An Invitation to Dinner, from Roswell with Love
Tucked away on the outskirts of Roswell, far away from the daily bustle of the alien museum, lies the Roswell Artist in Residence Program. The residency hosts six artists a year and each, near the end of their residency, has a solo exhibition. Each exhibition is followed by a dinner, which is prefaced by a handmade invitation from the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art's Director Nancy Fleming. She has been making these special invitations since 2004, and here is a peek into these small treasures.
By Corwin Levi|2018-06-21T07:45:43-04:0006.20.18|Design, Events, Images|3 Comments
Skyscrapers: A Cure For Loneliness & Overconsumption? Judith Dupré on the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings
Lewis Wickes Hine, A construction worker at the Empire State Building, 1931. (Photo courtesy the New York Public Library Digital Gallery) Books Worth Reading Skyscrapers: A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings By Judith Dupré. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 176 pages [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2017-10-31T15:19:02-04:0001.09.14|Books Worth Reading, Design, Images, Spaces|1 Comment
Gwarlingo's 26 Favorite Art, Photography, Film & Design Books of 2013
As an ex-librarian and book collector, one of my favorite things to do is to ferret out new publications and share them with readers. Whenever I'm traveling, I scour local bookstores and museum shops for interesting books. (Carting heavy art tomes home on an airplane is a familiar [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:49:23-05:0012.12.13|Books Worth Reading, Design, Images, Words|2 Comments
Writer Howard Mansfield on Clutter, Home Improvement & the Most Hated House on the Block
Lisa Dahl, Suburban Export, household cardboard, 1.5 x 2 x 2 inches (each), installation variable, 2011-12. View the finished installation Suburban Export here. (In-Progress photo of installation by Lisa Dahl courtesy the artist) "Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul." -Samuel Mockbee The [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:49:28-05:0011.19.13|Books Worth Reading, Design, Interviews, Words|2 Comments
Minka: How a Japanese Farmhouse Changed the Lives of Two Men
A still from the film Minka (Image courtesy Davina Pardo & Birdlings LLC) It is rare to find a film that is pitch-perfect in its cinematography, story, pacing, and length, but Davina Pardo's short film Minka is such a gem. (I owe writer Craig Mod a thank you for turning [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:49:44-05:0009.17.13|Design, Images, Spaces|3 Comments
James Turrell's Ambitious Light Installation Leaves Wright's Guggenheim in the Dark
James TurrellAten Reign, 2013Daylight and LED light, dimensions variable© James TurrellPhoto: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York "My art deals with light itself," says 70-year-old artist James Turrell. "It's not the bearer of the revelation---it is the revelation." While frequently lumped together with minimalist artists Robert Irwin [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:49:48-05:0009.05.13|Design, Events, Images, Spaces|4 Comments
Architect Says: Less Is More. Less Is a Bore.
Tadao Ando, Church of the Light, 1989. Osaka, Japan. Philadelphia is a city awash with memorable architecture, so it's fitting that I stumbled across The Architect Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's store, which offers a well-curated assortment of books inside of [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:50:06-05:0006.05.13|Books Worth Reading, Design, Images, Process|Comments Off on Architect Says: Less Is More. Less Is a Bore.
