Wednesday Work: Posters of the WPA

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Did I tell you we're moving?

Yup. Packing and sorting and trashing GALORE!

Hence, the theme of this week's Wednesday Work: the Posters of the WPA (Work Progress Administration). Felt fitting for all the heavy lifting we've been doing.

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I chose this one especially for The Sea.

I am sure you are all familiar with some sort of variation of the poster above, but are you familiar with the posters below?

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While the WPA was prominent with the onset of WWII, they were not designed in response to wartime. The WPA was an agency formed during the era of the New Deal (a series of economic projects passed by Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. )

The WPA employed millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.

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It fed children, redistributed food, clothing, and housing.

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The WPA was also concerned with the community's quality of life,

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Health,

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And clean teeth, (my favorite)

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You can learn more about the WPA here and see more of this wonderful collection of print work and design here.

Propoganda? Sure, but what isn't?

Alright, alright - back to work!

DEFY MONDAY: Summer of Cupcakes

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Cupcakes are all the craze these days. From specialty boutiques to cupcake trucks popping up all over the city - cupcakes are being made for every occassion, birthdays and holidays, in lieu of big wedding cakes, even golf themed for father's day.

This DEFY MONDAY I am thinking about next Monday, our first Monday in our new house (sure to be in shambles) and a bank holiday to boot. I won't have to work, so what am I going to do - how are we going to make the fourth of July extra special on the 5th?

Cupcakes.

Always a fan of humor, I love those shark and beach cupcakes from Martha Stewart pictured above, and these ice cream cupcakes below.

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On the Martha Stewart site, you can see corn on the cob cupcakes, bug shaped cupcakes, flower cupcakes - you name it. I don't think you need Martha Stewart though, just a good standard cupcake recipe to start, and a big crazy wild imagination. Go crazy with that frosting! (G-G-Go crazy...)

Or keep it clean, simple and delicious.

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As for humor - check out Cake Wrecks, a blog dedicated to when "cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."

There post for today? The cake pictured below, with a description that reads:

"that's baby Bigfoot on a BBQ, surrounded by beer bottles and a bonsai tree."

WTFudge?

Check out more, here.

This Weekend

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I won't tell you how I got there, but I have been thinking a lot about triangulation and refraction... Have you seen "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys"(2002)?

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Dealing with topics like depression, incest, mortality, and overall general angst, the movie tells a coming-of-age story set in Catholic School. The scene that stuck with me (I'm bringing it back around now), is one where the boys are doing their homework assignment on the topic of triangulation. They tempt death by triangulating where the end of a telephone pole might fall once it is cut down with a chain saw... check it out for yourself, here.


I think all this science-geek wonder and talk is my way of not dealing with all the packing we will be doing this weekend, but - what can you do?


For all of you that find yourself FREE this weekend, my tip to you - check out Hive76 , our very own group of science-geek wonder and talk right here in Philadelphia!

(Hive76)

With very open doors, Hive 76's mission statement reads as follows:


"Hive 76 is a community of makers and crafters organized around a shared workspace. We enable our members to invent, build, collaborate and share skills. We promote science education and the do-it-yourself spirit in our greater community to enable people to make things awesome and make awesome things."


Check out their calendar, we just missed their free lock-picking workshop, but there is an Open House on the 7th!

Also, some music for your weekend:

Check out Haight-Ashbury 's song Freeman Town, here.

Hope you all enjoy your weekend!

Wednesday Work: We're gonna do it like this...

(cheri of scout holiday)

Did you know we're moving? That's right. We've got to be all packed up and ready to go in 7 days! Suffice to say there is a lot to do and we can think of nothing more. Hence, this week's Wednesday Work: Home Design - images collected by Design*Sponge.

Design*Sponge is a fabulous blog offering insight into beautiful homes, DIY craft and home projects, beautiful art, and more! Its always been my go to when I am trying to brainstorm, and especially now that we are embarking on a new adventure.

(jen mankins of bird)

So now you know we're moving, did we tell you our new house is a dump? That's right.

The up-side? Our lovely landlord who we rent from now is also owner of the new property and he is giving us the green light to do whatever it is we want to do. Not only that he has offered to pay for all of our home improvement supplies!

(jen mankins of bird)

So wait, why are we moving into a dump? It's twice as big for the same price! Twice the studio space, a built in nook for The Sea's record player, and a fully finished basement with a sink and a drain!

