Snail!

He's baaaaAAAACKKK!!!

The Obscura

VA has got no shortage of great young artists right now. Richmond might seem like the center of the Virginia Artistic Universe, but the oft-overlooked region of Hampton Roads has got some really innovative stuff happening as well. The 7 Cities have a ton of fabulous organizations that are rapidly gaining attention, and the latest one is the web collaboration The Obscura.org. The photography based site has a handful of contributors at the moment, and it seems like the emphasis is portraits. I don't have a ton of info, so take the initiative and check the site out. It's a nice mix of artists, and I'm looking forward to watching it grow!

Vinyl store in San Diego now!

The nearest Kidrobot store to me is in Los Angeles. Now, I'm sure LA is a great town. There's a ton of artsy stuff going on non-stop, it's a giant hub of the world, a really lovely place with lovely people... right. As much as I LOVE the 2 hour drive up there to buy overpriced (albeit cool) clothes and knick-knacks, I'd just as soon stay local and buy my vinyl wares in the neighborhood. Now, thanks to Gunnzo, I can do just that!

Gunnzo is located in Old Town San Diego at 2445 Juan Street. It doesn't look like much from the outside (the store is located in the left side of a house smack in the middle of an incredibly steep residental street), and the inside consists of a small front room which leads to a slightly larger and more angular back room. All of this is attached to a great back porch which opens into a small courtyard linking the other side of the house (I'm assuming). What it lacks in space it makes up for in cozy quality.

Chika Sasaki has opened the only designer toy store in San Diego as far as I'm aware, and I'm hoping it works out beautifully for her. I got to go to the "opening" party where every attendee got a free Mini Munny Mobile to decorate as they pleased! I got to talking with a guy there (Jesse? Maybe? Bad with names) and apparently this entire venture started from her own personal collection. From the sounds of things, it seems like she has more internet business than walk-ins, but I'm sure as the buzz continues she's going to find herself in a great spot to dominate the toy market in San Diego. Not only does she have a great collection of hard to find Dunnys, Gunnzo is the exclusive US retailer for MINDstyle Asia Exclusives.

The fact that this is a toy store by a toy collector means that some things are off-limits, but what is for sale isn't grossly inflated with outlandish retail upcharging. Yes, she's got to make a profit, and her collection is small but very thorough. Sasaki seems to have a good handle on what's available and what's coming, so I'm expecting great things from her.

new from Generate

Generate Design is a super-cool site with a ton of stuff for the design lover. Their prices range from the wallet-friendly to back-breaking, but I assure you whatever you pay for you get your money's worth. This lamp is my new personal favorite thing ever, and I for one will not rest until I have fooled everyone with this illusion of suspended animation. Personally, I think it's a little on the pricey side, but what it lacks in affordability it makes up for in style, and isn't that what's really important?

Available in wall or table versions. Red or white interior.
Product Specs

Materials: Iron PlateLiquid Lamp
Designer: Kouichi Okamoto
Price: US $199.00 (red interior add $28, table lamp option add $11)

New from Veer

When I graduated from college, I had the choice to either A) go to Peru for a month for a school program (I'd get no credit for it but it would be an experience that basically was just set up for me) or B) upgrade my old hand-me-down laptop to a brand new Macbook Pro. For a variety of reasons (new boyfriend, long term helpfulness, I'd just gone to Costa Rica 2 months before, etc) I went for the Macbook Pro. I assure you I have no regrets about that. It is a magical device that I cling to my bosom and have already set up a trust fund for it. Still, it is not without its flaws, such as the tendency to get reallly hot on my lap while I'm using it for important design business. More like Tetris.

Anyway, Veer has a new product for just that very malady. Smooth, classic, modern, and with a type-twist, it's the perfect thing for the Mac-lover. I guess you could use it for a PC laptop but if you have one of those you probably hate pretty things anyway so don't bother.







The 3/4" engraved wood dissipates the heat (I always thought wood was flammable but design has proved me wrong once again!) and features 2 types that are elegant and swirltastic. Get yours here for the low low price of $100. Personally, I enjoy the crotchal heat. Convenient for private sexy time with my Mac.

attn: philly!

