The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

Thomas Campbell

This video will make you feel inadequate. Thomas Camppbell will make you feel inadequate. Last year we saw Beautiful Losers (WHICH YOU CAN NOW STREAM ON NETFLIX! DO IT NOW (if you want to feel even more inadequate)!!!) at the UICA and that was my first peak at his work. It’s a fresh mix of fantasy and I’ll-kick-you-in-the-mouth. I’m not crazy about all of his compositions but his lettering and color work is to die for.

Joseph Cornell and Found Objects

Our recent visit to Seedlings reminded me of Joseph Cornell and his use of found materials and things otherwise thought of as junk. While not exactly the same as the altered books we are working on, the use of collage, memories, and found materials is inspiring.

Joseph Cornell was born in 1903 and lived until 1972. Most of his work was created in the 1940’s and 1950’s. To me at least, his work still looks contemporary today.

Via Wikipedia:
Cornell could create poetry from the commonplace. Unlike Schwitters, however, he was fascinated not by refuse, garbage, and the discarded, but by fragments of once beautiful and precious objects he found on his frequent trips to the bookshops and thrift stores of New York. His boxes relied on the Surrealist technique of irrational juxtaposition, and on the evocation of nostalgia, for their appeal.

In addition to creating boxes and flat collages and making short art films, Cornell also kept a filing system of over 160 visual-documentary “dossiers” on themes that interested him; the dossiers served as repositories from which Cornell drew material and inspiration for boxes like his “penny arcade” portrait of Lauren Bacall. He had no formal training in art, although he was extremely well read and was conversant with the New York art scene from the 1940s through to the 1960s.

Six Years of Knowledge

It’s always encouraging / helpful / intriguing to see how companies you admire do what they do.  I’m super grateful for friends I’ve met that have been kind enough to share the things they’ve learned along the way, regardless of whether the transaction be digital or physical.  Today, one of the godfathers of lifestyle blogging, The Hundreds, celebrates its sixth birthday.  They’ve been sharing their knowledge and experiences with supporters via their blog since their conception…long before it became standard.

Well, we never considered ourselves merely a t-shirt line for starters. As trite as it sounds today, we were labeling ourselves as a lifestyle project, which gave us the leeway to one day get our hands into building stores, making denim, shoes, magazines, music… And with every t-shirt you bought from us, you were not only participating and contributing to that lifestyle, but also buying a story, that was told through our website.  Which goes back to why we were pushing our site so hard.. to really understand the product, you had to be engaged in our online project, and be versed in the background and culture as to where that t-shirt came from.

Happy birthday and many thanks.

Milwaukee Madness II – Little Friends

The Little Friends of Printmaking are a Midwest screen printing force to be reckoned with.  The husband-and-wife team (James and Melissa) came onto the poster scene gunz blazing in early 2003 and have been slingin’ ink and illustration ever since.  As you can see from the pictures they’ve managed to simultaneously build impressive lists of clients and vinyl toys.  During our Milwaukee stay James let us pick his brain on education and business for an afternoon and we’re better off for it.  Many thanks, James!

For more on Little Friends (and an informal BA in illustration) point your happy little clicker to their Flickr.

James Jarvis – Onwards

Onwards from akqa on Vimeo.  James Jarvis is non-stop.

HBO/Movie

HBO/Movie from Kenky on Vimeo.

My friend Jordan passed this on via the Twitter.  There’s so much going on here it’s overwhelming.  You almost have to pick a character and watch it all the way through in order to not get lost in the chaos.