I give up.

I find this very frightening. Actually, more frightening than pretty much anything I have experienced in the recent past:

www.logocare.com

This is how they sum themselves up:

An effective logo should stand out above those of your competitors and bring you in thousands of unexpected dollars.

We are masters of logo design and know precisely what it takes to design an attention-grabbing custom logo in as fast as one business day. A team of 5 top in-house logo designers will work on your logo for a very small fraction of what large corporations pay - Just $259.

Yep. While you wait. Logos... and if you need to move fast, you can get their platinum service for only $99 bucks extra and have 3 more top designers added to the mix. Imagine.

I give up. Next step, Microsoft creates logodesign as part of their MSOffice suite.

However, look at the Logoloft Not only is it scaled according to how many artists and how many designs...but how you load the job much like the chinese menu offered to you for school pictures. They even provide printing, in house design and dedicated phone support.But, this is not $259. that the Logocare folks offer.

More later.

Meet Louis Olson


Meet Louis Olson, glass artist, glassblower, batch engineer and marketer, annealer maker and marketer and all round the most energetic person I have met in recent past. Louis is Noslo Glass. Louis was with the GlassLab in Miami--working with the celebrated designers to help them work out their designs and realize their design intentions. And, I had a chance to talk with him over a few dinners and lunches, poolside and on his birthday. If we weren't talking to Louis directly, we were talking (with amazement) about Louis. He runs his own glass business, didnt like the glass batch offered in the market so he started to make his own. Now he does that in addition to glassmaking-- he makes and sells batch and also annealers (the GlassLab has one of Louis' and it is excellent according to the team). When he isn't working, he is playing equally hard. When we were all snug in our beds, Louis found the hottest spot in Miami and was entertained by salsa dancers on the bar and the scene. He got into his snug bed around 3 a.m. to be fresh and ready to go when the rest of us, the slug a beds were rousing. He is an inspiration and a good sport. Whenever we went out with him, we made every night his birthday...and he played along...to our howls of laughter. Louis is amazing, intuitive and inventive. Plus, Louis has some very good ideas and concepts. His brain is always working.

Why do I introduce you to Louis? Louis saw my Memento Mori notebook while we were in Miami and suggested we get together and make some forms in black glass and sandblast the illustrations (probably reversed--per my new knowledge from Steuben) into the glass. That would make the whites matte and white and depressed into the glass (slightly) and the blacks shiny and slightly raised. Or, what if you worked in clear glass (say a flat bottle) with the front plane and back plane interacting in an interesting way? I think that is a very cool idea and plan to pursue this. Why not? Matt Haber (of the other night's conversation about Mark Murphy) has bottles ( Lambrusco or some cheap stock bottle) painted. I can design the bottle or vessel, do the move (that is 3 D art direction with a glass team) and provide illustration etc. Maybe introduce some sewn or woven neck treatment in the case of a bottle. Or maybe, to keep it simple, just huge spun out platters/rondelles to get the illustration up big? I could see what happens. If good things happen, do more-- and maybe enter them into New Glass Review (remember, get the work out there?)...and work until it gets boring...or too much time/money is burned in the experience. I think there could be a market for this stuff (even for the Ithaca Art Trail etc.). New Year promises new avenues.

What do you think?

A blue pill for the Holidays?


Another mental holiday image. Maybe I do need sedatives. Not exactly the happiness of the season...no kookie skulls with christmas trees and lights. I am focused on the temporal and spiritual. I am working with brains and spirit effigies to see if I can get something going. Right now, everything looks like a puddle of black ink...but some clarity is coming out of the mess. But, to be honest, I am a bit dispirited with the work coming out the pen (my temporal brain is in freefall). So, maybe I just should take a little Memento Mori holiday and not push things too much and work on skulls like the above--a bit of decorating and no story/or symbol work. A bit of mental eggnog.

I think I have chugged through Graven (Allen Ludwig) by reading back and forth, top and bottom given the density of the work. No linear reading of that book. I love it..but when you begin to get deep into Puritan beliefs in angelography...whoa. I am now re-reading things I have read before--so I am seeing this as progress. Now, I need to give that a break...unless I read a bit about the various identified carvers. I am fascinated with the stone carvers who sign their stones, and often may do as many as 70 stones in a year...and some move to a different place and take their style which is so keenly identified with a locale...and it migrates. John Bull and the Stevens family (father, son and grandson) are some of my favorites.

