Art CULTURE outside the museum

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Check out a video on San Paulo art known as "pixacao" at Cool Hunting.

You might consider it just graffiti, but these street artists risk their lives for it!

Alternative Co-op in Baltimore

The last two weeks of Winter Q were horrendous, but as always, I managed to make it out alive.  The check-list studio was over, I had survived a corrosive chemical attack, and I had even experienced UC's hilly campus on crutches.  All that hardship and still no co-op job in sight. SIGH... but wait, enter the "alternative co-op option." 

The choices were laid out: volunteer, participate in a research project, or travel (not just a lazy beach vacation).  I settled on the first of these and packed my bags for Michigan, unpacked, laid on the couch for a week, and then packed my bags again and boarded a plane for Baltimore! 

Just into my first week, and my alternative co-op had involved some rather unconventional tasks.  I attended the Transmodern Festival and filmed interviews, joined a team of MICA students on a real marketing campaign that required me to measure a bus shelter and freight elevator, and most surprising of all, I helped out at a real mini-documentary filming of a local saxophone legend.

I never anticipated my 3rd co-op to be spent away from a cubicle, but I am actually having fun and learning invaluable lessons (no AutoCAD necessary)! 

France By Watercolor #2

Hello again, I'm posting the second of Claire's watercolors today along with her comments on it. A little background information is necessary for you to understand her story.  As Claire was finalizing the details of her co-op and flying to Chicago to pick up her work visa she found out she had a number of inexplicable tears in her retina. She had to undergo an emergency surgery on both eyes and was confined to her room, blind, for several days. Claire was forced to wait several more weeks for her follow up examination to hear the doctor's evaluation.  Without approval she would not be able to fly again which would end her co-op before it even began. Happily she was cleared to fly and quickly left for Annecy and a French residency. One of the reasons I post Claire's work is to celebrate this story.~TW

"I was sitting on a bench at the far north end of Lake Annecy. While I was painting this I mainly thought about my recent intensive eye surgery I had right before I moved to France and how glad I was to be regaining my eyesight."

Reuben Margolin

OMG this rulez.





"Reuben Margolin, a Bay Area visionary and longtime maker, creates totally singular techno-kinetic wave sculptures. Using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects, Reubens artwork is diverse, with sculptures ranging from tiny to looming, motorized to hand-cranked. Focusing on natural elements like a discrete water droplet or a powerful ocean eddy, his work is elegant and hypnotic. Also, learn how ocean waves can power our future. Learn more about Reuben at http://www.reubenmargolin.com"

France by Watercolor

Hello to anyone stopping by. Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting updates from a close friend co-oping in France. Claire is a fashion major with a passion for graphic and industrial design. She is in the middle of a six month co-op with Salomon sports in their Annecy office. Annecy is near the border of Switzerland so Claire's first day of work included testing their ski equipment in the Alps. During her free time Claire does water color paintings and she has submitted them with descriptions for me to post. Check back regularly to see her work and follow her experience in France. ~ TW

"I went on a three hour walk along the lake and found this view to paint. Lake Annecy is the cleanest lake in all of Europe so every part of the lake is quite natural and beautiful to look at. Downtown Annecy has a population of about 50,000 people, but as you walk along the lake you don't get a sense there are that many people around. It's very peaceful."

DUNNE AND RABY

"A collection of adult furniture for the Medici Gardens in Rome.

The spaces in the gardens of the Villa Medici are like rooms, outdoor rooms without furniture. We would like to furnish them, and provide suggestions for how these neutral spaces could be used. Parks are strange places. During the day happy families play out idealised
scenarios of modern life, while at night, they become sites for a variety of illicit activities. Our furniture will make some of these night-time activities more convenient and at the same time, offer a critique of the kind of design that is always trying to make things nice, convenient, user-friendly, efficient and ergonomic (especially public furniture)." - Dunne & Raby


ALSO...





"Hideaway Furniture is part of the Designs for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times series. There are three versions. They are designed to meet irrational but real needs, in this case, a fear of alien abduction."


AND...



"A building project. A studio and a home. The architect and builder Cassion Castle worked very closely with us. The main requirement:'A place of calm'. It sits hidden behind the shops in Bethnal Green in a tiny street next to garages used by the market traders. Only one south facing facade can be manipulated freely."

AND...



"Parasite light: A light that feeds off the leaky radiation of household electronic products; it only works when placed in electromagnetic fields."



They have so many cool things on their website. I highly recommend you explore their website dunneandraby.co.uk if you're into this stuff.

ROB DYRDEK - LAFAYETTE SAFE SPOT SKATE SPOT

I know my last couple posts have basically all been about the same thing and not exactly art focused, but I'll have to apologize because here we go again.

But before I get into a whole bunch of nerdy skate crap, here is a photo of the largest skateboard in the world, which was at the Grand Opening of the Lafayette Skate Spot and Rob and the Mayor of LA rode.



SO. We all know Rob Dyrdek even if it's just for his MTV antics. What you may not know is that he is single-handedly leading the movement for the transformation of how skateparks are built, where they are built, and ultimately how society views and incorporates skateboarding. I think part of getting that to happen is for people other than skaters to 'See What I See' as was eloquently showcased in these DC shoes commericials.



Dyrdek spearheaded the building of the first Skate Plaza in Kettering, OH in co-operation with DC Shoes. The idea of this park is to break the traditional box of what a skatepark should look like, and mimic the natural street terrain that skateboarders have been skating ever since Natas Kumpas, Mark Gonzales etc etc in the 80's. The whole point is to provide a place to skate without the legal hassles of skateboarding on private property owned by people who are not stoked on their marble benches getting wax and chunks on them.



Unfortunately, the Skate Plaza in Kettering is a $700,000 slab of concrete that needed to go through all kinds of red tape, and still fit into the notion of a skate park as a destination that one might have to drive to. For example, when I attended the University of Dayton only 15 or so odd miles away from the Skate Plaza I was only able to visit it once. I had a bike on campus too, but it was still too far - by the time I got there I'd be too tired to skate.

The draw of skateboarding is it's accessibility and universality. Given a board and sneakers you could skate anywhere with semi- smooth ground. The fact that I couldn't skate the best skatepark in the world when I lived 15 miles away attests to the 'skatepark as a destination' notion as an inaccessible and incompatible concept with skateboarding.

So finally to the SKATE SPOT idea. Rob came up with the idea to split up the ginormous Skate Plaza and place bits of it around the city of LA for people to enjoy sans car ride. I actually had been thinking about this kind of thing this summer, so I'm glad I didn't have to go through the trouble of making it happen.





A SIDE NOTE ON "SELLING OUT": Rob appeared in a commercial for Carl's Jr. and on a series of their large 'collectable' soft drink cups. How much did he make from this? Nothing. IT PAID FOR THE LAFAYETTE SPOT. Can you imagine that? A burger chain paying for a skate spot? Brilliant.

"Happy Star Just Saved My Life."


www.skateplaza.com for anything else you would possibly want to know about it.