(liz demos of @ home)

So - what do we want? As you can see from these images I've collected here, some of my favorites from Design*Sponge: Sneak Peeks, I want open rooms, natural light, calm, and comfortable.

(marianne van ooij)

Not too cluttered, but not too organized either. I want that lived-in feeling, ideally lived-in-by-wonderful-people-you-would-want-to- invite-to-your-next-backyard-bbq-and-be-best-friends-with-forever.

(caitlin mociun)

There are some limitations of the new place we won't be able to get around. There actually aren't that many (nor are they big) windows. Its just not the style of the old row home architecture of the neighborhood.

But we CAN make sure to put plants in the bathroom,

(caitlin mociun)

And awesome art in the bedroom,

(caitlin williams & james freeman)

And a garden in the backyard, pretty curtains in the living room, colors that pop in the kitchen, we've even been discussing painting the back wall of our backyard (the one that is concrete blocks painted white right now) with some nice stencil work!

Stay tuned, as all of these home-improvement projects are sure to be shared here.

And in the meantime, check out more of these lovely homes, plus many more, by visiting the Sneak Peeks section at Design*Sponge, here.

Wednesday work: Over and Out!

Garden Fresh!: Green Onion DILL-iscious Corn Muffins

So I don't know about you all out there, but you ever have that one packaged food item that lingers around the pantry and no matter how many times you think you've used it, another appears to take the last one's place?

My omni-present packaged good: The Jiffy Muffin Mix.

Sometimes blueberry, once in a while chocolate chip, often of the corn muffin variety - ALWAYS there!

How to put this friendly family member to good use?

For this last batch I went garden fresh! Combining my Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix with freshly chopped green onion from our weekly CSA, and freshed picked dill from our backyard garden.

It's simple!

All you need:

• 1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix
• 1/3 cup milk (I used soy.)
• 1 egg
• 1 stalk of green onion
• 1 generous hand full of dill

Pre-heat the oven at 400 F, mix it all together and pour into your muffin pan. ~15 - 18 minutes later: you've got good eating.
Top with a nice spicy smoked chipolte salsa and a smidgen of greek yogurt- its breakfast, its a dinner side, its dessert.
It's onion-y DILL-iscious!

DEFY MONDAY: Summer Solstice

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This may be the most important DEFY MONDAY yet as it is the Looooongest Monday of the year! Today is Summer Solstice, the FIRST day of summer and an astronomical phenomena. (A fitting way to start the season, don't you think?) Today we are the closest to the sun we are every going to get, which makes today the day with the longest period of sunlight!

How are you going to spend it?

With some summer solstice music,

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or maybe with some other fun group activities?

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Or is today a spiritual day for you?

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Whatever you choose, I must confess, my summer solstice will be spent stuck at this desk. But if I could have it my way, this would be my ideal summer solstice,

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But don't fret! What we will be able to do this summer solstice: thawing in the fridge as we speak, some delicious tuna steaks to throw on the grill when we get home tonight. A banging dinner to eat out on the back patio while we fashion some DIY style garden trellis for our rapidly growing vine plants, so that they can stop depending on our chain link fence and stray propane tank. Cucumbers, we are coming to save you!

For some great DIY Garden Trellis guides, check out here and here.

Also, another great for today and all those hot summer days in general,

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Deer Tick

And they're coming here: to our own Johnny Brenda's, in Philadelphia on July 20th! You can check out their music here and here, and reserve your tickets to the show here. We saw them last June in Philly, opening up for Jenny Lewis. And I can say it, without a doubt - it was the best rock show I've ever seen.

But in the meantime: Hope you all get a chance to get out and enjoy that summer sun! (Don't forget your sunscreen!)

Wednesday Work: Linoleum Prints: Troy Lovegate

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So, I am really into acessible art as of late. Art that I think I could make too... ok, well, at least art with a process that isn't way far over my head, or way out of my ability to gain materials for.

Viola - the linoleum print, or linocut. No fancy materials, nor does one need a lot of materials. A process - that once you get past the idea of printing backwards - laying down those colors in the background first and working your way out to the front of the print - a process that doesn't seem too difficult to understand.

L-L-Love these linoleum prints by Troy Lovegate! A jack-of-all-trades, he works in painting, drawing, mixed media and installation as well.