Going to get a little chunk of cash out before the end of the week to the U of Hartford to begin to pay for future fun and degrees. I have been really impressed with the smart, can-do attitude that comes across the phone with Hartford. I figure if the "back up band" (the admins) are great...imagine the lead act! This all is very promising after the shoddy scene with the Orange. Need to close out whatever we need to before the end of the week with the business as there are quite a few things outstanding that could end us up to our knees in unhappiness if we don't resolve or at least come up with a strategy to do so. I am wondering if I have the time for the House of Health tomorrow as time is tight...and the people are all in one place tomorrow morning. Right now, I am thinking not...but we will see.

We have a concert at the High School this evening. One for the Middle School on Thursday. Luckystone is going to lunch at Dijon (a break from our tradition at the Heights Cafe) and then back to the grind.

Then laundry, packing and more laundry. What is Christmas? and When is it? In three weeks or a month? (I wish.)

Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted skull

My friend Tina mentioned the Hirst skull when we were last having a gab fest...so I googled it. And here it is for you.

From Boingboing.net:

Damien Hirst's latest artwork is this life-size platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 fine diamonds. The sculpture, titled "For The Love of God," will likely sell for as much as $100 million, making it the priciest contemporary artwork ever made. White Cube gallery is selling several limited edition silkscreen prints of the work, priced from £900 to £10,000, for one sprinkled with diamond dust. The title of the piece comes from Hirst's mother who asked her son, “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?” From the New York Times:
For Hirst, famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, all his art is about death. This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”

Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.

“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”

New York Times says on June 3, 2007>>

Hirst is quoted on is it bling or not:
“I was very worried for a while, because if it looked like bling — tacky, garish and over the top — we would have failed. But I’m very pleased with the end result. I think it’s ethereal and timeless.”

He is selling screenprints of the same image for 810. pounds  for the edition of 1700 pieces. There are other images of the same skull with editions of 250 prints at 10,000 pounds per print from White Cube>> Hmmmm.

Memento mori with tude.

Holiday doings


Amendments to the poochy yum yums (dog biscuits)  posted yesterday:


--use a full cup of parsley and 2 tbsp. italian seasoning instead of the parsley mint combo
--use a mixer instead of the food processer--makes a more textured, more "healthy" cookie
--the mixer blends the herbs in...no need to knead as much. Just roll and cut. Keep em 1/4" thick..thicker gets gross.
--I used a juice glass to cut them. Made one big star for the top of the box...(chinese food containers)
--measure the dry stuff as the batch bakes so you can keep the trays  and dough rolling through.

I just made about 7 batches. Nice.
Also, made a twenty five pound lasagne for my tiny, baby son. When they started to proclaim that we were getting 10 inches of snow, a girl starts worrying about how to feed the children. Lasagne seemed to be the thing that popped into my head. Now we have enough for a football team anticipating the end of the world.

Planning around our trip to LA. Hopes to see lots of mexican stuff, skate and surf stuff, and find those magic screenprinters and sticker makers that the skate and surf guys use. We are looking forward to mexican food, japanese food, passion fruit iced tea, fresh rosemary growing in the parks by the seaside. Swimming and maybe a little relaxing.

Chokers are playing with a musician, Spider John Koerner at Castaways in Ithaca on Thursday, January 10, 2008. From the Castaways site, Bonnie Raitt is quoted saying:

He has a real unique style of guitar playing & a great talking blues style of delivery. They just don’t make anybody like Spider John Koerner. They broke the mold. As all great originators, like Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan, anybody else who tries to imitate them would just look like that, an imitator. I do "I Ain’t Blue" in my shows and recorded it on my first album. It’s one of my favorite songs of John’s, but his other songs I love to play just for my own enjoyment; but I can never come close to playing them as well as he does."


Bonnie Raitt ~ NPR's Morning Edition

So, I have a poster to make for the Chokers with a spider. Fun...but need to gun it out tonight. My pictures taken in the blue alley at Felicias on Flickr is on the Castaways site is also now on the Felicia's site. I guess this is a prompt to keep taking snapshots as there is a need for that sort of thing.

All the packages are in the mail. Now I just have to remember who I forgot...there may be some outstanding cards...I think the labels may have gotten mixed up...but I have Wednesday with my girl Friday to change that out. We leave on Sunday at the crack of dawn...so lots to do between now and then.

