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

Henry Wessel: Anything that Catches my Eye – A short ArtBabble video of photographer Henry Wessel talking about his philosophy on photographing and luck. Example excerpt,  “you can do things to prepare yourself to receive the good luck.” Note: In a couple weeks I’m taking a vacation and heading West with a car, guitar, and camera. If you’re feeling lucky, prepare yourself.

Wataru Ito: Castle on the Ocean – Tedium is the message. Learn a few folds for yourself on ArtBabble. Swallow. Duck. Sparrow.

Charles + Ray Eames on TED – Good work to the Internet for making this TED video show up on Digg.com. TED is definitely a cool site, but c’mon, this talk is over two years old. There’s way fresher Digg-able design content on ArtBabble : )

Monday Music – “I Wonder Who We Are” by The Clientele.

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I received an email the other day from a good friend with whom I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in the mid 1990’s. He had been back to Cleveland for a visit, and had met up with another CIA painting alum to walk the galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He wrote about revisiting paintings that had been important to him during school, like Rubens’ Portrait of Isabella Brant and about other paintings that stood out now, at this different moment in his life, including an Inness landscape. I haven’t been back to Cleveland since 1999, and I’m curious about which paintings might stop me now, and how different the list might be for me today than it would have been 10 years ago. To tell the truth, it isn’t necessary to travel to a museum that I haven’t been to for many years to have a similar experience. I’ve been working at the IMA for a little over five years, and I am amazed by how often a work of art that I haven’t paid much attention to suddenly asserts itself.

Isabel Bishop’s Tidying Up

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For those of you who may not have heard, the IMA is opening a Design Center later this year that will showcase and sell furniture, home accessories, textiles, and gift items. The common denominator among the Center’s offerings is that each item will have a design story associated with its inception.

I couldn’t be happier to be part of the team working on the Design Center, because I have been obsessed with style, fashion, and design for as long as I can remember.

I think it must have started in second grade when I got my white bean bag chair. Some of my friends and family members had them too- – but nobody had one in white. I remember feeling so lucky to have one in what was surely the coolest color for this staple of 70’s interior.

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