I am the oldest of three grandsons on my mother’s side. Of the four of us, I was the one who was most interested in, and knowledgeable about art and art history at a fairly young age. By seven or eight, I was familiar with dozens of artists. Among my favorites were (and still are) Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet, Escher, Saul Steinberg, Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer, Renoir, and Henri Rousseau. I bring this up to provide context for the photo below and for the story about it.

I don’t know if I was eight or nine when this picture taken, but it was taken by my friend Chuck Gould, a contemporary of my father, and somebody I have known for the bulk of my life.

On this particular day, for reasons unknown, I decided that I was going to dress up as Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec. His art utterly fascinated me, as did the fact that his path as an artist started at about the same age that I was then. I started with grabbing an oversized jacket worn by one of the adults, something that would dwarf me, or at the very least come down to my knees. Next, I grabbed a fat black El Marko pen and proceeded to draw a beard, moustache and glasses. I was ready to present myself. The resultant conversation went something along the lines of this:

Ivory (my father’s girlfriend:)  “Oh my god, what did you do to yourself?”

Me: “I’m Toulouse-Lautrec! Whaddaya think?”

Ivory: “what did you use to draw on your face?”

Me (proudly): “I used this El Marko pen!”

“…But…isn’t that indelible?”

“‘Indelible’? What’s that?”

“It means that it won’t wash off your face!”

That was the day I learned what the word “indelible” meant.  I have never forgotten it, and indeed the mighty El Marko was just that. We spent a while trying to scrub what we could off, but for all intents and purposes, I got to be Toulouse-Lautrec for the better part of a week.

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This image is included in a fantastic collection of photographs by Chuck from the Digger Archives. These photos are of particular excitement to me because they chronicle a world that my father was part of in the late sixties and into the early seventies….and by extension me.  I know or knew most of the people in these photos, so it’s really great seeing these photos all pulled together like this. From an historical perspective, this collection is perhaps one of the better visual records of activist hippy life in and around the scene that surrounded the Height back then….and of many of the Diggers.

I’d like to say that I’ve been a long-time follower of this award, but I’d be lying. The ISEVC (much easier than typing it out each time) is sponsored jointly by the journal Science, a nonprofit international science society, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and is intended to “captivate and engage the viewer by revealing the hidden meaning and intricate details of our world in visual form.” The winners have just been announced! The competition is in its seventh year and is equally focused on science as it is on the visual arts. The criteria for judging the entries include “visual impact, effective communication, freshness and originality.”

The winner (pictured here on the February cover) was for Branching Morphogenesis, “an installation made from more than 75,000 interconnected cable zip ties, [and] illustrates the predicted forces generated by human lung endothelial cells as they form networks within an extracellular matrix over time.” As a example of the challenge, NPR explained “let’s say you want to know how human lung cells interact with their surroundings. You could take a picture of what you see through the microscope…what if you took 75,000 cable zip ties and used them to create an 11.5-foot-tall sculpture that represents those interactions in three dimensions?” That was exactly what Branching Morphogenesis did.

I’ve been a fan of The Flaming Lips since Hear It Is came out in 1986. Skin Yard was a band barely in its infancy, and suddenly here comes this out there, neo-psychedelic band out of Oklahoma of all places obscure. Their live show then was nothing like their show as it’s evolved over the last fifteen years, but the music was undeniable and we had the great fortune and delight to be able to open for them on more than one occasion. The thing that struck me then and struck me again this last year when I got to interview Wayne (Coyne) for RocknRollDating, was the fact that Wayne may indeed be the sweetest and most genuine front-man you’ll ever meet in rock. He was as gracious and seemingly without ego in 2009 as he was in the late ’80s. As a result I remain a fan of both the man as well as the music.

Fast forward to last week when Gizmodo posted the most awesome gallery of pics from Wayne’s newly remodeled mid-century palais, a feast to the eyes, and a spectacular showpiece from the remarkable Fitzsimmons architectural firm. The design sensibility seems to draw from the same playful and adventurous nature of the Lips’ music, and is truly unique and unlike anything that I’ve seen before. I had to share and I invite you to take a look as well:

The Gyrofocus Fireplace

A Living Room or Something Like It.

Looking from the Other Side

The Patio – LOVE the Rock Inlay

The Space Bathroom

Design-Milk has a few extra pictures as well.

Yonder from Emilia on Vimeo.

My friend Al introduced me to a friend on his on Facebook (Scott) and so I did the obligatory digging around which led me to his blog, Destroy Your Computer. There I found an exquisite and inspiring piece on animation from a woman in Germany named Emelia Forstreuter. She uses Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Cinema 4D and Flash to create some of the most inspired work I’ve seen in a very long time. I am stunned, hope you are too. Fullscreen it!

This was an amazing piece that I discovered while still working @ Creative Asylum overseeing the development and launch of the Peer Squared Project. While this is not a new find, it’s a piece of work that warrants a rediscovery as it’s still one of the more amazing projects I’ve seen in recent years.

Brambilla’s work, entitled “Civilization,” is a continuous HD video collage, “taking hundreds of stock footage, movie footage and original clips and combining them to create a moving landscape depicting the ascension from hell to heaven” (500 clips in all) as an installation inside of an elevator in New York’s Standard Hotel.

The Video moves up and down depending on the direction of the elevator car, and passes through hell, lower purgatory, middle purgatory, upper purgatory, heaven and upper heaven/lower hell (which is where the video collage ultimately loops to create the continuum).

The total size of the piece is in itself daunting: 1920 x 7500 pixels played back on a 42″ plasma screen.

To view the entire piece, read the details of the project along with an interview with Brambilla, please CLICK HERE: it’s well worth the time. You’re welcome!