Plaid Pony Vintage is a cute, kitschy independent company in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia (one of my personal favorite cities in the US of A). Their main wares are vintage clothing, accessories and other items for the rockabilly and retro fans of today. Art Star is a Philadelphia gallery that is an independent spot frequented by art lovers, young people, crafters, and the like. It seems very similar to Quirk, and has a great online shop for the poor art student as well as a wealthy collector. Trunk shows are a great way to get introduced to new lines, and meet the people responsible for the creativity being shown. I recommend to anyone in the Philadelphia area to check out this event and bring your wallets!

Rainy Day Dunny!

Gloomy day? Down in the dumps? Well, if it's raining in LA, Miami, SF, or NYC, head over to your friendly neighborhood KidRobot store to score the new John Burgerman Rainy Day Dunny!



The 3" Dunny is only sold on days when it's raining at the city the store is located in, and sporadically through the website. What a cheeky gimmick to cheer up even the most depressing of drizzly days!

MY GOD... I'M DELICIOUS!

I have a Twitter account. Believe me, I was a HUGE skeptic when it first came out, and when even now when I sit down and try to grasp the actual concept it still seems ridiculous. That being said, I follow Rainn Wilson's Twitter (Dwight from the Office) and his posts are always silly antics of online taunting with a few worthwhile links thrown in. His new background is courtesy of Mike Mitchell, an artist I'd never heard of- he hails from Los Angeles (where else) and a is self-proclaimed cat enthusiast. His work largely deals with animals, comic book characters, mixed in with a dash of silly, a splash of ridiculous, and some adorable grotesquerie. Take a peek at a few of his pieces (all used directly from his site)







These are just a couple of my favorites (wow, I like bunny art and a zombie ice cream- how totally unlike me!!!) Mike is also a brother in blogging! Check out his blog and shop for even more stuff from this darkly original artist. Shirts, prints, the works! He seems like a fun guy. Mike, if you ever see this, come on down to San Diego and we'll discuss important topics, like crime fighting slugs and spontaneously combusting kittens.

Thomas Doyle

I feel like I might have seen and/or posted about Thomas Doyle's miniature worlds, but who cares. It's amazing enough for even TWO mentions. His site is home to his Distillation Series, Bearings Series, and Reclamation Series, all focusing on presenting a minute view with universal ideas. I've included only one picture from each of the series, because I want to tantalize you enough to go directly to the site without going batsh** insane and posting his entire portfolio.

Bearings:


Reclamation:


Distillation:

The Grid Book

Hannah B. Higgins has mapped the history of the most prominent grid systems in Western culture in her book "The Grid Book", which had an opening a few weeks ago at Printed Matter in NYC. She examines the brick, the tablet, the gridiron city plan, the map, musical notation, the ledger, the screen, moveable type, the manufactured box, and the net as the underlying structures for the world around us perhaps even more than any of us realize. These 10 "grids" have moved and shaped the world around us, and even as the landscape changes these basic structures remain the same. They are used in art as well as urban planning, technology as well as simple games.

She is the an associate professor in the art history department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which I think would present a really interesting point of view for such a potentially mathematical subject. I've always been fascinated with the idea of structure in a seemingly structureless object, like parallel lines in nature. Thinking about the invisible harmony of the world is truly a spectacular mind exercise.

photos

When I don't have any new items to post, new events coming up, or just something new and exciting, I'll start posting a photo montage! I have a lot of pictures that I just kind of have... so they might not all fit together or make sense... but here goes!


















Just a couple of shots from the last month or so... I haven't edited anything in Photoshop, but I kind of miss doing that on a regular basis. I need to get back into the habit. Anyway, here's the scoop.

1) Balboa Park Cactus Garden- I just thought the perfect round cactus shape with the weird blues of the unidentifiable plants were really cool. I love nature!
2) Prickly!
3) Skull decal in LA... I'm sure I'd get sick of all the snarky street art if I lived there, but for now I just think it's cool.
4) Balboa Park again... I just thought it was cool the way the sun split the tree. No major artistic insight there.
5)San Diego zoo- flamingos are sweet, and I like how crisp this turned out just as the sun was starting to sink.
6) Ashton likes to take ugly pictures of me when it looks like I have legs like a goat that bend backwards.
7) Wall in LA. There's old stuff there?!?!
8) Leprosy leaves in Balboa Park. Not really. But maybe.
9) I've based entire portfolios around the concept of geometry in nature, so these naturally hexagonal pink cactii will probably be popping up a few more times

SWEET!