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You can see more of Troy's work here, and here.

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And in the spirit of doing-it-yourself, check out easy to follow linolem print tutorials here, and here. The first one even has a margarita recipe at the end! (The second is more kid-friendly.)

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Who's going to try it with me? I'll post mine, if you show me yours....

Get Growing: Cilantro!

So, its my first season doing my own growing - and like most things I do for the first time, I am mucking it up. Hence, a lot of back-pedaling, doing a lot of research I probably should've already done.

The advantage? I am going to share it here with you! As I learn things, you'll learn them too, and maybe you won't muck up anything at all when you go to start your own plot in the backyard.

Today's lesson: Cilantro!

Yum with black beans and spices! Yum with chicken sausage and feta cheese! Yum in fresh home made salsa! Yum on garden fresh egg sandwiches!

What you need to know - that I didn't... don't let it flower!

Most herbs are this way. Where a flower signals the coming of fruits and vegetables on plants like tomato, and cucumber... flowers on the tops of plants like cilantro and basil, mean the plant will give more nutrients and energy to those flowering buds, than it will to the production of leaves = no more cilantro.

The solution: pluck them off before the buds mature to put the plants attention back on the production of new leaves, OR let them mature and resow themselves back into your garden, you'll have a new cilantro crop in a few weeks.

I really messed up this one because...not only did I not pluck off those flower heads before they matured, neither did I let them resow! I cut them for a nice fragarant bouquet for our kitchen island. They look beautiful and smell great, but I guess we will be getting the rest of our summer's cilantro elsewhere.

My defense: we got a pot of cilantro when we made our trip to Laurel Hill Gardens. The pot we got already had a few stalks that were thicker and more stick like - those on their way to flower. Those leaves closest to the flower, don't look like cilantro. We got some dill too and planted that next to our cilantro in our herb pot. I couldn't figure out if the flowering stalks of cilantro were tall stalks of dill ... did you know? Coriander used for seasoning are the seeds of the cilantro plant?

Always learning.

The silver lining: Our tomatoes are coming!

We learned (before planting) by talking with someone from our neighboorhood farm, Greensgrow, in order to prevent blossom rot , a common ailment of tomato plants both home-grown and commercial, smash up some egg shells in your tomato soil before planting your starter plants. The result - the egg shells will provide the plant with the extra calcium it needs to prevent blosson rot = beautiful, delicious fruit!

It looks like we're well on our way!

DEFY MONDAY: Make Some Matching Shirts!

What a better way to Defy Monday than to make some matching shirts!

Its simple! All you need is:

• a friend (or two).
• iron on letters (Check out the hot pink sequined ones below).
• an iron.
• and, your combined imagination.

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Heard a good joke? Have a secret nickname? Want to share with others your political views, relationship status, favorite sandwich recipe?

Put it on your shirt!

Its just like facebook, but in real time - matching t-shirts=connecting friends.

Wednesday Work: Inspired - Beer Art for Philly's Beer Week

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Type the words "beer art" into Google's search engine and you end up with a lot of links to images like the one above. I don't know what I expected with a search like that, but innocent and star-y-eyed I thought to find something truly inspired. I guess I should have been shooting a lot lower.

I was about to give up hope and let my dreams go of finding some beautiful beer art (though I know from being a working artist myself, that many studio sessions are indeed alcohol-fueled), I would have to find another way to honor Philly Beer Week ... and then it happened,

I stumbled upon this gem,

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And then another,

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These beautiful, artistic, beer bottles, can be credited to Beck's current ad campaign to bring "music-inspired art" to their labels, working with musicians (and artists) Ladyhawke and Hard-Fi.

Its not the first time Beck's has collaborated with the contemporary art scene. They have also worked with modern artists, Tim Head, Damien Hirst, and Rebecca Horn, to put out these bottles pictured below.

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Dy-na-mite! I look forward to seeing more of Beck's labels as they arrive.

You can learn more about Beck's beer company, here. And more about the artist's here: Ladyhawke, Hi-Fi, Tim Head, Damien Hirst, Rebecca Horn.

Until next time: keep it cold and keep it pretty.
(And I've gotta ask it: has anybody out there ever had a Beck's? What's it taste like?)
(Okay, bye.)

