You Are My Heart and Soul

Happy Birthday to my husband, soul mate, and best friend!

Randsom Notes via Harbenger Duo

Always, always, always read the fine print.

I know it is not very lady-like to post such nasty grams, but read the fine print my friends.  Do you see it now(?)...That I am just expressing my love!?!

via Pingg

Sidenote: this is another one of my bad habits.

"Pure Beauty" John Baldessari

Quite a character Mr. Baldessari is.  Last year I was lucky to catch the PBS Art 21: Systems episode featuring Baldessari and I was immediately intrigued by his work.  I love the way that his pieces hold my interest and gaze for quite a while as I try to piece the imagery together.  I love his ability to obscure bland regions of a photograph and give them much more meaning.  {This humorously makes me think of all the times I wanted to pull out old photographs and place circle stickers over the heads of ex-boyfriends or randoms who stick their mugs in our pictures.}  
To promote John Baldessari: Pure Beauty the traveling retrospective of his work, 1st Dibs has an Introspective of his work and the curating process with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Tate Modern, written by Marlena Donahue it is certainly a must read.

"...Baldessari's deadpan visual juxtapositions equate images with words and illuminate, confound, and challenge meaning. He upends commonly held expectations of how images function, often by drawing the viewer's attention to minor details, absences, or the spaces between things. By placing colorful dots over faces, obscuring portions of scenes, or juxtaposing stock photographs with quixotic phrases, he injects humor and dissonance into vernacular imagery." -Artist Biography excerpt taken from Art:21

Here is a short excerpt of the Art:21 Systems episode, which hopefully you can catch re-broadcast on PBS.  In this clip he describes how he upcycles old photos and imagery into his art:

{All images via 1st Dibs.  Video via Art 21.}

Picnic-a-go-go

Wallpaper Magazine has comissioned a wonderful collection of artisan goods for their Handmade Issue.  I am just drooling over all the outdoor-worthy items and wishing it was time to pull out some rich fall hues, and lie beneath a tree canopy of fall leaves.

all images via Wallpaper

They really have thought of it all: blanket, cutlery, cocktail set, lawn tables, stop watches and horseshoes...the only thing missing is our favorite game Petanque [luckily we already have a set.]

Looking Fabulous at 60

Happy Birthday Mom!  You are just as beautiful today as you were in this high school photo.  I love you mucho!

"...Anything to make you smile...."

Loving Cee-lo's cover of "No One's Gonna Love You" by Band of Horses, I think that the Gnarls Barkley front-man's vocals are a perfect fit for this song.  The video is pretty great too, feels like an eternal summer. What I wouldn't give for some sweltering heat right now.  I know, be careful what you wish for but I am soooo over all this rain.

[Don't worry folks, this is the clean version]

[via]

Upcycle Ottoman

For 24hours about six months ago, I was on a mad hunt to find old burlap sacks to recover my tackboard.  Ultimately I just kept the silly polkadot fabric and covered every inch of the boards with images from my inspiration file.   [I know, I know...not quite what you would call dedication.]  So imagine my delight to discover the Upcycle Ottomon!!! Not only is upcycle one of my favorite words but these ottomans have some serious character, look at how fabulous all those different fonts and logos are.  Made from repurposed fair-trade coffee bags, each ottoman is unique and part of the limited edition collection.  I think I need a pair at the foot of my bed...

[via Interior Design June 2010]

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of an Awesome Photograph

I recently found these photos underneath the drawer liner of our dresser and I feel like I have unearthed a national treasure, filling my heart with patriotic pride.  The dresser belonged to Will's grandparents and we are not sure if his great grandfather is in either of these pictures.  Mole and Thomas were quite prolific in these "living photographs" staging officers and enlisted men in emblems of American history, these are two in the series of ten.  Can you believe that this was almost a century ago?  Amazing!

Sadly these have seen quite a bit of weathering, the Liberty Bell even has a tear in nearly the same location as the infamous crack...oh the irony! I would love some tips on how to restore|preserve these gems if you have them.

And we're off....

Have a great holiday weekend!

Poster

Impossible Silver Shade

A little prize arrived yesterday in the mail [courtesy of my ever thoughtful husband], new film for my Polaroid camera! Do you remember a while back when I blogged about the Impossible Project?  Since then I have been saving my last two instant color exposures.  With the arrival of my new film, I can not think of a way to use that old color film up fast enough so that I can explore what appear to be the magical qualities of the new PX Silver Shade film.