Nia James Kiesow likes culture, historical fiction, Japanese ramen, illustrating, and technology. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she now lives in Gramercy in NYC. Nia is currently the administrative assistant at the International Arts Movement.
via HuffPost Arts&Culture Check out these photos from photographer Jimmy Nelson’s photo project, “Before They Pass Away.” For the past four years, Nelson spent his time traversing remote areas of Africa, Asia, South America, and Siberia. He calls these people “the last bastions of human purity and authenticity: the world’s lingering, dying tribes.” These photos of […]
Auburn University's Rural Studio 20K Housing Program
via Fastcoexist There are so many debates out there about morality education and whether it is “all right” to be wedding learning with an ethical overview. Over at Auburn University’s Rural Studio, there is a program for design students that places morality into their materials–debates and issues aside. ‘Social justice architecture,’ they call it. Rural […]
Like Trapping Lightning in a Jar
Ever wonder how scientists figured out how to store electrical charges? A post over at MIT’s online library explains how it was done with Leyden jars around the beginning of the 1800’s. The Leyden jar is the ancestor of our modern capacitor. As experimentation with electricity progressed through the 18th century, scientists were looking for […]
I came across Morgan Herrin‘s work on Colossal this morning and felt the need to share his work because of the detailed etching, striking imagery, and the transformation of humble material into beautiful sculptures. Herrin’s statement explains the reason behind his choice of material as well as methodology: The evidence of my labor gives value […]
Plane Crash Memorial: Replacing Tragedy with Beauty + Awe
We want to share this story of awesome human accomplishment and the lengths to which families went to show duty to their lost loved ones. 18 years after a plane crashed in one of the most inaccessible places in the planet — the Tenere region of the Sahara Desert — the victims’ family built a […]
A Cultural Guide to your Halloween Costume
This was found on www.justposhmasks.com>>
October Desert Art Trek: High Desert Test Sites 2013
Over on LA Weekly’s art blog this morning I found out about a huge outdoor art gallery that spans from Joshua Tree to Albuquerque: the High Desert Test Sites. Started in 2002 by artists Andrea Zittel and Aurora Tang, the HDTS allows artists to experiment with art whilst engaging with otherwise deserted desert communities. This year’s HDTS […]
The Summit | Symphony No. 1 by Jeffrey Roland Leiser
The Summit is a new symphony by Jeffrey Roland Leiser, the award-winning film composer from ‘Imagination’ and ‘Glitch in the Grid’. The Summit is a new symphony from Jeffrey Roland Leiser, the composer of Imagination and Glitch in the Grid. It represents his first symphony written for the concert hall, an adventurous work that will be performed by a […]
Andrew Kolb Illustrates Cartoon Conspiracies
If you haven’t heard some of the bizarre, possibly childhood-ruining conspiracy theories about your favorite cartoons, I suggest we get thee over to Flavorwire‘s list as soon as possible. As if one wasn’t enough, they now have two. To help visualize what a cartoon conspiracies may look like, allow me to refer to illustrator Andrew […]
I stumbled upon these great blockprinting photographs via Line x Shape x Color this morning and thought I’d share. We’re well over the drudgery of winter, but who doesn’t love a good pick-me-up craft project every once in a while? If the sprouting daffodils aren’t cutting it for you, try some Spring therapy with a […]
When you mix creativity with education, you get SLÖJD.
There’s a new collaboration stirring in Los Angeles concerning educational reform, but the call of duty this time comes from the design-oriented section of industry. The two parties partaking are No Right Brain Left Behind and verynice and together, the two have formulated a workshop to tackle the cause, naming their collaborative effort SLÖJD. NRBLB is an organization that works closely […]
The Art of Art Collecting: Christy Tennant Krispin and Art Patronage
By sharing their personal art collection, Karl and Christy Tennant Krispin hope to encourage more thoughtful art patronage among people of modest means and help connect aspiring and emerging artists with people eager to fill their homes with art. The Krispins displayed their collection at Dubsea Coffee, located in the heart of the White Center area of Seattle, […]
Tinker, Tamper, Strings and Dampers: the Prepared Pianos of HAUSCHKA and John Cage
discovered via The Avant/Garde Diaries Hauschka – Noise is Music from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo. When you place objects between or on the strings or hammers or dampers of a piano, you create what is known as a “prepared piano.” When the piano is played, the “preparations” create a resistance against the strings […]
Photographic Taxidermy by Andrew Zuckerman
via swissmiss. In 2007, NYC-based photographer Andrew Zuckerman released a compilation of photographs in a book titled CREATURE, featuring a compendium of animal portraits intimately highlighted against Zuckerman’s signature white background. In doing so, the distinct animal subjects are divorced from their contexts to equalize the greater conversation that runs between them. (He has since […]
via The Creators Project Here’s something I haven’t seen done with Legos yet–particularly the Lego Bionicles! Sound producer and designer Giuseppe Acito harnesses the Nord Beat app, hooking each Lego Bionicle figure up to his iPad and controlling them with the MIDI sequencer. The Legos-turned-robots can then play pre-programmed songs or play live shows with […]
The snapshots of graffiti that are often seen on Tumblr or Instagram usually display drawings or stenciled sketches–the kind that pushed artists like Banksy into the limelight. But if you follow the history line of graffiti back to its beginning, you’d see how this fixation on pictorial elements was not always the case for graffiti. […]
Over at NPR this morning I found a small story highlighting art student Risa Hirai‘s edible art–more specifically, her hand-painted cookies. Hirai’s cookies feature Japanese motifs with the intention of wedding her ethnic roots to what she deems a very Western canvas: cookies. If you were to walk into her current exhibit at the Gallery Tokyo […]
