In Permanent Ink
Enthusiasts around the world have shown their admiration in many different ways for the things they love most. However nothing seems as intense as permanently inking your body with symbols or designs honoring your favorite sport, movie, celebrity, hobby, etc. Some call it crazy, some call it awesome, and some call it just-plain-idiotic. Whatever label you put on it, it is what it is; “fan”atical tattoos.
The history of tattoos goes back thousands of years. Though how this artistic trend came about is hazy, the evolution of the tattoo is sometimes extreme. So to honor the crazy, the awesome, and the just-plain-idiotic (you can decide for yourself) enjoy this collection of “fan”actical tattoos.
Attention New Orleans: Get Ready to Swoon
I’ve been obsessed with street art for as long as I’ve lived in New York. I can remember walking around the East Village in the nineties spotting OBEY GIANT stickers and posters everywhere 
and trying to figure out what it all meant. Years later, Shepherd Fairey is probably second only to Banksy as the world’s most-recognized street artist thanks to the campaign poster that helped galvinize Obama’s base during the 2008 election; but he’s far from the only one transforming wheat paste and paper into transitory, unexpected moments of joy. (And isn’t that the best thing about street art? Stumbling across a thing of beauty–and often provocation–left as a gift in the most unlikely of places, and suffering at the mercy of weather, municipal agencies, and competing provacateurs.)
Among my favorite artists working today is Swoon, a former painting student at Pratt and a Brooklyn resident, she makes life-size wheatpaste prints and paper cutouts inspired equally by the German Expressionists and folk art.
Swoon Poster Art
She’s also known for her more interactive and site specific projects, such as The Miss Rockaway Armada, in which a group of performers and musicians floated down the length of the Mississippi River on rafts made from scavenged and recycled materials. Now she’s turned her eye to New Orleans and along with a group of artists and musicans across the nation is setting out to create a permant sculputural installation out of the remains of a Creole Cottage in the Bywater District. Called The Dithyrambalina, it will look like a house, function like a musical instrument, and be open to all. And while it’s meant as a permanent gift to the city, like the best street art, lord knows how its fortunes will bear out…
Scale Model of the Dithyrambalina
http://www.dithyrambalina.com/blog/
and here:
hitRECord + It Books + Tiny Stories
It Books and hitRECord Partner to Publish The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories Series
The first book in a three-book partnership to hit stores in December 2011
NEW YORK, NY (July 5, 2011) – It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced today that it has acquired publishing rights to the Tiny Book of Tiny Stories series with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s open collaborative production company hitRECord. The new book titled The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume I is scheduled to be published in December.
The ‘tiny’ book will feature a number of (very) short stories and illustrations developed through hitRECord. With the help of his entire creative collective, Gordon-Levitt will cull, edit and curate the massive number of contributions into a finely-tuned collection.
“It’s very exciting for me and hitRECord – now more than 45,000 artists strong – to be working with It Books and HarperCollins to bring ‘Tiny Stories’ to the mainstream – a dream come true, really,” says Gordon-Levitt.
“We think what hitRECord is doing is new and groundbreaking. We’re thrilled by the prospect of working with them to capture this mass collaborative art in book form,” says Mauro DiPreta, Vice President and Associate Publisher for It Books. He acquired the project from Creative Artists Agency.
Throughout the month of July, Gordon-Levitt is inviting the worldwide creative community to join in on the Tiny Stories collaboration. Artists can participate by submitting their writing and illustrations, and they’re also encouraged to edit and remix others’ contributions. The ‘Tiny Stories’ collaboration is already a hive of activity and can be found at the hitRECord website at: http://hitrecord.org/records/407384.
Click HERE to see a video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt announcing the Tiny Stories partnership (starts at approximately 9 mins).
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About It Books: Launched in September 2009, It Books is dedicated to publishing exceptional books in entertainment, music, fashion, design, art, celebrity, pop culture and sports. It Books has published numerous New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestsellers including the # 1 New York Times bestsellers Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern and Red by Sammy Hagar as well as Getting the Pretty Back by MollyRingwald, Booky Wook 2 by Russell Brand, The Red Hot Chili Peppers by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead by Neil Strauss, All My Life by Susan Lucciand The EveryGirl’s Guide to Life by Maria Menounos. Upcoming publications include Dear Cary by Dyan Cannon and Beauty, Disrupted by Carré Otis.
