Grate Art

GREAT IDEAS ARE LOCKED AWAY IN EVERYONE’S MIND. I am convinced of that. Most of us just do not have access to the place they are stored. These ideas are behind locked doors and they do not open easily. It takes 1) hard work; 2) actually acting on a thread of an idea; 3) dumb luck.

For Joshua Allen Harris, he had an idea and ACTED on it. In order to see if his idea had merit, he had to MAKE his creatures. There must have been some trial and error. He had to figure out the best glue to use, and what material would work best. Most of all he had to put in some hard work to see his idea happen. And look what he did!

He made art.

Thanks Josh, for such inspiring art.

Freaks of Fancy

(Above) Cover of book, The Handy Book of Artistic Printing, published by Princeton Architectural Press, by Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas.

(Above) Liberty Machine Works, advertisement, 1888.

(Above) Trade card of J. F. Earhart, 1883, employing elaborate color effects.

Click any image for larger view.

(Above) This 1881 cover of The American Model Printer most likely involved fitting together hundreds of individual pieces of type.

IN THE EARLY TO MID-1990s, WHEN THE MAC COMPUTER WAS GROWING UP AND DESIGN APPLICATIONS like Adobe Illustrator was gaining more users with strong creative proficiencies, I saw designers pushing the envelope of their design by building imagery (at times) with extraordinary complexity. The new technology was allowing them to flex their creative muscles, with instant drop shadows, backgrounds of .25 ruled lines stepped and repeated to create marvelous logos and magazine headlines. Fonts were now digital and plentiful, and I saw designers falling in love with the art of decoration. Many designs, which I still remember, were absolutely beautiful with Photoshop blends and other effects at work. I think all of us at the time, were mesmerized with our new found abilities for intricate and elaborate typographic fancies.

Now let’s go back in time 110 years or so. It’s 1892 and letterpress printers, engravers and lithographers of the day were going through their own new design discovery. It wasn’t so much a discovery gained from new technology but a creative challenge to the traditional staid design of the day. What the public began to see in books, on cabinet card backs, business cards and other printed material were intricate and elaborate design where quirky type, ornament of all kinds, corner frills and border embellishments were the norm. Like many design fads we have seen come and go just in the last 50 years of our time, it wasn’t long before most of the lithographers and engravers of the day had jumped on the “freaks of fancy” bandwagon.

Graphic designer Doug Clouse and freelance writer/designer Angela Voulangas have teamed up to present a very solid history of this period of design in the late nineteenth century. Packed with great period designs (some of which are showcased for you above) and solid scholarship, this 224-page book by Princeton Architectural Press should be on the shelf of any designer, library or bibliophile.

Doug Clouse is a graphic designer. A graduate of the Bard Graduate Center in New York, where he studied the history of typography, he teaches graphic design and prints on nineteenth-century treadle-powered presses whenever possible.

Angela Voulangas is a freelance writer and designer. Her love of New York City history and nineteenth-century estoerica have lead her to work for institutions as the New-York Historical Society, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and the New York Public Library.

Handy Book of Artistic Printing, The: Collection of Letterpress Examples with Specimens of Type, Ornament, Corner Fills, Borders, Twisters, Wrinklers, and other Freaks of Fancy.

Doug Clouse, Angela Voulangas

ISBN 9781568987057
8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm), Paperback , 224 pages
185 color illustrations; 12 b/w illustrations

In print (publication date 5/30/2009) A PAPress publication; Rights: World; (1652.0)

Also available on Amazon.

Diane Arbus: Photographing the Other Side

ONE OF MY FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS IS DIANE ARBUS (1923 - 1971), a photographer who knew fame for only about 5 short years. Her debut to the art world was MOMA’s exhibition called New Documents, in 1967. I was in college when she died of suicide in 1971, and I am not sure I even knew much about her at that time. It was about 1972 or 73 when I first saw her work, and I was amazed at what I saw. For sure, Arbus changed the way we look at the world. Without Arbus, our artistic eyes would would be lacking a lens. Arbus was a visual genius.

“Nothing about her life, her photographs or her death was accidental or ordinary,” wrote Richard Avedon. “They were mysterious and decisive and unimaginable except to her. Which is the way it is with genius.”

This is a short film made about Diane and features her daughter Doon, teacher Lisette Model, colleague Marvin Israel, and John Szarkowski, at that time the director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art. I have heard that Doon Arbus is quite reclusive and protective of her mother’s estate and images. I don’t blame her.

