“An umbrella built for the inseperable.” By Jasmine Raznahan and Marc Owens.

This site I found yesterday is so hilarious. If you have ever seen or read The Hipster Handbook, you will be well aware of the type of obsevational humor found on this site. It takes pretty much the entire spectrum of today’s hipsters (where in only a few years the term hip has been replaced with “scene”). Overall what it points out is that the people who claim to be the least image obsessed actually spend more time on theirs than most people. I bought the hipster handbook about 4 years ago and its already tragically outdated as the groups it hilariously (and accurately) described have continued their intrepid journey to escape any shade of lameness. Little do they know that when you partake in such transient trends, escaping lameness is as futile as running away from one’s shadow.  Personally I blame Myspace, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, and Juxtapoz for the proliferation of so many fad jumpers. In my opinion, head-to-toe looks are inherently lame, but we are Americans. We are what we buy.

Click Here to go to the site, the descriptions for each look are spot on. Their is also a limited edition book.

This guy’s work, which is very reminiscent of Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), fascinates me with the simplicity and beauty of being washed away at the end of the day, and the fact that it is all hand-drawn (no measuring whatsoever).  I love the idea of ephemeral artwork, especially dealing with time, cycles, movement, and the impact of human imposition and movement on the planet.  Check it out at his website.

He uses no form of measuring devices except himself and a found stick to draw with.  These are fantastic, especially when viewed from aerial photographs.  They almost look super-imposed onto the scene. 

Somehow the body of this post got deleted (looks at a certain occassional writer). But anyway, I dont really feel like rehashing what I said, so here are the images and you can go to his site HERE.

I was using my favorite new tool for discovering new interesting sites on the web, Stumble Upon, when it eventually led me to the campaign website for Barack Obama. It raised an interesting question. We all have seen McCain and Obama say what they are about, but how does their websites go about representing who they are. So here I will go about taking a look at both sites and see how they relate to both the candidate and the message they try to convey. I will start with McCain’s website.

On first impression, the one phrase that describes Sen. John McCain’s website is “Big is good”. All of the buttons are big and the Fonts are awkwardly large, almost as if the web designer forgot he was designing a website and instead designed something to be used on an ATM Machine. I guess it’s meant to seem easy, but it comes off as cluttered and unecessary to average web surfer (the people most likely to visit the site). Another more nuanced observation of the site is that it is a bit confrontational in it’s content. I mean, the first thing you see is a big picture of some woman holding up a Hillary Clinton sign covered with McCain bumper stickers, to suggest that she is a former Clinton supporter who is now supporting McCain instead of Obama (which is perplexing issue worth its own post in itself). I’ll give his campaign the benefit of the doubt and believe she actually was a Clinton supporter and not simply a McCain supporter who picked up a Hillary poster and slapped some McCain stickers on to send a message to her 18 million supporters (or even worse, a McCain supporter who was given the altered sign to hold up by part of his staff). However the confrontational aspect doesn’t end there.

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On the right, the first painting I ever made of a person Fall of ‘06. On the left, my current work in progress. It’s insane how much one learns simply from painting, and a desire to improve. The new painting is no where near done, but it really makes me feel good about where I’m going if in only a year and a half I have improved this much.

I came across this little gem of the interwebs yesterday and its my new favorite thing to watch online. It is a series of Photoshop tutorials… I know that doesn’t sound interesting at all, but these are SO worth your time. They are hilarious! Just watch the one I have posted and you will be hooked, for more reasons than one. Go here for more.

I know quite a few students in my art department that simply don’t get/care about/know the groundbreaking artist Marcel Duchamp. I simply won’t get into why every artist should know about him (for my most frequent readers, I’m sure you already know him very well), but even for the most well versed Duchamp fan, this little online resource is chocked full of interesting and thorough information. Best of all its arranged very well in a linear timeline, with all of the elements clickable for further information. Do yourself a favor and visit this site to get a healthy dose of an artist who one could argue is responsible for where art is today.

UnderstandingDuchamp.com

I went to an artist workshop this weekend and needless to say it was ridiculously informational. The best part was the introduction to a piece of software called GYST from a company with the same name. The program has everything an artist will ever need to know from how to handle your estate when you die, writing invoices when you sell work, and it even has a database with unlimited storage space to keep a detailed inventory of your work as well as detailed “how to” summaries on things many artist (especially young artists) need to know how to do, such as grant writing and project proposals . For more info check out their website, and in my opinion, this is probably the best investment an artist can make in order to build a long successful career