The entire kitchen is Sandee’s playground, and that includes the chalkboard. I’m not sure what holiday she’ll decide to honor next.

She’s been busy elsewhere at home too.

Brooklynite Joshua Longo’s crazy animals are showing at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont through October 26th. Sweet for me: I’ll be in town this weekend. I’m hoping to check it out.

Walking north on Valencia I heard the characteristic snap snap snap of an old manual typewriter’s hammers striking paper on the platen.

I was more than a bit curious about who might still use such a classic machine even before its operator called out to ask if I wanted to buy a poem. Still, it’d been a full day exploring The Mission with a fabulous host and the time for my flight home was nearing.

“A poem?” I asked, and before I could inquire what the poem might be about or demand to review samples of his previous work, this sales savvy poet asked my name and the purpose of my visit and started hammering away on the faded blue portable Remington.

His name is Zach Houston, and in addition to running the Poem Store on various street corners around San Francisco, he also just opened a show in a gallery on the other side of The Mission.

But if he’s running a store, if this was a commercial transaction, I wanted a receipt. Into the typewriter went the remaindered piece of the shipping labels that he uses as a canvas for his work and in several more snaps he tapped out a suitable bill of sale.

Via Ryan: Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies at Centripetal Notion.

awesome, book, books, art, sculpture

This is what I get for not following Gizmodo faithfully: flaming industrial art.

They introduced it saying “Do you enjoy fire? Do you also enjoy very intricate Rube Goldberg machines? Of course you do.” Though a reader there exclaims:

It didn’t do anything. For it to be a true Rube Goldberg doesn’t it have to accomplish some task, like cracking an egg or pouring a glass of milk or something? Neat to watch, but make it do something!

Something, presumably, other than just fascinate the pyros. …Which is what brings us to the dump truck smashup video:

Not that the dump truck actually accomplishes anything either, just that it looks cool.

(Note: the real connection here is that Cliffy introduced that video with “Everyone loves the idea of smashing fast-moving things into hard objects,” but got quickly shot down by somebody saying only guys like crashes, flames, and explosions.)

kinetic sculpture, flame, fire, art, rube goldberg, explosion, video, dump truck, crashes, flames, explosions

In an anomaly that we would eventually recognize as commonplace on the internet, Touching the Void, a book that had gone out of print, remaindered before it hit paperback, was all but forgotten, started selling again in 1998. Chris Anderson wondered why, and found that user reviews in Amazon’s listing of publishing sensation Into Thin Air had people recommending Touching the Void as a better read. Today, Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air 2 to 1.

Clearly, Amazon and the internet had hit critical mass.

Based on statistics reported in 2005 or earlier:

• Over 200 million Americans have internet access
• 94 million Americans use the internet on an average day
• Over 62 million households (55%) have internet-connected computers at home
• 87% of youth 12-17 are active online
• 89% of college students and 87% of the general public start their research in a search engine, not a library
• 80% of internet users believe the internet is a reliable source of information

But it’s certainly not just youth driving this:

• Over half of 2005 US tax returns were filed electronically; the IRS is mandated to raise that number to 85% over the next few years
• Online banking is a reality for most Americans who have bank accounts
• The leading demographic of those purchasing movie tickets online is adults over 35
• The early adopters for the iTunes music store were adults over 35

And, as a measure of growth in the past year, John Battelle’s The Search in 2005 reported under 5 billion monthly searches on major US search engines. By July 2006 that number had grown to 6 billion.

The internet is truly changing us. The ability to instantly find anything we want and get recommendations from people of similar interest, irrespective of geography or time, is changing us.

Stories:

• Mark Michaelson is passionate about mugshots. He’s posted them on Flickr, people are finding and commenting and blogging about them, people are developing stories about them, and Mark is part of the conversation. Now he has a show, and a book, and if you send him a self-addressed, stamped envelope, he’ll send you a sticker.
• A friend who likes The Decemberists goes searching for more, finds a photographer who’s done some of their photos, browses more from her portfolio, finds some of a band called Dirty Martini, finds their website, finds their MySpace, previews a few tracks, and decides to purchase the album.
• Sam Brown, who can be found at explodingdog.com, bases his drawings on short phrases emailed to him at sambrown@explodingdog.com. He’ll also mail drawings to fans who mail him their phrases — “i will doing drawings from titles mailed to me. mailed in a truck. i will mail you the drawing back to you. in a truck.” Fans can buy t-shirts, books, and prints of his work. Wikipedia, updated faster than any print encyclopedia, offers details of the site and its creator.
• Then there’s Ranjit Bhatnagar, whose photos were discovered on Flickr by NY MTA Arts For Transit curator Lester Burg. Now his works are on display in the Atlantic Ave station through September 2007. I know all this, of course, because the story appeared in the Flickr blog.