Dennis' bike joust from Slaughterama!!!! VICTORY!

this morning

marked a new start. the drive was especially wonderful today. it looked like the mountain to the east was a volcano because the clouds matched the colors of the shadows perfectly; the powerful, unmoving rocks of deep gray-blue melded with the constantly shifting vapors in the sky and the pale gold of the sun peeked through in an ever-changing dance of dawn. there was just the slightest hint of pink hanging on the edges of the sky. subtle twinkles on the bay to my right, and as i turned to face the sun the heavy hanging clouds over mexico moved to the side to make room for the crisp morning. it was the perfect start to a new day, which in itself is a new start.

Joe's Inn

I took this off Google Maps. I miss this place!

Souther Salazar and Megan Whitmarsh

First of all, I LOVE studio tours. It's such a great glimpse into the reality of the working artist. Fecal Face is really good about updating them on the reg, and the latest one was the LA studio of Souther Salazar and Megan Whitmarsh. I think collaborations or even shared spaces is an excellent idea, because even though the personal space is affected, the bouncing and sharing of ideas is a fabulous marriage. One day I would love to have a seperate studio from home; I kind of got a taste of that in the Honors Studio at VCU and it gave me the bug. I won't even bother posting images of their actual work (you can go to their websites for that) but I love the following things about their studio:
1) Exposed brick walls
2) Lots of weird nooks and corners
3) FLAT FILES. SO AMAZING.
4) Lots of light
5) Tons of books and other reference materials
6) An influx of neon. Superb.

Anyway, here's the studio. Maybe the next time I'm in LA I'll be a creep and lurk outside.

Los Angeles Festival of Books!

UCLA is hosting a weekend-long book festival at the end of the month that is FREE!!! Nothing in LA is free, but somehow this is (however, parking is not). The Los Angeles Festival of Books will take place Saturday and Sunday, April 25-26 on the UCLA campus in West LA. There will be book readings, signings, and local authors on hand peddling their wares. Click the link above to get more information on what's happening and who will be attending. Tickets are free but required to enter some of the events and panel discussions.

Pritned Matter NYC

Nieves
An Exhibition
April 4 – May 23, 2009

Opening Reception
Saturday, April 4, 2009, 5:00 – 7:00 PM

Printed Matter is pleased to announce an exhibition with the legendary Swiss publisher Nieves. The exhibition will feature a full retrospective of Nieve's zine program since 2004 as well as a selection of the books published by the press since its founding in 2001. The opening reception will also serve as a book launch for new titles by Henry Roy, Katerina Christidi, Harmony Korine as well as the compilation Zine Box 2008. The exhibition will open on April 4, 2009 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM at Printed Matter, which is located at 195 Tenth Avenue (between 21st and 22nd Street) in New York City.

Nieves was founded in 2001 by Benjamin Sommerhalder, following the demise of his short-lived magazine Zoo. From the start, Nieves has published critically acclaimed, yet diverse, publications from a who's who of visual delinquents: Rita Ackermann, Linus Bill, Robin Cameron, Larry Clark, Marcel Dzama, Chris Johanson, Kim Godon, Spike Jonze, Harmony Korine, Ari Marcopoulos, Mike Mills, Rick Myers, Aaron Rose, Ed Templeton, and Andrew Jeffrey Wright to name but a few. The publications have taken on a variety of forms, from limited edition, photocopied zines, to more-formally recognized hardcover, perfect-bound and offset books. In the last eight years, Nieves has become one of the most talked about names in European publishing and Sommerhalder recently won the Jan Tschichold award, a prestigious award given annually on the occasion of “The Most Beautiful Swiss Books” competition.

Although I have collected artists' books for several decades, this is the first time that I have trusted a publisher's tastes and program to intersect so completely with my own. Perhaps this is because Benjamin Sommerhalder, who is Nieves itself, is not so much a publisher as someone taking pleasure in artists' zines and in the act of publishing.