Another possible customer at Cornell for a holiday card (2008) based on the work I did this year for the Baker. You know, one could make a bit of money just doing holiday cards....hmmmm.

more later>>

Mark Murphy, designer, illustrator and entrepeneur


We met Mark Murphy at the Art Now Show (Claremont Hotel) during Art Basel Miami. The Art Now space was very run down and worn out (much like old college dormitories) with long, unbroken, dark hallways without windows and with steel doors. The place seemed dirty and haphazard. So, we followed the breadcrumbs and found Mark in a sparkling and bright corner space (he admitted that he cleaned and cleaned the space to the shock and surprise of the cleaning staff that his space never looked this good). His work was beautiful and presented in a very methodical way--with a bookshelf of his self published publications, his Known show (as promoted on his blog) and his big,smart and happy personality filling the space. Mark told us all about his books and love of doing it right--all archival and well designed. Mark is proud of his relationships with his illustrator friends and encourages them to take their work as far as it could go--and it shows in the beautiful, case bound books that he produces.

I was taken by Matt Haber's delicate head (see above), Marc Burckhardt's Harlot, Cathy Bleck's inspiring scratchboard illustrations and the animal head from A. J. Fosik which was well crafted and had a great design and color sense. For collectors, Mark Murphy's little gem of a space within the dingy confines of the Claremont is the ticket. One can pick up gorgeous originals from celebrated illustrator/artists on the upswing of their careers. If one had $20M to spend, you could buy yourself a collection with Mr. Murphy along with starting a little limited edition library as well (more on the books here>>).


I am so taken with Cathy Bleck's work, I have pulled out my scratchboard tools and may start scribing some black boards tomorrow. Lets see if it's fun, it works, and if it's quicker than ink.
Mark Murphy says she is now creating her own boards along with rubbing pigment into the coating. I think I would opt for photoshop helping our with the color and image manipulation.

Mark is a very strong and positive force for illustrators, designers and the space in between. He has a great design sense and passion for everything he does--and I admire his energy, personal mission, sense of quality, drive for excellent art and production and love for his work. It is a remarkable thing. It has rubbed off a bit on this person.

You go, Mark!

From Mark's blog on the image above: Matt Haber celebrates the narrative tradition of cartons and comic books. Matt’s character-driven works and doll-like characters are small pawns in his constantly evolving storybook. Mr. Haber has worked as a Disney animator in the past and currently works for Fox animation studios, working experiences that has evolved his love for rich storytelling. You can see his latest painting, entitled, “Mask,” at www.glassesareshields.com

Amazon's Christmas Gift to all of Us


Amazon, the retailer for everything, the cyberdepartment store bought the copy of JK Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard at auction for 1,950,000 pounds that is going to charity. Amazon has set up a page on their site so you can see the book and begin to hear about the stories that Ms. Rowling has hand scribed and illustrated. There are reviews of two of the five tales...so pour yourself a cup of tea and dig in.

From the Larder: Canine Christmas Cookies

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
1 1/4 cups cornmeal
1 1/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
1 large egg

Special equipment: a pastry or bench scraper; a dog-biscuit cookie cutter

Pulse flours, cornmeal, oats, wheat germ, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt in a food processor until combined. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal with pea-size butter lumps. Add 1 cup water and pulse until a coarse, dense dough forms.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead in parsley and mint until well distributed. Gather, then halve dough with scraper. Form into 2 balls and flatten each into a 6-inch disk.

Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 2 large baking sheets.

Roll out 1 disk of dough into a round (1/3 inch thick) on a well-floured surface with a well-floured rolling pin. (If dough becomes too soft to roll out, wrap in plastic and chill until firm.) Cut out as many biscuits as possible and arrange about 1/4 inch apart on 1 baking sheet.

Gather scraps and reroll, then cut out more biscuits. Repeat with remaining dough, using other baking sheet.

Whisk together egg and 1 tablespoon water. Brush biscuits with egg wash and bake, switching position of sheets halfway through, until tops are golden brown, about 35 minutes total. Turn off oven and dry biscuits in oven overnight.

Cooks' note:
Biscuits keep, layered between sheets of wax paper or parchment, in an airtight container at room temperature 1 month.

Servings: Makes about 5 dozen biscuits.

Gourmet 2005

from the drawing board.


Two day turn around for a comp to show a potential customer for my client. The trick I have learned is to work the illustration in positive and then give them art reversed which allows the black things to read in the glass as dark...and the light stuff gets the texture and whiteness. If this goes, there are either 6 or 12 illustrations that will be needed lickety split. Hello another stream of income from illustration through the business. Plus, I am digging the treee and think that a piece with a bunch of trees at different planes in the glass might make a nice piece...R. thinks that this technique might suit an ice skater with NYC in the background (hello cash machine)--So, this might have some legs.

