Phil’s Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

CoolHunting.com – With its emphasis on “ideas and products in the intersection of art, design, culture and technology,” CoolHunting just may be the site I’ve always been looking for. New, neat, and interesting stuff is posted frequently and with a PageRank of 7, I’m totally stumped as to why I’ve never seen this site until now. As for some content on the site that I think is worth a look, I’m into lighting artist, Marcus Tremonto’s The Paper Landscapes which reminds me of a little Tara Donovan mixed with Tron mixed with Portal. Also on CoolHunting, Ryan McGinness’s recent show that I’m now only able to experience via the web.

blublu.org – Home to a very cool stop motion animation film called MUTO that was created on regular old public walls. Street art mixed with stop motion is very satisfying.

Tweetingtoohard.com – I’m pretty self absorbed. However, I don’t think my Internet fans are able to tell that from my tweets. I should get on that. Until then, here’s a page with a stream of hilarious Twitter updates from users that Tweeting too Hard has identified as self important. A taste, “fan belt light came on in the 911 so now I’m driving the Cayenne Turbo S – the backup, backup car. Trying not to think about the Tesla…”

Monday Music – “Ecology” by Anni Rossi. She’s playing tonight at the Wexner Center for the Arts with Camera Obscura. I’ll be there.

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This past Sunday, European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century was on view for the last time before the museum shifts gears over to its next special exhibition, Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World. EuroDesign is and was a magnificent achievement and a huge thanks goes out to everyone who made the show possible. Good work.

Even though the show has only been over for a few days now, I thought it would be interesting and a little fun to recap some of the online stuff that happened around European Design.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wordwide Womenswear Digest – WWWWD is a webzine draped in a satiny attire that some people call the Onion of fashion news. I call it the perfect prescription for costume curators down in basements, FIT dropouts turned librarians, and a childhood friend of mine that is about to pop out of Parsons. Way to go, Jon! Thanks to local fashion blogs Haute in the Heartland and ballcaps and neckties for the tip.

Amazing iPhone Art – I’m amazed.

$20 Per Gallon – A soon to be released book by a senior writer at Forbes named Christopher Steiner. The full title, $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives has stirred the green in me and makes me wonder what a sharp rise in energy prices would do to the museum world. Can’t wait for it to hit the library.

Theo Jansen – Here’s an artist that could probably help out in an energy crisis. I’m thinking a commission from a kinetic sculptor with a penchant for wind power would look really good next to an Energy Star certification. Check out one of Theo’s amazing wind powered creations on YouTube.

Monday Music – “The Strangers” by St. Vincent. Apparently, I have a thing for saints.

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facebook.com/imamuseum – I’m a real trooper. On Friday night, nay, Saturday morning at 12:01 am, Facebook started allowing vanity URLs. As the IMA’s main Facebook logger-in person, you know I was poised at the keyboard right before the witching hour, ready to blast-type in the nine characters that would once and for all slap the collective Facebook faces of our main IMA rivals, the museums for Internet Memes and Artifices and the Iconoclast Museum of Art. Oh yeah, I also snagged facebook.com/artbabble. For you web folk, here’s some geeky Facebook URLs for ya.

EnvironmentalGraffiti.com – Came across this page as I was doing my normal morning search for shadow art made from garbage/junk. Don’t question my queries. Anyway, I’m into clever uses of materials and space so you know my eyes were like “let’s pop out this skull” when I saw a post on their homepage about green roofs. As I’m aware, the IMA has a green roof above its parking garage. Good looking out, EnviroGraff.

BadArtists.jpg – Speaking of graffiti, as reported by CNN, “artist Banksy, famed for infiltrating museum collections without their knowledge and spray-painting public buildings around the world, is holding his first major exhibition in years.” Neat! Here’s a link to some pictures. @dincandela – Check out this show if you have the chance. It’s at the Bristol museum.

Monday Music – “Last Dance” (Demo) by The Raveonetttes.

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The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists…never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little. – Banksy

Slow and self-obsessed? Way harsh, Banksy. I’m not going to chime in on that part of your quote. However, I do often think about the possible art the super bright, creative, and ambitious people in the IMA’s Design Studio would be creating if they had unlimited time and money and weren’t grinding out ads for me about Free General Admission (shameful plug). Of course, that’s not to say that great art is always created from pure passion without hopes of compensation, but haven’t artists mainly paid the bills by creating art for other people? I mean, I’m no art historian but a lot of great art was commissioned in some way, right? And while I understand Banksy’s criticism, today I’m going to point out a few examples of what I think are artistic advertisements.

 Read the rest of this entry »