in compliance with our trade balance or even human rights policy which would be totally okay to skip all the duties, etc?"Hillary

"My fellow Americans: YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY LOW-WAGE WORKERS EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE. Ask yourself when the last time the guy standing next to you on the train might have seen a dentist/had a physical/enjoyed a decent vacation from work; then, picking an obvious target such as the ready-made possibility of sweatshop labor might then become somewhat more difficult." EM

I could go on and on! So many interesting comments....go read them and tomorrow I will post my last article and hopefully tie all this stuff together.

Printing!

I just signed up for a month of studio time at The Lower East Side Print Shop (now located in midtown!). They have a really nice space (bright light, good equipment) and I met another girl who will be doing some work there in July too who seems fun.

The print shop is amazing with a strong history in NYC (opening in 1968). They've had really good artists in residence over the years (from Barbara Kruger to Ryan McGinness) and it seems like a really supportive atmosphere (time will tell I guess!). I met the paster printer today (James Miller) and he was great. I'm really looking forward to it, and hopefully will post some works in progress on here as the month progresses.

curiousity killed the cat

Italian artist Michelangelo Roberti is making 999 black cubes (20 cm each side) and selling them on his website saying that there is something different inside each one but DON'T OPEN IT! He also says:

"In this deep sense the thing inside the cube is a representation of the Absolute. A good definition of Absolute can also be 'something that doesn't draw its reality from the fact of being perceived'. Curiosity is paradoxical and comes from the useless hope to perceive the Absolute."

Nice.

Also a nice interview with him here

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