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From English Russia:
The Pervaya Eltsovka River consists of two subterranean pieces, an old littered one and a new one - that is still being built.

The old part represents square tunnels, stink and much litter. Here comes different household rubbish that is dumped by people upstream. As a result, the collecting header is blocked by congestion of plastic bottles.

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From Mind Games:


Bubble Girl

Dragon

Goggles

Ice Cream Sandwich

Naptime

From Domestic Vacations:

Time Out

Birds at Home

Gum

Cherry

Artist's statement:
The Dutch proverb “a Jan Steen household” originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work. I am the oldest of nine children and now the mother of three. As Steen’s personal narratives of family life depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and real.

The stress, the chaos, and the need to simultaneously escape and connect are issue that I investigate in this body of work. We live in a culture where we are both “child centered” and “self-obsessed.” The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality is intense since these two opposites strive to dominate. Caught in the swirl of soccer practices, play dates, work, and trying to find our way in our “make-over” culture, we must still create the space to find ourselves. The expectations of family life have never been more at odds with each other. These issues, as well as the relationship between the domestic landscape of the past and present, are issues I have explored in these photographs. I believe there are moments that can be found throughout any given day that bring sanctuary. It is in finding these moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life throughout time seem remarkably unchanged. As an artist and as a mother, I believe life’s most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.

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Alex Cornell's vast designs are at once elegantly simple and infused with a sprawling, dry wit.







Concept project for a fictional Wes Anderson film Festival that totally nails the Wes Anderson aesthetic.


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Online Dating Statistics

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My friends and I have made a blog (well, technically it's a tumblr). It's called The Pantograph Punch and it's basically the most e-fun a person can have.

I came up with the name while trawling wikipedia one evening - traditionally, pantographs were an instrument used to copy writing (they kind of look like a compass) and the pantograph punch was a machine used in the 1890 U.S. census. The name reflects the intention of the blog - finding cool things on the internet and transposing them into this pretty wee receptacle.



Check it out.

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Fingering the programme for When the Rain Stops Falling, I turn to Katherine and stammer: “I think this is a play about sustainability.” We smile uncertainly at each other. “Yes,” she replies. “It seems it is.” I purse my lips as I examine the stage, a beautifully minimal landscape bearing a solitary crack. Sustainability is, you know, like, cool and all, but whether I’m willing to sacrifice two hours of my Monday night to it is another story altogether.

And, well, it is another story altogether. Writer Andrew Bovell – best known for Lantana and Strictly Ballroom - maps the misfortunes and mistakes of three generations spanning from London to Uluru, woven together with an unmistakably tragic thread, each running seamlessly into the next. The people change, but their patterns don’t. Time simply overlaps, culminating in a ramshackle apartment one afternoon in Alice Springs, 2039, as Gabriel York (Stephen Lovatt) sits down for lunch with his son Andrew (Simon London) for the first time in 21 years.

I resent the play at first. The opening monologue feels artificially earnest and the transitions, stilted and ambiguously symbolic. I feel unnecessarily bewildered as it progresses: it seems confusing for the sake of being confusing – for the sake of being ‘artistic’. At times the dialogue feels heavy-handed, bordering on patronising; spelling out what has already been ladled into our laps. The faint traces of absurdist theatre – most notably the repetition of certain lines – make me feel disgruntled because while they draw parallels down the bloodline, they also reduce moments of poignancy to the banal and while you can relate this back to the absurdity of human experience, ultimately they are two totally different things.

But then When the Rain takes me by surprise by improving exponentially. And I really do mean this in the most sincere sense of the term. Under Shane Bosher’s direction, the cast give incredible performances and it isn’t long before I make the leap from being immutably unenthusiastic to teetering dangerously and unwaveringly on the brink of tears. The necessity of the fragmented presentation of their lives becomes clear, gently knocking the wind out of you as it slowly unravels.

Ultimately, the play is about sustainability, just not in the way you expect. It’s a quiet reflection on the need to maintain our histories, no matter how sordid and peppered with shame they may be. It’s a reminder that history has a funny little way of sustaining itself, and that attempting to conceal that history may mean that the last truth you ever know is the very truth you spent your whole life searching for.


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HOLY SMOKES I want a bag of these in my hairy little hands RIGHT NOW.


design by here.

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Miss Kee

Nana Fishies

Nana Galaxian

Chic Squid

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I first became acquainted with Maira Kalman's work when I bought The Principles of Uncertainty on a whim (thank you, Amazon recommendations). It turned out to be the better choice over Alice in Sunderland anyway, which I still can't muster any enthusiasm for.

Anyway, I just discovered that she blogs for the New York Times (which continues to amaze me with its overwhelming breadth). And the Pursuit of Happiness is themed around American democracy, starting with Obama's inauguration. My favourite is probably In Love with A Lincoln but Can Do and I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door are pretty good too ("then came dinosaurs and motorcycles").