How does this work? How do these thin threads come together to be woven into those stories?

If written a few years later, Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point might include a story like that of the re-emergence of Touching The Void long after it had been remaindered among the tales of the boom of Hush Puppies and Paul Revere’s social networking skills. But, as it is, the emergence of the internet does more to support Gladwell’s thesis than question it.

The internet has created new opportunities for people to make the personal — but often momentary — connections that Gladwell identifies as being so important, to the spread of an idea, a product, a phenomenon.

The internet adds links.

The internet adds comments.

The internet changes the basic economics of doing business, of making a sale, or finding an audience.

Chris Anderson, who was so fascinated by the story of the re-emergence of Touching the Void, followed up his initial article with a book-length examination of the changes that made it possible. What he found was that because was able to make findable an inventory of over two million books, dramatically more than a typical bookstore’s 130,000 books, and because Amazon had almost no inventory carrying costs, it was in a position to turn people who’d heard about Touching The Void, through Amazon’s own comments or elsewhere, into customers. By shortening the distance between interest and purchase, Amazon changed the shape of the marketplace.

But it’s not the technology that delivers success. It’s the personal connections made possible by the technology that are build success.

An example how that can go wrong comes from Reprise’s efforts to market Bonnie McKee. After premier a song on Yahoo!’s LAUNCHcast with good results Reprise decided to make a big CD release in September 2004. Despite being a huge hit with girls aged 12-17, and becoming a top searched name, the album ended up selling only 17,000 copies. An explanation cited in Anderson’s book notes “fans weren’t invested in the artist, only the song.” The explanation is that the internet has changed the rules, and music buyers, or consumers of any item, are becoming partners in a marketplace that expects more than the old marketing drivel, and has access to a broader selection than todays top 40 or whatever fits on a retail shelf.

Vincent Flanders author of Web Pages That Suck explains:

Nobody cares about you or your site. Really. What visitors care about is getting their problems solved. Most people visit a web site to solve one or more of the following three problems.

• They want/need information
• They want/need to make a purchase / donation
• They want/need to be entertained

Too many organizations believe that a web site is about opening a new marketing channel or getting donations or to promote a brand. No. It’s about solving your customers’ problems. Have I said that phrase enough?

And, for emphasis, from the Cluetrain Manifesto:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter–and getting smarter faster than most companies.

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

There is, perhaps, no better time to be a niche producer, a craftsperson, an artist. The world wants to hear human voices rather than marketingspeak. This is David’s moment against Goliath.

Long Tail, NH Visual Arts Coalition, art, arts, google economy, presentation

Above, one of Sandge’s contributions to the The Toy Cameras Pool reminds us that good photography is something that often happens despite the equipment, not because of it.

Of course, no sweeping generalization can go without argument, and in this case I think the toy camera enthusiasts would be joined by the glitch art aficionados, like RoninVision, who apparently made a mistake while scanning to give us this:

It seems common among contemporary artists that a web search might turn up a few pictures of their works, but not much about them or their works. In this case it’s Nina Katchadourian and the work I’m interested in is her Sorted Books Project.

A video interview from the University of Colorado and ResearchChannel.org does offer some insight into Katchadourian’s art, but why are such glimpses so rare?

Anyway, I was happy to find her compact, graphic poetry. And I’d be happier still if I could find more of it online. Instead, all I have is a smattering of images from gallery shows of her various works. Eh, take a peak at Crossdressing.

Crossdressing, Nina Katchadourian, Sorted books, art, artist, artists, books, poetry

I had a good opportunity to revisit the Museum of Bad Art in Dedham Mass earlier this week. Above is my buddy Corey, but I was amused to find that visitors appear to be leaving their own works for the collection.

art, art museum, bad art, dedham, dedham ma, funny, massachusetts, moba, museum, museum of bad art

Who wouldn’t like to play with The Crucible’s “fire truck”?

What’s “The Crucible”?

[it's] an arts education center that fosters a collaboration of arts, industry and community. Through training in the fine and industrial arts, The Crucible promotes creative expression, reuse of materials and innovative design while serving as an accessible arts venue for the public.

You can see the truck at the Make Magazine Maker Faire later this month, and in July at the Crubible’s Fire Arts Festival.

art, arts, arts education, crucible, fire, fire arts, fire truck, make faire, make magazine, the crucible

Most people may recognize Zhang Huan from his “My New York” work that had him dressed in a beefy muscle suit. Above is “My Boston,” but I have a feeling it might get repurposed elsewhere during finals this spring to represent the agony of study.

Ups to Ryan for the pointer.

art, book, books, boston, fine art, head in books, my boston, photography, zhang huan

Atlanta was a bit of a lark. I hadn’t seen my friends for a while, and they were telling me that the weather was beautiful. So why not go?