The Cleveland Art Scene: Be Prepared to Be Surprised
Barry Underwood, Archimedes. This installation was created at the construction site for the new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. (Photo © Barry Underwood. Click to Enlarge) As New York artists search for the next affordable, urban frontier in Bushwick and Queens, a renaissance of sorts is taking [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:50:20-05:0004.04.13|Design, Events, Greatest Hits, Images, Spaces|17 Comments
Why Design Matters: Imagining the Future of the Rockaway Waterfront
The wreckage of Rockaway Boardwalk after Sandy (Image via CNN.com) A few months ago I shared Eve Mosher's piece, High Water Line, a public art project in Manhattan and Brooklyn that brought the topic of climate change directly to the city's residents. Mosher's inventive project showed what [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:51:32-05:0002.28.13|Design, Images, Spaces|Comments Off on Why Design Matters: Imagining the Future of the Rockaway Waterfront
Soo Sunny Park & Spencer Topel Transform a Chain-Link Fence into Art
Artist Mary Goldthwaite-Gagne studies "Capturing Resonance," a piece made of chain-link fencing on view at the deCordova Museum. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge) On my recent visit to the deCordova Museum, one of the artworks I found most compelling was "Capturing Resonance" by sculptor [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2017-03-05T10:27:16-05:0003.30.12|Design, Greatest Hits, Images, Sounds, Spaces|6 Comments
Ai Weiwei : Creativity Is the Power to Act
Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009 has been good company the past few days. Between 2006 and 2009, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei used his blog as a daily notebook where he posted thousands of photos, documented his artistic practice and personal [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:53:02-05:0003.11.12|Design, Greatest Hits, Images, Process, The Complete Creative|14 Comments
The Spectacular Snow Drawings of Simon Beck
Winter has finally arrived in New Hampshire. We're expecting about a foot of snow here in the Monadnock region by the time the storm ends Thursday evening. There hasn't been a single opportunity for snowshoeing this year, which I've missed. Snowshoeing has been on my mind...This week I noticed [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:53:04-05:0002.29.12|Design, Greatest Hits, Images|6 Comments
Gwarlingo Tours the High Line, New York's Park in the Sky
If you're fed up with partisan bickering and political dysfunction in Washington, the gratifying, lavishly-illustrated book High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky, just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, might temper your burgeoning cynicism. The book is a lesson in what can [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:53:33-05:0012.26.11|Design, Greatest Hits, Images, Spaces|1 Comment
Rockefeller Center's Secret Roof Gardens
Inhabitat has just published a short piece on Rockefeller Center's hidden rooftop gardens. The Center has been maintaining these gardens for the past 75 years, but public access to the gardens is a rare event. According to Inhabitat, the building's developer John R. Todd and architect Raymond Hood originally envisioned a [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:55:43-05:0008.21.11|Design, Greatest Hits, Images, Spaces|Comments Off on Rockefeller Center's Secret Roof Gardens
Animal Architecture: A Bat Tower, a Bee Folly, & a Five-Star Hotel for Bugs
One of the benefits of living in a rural place like New Hampshire is that interactions with wild animals occur on a daily basis. I see birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects when I'm hiking, commuting to work, or simply strolling around the yard. Wild turkeys, bears, grouse, moose, [...]
Drainspotting: 61 Amazing Manhole Covers from Japan
One of my favorite book discoveries this summer is Drainspotting by Remo Camerota. The book celebrates an array of fascinating manhole cover designs from Japan. According to Camerota, nearly 95% of the 1,780 municipalities in Japan have their very own customized manhole covers. The country has elevated this humble, practical object to its [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:55:46-05:0008.14.11|Books Worth Reading, Design, Found, Greatest Hits, Images|14 Comments
Designer Milton Glaser on Creativity and the Fear of Failure
You may not know graphic designer Milton Glaser by name, but you undoubtedly know his work. He is best known for the "I ♥ NY" logo, his "Bob Dylan" poster, the "DC bullet" logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005, and the "Brooklyn Brewery" logo. He also founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968 and was [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:55:55-05:0007.22.11|Design, Greatest Hits, Images, Process, The Complete Creative|2 Comments
A Tour of the World's Longest Sea Bridge
Last week the world's longest sea bridge, the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China, opened to traffic. The bridge, which is 26.4 miles long, would easily span the English Channel and is almost three miles longer than the previous record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, officially making it the world's [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:56:01-05:0007.05.11|Design, Images, News|1 Comment
Gwarlingo Visits the Tate Modern
This week I paid a visit to the Tate Modern in London. The museum is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world with over 4.7 million visitors a year. Currently, the Tate has special exhibitions by Joan Miró and Taryn Simon. (The Simon exhibit is particularly interesting, but [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:56:06-05:0006.22.11|Design, Greatest Hits, Images, Spaces|2 Comments
The use of color in cinema has been on my mind in recent days because of a site called Movie Barcode, which offers a new way of experiencing a film. Movie Barcode compresses every frame of a movie into a single image. While these images may be interesting in [...]
By Michelle Aldredge|2016-11-11T21:56:12-05:0003.28.11|Design, Greatest Hits, Images|Comments Off on Movie Barcodes