There’s a great new effort underway to document the everyday fabricators, makers, crafters, and artists at the heart of today’s DIY movement. Its called Makeshift Magazine: A Journal of Hidden Creativity and their first issue is out. If you support their launch by contributing to their Kickstarter campaign, you’ll get a copy! While the magazine [...]

There is a delightful story in this week’s New Yorker about the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, who has been developing large scale “beach creatures” that autonomously trek along Holland’s sandy shores. Ostensibly envisioned with an ecological purpose (to retain beach), for some reason the pure lines and spindly white constructions (lots of PVC) evoke recollections [...]

I’ve got to confess a real enjoyment of sepia-toned, shadow-suffused and steam-filled imagery of the Victorian period. There’s a rich mystery locked up in the works of the period – from the early greats like Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and HG Wells to contemporary conjurers like China Mieville, William Gibson, and possibly even Neal Stephenson [...]

A friend recently asked if I could make a “cat sarcophagus” for her daughter’s upcoming eighth birthday party. Along with the proposal she included a snapshot of a “cat mummy”  from London. Coincidentally, a few months prior, National Geographic had a cover issue dedicated to pet mummies of ancient Egypt, which my family had loved. So plenty [...]

A friend recently asked if I could make a “cat sarcophagus” for her daughter’s upcoming eighth birthday party. Along with the proposal she included a snapshot of a “cat mummy” from London. Coincidentally, a few months prior, National Geographic had a cover issue dedicated to pet mummies of ancient Egypt, which my family had loved. [...]

Around the holidays last year I’d made a promise to knock out a washboard table with a collage top for a family member. I’d gotten the basic idea from the remarkable Victoria Romanoff in Ithaca, New York at a meet up we’d had years ago.This go around, I’d found a couple of pricier washboards with glass rubbing plates. Cleaning [...]

Andres Myers is a mixed media artist who’s work stands out from the usual. Its almost otherworldly. Familiar too. Layers of color like lacquer, applied carefully and used sculpturally – paper, cloth, plaster, tape, paint, wire – you name it, its there. Its also deliciously abstract – a lollipop that fell onto a sprinkles-covered ice [...]

I sure would like to be in New Orleans Saturday when Prospect.1 New Orleans opens in the Lower Ninth Ward and throughout the city. Its going to be, “the largest exhibition of contemporary art” in the U.S. – ever. Well, that’s according to the New York Times, with a bit of hedging with a “billed [...]

While I was in Ithaca last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Victoria Romanoff, restorationist and artist. One of the pieces of ‘functional salvage art’ she introduced me to was her “washboard table.” The idea is elegantly simple: for an open-faced (front and back) table, join two antique washboards together with a top surface [...]

While in New York recently for a “Greening the Arts” symposium [see below], I had the very good fortune to meet an artist, preservationist, and self-described “recycling fanatic” Victoria Romanoff. Touring her converted firestation – which serves as her home, studio, and office – I was struck by how full and well-lived her life is, [...]

MixedMedia is all about appropriation – the process of selecting, manipulating, integrating “found” works into new arrangement, compositions. So when I came across the Walker Art Center + Soap Factory = Festival of Appropriation, I was intrigued! On Thursday November 29, Walker Art Center will host a film collage presentation and Circuit Bending Workshop with [...]

July has gotten me back in the studio after a June’s worth of cleaning. This month also finds me working to develop some study aids – exercises in color, simplicity, texture. Small constructions on wood panel that reflect some principle of good design and technique. One of the people who is presently inspiring me in [...]