This post is part of Blog Action Day.
(Outside the norm, today’s post has intermixed store links to more easily show environmentally friendly art tools and materials.)
Art is still mostly a hand made thing. As most things hand-made, materials of the craft used to be natural – wood, clay, marble and natural pigments. But [...]

The other day, though not in the rest of the post, I linked to the New York Times story discussing that the studio had tested their own cut of Across the Universe without Julie Taymor’s knowledge. I don’t know how that turned out, but it must be mostly ok because her name is still [...]

There are only certain places that blossom in that certain way that creates Bohemia. Crumbling and eroding but more glistening and alive than filmed dreams. Some generations there isn’t one, they grow slowly until them bloom, only one exists in the world every 30-50 years. New York in 1974 was the last [...]

YouTube and Google have just provided a new way for filmmakers and small independent studios to distribute their work and, importantly, get paid for it. It’s a great new model. I’m just testing it out and experimenting now, just to see how it goes. This one has animation and other short films [...]

Negativland is a group that creates mash-ups of existing music, sound and video. They have been sued for this, but believe firmly that art belongs to society. They are releasing a compilation of their work, Our Favorite Things, which properly has been mashed up yet again by other artists. They started doing [...]

I was born after the 1960s. What I know is only from stories and grainy video, comprised of many heroic and striking moments, modern stories not unlike King Arthur’s Court or Hamlet. The difference is, these are modern stories from not that long ago, and you can see their effects clearly all around [...]

Since the New York Times opened its complete archive on the web (previously it was only available as a web subscription), many people have been scouring the site for interesting history.
The first mention of Picasso comes on May 19, 1912, with this:
…it is to be regretted that this unquestionably talented artist, who is practically unknown [...]

Don Hertzfeldt, who with Mike Judge (creator of King of the Hill, Office Space and Beavis and Butthead) created The Animation Show, a film festival of great new animation, released a collection of short films titled Rejected. The premise is that these animations were commissioned by corporations and then rejected.
Very funny. Be warned, [...]

I’ve just finished reading an illustrated autobiography that I’ll write more about later.
But it has me thinking. There are many people and places I’d like to know more about. Many times this kind of cultural learning and exchange happens through art. But where is the exchange when people aren’t allowed to express [...]

I’ve seen similar things, but nothing as insanely complex as this… what I can only describe as Performance Animation. From South Korea:

Beautiful street art in Moscow and Brazil (not sure where). From Funny Picture Crazy.
Brasilian street art
and
Moscow street art

Over the past few weeks, Elevator Repair Service has been in Portland and Seattle performing Gatz, their performance which involves the complete six hour reading of The Great Gatsby. I intended to go. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.
I’m up for any strange art thing, I mean I’m one of [...]

After yesterday’s post (Getting the right tools vs. actually doing something) I read this story in Wired. Instead of waiting on a $4,500 paraglider that he could likely never afford, he built one out of plastic bags. He could have died using it, but instead he became a world renowned paraglider, one of [...]

I read a New Yorker story recently about the cult of Leica cameras. Some of the most famous photographs in history have been taken with Leica’s, and photographers love them. But at $4,000+ a pop, you’d better really love it, and you’d hope it takes a great photo.
…as the camera has evolved over [...]

Inside Japan (a bit like Berlin), there aren’t really serious art collectors. Inside Japan, people like Murakami and Nara make their money by doing corporate identity (Vuitton, Roppongi Hills) or mass-producing souvenirs… Art is collapsed into the mass market. Galleries are often in department stores, and often show what we’d think of as commercial work; [...]