Holden Smith

Boston buddy Holden Smith makes a foray into indie film making with his little ditties documenting the Jenny Holzer exhibit/installation at Mass MoCA, ivy blowing in the breeze, and shadow-chasing and almost colliding with a bicyclist on the streets of New York. But my favorite one of all, especially now that temperatures are in the nineties, is this one of Homer, Alaska ice car racing. Super-cool! Check out Holden’s “Culture Crawl” blog, and his YouTube pages (art and travel).

Cher Love Strong (YouTube and MySpace) a.k.a. ~Local Media~

Cher has been a fixture in the Northampton, Massachusetts music scene for as long as I can remember, diligently and artistically documenting local bands in photos and video. Here’s one of The Figments performing 10,000 Napoleons at the Iron Horse.

JibJab

The folks who brought us This Land, the brilliant and hilarious satire on the Bush/Kerry presidential standoff are now back at it with an equally brilliant take on the Obama/McCain showdown: Time for Some Campaignin’, set to the tune of Dylan’s The Times They are a Changin’. Good stuff. I actually landed a cameo appearance in this one, an action scene with Uncle Sam that sends me airborne near the end. Enjoy:

Given all the wet weather of late, we had wondered whether we were going to get to see fireworks at all this Independence Day weekend. Our hometown fireworks display—typically one of the best around—was cancelled all together. Greenfield had set a rain date of today, but it wasn’t needed. The fireworks went off as planned. Greenfield puts on a great show.

Where: ECA Gallery, in the Old Town Hall at 43 Main Street, Suite 4, Easthampton, MA 01027

What: Free wine, cheese, fruit and other snacks + look at paintings.

When: Saturday July 12, 5-8 PM. If you miss the reception you can still see the show until August 4th. Contact ECA Gallery directly for gallery hours: (413) 527-8278.

Hope to see you there!

I just got back from attending An Event Apart in Boston. The whole experience was amazing, from the brilliant slate of speakers to the new friends I made (Matt, Raeanne, Josh, Kelley, Yoann and Barry) to the opportunity to have lunch with Eric Meyer and discuss the nuances of sizing type for the web. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. (I’m looking at you, next year!)

I am pleased to present my most recent web design project, the redesign of friend and fellow Easthampton artist Maggie Nowinski’s website.

Maggie Nowinski had wanted a site that would showcase her work, and that she could update on her own, so she asked me for help. Naturally, I turned to WordPress, which is a great tool for such a job.

I used the excellent NextGen Gallery plugin to implement the art galleries.

Visit the site: http://maggienowinski.com/

I recently put finishing touches on one of the most unique and personal art projects I’ve ever collaborated on: a decorated belly cast. Dear friends—and their then nascent first son—supplied the raw form; I provided the flower petals and the paint.

Click the image above to display a more detailed version.

What a difference a day off makes! I found a hole in a fence and wiggled through. I left only footprints and took only pictures. And now I have an intimate understanding of the beautiful iconic creature whose exterior has always intrigued me from a distance. I hope and wonder what will become of this forgotten complex. Condos? Live/work art studios? A scooter factory? a mega-fitness center?

My niece in Atlanta, Georgia participated in a project wherein she mailed me her hand-colored version of Flat Stanley, this kid who got flattened under a fallen bulletin board and made the best of it.

Like the garden gnome in Amelie who travels the world, this Flat Stanley made his way North just in time for Sugar Season.

Another great YouTube find (hat tip: Mark Alan Miller).

I know I’ve posted about Paul Rand before, but here it is again, this time with visuals embedded right into my website. Great designer; great quotes. It’s always nice to be reminded of the interrelationship between form and content.

This is some serious talent! How does she do it? How does she keep parts of herself completely stable while letting other parts flail? I want to learn!

The music is Harder Better Faster Stronger by the Parisian group Daft Punk. I’ve never been a huge fan of electronica (in fact I distinctly recall having severely critiqued it as a younger fellow), but for some reason certain select expressions of it have been growing on me lately. Perhaps it’s my day job ;-). Or a resurgence of my inner romantic, which loves many things French.

In any event, enjoy getting this song-and-dance stuck in your mind for days as I have.

From an article on Slate:

The goal is to create objects that propel a crudely drawn ball toward a crudely drawn star. There is no single correct way to scoot that ball around; the fun is in exploring the options.

(Hat tip: AMA)

I am pleased to present my most recent web design project, the redesign of fellow One Cottage Street artist Susan Elena Esquivel’s website.

Susan Elena had wanted a site that would appeal to her customers, and that she could update on her own, so she asked me for help. Naturally, I turned to WordPress, which is a great tool for such a job.

I used SimpleViewer-Pro to implement the art galleries.

Visit the site: http://susanelena.com/

For example, in languages that read from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, most sites are probably going to feature some combination of a header or branding element, top level navigation, content area(s), and a footer that gives pages a little space for contact info or copyright info. So why not give designers new elements (a.k.a. tags, before tags came to mean something else) specifically designed to do those jobs?

HTML 5 will give us the following elements: <header>, <nav>, <article>, <aside>, <dialog>, <figure> and <footer>. And for media, we will have: <embed>, <video> and <audio>. Notice I said <embed>. This “element” has long been used—regardless of its “invalid” status—by designers seeking to embed Flash content. Well good news, Flash designers, you’re going to get out of jail for free on this one. Those of us who have bothered to learn how to embed Flash using more accessible and SEO-friendly means may continue to do so, but it’s nice to know that the architects of the specifications are listening to what the people want.

CSS3 will give us some great tools, too, to break out of the “boxiness” that many feel CSS embodies. Rounded-corner boxes and multiple background images per element open some pretty exciting possibilities.

Of course, I hope that the major browsers are quick to support HTML 5 and CSS3 consistently. This as much as anything else may determine the adoption rate of these new technologies.

Pączki season is upon us.