Off to the grocery store to provision and to the post office for the final packages...
We are going to get snow like no ones business tomorrow and Monday. The closings are being planned as we speak.

K and I are making our traditional Christmas dog biscuits for fun.

More later

IF:Little Things


Little things about the Puritans from Graven Images by Allen Ludwig:

"It can be assumed that glorified souls become angelic bodies but they are by no means the equals of the created angels. Sometimes the two can be distingusihed from one antoher but more often than not the stones are equivocal. There is not real doubbt that the angels bearing the Antram soul to heaven are not representations of glorifed souls but created angels performing their proper duties."
Allen Ludwig

"Consider, if we fear God, the Angels will not forsake us at death. They will be with us all our lives long; uea, and at and after death too; when we must foresake all the world, when our Bodies and Souls must part for a time; when our Souls foreske our Bodies; the blessed Angels will not leave us, until they have brough us into the presence of Christ om Glory... When ye fall, that is, when ye die or cease to be in this world; they may receive you, that is to say that they whose office is to receive you, namely, the Holy Angels, that they may receive your Souls into their Arms, and carry them upon their winges into everlasting Habitations."

Increase Mather,
Boston Minister, author and distinguished angelographer
(1639-1723)

love these little kites


Superliner - 2007
acrylic, paper, dacron, wood
165 x 395 x 18cm.

Jacob Hashimoto was represented by the Mary Boone Gallery at Art Basel Miami. There was a lovely installation that was very inspiring I thought I would share him with you.I love how decorative his work is using tying, knotting and little kites to create this magical world you can live in...even if its for a short time.

designboom.com says about him:

jacob hashimoto is one of the most interesting young activists in the contemporary art scene. what he does with paper creates real magic -a ravishing cascade of cloud white paper shapes flowing from ceiling to floor like a waterfall frozen by winters icy breath. viewing the piece fills you with a deep and profound stillness.

jacob hashimoto is perhaps best-known for his installations in which he creates large-scale sculptural forms out of thousands of 'kites'. drawing on the tradition of kite making, he creates each of the kites by hand, using bamboo rods, string, and offset prints. or all of their exquisite lightness and ethereality, the sculptures are expression of air, light, and space.

More on Jacob Hashimoto at his website :Studio La Citta>>

Think about it. Live from Art Basel Miami


TITLE: Bat Love
ARTIST: Gabriel Acevedo Velarde
WORK DATE: 2007
CATEGORY: Prints
MATERIALS: silkscreen
EDITION/SET OF: 5
SIZE: h: 100 x w: 140 cm / h: 39.4 x w: 55.1 in
STYLE: Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)
PRICE*: 4,000 US$ (Convert prices to your currency with our Currency Converter)
GALLERY: OMR +52 (0)55 5511 1179 Send Email
ONLINE CATALOGUE(S): Art Basel Miami Beach @artnet Dec 6 - Dec 9, 2007

Kind of begins to validate the stuff I have been doing. Don't you think?

more on Art Basel stuff


Bari Kumar was at Art Basel and I love his work! He was part of a group of really interesting and talented Indian painters that take eastern ideas and marry them with a western perspective. I love the way Kumar also introduces a very moody Indian inspired palette, a painted digitization/digital artifact and western symbols to create a very mixed and interesting message.The Indian artists and indian art magazines were one of the interesting categories that inspired me. Anishen Avini uses bleach on giclees of Indian imagery--erasing faces and details to create interesting new images. Galleries from New Delhi were very much in evidence.

Other observations include:
Black and white/ inked drawings are acceptable. Chris Ware's original inked layouts are being sold alongside Steinbergs etc. Great gallery (Adam Baumgold) in Aqua specialized in this sort of thing. Donald Urquhart, Herald Street Gallery London, is doing some whimsical, almost sixties-ish fashion brush drawings with very loose, scripty writing.

New technology: Karin Sander created these interesting little 3 dimensional people figures (about 8" tall in paper) that were 3D body scans that were output by a 3D inkjet printer. The laser cutter for flat pieces of paper was very much in evidence and unfortunately looked too predictable and too hallmark-y to be successful. For a laser cutter to be effective, one needs to build flaws and inconsistency into the image to have it feel genuine versus gimmicky. An artist at the Mary Boone Gallery, Che Fueki did an image called "Owl" with regular paint on canvas and then built up layer upon layer of puff paint to take the picture to the maximum with decoration and detail. Very cute and original. Another painter took pictures during her morning walk and translated the color fields to these soft, very very smooth gradients on stretched polyester (very shiny and not much texture) that seemed to take the idea of airbrush to a whole other place.