AA Bronson
“Nieves”, The Most Beautiful Swiss Books, 2009



The exhibition will feature over 100 zines published by Nieves since 2004, making them available for reading and perusing. Also on view will be a broad selection of books published by the press since 2001. Nieves authors Rick Myers and Tim Barber will be on hand to sign their publications at the opening reception, which will also serve as the launch for four publications:

Henry Roy's new zine August is about cinematic and dreamy vision of Ibiza, where he spent his last summer holidays (and has been visiting many times since the late eighties). August is saddle stitched, black and white, and 20 pages. It retails for $8 and can be purchased at Printed Matter's storefront in New York City or online at www.printedmatter.org.

Katerina Christidi's C'est pas angoissant is a combination of charcoal drawings drawn from her large scale works and her series One Year Drawings. The figurative work creates tension as the artist describes “between the anxiety of existential discomfort and it's comical response evoked by human figures.” C'est pas angoissant is saddle stitched, black and white, and 20 pages. It retails for $8 and can be purchased at Printed Matter's storefront in New York City or online at www.printedmatter.org.

Harmony Korine's Devils and Babies is as the title suggests, drawings of devils and babies in the artist's characteristic brut style. Devils and Babies is saddle stitched, black and white, and 20 pages. It retails for $8 and can be purchased at Printed Matter's storefront in New York City or online at www.printedmatter.org.

The Nieves Zine Box 2008 is produced in an extremely limited edition of 20 and contains a complete set of the zines that produced in 2008. The authors include Keegan McHargue, Beau LaBute, Mari Eastman, Geoff McFetridge, Frédéric Fleury, Reala / Körner Union, Eddie Martinez, Susan Gianciolo, Anthony Record, Tal R, Jonas Delaborde, Beni Bischof, Himaa, Rick Myers and Stefan Marx. The Nieves Zine Box 2008 retails for $250 and can be purchased at Printed Matter's storefront in New York City or online at www.printedmatter.org.

For more information, please contact AA Bronson at aabronson @ printedmatter.org.

Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists' books and other artists' publications.

Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Altria Group Inc, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Schoenstadt Family Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.

Even though this is an "art" blog, I think that I have a) enough freedom to take a break and write about something personal, and b) not enough readers to make a difference anyway! Lately, for a variety of reasons, I've had to re-think how my current life has been affected by my past. For years I have blocked out significant amounts of memories and experiences, which unavoidably have helped shape me into the person I am today. I have as much cynicism and jading as I do nostalgia and happiness, and while I have chosen to focus more on the present and future, I have to come to grips with things in my past to be able to successfully move ahead. For years I struggled with an enormous amount of self-doubt and thus overcompensation in mentally unhealthy ways, none of which ultimately damaged me as a person, but I believe as a defense mechanism I was able to block out much of my negative experiences. This self-induced amnesia only works to an extent, and I believe that I need to re-visit many of these experiences and resulting emotions to move forward. While generally I subscribe to the notion that focusing on the positive is better than drowning in the negative, sometimes coming to grips with the past means examining the unpleasant experiences and emotions. I guess it's just thinking about "growing up" and kind of outlining how even terrible, horrible, soul-crushing emotions have helped me to become a better, stronger person. I am very happy with my life today, and I wouldn't change anything in the past, but there's no way to separate the person I am today without thinking about how I got here. The relationships I built and lost, the accomplishments I made, the interaction with my family and resulting present ties, my observations of relationships and how they have shaped mine, the choices I made, big experiences and firsts, my reactions in love, hate, jealousy, compassion, forgiveness, judgment, and reality. How people and "scenes" shaped me. How family has shaped me. How love has shaped me. How friends have shaped me. How people judging me has shaped me. How me judging people has shaped me. How loss has shaped me. Basically outlining the last (almost) 24 years as my life and trying to make sense of it all. Seems like a tall order...

UGH NO FAIR

Kidrobot LA is JUST far enough away to make me a crazy person for driving up there just to shop. Still, they have so many ridiculously cool events that my sanity is often tested by my desire to go up there and blow my life savings on toys. Tonight Frank Kozik is kicking off his summer apparel series with a signing and pre-release of the new 1984 Labbit from 6-8. All the details can be viewed here and also below.


Is it bad I would move to LA just to be a hobo outside the store?