Anyway, Chuck Close is on display at the High Museum. And the thing about Close’s work is that it frustrates my rule of “don’t do twice what you can automate once.” Many of his portraits are the result of carefully mapped and measured graph lines that allow him to create pixelated works. I want to use computers to do this, but he used a ruler and paper. Nonetheless, many of his works — like his early self portrait at the top this story — are truly stunning.

Rather more interesting to me was Roger Ballen’s “Shadow Chamber” show at the ACA Gallery. It’s not often that you can call a work of photography Surrealist, but, well, you might not have seen Ballen’s work. From the brochure:

Ballen uses the assumed objectivity of his camera to explore the subjective world of dreams, nightmares, and calculated chaos. He is at the height of his powers as a director, and each picture is architecturally rigorous, tonally stunning, and emotionally saturated.

Later, after some low-art/high-fun times at Whole World Theater, we stopped by Troy’s studio at Saltworks, where a collection of Iona Rozeal Brown’s provocative and fetishistic work was showing.

art, atlanta, atlanta college of art, atlanta ga, Chuck Close, galleries, gallery, georgia, high museum, Iona Rozeal Brown, museum, museums, Roger Ballen, saltworks gallery

Ben Apfelbaum died before having the chance to see it all come together, but his quirky idea seems to be a hit. Here’s how Jerry Cullum described it for the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

“The Ben Show” was the brainchild of beloved Spruill Gallery director Ben Apfelbaum, who asked one day, “What’s in a name?” and proceeded to track down a host of artists named “Ben.”

Well, actually, he asked, “Is the use of a given name as a thematic device as useful as any other thematic device to create an art exhibition of interest?”

Photographer and friend Troy Bennett stands among fellow artists Ben Boutin, Benita Carr, Ben Smith, Candice Bennett, Ben Wilson, Ben Fain, Marianne Weinberg-Benson, Lloyd Benjamin and Ben Apfelbaum (a different Ben Apfelbaum), and others. Jerry Cullum’s coverage of the opening mentioned Troy’s work — selections from his “Above and Below” series (image above):

His color photos look like bodies turning into flame, as in a mystical Bill Viola video. They’re actually unmanipulated images of a swimmer and an underwater pool light.

Find it at the Spruill Gallery, Atlanta.

Atlanta, Atlanta GA, Georgia, Troy, Troy Bennet, Ben Apfelbaum, photography, art, gallery, show, Ben Show, what’s in a name, art, art gallery, Spruill Gallery, Spruill Center for the Arts, arts

The story here isn’t about why I’m on the Kate Spade mailing list. The story is about their new line of “paper.” It’s stationary, of course. The kind of formal paper people use to send out wedding invites and thank yous and whatever other little missives that email or AIM seem too uncouth for.

I made this point before, in a discussion of how painting evolved from trade-craft to art after the development of the camera, but I love seeing a new example.

Even as paper documents become decreasingly valuable to us — how many of us cringe when offered a printout of a web page? — formal, artistic uses of paper seem to hold on. Does this Kate Spade release affirm the overall usefulness of paper, or its boutique value as an icon of class and privilege?

My argument here isn’t against paper, and certainly not against art. My argument is that technological development changes the value and use of everyday objects. In this case, Crane, the manufacturer of the Kate Spade paper collection, used to sell through stationers in small shops throughout the country, but technology has changed that market. The bread and butter of those shops — printing letterhead stock for local businesses — has largely disappeared as those businesses shift more communications online, use on-demand printing, or go elsewhere for more complex work like full-color brochures. Crane has already missed it’s opportunity to lead the technology that’s changing it’s market, so now they’re forced to try selling their old products in lower volumes to niche markets where the Kate Spade is use to show the privilege and class of the consumer.

The internet changes everything, where will you be when you realize it?

art, craft, crane, crane paper, internet, kate spade, kate spade paper, privilege, trades, useful, useless, wealth

I wasn’t just surprised to find a gallery of velvet paintings, I was further surprised to learn they were hosting a show of Valentines velvet works by local artist Juanita and had cards advertising a show of LA artist Arnold Pander’s oil on velvet works at the local Vault Martini Lounge.

But the fact is, Carl Baldwin and Caren Anderson’s Velveteria is the place, if ever there was such a place, where such forces will collide.

