speaking of stealing beauty...

if you really want to take the delorian back to 90s melancholic crooning (and i do, this wintry day), find yourself mazzy star's "rhymes of an hour"...or most of the stealing beauty soundtrack will do...this soundtrack is the 90s equivalent of what john hughes movie soundtracks were in the 80s. totally evokative of that age. what happened to all these triphop dark and moody musicians of our college days....
mazzy star, portishead, tricky...
ok so the musical stream of consciousness rolls on...red house painters, trash can sinatras, sundays, lush, my bloody valentine (loveless still makes me fall to bits and pieces), cocteau twins. ..lotion and madder rose and medicine and red red meat. any of you out there that want to wax on about your favorite 90s college radio bands (and i know mine are not anywhere near indie)... please do!! i'm feeling nostalgic! will band names ever be so weirdly cool? remember 'harriet the spy' (both the band and...the book series that spoke to all of us tomboys who thought nancy drew was kind of prissy (relatively speaking). sorry nancy.

can you build a house around...

have you ever seen the kohler commercial where the couple wants a fancy architect to design their house around their sink hardware? i think of that commercial sometimes, about little things inspiring big things.
(side note #1: i also like to think, in this vein, about movies that inspire whole lifestyles...such as stealing beauty)
(side note #2: this concept of a little item inspiring a building reminds me of what i overheard a friend once saying about buying something small -a candleholder or serving plate or something- for the dream home you don't yet have, just to get the positive waves in motion. i think oprah would be right there AMENning with her recent put-your-request-out-into-the-universe-and-the-universe-will-respond campaign, but oprah and her tiffany bubble wand is a whole nother side note)...
so... i love this j schatz egg bird feeder. when on a crusty old tree, i think it embodies the whole "build a house around this" idea...
the mixture of sleek, rounded lines, the hint of fragility in the eggshell but clearly fabricated and not-of-nature... hanging off a sturdy, natural, dirty, unpredictable piece of living wood. and then life- in the form of a bird- comes to flit or stay a moment, crossing the lines of the sleek artificial and the wonky creaky natural....hmmm. nice birdfeeder!
check more colors out here

sweet beaver

yesterday i picked up a book called cool green stuff, which is a great picture books of great sustainable goods for your home & self. much of the furniture and home items are clever and high-end. one of the first pages i flipped to featured the ecosmart fireplace. ahhh. fireplace. ever since we took down our christmas tree we have been missing a nice general soothing glow in our living room. the ecosmart fireplace, developed in australia and available around the world, is an "environmentally friendly open fireplace." as it's flueless and doesn't require the hookup of more traditional fireplaces, it can be located smack in the middle of the room. which also means you can have fireplaces wherever you want, at opposite ends of your home (or apartment). it burns on renewable denatured ethanol. don't get me wrong, "denatured ethanol" sounds hardly as romantic as a good wood burning fireplace. i know, i know. i grew up with woodstoves and loved laying my clothes out to toast up while i took a shower in the morning. but this one involves no yucky scary managing of a wood pile (if you ever grew up with "stacking wood" as one of your chores you know what i mean. wood means bugs and snakes) and is green, which is happy. and if you can just pick up and move it, you can take it with you if you move!

donna wilson's studio

i first blogged about donna wilson here. i tore the above page out of the last issue of ID magazine because i loved the (maybe cardboard?) frames hanging on the wall and the (maybe cardboard) chandelier in the foreground. and the more i looked at her studio the more i thought it was like a color/fabric wonderland. . .like an art installation factory. beautiful. also reminds me of one of my favorite childhood books, the wheedle on the needle (below)

some color inspiration

for some new work debuting in march

tufte books

we recently got the catalog for tufte books in the mail. the books (all seven of them) immediately caught my eye. don't mind that they look like textbooks: though they seem pretty "sciency" with graphs and diagrams, they seem to have a good dose of humor and soul too!

the boston globe calls The Visual Display of Quantitative Information "a visual Strunk & White." of Envisioning Information, Milton Glaser and Jeri Heiden say: "This is one of the best books on graphic design ever published- vibrant, engaging, extremely beautiful, an extraordinary achievement...it is probably the most perfect book of its kind that i have ever seen" (wow). of the same book, rudolf arnheim says "a real treat for all who reason and learn by means of images" (man, that's me!!!)

best of all the books are very affordable, as art books go- forty and forty eight bucks!!! (top to bottom: book covers, the visual display of quantitative information, envisioning information

visit themonline

ruby ruby

defyra

work by defyra, a swedish design troupe i found through this woman

color in

your own christian leboutin. i'm thinking cherry red or tartan plaid.

maira maira!

maira kalman makes my day as much as sagmeister. top image is from her book, principles of uncertainty, which was inspired by/collected from her nytimes blog. if you want to have a nice transcendant sunday afternoon experience, read through some of her blog (my favorite: january) while listening to 'dreams' by cat power. that would be made even more supremely ideal if you were to add in a glass of fresh squeezed OJ like we had mornings at this place, while rubbing our eyes at this.

back to cat power, i just heard 'dreams' on radioIO acoustic cafe, then i tried to find it online but with no luck. dreams is from a 2-song japanese import. you can buy the CD or LP of from matador records. but i'm so impatient... if you (david?) can find me a downloadable (i'll pay!) version of dreams online i'll be your best friend (david)... so lovely. if you can't find dreams, and need a sunday diversion or just generally some more breathing power, listen to any of the new cat power album or turn on acoustic cafe and maybe something surprisingly uplifting will be on.

back to maira...kalman has illustrated for the new yorker (a lot), designed fabric for isaac mizrahi and illustrated for kate spade bags (i think the ones with dogs on them)...i adore her ability to capture the everyday beauty of little things (popsicles and empty boxes) and to crystallize through visuals the most (painfully human) benign and loveable side of complete strangers in cities where most people are too busy/afraid/distracted/annoyed to be sensitive to such nuances of individuality (like her photographs of people walking through the city from behind). very bruegel-ian! she also has a dozen brilliant children's books. we own what pete ate, which ruby is crazy for.

maira was also married to prominent and groundbreaking graphic designer tibor kalman, who passed away in may of 1999. amongst other positions and work, tibor was creative director at interview magazine and founding creative director of the controversial colors magazine. what a duo, these two. and what a heartbreak, his death. . .his last large project being a retrospective of his work entitled tibor kalman: perverse optimist. the book has contributions from some great people, including jenny holzer, david byrne, isaac mizrahi and oliviero toscani (from colors) and kurt anderson. who i shared an office with when the mag i worked for (brill's content) merged with his cybermag (inside.com). ("with" meaning he was in the same offices, along with other illusive writers such as seth mnookin). i guess that's my two degrees of separation from the dynamic kalman duo.

tile poster/wallpaper

by swedish designer hanna werning, as seen in the march 2008 issue of dwell magazine

a bit of "the sag"

in need of a bit of stefan sagmeister

more sweden love

i heart pia wallen