Hand Soaps

THE NEXT TIME YOUR WIFE ASKS YOU TO PICK UP SOME HAND SOAP, order these creepy beauties from a site I found on Etsy.com. The fact that they are “baby-sized” would definitely turn off a lot of people, but not in our house. We might not set them out when we are expecting a visit from our minister—but we don’t have much worry about that.

These “hand soaps”are are completely “hand-made,” so each set is slightly different with different hand-shapes & skin tones. The soaps range from about 1/2” to 2 1/4” tall. According to the site, you get at least 10 hands (at least/about 100 grams of soap). The soap is natural vegetable glycerin & has a very light scent. Order here, on Etsy, where artists and craftsmen sell their work.

Vintage Photographer’s Backdrops

CABINET CARDS AND STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHS WITH PAINTED BACKDROPS WERE EXTREMELY POPULAR IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY, and it wasn’t until around 1900 that they began to fall out of favor. Why was this? This was due to the popularity of the Kodak Brownie camera, when people could make their own photographs. So, it is rare to discover these 7-foot, 110-year old German painted backdrops. Imagine yourself in front of one of these.

Photographer’s Backdrop:

Germany
Circa 1900
Rare photographer’s backdrop of German winter landscape.

Condition: worn, with folds, worn edges

Measurements:
Height: 7 ft. 6 in.
Width/length: 7 ft. 10 in.

Specifications:
Number of items: 1
Materials/Techniques: hand painted, Ton Sur Ton, oil paint on canvas, removed from frame
Creator: unknown

Location:
InstallationsAntiques via 1stdibs.
611 W. 22nd Street
Houston, TX 77008

Phone: 713-864- 6125

E-Mail: becki@installationsantiques.com

The Beauty of Accidents, Part II

Click any image for larger view.


Click any image for larger view.




Click any image for larger view.


LAST APRIL 30, I DID A POST ABOUT PROCESSING ERRORS AND OTHER MISTAKES found in snapshot photography, courtesy of my good friend Robert Jackson. Robert is the collector whose work was shown at the National Gallery of Art with the book The Art of the American Snapshot. Robert was kind enough (once again) to share with us another batch of snapshot mistakes, blunders and mishaps, proving once again that every once in a while a photo mistake can be worthy of a second look.

Before the age of the digital camera, there were many things that could go wrong after you shot your images. Drugstore film and print processing presented a myriad of potential disasters—things like wrong temperatures of processing fluids; machinery errors and especially human mistakes.

Of course, numerous other problems lay in wait while taking a photograph—light leaks in the camera body; double exposures; light flares; having a finger over the lens; over-and under-exposures and the list can go on and on. So enjoy these photographic screw ups and let me know which of these is your favorite!

Biker chic

(Above, with 3 details below)
LES ATELIERS RUBY x MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA
“Pavillon” Helmet


(Above) Detail of inside.
(Above)
LES ATELIERS RUBY
Pavillon Grenelle Helmet

(Above)
LES ATELIERS RUBY
Pavillon Eley Kishimoto Helmet
(Above)
LES ATELIERS RUBY
Pavillon “Aoyama” Helmet
Designed by Jerôme Coste.
(Above)
LES ATELIERS RUBY
Belvedere Shibuya Helmet


IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A BIKER’S HELMET TO BE COOLER THAN THE MOTORCYCLE? Even in the ultimate biker movie, Easy Rider, Peter Fonda’s (Captain America) helmet is second fiddle to his magnificent chopper.

These motorcycle helmets were found… where else? Paris! At a shop called Collette.

Though I do not ride a motorcycle, I would buy one of these just to have it. I might just put one on a pedestal in my home. My favorite helmet of them all is the scrawled-on helmet called “Les Ateliers Ruby x Maison Martin Margiela.” Can you imagine riding your new Vespa or classic 1963 Honda Bentley motorcycle with this baby on? Bitchin’!

From Wiki: “Martin Margiela was born in 1957 in Genk, Belgium, and is a Belgian fashion designer. He studied at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts along with the legendary avant garde fashion collective known as … “The Antwerp Six.” Many still consider him to be the “7th” member of the collective.”

“Throughout his career, Martin Margiela has maintained an extremely low profile. He has never had his picture taken and remains backstage after his shows. All media contact is dealt with via fax. Maison Martin Margiela’s ultra-discreet trademark consists of a piece of cloth with the numbers 0-23. The badge is attached to the inside with its four little white pick stitches, exposed to the outside on unlined garments.”