Le Hut du Grass

Grass Hut interviewed over at VLU.

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Font-of-the-Day

A day-by-day calendar conceived of by Lars Harmsen and Raban Ruddigkeit at Slanted. You can buy a physical desktop calendar or download a desktop / iphone widget for free. They have opened up the floor for submissions to the 2010 edition. Check it here.

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Yes Pecan!

From the Ben and Jerry's Website:
"YES PECAN!" An Inspirational Blend! Amber Waves of Buttery Ice Cream With Roasted Non-Partisan Pecans.

If you decide to indulge in some “Yes Pecan” in Scoop Shops during the month of January, Ben & Jerry’s is donating the proceeds to the Common Cause Education Fund.

Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process. They are committed to honest, open and accountable government, as well as encouraging citizen participation in democracy. Their Education Fund conducts research, education, and outreach activities. Check out http://www.commoncause.org to take action.

Wonder what the George Bush flavor would be called?

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Pending Lawsuit

Plazm VS. Peter, Egon, Ray, and Winston

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(Word) Cloud Maker

Input text into Wordle and it generates a word cloud, or visual representation of that texts emphasis, based on word frequency. See what you're saying?

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Colophon 2009: More Magazines Than You Can Shake a Stick at

Plazm will be part of the Colophon biennial symposium of independent magazines in Luxembourg, March 13-15. Go if you can. Regardless, the Colophon web site is a great resource for checking out magazines from around the world. I did an interview with these folks about the history of Plazm magazine. That can be found here.

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Carson Ellis at Nationale

Carson Ellis' work is up all month at the lovely Nationale. Go there and support local business!

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Senate Vote Prohibits Arts Recipients in Economic Stimulus Funding

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered a "compromise" amendment which passed the Senate as part of the economic stimulus package. The compromise prohibits arts funding. Now is the time to call your Senators and Representatives to let them know that art creates jobs and helps contribute to creative thinking across all communities. You can send an email via the Americans for the Arts action page.

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Worst. Song. Ever?

Sarah's and I carry on a weekly tradition of tuning into podcasts of This American Life. In act two of Episode 88 Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar explained their contribution to the artistic world in relation to the weekly theme of the show Numbers.

This is how it works. They hire a polling firm to investigate what people want to see in paintings in different countries across the world. Then, using the poling data, they create paintings based on what the country's people statistically would like to see. On the flip-side of this, they also create paintings of what people would least likely appreciate. The resulting works can be found here. The painting shown above is America's favorite painting, the result of the data shown here.

But then they took it a step further. They teamed up with musical composer David Soldier. Using the same poling procedure, they produced one song based on what people most want to hear—and one song based on what they hate the most. Read about it here and listen to the song "fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population would enjoy" here.

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Wesley Younie

Portland based painter and plant designer Wesley Younie creates enthralling narratives starring various flora and fauna from the wild and art history.There is a ton of nature art out there, and Younie's work really stands out with his interesting use of perspective and color, as well as the often humorous narratives he employs.Check out more of his work here.

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Kelly Reichardt on Fresh Air

The 'Wendy and Lucy' director talks about Portland, Michelle Williams, trains, homelessness, and her co-writer, Plazm editor Jon Raymond on NPR radio. Podcast/stream at npr.org.

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Martha Rich

I've been a huge fan of Martha Rich ever since I came across her work a couple of years ago. Her unique paintings and drawings culled from pop culture's past have a soul all their own, and her commercial work retains her individuality in a transcendent manner.How can you not respect someone who did a painting/drawing a day for a year, and then a painting a week? Now Martha sells her affordable drawings on Etsy. Check them out!

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Swimming Cities

The Swimming Cities of Serenissima is a fleet of three intricately hand crafted vessels that will navigate the Adriatic Sea from the Karst region of Slovenia to Venice, Italy in May of 2009.

The vessels are imagined as a hybrid between boats and bits of land broken off and headed out to sea. Watching them approach the shore is like seeing a floating city in the distance, as improbable as Venice itself. To the real life crew, the boats are a place of refuge – both a home and a way of moving through the world. To those who encounter the boats for the first time, they are a reminder that anything that can be imagined can be built.

The Swimming Cities are designed and organized by printmaker and installation artist SWOON. The boats' crew is made up of 30 collaborating artists from the United States.

For more information on this project, or for donating to the cause, visit here.

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