It Books is an imprint HarperCollins Publishers, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world and a subsidiary of News Corporation (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). It Books can be found online at www.YourItList.com, www.Facebook.com/YourItList, www.Twitter.com/YourItList and www.Twitter.com/ItBooks.
About hitRECord: Founded and directed by Golden Globe-nominated actor and artist Joseph Gordon-Levitt, hitRECord is an open collaborative production company where members can contribute their work in various forms including music, videos, text and drawings. Members are then encouraged to add, edit, remix and collaborate with each other. HitRECord currently has over 45,000 active members worldwide. Over 1,000 creative contributions are added daily and over 100 new artists join hitRECord each day. As with all of hitRECord’s money-making productions, profits for ‘The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories’ will be split 50-50 between hitRECord and the book’s contributing artists.
• hitRECord website: www.hitrecord.org
Tiny Stories collaboration page: http://hitrecord.org/records/407384
• hitRECord Twitter: www.twitter.com/hitrecord
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Twitter: www.twitter.com/hitRECordJoe
The stories behind Mad Men revealed
The wait is finally almost over… the new season of Mad Men premieres July 25th on AMC. It’s about time. The recently released Season 4 poster has been getting a ton of attention including this in-depth examination and search for hidden meaning from TV Guide.
But to find out the real meaning behind the hit show you’ll need to read Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper, the woman behind the highly popular blog The Footnotes of Mad Men.
In the book, Vargas-Cooper turns her eye to everything from Lucky Strike to Madienform, gray flannel suits to Burt Cooper’s Japonism, Grace Kelly to John Cheever — and examines iconic morsels from the show and the error. Very Short List agrees, Mad Men Unbuttoned is like a little time machine that takes us, as Mr. Draper so elegantly put it, ‘to a place where we ache to go again.’”
Still need more Mad Men in your life and on your computer screen? You can download two Mad Men wallpaper designs for your computer: What’s in Don Draper’s Desk and What’s in Joan Holloway’s Purse.
Buy the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders or Books-a-Million.
Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies
The John Jasperse Company has the New York debut of the brilliant new work, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, June 16-19 at the Joyce. If you’re in or around NYC you definitely don’t want to miss this one.
Via Joyce.org:
“When Jasperse makes a new work, it should be seen: end of story,” says Claudia La Rocca of The New York Times. You can see Jasperse’s latest work when the company returns to The Joyce for the first time since 2000 with the New York premiere of Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies. The evening-length piece explores the often fluid boundaries between fantasy and reality, and features a commissioned score by composer Hahn Rowe and live musicians from the critically acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble.
(Photos via Joyce.org and JohnJasperse.org)
A new interview with Jon Naar
Thanks to the folks at Wooster Collective for creating this excellent video of legendary photographer Jon Naar discussing the reissue of his classic book THE FAITH OF GRAFFITI.
Learn more about the book here.
He-Man Goes Arty
I’m a child of the 80s, so I may seem a little biased in saying that the best cartoons EVER came out of that decade. (seriously, Pokemon? PokeFAIL.) There are too many kick ass toons from that era to name here, but one that is obviously at the very top of the pile is He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. LOVED it. I was so in to that show my parents even took me to see the Masters of the Universe Power Tour and I remember every minute of it.
Anyway, I’m glad to see I am not the only person with such fond recollections of the show. Gallery Nineteen Eighty Eight in Los Angeles, CA currently has an entire exhibit titled “Under the Influence: He-Man and the Masters of hte Universe” in which 100 artists reinterprete the cartoon megapower. Luckily, the gallery has put everything up on their blog, which you can check out here.
A few of my favorites below, but if you are in the LA area, definitely check this out and get me a t-shirt!
Just three frames
I love the idea behind the site Three Frames. It’s essentially exactly what it sounds like…three frames from a movie or TV show, in order and shown in rapid succession on a loop. The results are hilarious, amazing and sometimes scary (in my humble opinion). After I came across the site I found myself getting sucked in and going through the entire archive. It reminds me of those cameras that have four exposures, so the final photo has just a hint of motion in it.
Also, if you have any idea what movie these stills are from, post it in the comments section because topless machine guns = movies I must see.