Visualizing More Than 63,000 Cross-References in the Bible
Imagine charting the 63,779 cross-references within the Bible. The complexity of transposing such data sounds like an endeavor presupposing a drawn out migraine, no? For Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild, the project became something that focused on the beauty of the data rather than the functionality of the information. They sought to visualize it, rather than […]
Swissmiss blogged a few days ago about Ace Greenhorn‘s little educational start up in New York City. The initiative presents a series of cheeky instructional videos on how to perform everyday tasks, because sometimes adult life can be tricky and we need those little reminders. Ace Greenhorn says: Ace Greenhorn’s Masterclass is all about learning […]
A quote popped up on Take Root last month that struck me like a hot whip of ethical emotivism. Allow me to share: The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of ‘style’ to make it acceptable. And that, to […]
Brightening Lives with Tiny Miracles
I learned this morning over at GOOD about a small neighborhood adjacent to the red light district in Mumbai, India working to break their cycle of poverty. The neighborhood is tiny, a mere 150 meter stretch of concrete upon which 115 families of the Pardeshi people live. Traditionally bamboo-basket craftsmen, the Pardeshi people are finding […]
I often think that there is not enough mingling of the sphere of mathematics with the sphere of the art world. The last time I really thought about their collision was during an ancient arts class where one of my professors explained the aesthetic qualities in observing architecture that utilizes the golden ratio. But this […]
The "Invisible Man" Makes a Conspicuous Appearance
Colossal reports that the Galerie Paris-Beijing has a new exhibition displaying the latest photo series by artist Liu Bolin, whose nickname came to be “The Invisible Man” after his first body of work in 2005 called “Urban Camouflage” when Bolin photographed himself as blending into his surroundings using body-paint. The new photo series, called “Hide […]
Strobes and Strokes with Pablo Picasso
In 1949, a freelance photographer for LIFE Magazine, Gjon Mili, paid a visit to Pablo Picasso in the South of France. Mili, an innovator of photography at the time, experimented with electronic flashes and stroboscopic lights to capture a sequence of movements within one frame. Mili’s visit to Picasso’s home was to show his fellow artist the photographs […]
The New York Times ArtsBeat reports that at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday, the J. Paul Getty Museum of Los Angeles won a bid on a rare illuminated manuscript, The Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East, for $6.2 million dollars. In 2003, the manuscript was at the Getty on loan for their […]
An Experiment in Mapping Chaos
Over at Colossal I spotted something seriously rad that took one of my favorite arcade games to a whole new level. Netherlands-based graduate student Sam van Doorn modified parts to an old pinball machine to create his own tool for design. The machine uses standard flippers to control an inked-up pinball as it’s flung across the game board. For each […]
We don’t pay much attention to the craft of sign painting anymore–especially when electronic light boards or mass print wall decals became the alternative form of advertising. Over at The Morning News, the subject of the sign industry comes up as they talk about filmmakers Faythe Levine and Sam Macon’s new book Sign Painters. The […]
There used to be a copy of “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” hanging in my college cafeteria and my school friends and I would wonder at it. We marveled at how casually brash and daring the Depression-era iron workers were to be sitting atop a beam suspended stories and stories above the buildings below. To bright-eyed youths like ourselves, the […]
From Discord to Synchrony: A Mini Lesson in Physics
Over at The Kids Should See This, a video from the Ikeguchi Lab in Japan demonstrates how 32 metronomes match up in synchronous play after each being tapped at different instances. It’s a pretty difficult feat to sync 2 metronomes–let alone an extra 30! It’s Okay To Be Smart explains the physics behind it: When […]
On Wonder, The Ethics of Elfland, and the Miraculous World We Live In
Our last blog post mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories and today I came across Harry Clarke’s fairy tale illustrations over at But Does It Float. Clarke’s illustrations appeared in a 1916 edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, informed by his studies in stained glass. Comparison of a window he designed depicting Saint Patrick […]
Add Something Adorable to Your Day
Click on the featured image above for full view. I found something adorable on the Paris Review today! Illustrator Mattias Adolfsson drew up a few literal interpretations of the names of famous authors. The Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare illustrations are particularly amusing. I’m feeling inspired to jot a few down in my own Moleskine tonight! […]
Beauty Observed in an Icelandic Volcanic Ash Field
The pictures you’re about to see are not what you might think them to be. I am imagining the many inferences flitting through your mind at this very moment: a series of watercolor paintings, the product of someone’s bored Thursday afternoon tinkering around on the latest Adobe Photoshop program, or magnified snapshots of bloated raffia cells from a scientist’s […]
Who says there’s nothing new under the sun? Originality can still be done–just leave it to the craftsmen! Over at swissmiss there’s talk of new online communities where people can request custom-made goods. It seems that factory-made products don’t dazzle the way they used to. A new trend shows the return to desiring hand-wrought pieces. I remember when […]
Caitlind r.c. Brown Raises a Storm
I just saw over at The Kids Should See This that at the Nuit Blanche Calgary contemporary arts festival last Saturday, artist Caitlind r.c. Brown put up her own kind of storm. She calls her piece CLOUD, and further describes it as: “Created from steel, metal pull-strings, and 5,000+ light bulbs (both illuminated and burnt […]
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