Joe Coleman, Barbara Kruger and Nedko Solokov are using words, phrases, personal narrative or biographical narrative as integral to their work. The neon guys doing complete lines of copy were impressive. The Deitch Galleries/Projects used hand painted sign making and vinyl signmaking using copy/type and illustrations to great effect. Type independant of image is less so...but integrated is very much in evidence. Charles Krafft's "Sharing is loving" pair of delft inspired bunnies in porcelain flanking a huge hypodermic needle (illustration to just give you a glimmer of it's wonderfulness)

Organs and parts very hip. Barbara Kruger and her brain. Sigga and her glass organs. There was this wonderful artist doing penance for his partner's illness. He created an outline of the body in coloraid paper (to size), with selected systems called out in other cut paper (all of it put down with matte scotch tape)--with a chalky multicolor heart, lungs, circulatory system in the hands, the brain etc. Very evocative.

Then there is old technology made new. Matthew Brannen, an artist that makes these very simple layouts--letterpress with polymer plates that he makes one saleable piece and one artist's proof. He did a great piece with suntan lotion bottle and stone crab claws. But my all time favorite was a stacked piece showing a shark as a shape with a turquoise water (expressed with a thin, turquoise woodgrain) and the pooor shark's stomach holding skeleton hands and wine bottles. It also had the shark's small digestive tract and equally small brain complemented with price tags and manila's little tags as well. Totally perfect.


Huge Scale. Walton Ford's fabulous tiger. Huge C prints of landscapes that totally suck you into their vortex and their rich, rich evocative state. The color and saturation framed up either as a slice of a luscious landscape or an elegantly overdetailed Baroque court salon that transports you to another place and time. The big size and deep color takes you to an entirely different place. Oversized is great.

Work inspired by Velazques. A wonderful compliment of images and figures in the park inspired by the Infanta in Miami. Also, the Felipe IV inspired Velazquez by Manolo Valdez was a reason to pick up a paintbrush or in the case of this sculpture, a knife. Gorgeous.

more later>>

Joe Coleman is amazing


There were many outstanding images at Art Basel, but a real showstopper and one I spent time with was this image "Behold Eck, 2006" by Joe Coleman. As I googled for this image, it turns out that the NYTimes has done a writeup on Joe Coleman's recent show that I will forward to you for your enjoyment before I start my yammering>> I had seen an interview of Joe's work in Juxtapoz and didnt really understand his work until seeing this singular picture which captures the best of graphic novels with a Bosch/Breughel aesthetic in truly an american and almost victorian view. With these portraits or pictures, Joe Coleman tells you the story of the person's life from different viewpoints and little snippets from rendering little gargoyles to exemplify a personality trait, to tiny little newspaper clippings (all rendered copy in less than a single hair brush with such control and dexterity--he matches any medieval monk painting marginalia). The printed version of this painting does not even begin to show the freshness and subtlety that Coleman expresses in the original. His work is extrordinary, original and thought provoking--and as illustrators, we should all take a look at someone really using the two dimensional plane to tell a story beyond the picture and weave a complex depiction of the personality, life and deeds in a truly rich and thoughtful way. There is a book out on his work "Internal Digging" worth pursing.

More later>>

Thoughts on Memento Mori


Barbara Kruger (who I found out was a graduate of the orange school, Syracuse University in 1965) in a piece represented by the Mary Boone Gallery, showed an enormous piece of output (could have been 12'x 15'--stretched with a stretcher and frame..no glass or plexi) showed a color (huge benday dot) blow-up of a cross section of the brain and in her signature typography and red bars holding the type she relates:

"In the beginning there was crying"

"In the middle there was confusion"

"In the end there was silence"

Which kind of says a lot about the death thing or about the brain...or both. I was musing with my friend Tina, curator to the stars...or better the Curator of the Modern and current work at the Museum of Glass. Tina is fascinated by everything and anything and is deep into the Masons, the scene at Lilydale, Spiritualists, obscure and wonderful saints...you get the idea. She was telling me about a spiritualist she consulted with...and they tape recorded the session. As they reviewed the tape, there were other voices that she had not heard during the consultation --confirming her thinking that the spirits are not just energy but there is intelligence and involvement here on this plane. So, to that, maybe Barbara Kruger has got the end part a little wrong. Maybe in the end there is silence to our ears...but a rush of communication on another level. Maybe the puritans had it right, that there are spirits about us, those spirits that travel with us through our lives and then help us to transition when we pass from one plane to the next. Its funny how all this stuff is out there when you just tune to the right frequency.