Sadly, my visit Saturday evening was at a time when the owners weren’t hosting, and the woman who was there wasn’t able to offer much to explain the works. Fortunately, artist Arnold Pander (whose works span a broad range of media, including oil on velvet) lays out this history of velvet painting in his personal gallery:

For hundreds of years velvet paintings have been created in various ways, dating back to the fourteenth century when Marco Polo discovered samples of velvet paintings in Kashmir, where velvet was first woven. During the Victorian era, painting on velvet became a popular hobby amongst the British upper class with floral and still life subjects. It later came to the U.S. during the post revolutionary period where biblical scenes and landscapes were the dominant themes of this romantic medium. Edward Leeteg revolutionized the velvet painting in the 20th century with his figurative “pin-up” style of Tahitian native culture in the 30s 40s and 50s. Leeteg transformed the way velvet painting was perceived, solidifying it as a part of American pop-culture.

(Pander’s works can also be seen at the Mark Woolley Galery.)

The Velveteria stands in northwest Portland and offers about 150 works in two rooms. My knowledge of the medium was limited to badly rendered paintings of Elvis sold along with bull skulls out of the trunks of big American cars from decades past.

Portland Picks tells me the genre is typically represented by a “Elvis/Jesus/Clowns trifecta,” but we both agree that the range represented in the museum is almost beyond words. I say “almost” not because I’m going to attempt to describe them, no. I say it that way because I have this further link to the Portland Mercury about the whole thing (though it’s worth noting that they apparently couldn’t begin to report the story without quoting Dave Hickey’s famous “good taste is the residue of someone else’s privilege”).

But the Mercury did also explain the Velveteria’s nude room, saying “buxom lasses” as are the dominant subject of the black velvet medium.

Painting on velvet (paint is applied either by brush or air gun, or frequently a combination of the two) results in a unique luminosity when done well, and skin tones highlight this quality best.

The owners are said to have over 1000 velvet works in their collection, so this is clearly a passion for them, I’m just sorry to have missed the opportunity to meet them. Admission is $3, and the bumper sticker is $2. Tee shirts, postcards, and keychain peepers are also available.

velveteria, velvet, velvet paintings, oil on velvet, portland, portland or, oregon, art, museum, gallery, weird museum, weird museum tour

What you can’t tell about the photo above is that the eagle is huge, and made of spray foam. It stands at Sprayfoam Inc., just off the I5 at Millersburg. Don’t miss the cornucopia-like sign, or the completely enfoamed Sprayfoam-mobile.

art, foam, sprayfoam, sprayfoam inc., spray foam, millersburg, oregon, millersburg or, sculpture, eagle

library, libraries, book, books, page, pages, book leaf, open book, flower, art, photo, library mistress, black and white, b and w

Jon Link is among the smartest and coolest people I know, so when he decides to start up a press, and then decides to fund his startup with t-shirt sales, I get in line.

jon link, astro dog press, small press, publisher, t-shirts, start up, literature, poetry, art

Most of my reading is non-fiction, so I depend on Bob Garlitz to keep me current with the rest of the literary world and a bit of the art world.

bob, bob garlitz, garlitz, art, literature, stylist, blog

Rochelle worries that all this Library 2.0 talk is lost on her library. Ross tells us why he hates the Library 2.0 meme and Dan reminds us it’s not about buzzwords. But Michael is getting closest to a point that’s been troubling me for a while: Library 2.0 isn’t about software, it’s about libraries. It’s about the evolution of all of our services to meet the needs of our users.

Let me step back a bit.

Before the development of the camera, illustrative painting and portraiture was a trade on par with carpentry and masonry. But as photography became a reality, painters found themselves in a quandary. Many said that those early black and white photos were inferior to large and colorful portraits on canvas, but the photos were quicker, cheaper, and offered a scientific representation of reality that suited the times. And so painting, having lost its relevancy as a form of documentary reality, became art. As art, it exploded with new non-representational forms and styles (plot the timeline of the impressionists against a timeline of photography), and became collectable.

Our perspective prevents us from seeing the turmoil of those times, but let me try apply that lesson to libraries today.

We have two choices. We can continue to operate by the old rules and hope that we find wealthy patrons to support us as symbols of the wealth and refinement of our communities. But, if we look hard, I think we’ll find that we can apply the core values of librarianship to new current technologies and new service models, and rather than becoming a sort of art, we will be valued for serving the needs of our communities.

library, libraries, library 2.0, library20, art, challenge, photography, web 2.0, web20, future

My friend Troy keeps a studio at Saltworks, a combined gallery and studio space in Atlanta where Prema Murthy just opened her deStructures show. I was in Atlanta to see Troy and family, so the opening was added sugar, and quite a pleasure.

The image above comes from Troy’s Above and Below series.

tags: above, above and below, art, art opening, atlanta, below, destructures, gallery, georgia, photography, photo, prema murthy, saltworks, studio, troy, troy bennett

Is there a sneaky surprise hidden in your hotel room? See if you can recognize anything in these photos (tip: mouse-over them).

tags: art, hotel, hotel art, hotel room, secret, secret wall tattoos, secretwalltattoos, sneaky, surprise, wall tattoos, walltattoos