Garden Fresh!: Garden Breakfast

Did you all see that post a couple of weeks back by The Sea, "Memorial Day Weekend Project Idea: Plastic Planter Pick-Me-Up"?

Well, I am happy to report that after too many weeks on the road, I woke up early enough this morning to finally (!) take advantage of our budding Philadelphian urban garden.

While its still too soon in our backyard for tomatoes, I was able to harvest some fresh arugula, basil, chives, dill and cilantro from our pots. Put it all together with a hard-cooked egg from our first CSA Pick-Up (doused while-cooking in Frank's Red Hot), a nice wheat toast, salt and pepper, and a dallop of greek yogurt, and Viola! Es magnifique!

While a big cup of coffee is synonymous with my cleaning up in the morning, this egg sandwhich is sure to not only get you going, but to keep a smile on your face: all-day-long.

For more "garden-fresh" breakfast recipes check out here, and here.

And if you're not - I urge you to - Get Growing!

DEFY MONDAY: ...uh, can we skip it?

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Its been a busy weekend here, and it's sure to be a busy week. We are fresh of the plane from Nashville, TN, homeland of The Sea. She is sure to catch you up on all the down South doings later on this week - but in the meantime....

My fondest Tennessee memory from this weekend? The Thursday afternoon we spend drinking $2 bottles of New Belguim's Fat Tire, listening to a Regular who claims to be an ex-Navy Seal, far-out guitar player (with an album on the way), and a would-be astronaut (had that one space shuttle not blown up, and knocked him over the age limit), tell jokes that got more and more disgusting with each new bottle of beer! Too much so to repeat any of them here.

The place? Springwater Supper Club & Lounge, right next to Centennial Park in Nashville's West End.

The next night? Dos XXs and free BBQ at the boro, before trying very hard to walk alllll the way back to the hotel. We got picked up, but I will save that story for another time.

Back home now, and don't forget - it's Philly Beer Week!
We'll see you out there!

Wednesday Work: (speaking of water towers....) The Work of Idris Khan

every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical type Gasholders

Idris Khan

2004

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Idris Khan is a London based artist using appropriated imagery and a document scanner to create "all-encompassing composites, consolidating iconic cultural symbols of similar type into single 'super-iamges'."

Khan records each individual image in a series of photographs or paintings, (or each individual page of music or text in a literary work), which he then works with digitally to layer each on top of the other to create a single image of said music, text, or series.

He did that here with the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, (mentioned in reference to water towers in the last post),

every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison type Gasholders

Idris Khan

2004

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every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Gable sided Houses

Idris Khan

2004

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As well as with musical scores by Bach,

Bach... six suites for the solo cello

Idris Khan

2006

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And literary works like, Vilem Flusser's "Towards a Philosophy of Photography."

every...page of Vilem Flusser's 'Towards a Philosophy of Photography'

Idris Khan

2004

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Whether this is just a cheap trick, a nod to the overwhelming flood of information that is out there, or a question to what it means to experience a thing (can the photograph be the experience? Is every page/note/image needed in the overall experience of a thing?) - it's up to you as an individual to answer that question for yourself, my jury is still out.

It did lead me to another intersting artist, by the name of Jason Salavon. Salavon is a Chicago based artist and like Khan, is an artist who is noted for his custom computer use to manipulate preexisting media to create new visual work of art.

Some interesting works of his are his series of "MTV's 10 Greatest Music Videos of All Time". A series in which Salavon takes "each of these videos and digitizes them in their entirety. The individual frames of each video are then simplified to their mean average color, eliminating overt content. These solid-colored squares are then arranged in their original sequence and are read left-to-right, top-to-bottom."

MTV's 10 Greatest Music Videos of All Time: 1. Thriller

Jason Salavon

2001

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MTV's 10 Greatest Music Videos of All Time: 2. Vogue

Jason Salavon

2001

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MTV's 10 Greatest Music Videos of All Time: 3. Teen Spirit

Jason Salavon

2001

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Perhaps a quote from Khan's artist page via Saatchi Gallery puts it best for both artists work and their ability to "create poetic malleability from the fixed codes of history. Compressing the timeline of repitition into indivisible subsuming moments, the photos offering a glimpse into the sublime."

You can read more about Idris Khan here, and here. And Jason Salavon here, and here.

Summer reading list: Eistein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman.