Saturday, October 31, 2009

Daily Book Graphics #241 / Birds of the West African Town & Garden





This is the third, and sadly last, book I own in the West African Nature Handbooks series. I previously posted from West African Snakes in DBG #11 and Small West African Mammals in DBG #76. Illustrations: Ernest C. Mansell / ©1960

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Big Rigs

We live just a block away from The Peace Bridge (between the U.S. and Canada), so we often see strange things passing by on trucks. This appears to be part of the shaft of a windmill.

Daily Book Graphics #237 / Limits to Medicine

©1976

UpArt/Rooms of Wonder at the Gladstone


I was in Toronto last week from Tuesday to Sunday participating in UpArt at the Gladstone Hotel. I was there thanks to Hallwalls and John Massier who curated me into the show. The Gladstone is a boutique Hotel that uses its second floor exclusively for art installations and exhibits. I've been to a number of really cool art and design shows there over the last couple of years. I re staged my Abandoned House/Decay Community/Secondary Occupants Collected & Observed that was part of the Ecologies of Decay show that just ended in Buffalo. I had a much smaller space in which to intstall, but I was happy with how it turned out. Unfortunately, despite being part of the Toronto Art Fair, attendance was lower than everyone expected. The weather played a part, it rained from Wednesday until Saturday, and on Friday night, just as the big opening party was about to start there was a blackout that lasted for an hour. But a good number of people passed through the space, and there seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm for the work. It was also nice to spend time in Toronto, I took my bike with me which was really liberating. Normally when we go up we basically trudge up and down Queen St. but this time I got to see a lot more of the city.






The real show stopper was Cologne based artist Achim Zeman's installation in the foyer/hallway

Achim Zeman

Hallwalls curator John Massier and artist Jennie Suddick having a conversation during the blackout.

Drinks by flashlight

Monday, October 26, 2009

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

UpArt at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto

I'm headed up to Toronto in an hour to participate in UpArt: Rooms of Wonder at the Gladstone Hotel. I'll be taking the installation I did for Ecologies of Decay and re-staging it in a hotel room, a fairly large hotel room, but still, it is bound to be a very different installation. More later.



Saturday, October 17, 2009

Daily Book Graphics #232 / The Big Ones






This a middle school reader from 1969. It has stories about athletes, war heroes and musicians.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Kingdom of the Spiders

A little while a ago a friend gave me the DVD of William Shatner's 1977 movie Kingdom of the Spiders (my interest in spiders here.) I finally got around to watching it last night. I can't say it's a great movie, (actually pretty anti-climactic) but it does have a lot of classic Shatner overacting. The original poster for the film is amazing, I think I need to own it.

Daily Book Graphics #231 / The Meaning of the 20th Century

©1965 / Cover Design by Ronald Clyne. Clyne was the art director for Folkways Records from 1951 to 1981. I just took a quick look to see if there was a good collection of his work online, the best I could find was the web page for a retrospective from New Zealand in 2007: here. I have been disappointed to find, through doing this project, that there are a lot of great designers from the mid century period that have a negligible web presence. I'm thinking particularly of John+Mary Condon, Rudolph De Harak, Fred Troller and Davis/Aviles. The AIGA archives are helpful but low on content. I guess I should start Flickr groups for these designers and see if we could collectively make something happen.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Daily Book Graphics #229 / Designing with Type

©1971. This didn't quite fit on the scanner, it actually extends a quarter inch or so to the right.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Monday, October 12, 2009

Daily Book Graphics #227 / The Adventurers


In a strange way I really like this photo collage style. 37th printing, July 1973. Designer: Lockhart / Photo: Ivan Nagy