Bloom Bookcase, Raw Edges.
Oh, I want! I want one of these a whole wall length. Great design. This was one of the designs included in Dezeen’s 10 shelving designs that are perfect for book lovers, which led me to the Bloom Bookcase by Raw Edges.
The Walled Off hotel may sound utilitarian, even bleak. Its owner says it has “the worst view of any hotel in the world”, while its 10 rooms get just 25 minutes of direct sunlight a day.
But, nestled against the controversial barrier wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territories, the West Bank’s answer to the Waldorf offers travellers something more elusive than any luxury destination.
The lodging in Bethlehem is a hotel, museum, protest and gallery all in one, packed with the artworks and angry brilliance of its owner, British street artist Banksy.
From the disconcertingly lavish presidential suite where water splashes from a bullet-strafed watertank into the hot tub, to the bunk-beds in the budget room scavenged from an abandoned army barracks, the hotel is playful and strongly political.
All the rooms look out on to the concrete slabs of the wall and some have views over it to pill boxes and an Israeli settlement – illegal under international law – on the hillside beyond.
“Walls are hot right now, but I was into them long before [Donald] Trump made it cool,” said Banksy in a statement. The artist, who fiercely guards his anonymity, first came to Bethlehem more than a decade ago, leaving a series of paintings on the barrier that have become a tourist destination in their own right.
Since then, the town’s pilgrim and sightseeing-based economy has been ravaged by ever-tighter Israeli controls on travel between Israel and the Palestinian territories, so the new hotel is expected to provide a welcome boost in jobs and visitor numbers.
Banksy’s reputation is likely to keep all rooms fully booked, but he wants guests to leave with more than just a selfie. “(It’s) a three-storey cure for fanaticism, with limited car parking,” he added in the statement.
The hotel opens to guests on 20 March, with bookings via the website.
You can read much more here, and the photo gallery is here. I hope it’s a great success, in every sense.
I don’t want to explain. I don’t want to say anything, because ipnot’s work is pure magic, which cannot fail to delight. Just have a wander, go look, wonder, smile, and laugh! If you’d like to read more, head over to Spoon & Tamago.
The second journey that Lufthansa #inspiredby HEIMWEH takes us on, “The Colors of Home”, followers Nepalese jewellery designer Arpana Rayamajhi from her adopted city of New York to her native land of Nepal, in search of the meaning of home.
In the film, Lufthansa accompanies Rayamajhi from New York back to her hometown of Kathmandu, where the designer searches for her creative and personal identity. Having experienced a childhood influenced by strong Nepalese women, Rayamajhi finds herself navigating a city that is at once familiar and distant. In between this tension, she must learn to reconnect with her roots, be inspired by different versions of creativity, and experience a new feeling of what it means to be home.
Beginning in Kathmandu, Lufthansa’s voyage transports the viewer through the journey of color, sound and vibrancy of the capital, as well as the city of Pokhara and its regional provinces. Sweeping views of the Himalayas alternate with vast cityscapes, showcasing the vast diversity of both the country and Rayamajhi’s inner journey.
Via iGNANT.
You can read all about this new children’s book at Out. Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing is now available at Penguin Random House.
Space Cake! More images and instructions here.
Real Space! © Peter Kurucz. You can see many more amazing photographs here.
Everything Anywhere.
A steel blindfold covers the head of a human female figure, yet, unlike Lady Justice, her arms and legs too are bound. Fiber, in an interlocking braid, ties her wrists, wraps her neck and belly, and snakes down to hitch her legs at the ankles. Over her shoulder, however, her hands clutch the means to freedom from her bondage: a soft white blade digs beneath the rope around her neck. Salvation via ceramics.
Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger was born on the Standing Rock Reservation. He is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian heritage. A graduate with honors from The Institute of American Indian Arts, in 2016 he was the recipient of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artists Fellowship Award for artists who “represent the cultural continuity of Native peoples in contemporary contexts, and are the creative voices of their communities.” His work in sculpture is figurative yet imaginative, assembling a panoply of cultural symbols—feathers, bones, textiles—into signifiers all his own. More mythopoeic than surreal, it frames him as a medium, a psychic intermediary between colonizer and Native, ancient tradition and modern understanding, soft clay and hard ceramics.
Nature.
The Creators Project has an interview with Cannupa Hanska Luger, you can see and read much more!