More on the antics in Miami>>

Back for Lunch


Finally! We stayed an extra night as there was a promise of some nasty ice in Syracuse--and the concept of flying into Syracuse to an ice storm at midnight didnt sit well with us. But hey, we are back. The picture above is of David's Cafe (a block from the Lincoln Road shopping district) where R and I both had cuban sandwiches (as in this picture) and two cafe con leche yesterday for lunch. It doesnt get much better than that. But, in Miami, every experience tops the last one.

The trip to Design Miami, Art Basel was stupendous. My brain is bursting-- so there will be lots of chatter in the next few days reflecting on all that I saw, the people I met, and my hopeful expectations. Of course, there is just a ton of chatter about the wonderfulness of Miami, it's people, it's energy and all the nature and urban life all rolled up like a cigar (Davidoff were rolled at ArtBasel). I decided against my taking my computer which I regret. However, the new point and shoot camera is a real trooper (Canon Powershot A720) and works well in low light situations. So, you didn't get realtime blogging...but I will try and give you a flavor of what was going on.

I will be doing posts in the next few days on:
--the Art and Art Basel experiences >> see the flickr set
--Observations on the Art and how it relates to ME
--the ancillary shows at Flow, Aqua, Art Now, Red Dot and the Beach activities for Art Basel
-- GlassLab and my friends and new friends >>see the flickr set

We stayed at a nice, modest hotel (three hotels up from the Eden Roc) called the Miami Hotel and Resort. There was a lovely swimmable pool with access to the beach and the snappiest stone and tile floors that reek of the Mary Blair/ Jim Flora whimsies of the fifites. When the Wyndam decides to roll some cash into this place--it has tremendous bones and will be quite special when it is done. Each door in the hallway has a big, schmaltzy doorknocker with lots of curlicues. The carpets are redolent with palm and tropical leaves, huge and greens. At each door, in the carpet is an enormous hibiscus flower like the point on the end of an exclamation point.

The flight down on Corning's jet was the way we all should go (and never do. Airport to airport was around 2.5 hours without the crazy shoe taking off and the tons of security mojo. Jet service for 4 with sandwiches and fun conversation, then greeted by a smiling man with a big, black car. Whisked off to the hotel immediately and the fun began. R was already off at Design Miami with the GlassLab. I did a little swimming in the dreamy pool and then got over to the GlassLab around 6ish on Thursday for the Vernissage event.

Design Miami happened in the new and beginning to happen Design District on the fringes of downtown. The design district is very much like the early days of Long Island City and the move of all the contract furnishings showrooms going there. That along with some fru fru stores like Fendi etc. and some new restaurants (Brosia, the newest, was the GlassLab's neighbor in the Oak Plaza). Brosia has an entirely tiled facade with outdoor seating in groups (sofas and the like) The new Addidas and Yoji store (Y3) just opened--the store and more particularly, the stuff was great. Really good looking sports stuff with more design and a really creative approach to the materials and the look. I even bought a cool bag there. More time and money would have def parted me from my cash.

The GlassLab was having the Brazilian Campana brothers and Sigga Heimis work with them that evening. The Campana Brothers are bigtime fabu, famous art/design guys who have a real following. Sigga is a designer from IKEA with a nice design sense and a lovely person to boot. The team enjoyed her spirit and ideas (complete with books on the human body) with her sketches. Sigga created human organs in glass with the kidneys and heart being home runs. It took a few days for the team to get used to her expectations and design sense, and for her to begin to understand the process of design with a hot glass team. The Campanas did a series of open branches that could work as vases and a candle holder etc. There was lots of good energy around the work and working with these designers and hopefully this will be the beginning of an ongoing glass-filled conversation with happy results.

More later>>

new from the land of the dancing vectors


Hooded Merganser on the drawing board. Am liking whats going on here as I have been away from the land of the dancing vectors. I hope to keep this looser than I have gone recently--it feels fresher and more serigraphic if I do. Not done yet, but in progress. Wanted to share it with you.

Felt like sleeping in the freezer last night. Fab!