In the Spring of 2014, after spending a decade working on her photography book, The Oldest Living Things in the World, artist Rachel Sussman came across an image circulating on the internet: a broken bowl that had been restored using gold dust and glue. The bowl was the product of a traditional Japanese art practice called kintsukuroi, which translates to ‘golden repair’ and involves fixing broken pottery with lacquer that’s been mixed or dusted with powdered color pigment. After she was introduced to the technique, Sussman had the idea to take this practice to the streets—literally—by using it to repair cracks in sidewalks. This concept ultimately went on to become the basis of her ongoing series, Sidewalk Kintsukuroi, a contemporary take on the traditional Japanese practice.
You can read and see much more at The Creators Project.
Joe Hisaishi, the composer who put music to nearly all of Hayao Miyazaki‘s 11 feature films, once remarked in an interview that, “Many of his works have flying scenes and flying has always been the dream of human beings.” In fact, few artists have so successfully captured how the imagination defies gravity than the My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke director. A new film essay by Zach Prewitt gathers some of the 76-year-old director and producer’s finest flights of fancy into a rejuvenating three-minute video.
Miyazaki, who recently announced he was coming out of retirement (again!), explains the paradox of his love for military airplanes and his hatred of war in the video below. While little is known about the narrative of his upcoming film, currently titled Boro the Caterpillar, an ending in which the protagonist transforms into a butterfly and attains flight would align with Miyazaki’s fascination with airships, fantastical insect-winged aircraft, flying castles, and early 20th century aircraft. All of the above and more stretch their wings and take to the skies in Prewitt’s Fandor-produced video.
Via The Creators Project.
Tattered. Mixed Media, 36″ x 36″. © C. Ford.
Lousy photo, but it’s snowing outside, so a bad indoor shot.
There’s nothing quite as nice as a new, blank canvas. To work!
This is one of the coolest things ever. The Creators Project has an in-depth story, and stills from the video.
Noether’s Theorem concerns itself with symmetry in physical systems. “Symmetry is the idea that one aspect of a system can change while another remains constant,” Cooper explains in the video’s description. “The idea of natural laws themselves rely on the forms of symmetry that mean the same forces will apply to you as they do to me, independently of our position in space or time… The principle is also responsible for music, in that our enjoyment of tonality, melody, harmony and rhythm comes from our subconscious appreciation of different types of patterns (i.e. symmetries) in sound waves.”
McLoughlin, whose experimental films have showed us what a Googol looks like, an extra-dimensional portrait of his dad, and sleep deprivation distilled into visual style, applies the mathematical theorem to a spiraling universe of flat circles. “The law of symmetry struck a chord with me in a huge way,” McLoughlin tells Creators. “There’s just something so divine about that law, it’s just so primal and insanely complicated. Almost like the soul of everything. It just feels spiritual to me.”
If you’re into math stuff, learn more about Noether’s Theorem here. If you’re rather feel it than read about it, watch Kevin McLoughlin’s video for Max Cooper’s “Symmetry”.
Meriem Bennani, Your Year by Fardaous Funjab, 2015, Courtesy of Jayson Wyche and Public Art Fund, New York.
If you find yourself in Times Square, downtown Brooklyn, or at Westfield World Trade Center in New York City, you may be surprised to see those spaces’ ubiquitous ads for soft drinks, fast fashion, and electronics swapped for poignant and gorgeous video art. The switch, part of a citywide exhibition called Commercial Break, kicks off Public Art Fund‘s 40th anniversary season with disruptive, artful advertisements taking over the city’s largest and most technologically advanced screens. Curated by Associate Curators Emma Enderby and Daniel S. Palmer, Commercial Break features 23 artists whose work can be seen on billboards in Times Square, the 360-degree “Oculus” screen outside Barclays Center, 19 digital screens at Westfield World Trade Center, hundreds of LinkNYC kiosks all over the city, and embedded as pop-up “ads” on PublicArtFund.org.
The idea for Commercial Break sprang from Public Art Fund’s formative exhibition series Messages to the Public , which ran on an 800-square-foot animated Spectacolor screen in Times Square from 1982 to 1990. Every month, one of 70 different artists, including Jenny Holzer, Guerilla Girls, and Alfredo Jaar, presented a 30-second animation within a 20-minute loop of commercials. The intent of the project was similar to that of Commercial Break: fighting propaganda by means of propaganda. The artists this time around had to confront time limits and embrace brevity. Their challenge is cutting through a litany of information surrounding outdoor advertising by relying solely on visual language.
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Commercial Break is on view through March 5. For a full rundown of Public Art Fund’s 40th anniversary programming, visit their website.
You can read much more, and see more about this fantastic art project at The Creators Project.