Olafur Eliasson Is Your New Bicycle

This beautiful, confounding, and utterly unrideable bicycle by Olafur Eliasson is just around the corner from the artist's equally unrideable ripples-in-a-mercury-pond skate deck.

Even when it's not installed in Kanazawa's spectacular 21st Century Museum, Olafur's work is some of the most photogenic contemporary art in the world. The bicycle turns up somewhere around #55 in the slideshow on his website. The exhibition itself runs through March 22.

Olafur Eliasson: Your chance encounter 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa 21 November 2009 - 22 March 2010 [olafureliasson.net]

Tactile Inuit Coastline Carvings

These are so fantastic. And by "these," so far, I just mean the three tactile maps of the Greenland coastline carved by kayaking Inuits that keep propagating across the "Hey cool!" section of the web. This particularly clear image of the map in the Greenland National Museum is from spacecollective.org:

Three-dimensional maps of coastlines were carved of wood as long as three hundred years ago. These Inuit charts were usually carved from driftwood and are made to be felt rather than looked at. The Inuit hold this map under their mittens and feel the contours with their fingers to discern patterns in the coastline. The land is very abstract. It is limited to “edges” that can be felt on a dark night in a kayak.

At the always-awesome BLDGBLOG, Geoff embraced the idea of tactile maps, and then promptly paddled out into the open speculative waters he prefers.

Me, I'd love to see some more Eskimo maps. Even if it's from the fake Inuit market where the cruise ships dock. Besides, I'm on kind of a mapping X abstraction kick at the moment.


Inuit Wood Maps (on a Greenland stamp!) [spacecollective.org]
Tactile Maps of Coastlines [bldgblog]

Mini Cinder Blocks And Blackboard Tables

Holy moley, if I could marry a virtual antique store, I'd marry Joshua Lowenfels, Works Of Art right here and now. And then I'd rifle through its file cabinets while it was in the shower, see who bought the c.1950s manufacturer's sample mini-cinderblocks and the c. 1960, 5-sided, nesting blackboard cube tables, and then go get them back for myself. Then I'd hightail it to California or Virginia or one of those other marriage-banning states, when I got there, I'd call and say the whole thing was an awful mistake, no hard feelings. Of course, I'd keep the loot.



Joshua Lowenfels, Works of Art - Archive (Sold) [joshualowenfels.com via accidentalmysteries]

Hotel Art

I wish I knew the name of this artist. The painting is in our hotel room in 21C, a pretty amazing "museum/hotel" in Louisville, KY.

Incidentally, my wife, who's from Louisville, said there's a Holy Spirit school in town. Of course... they always win!

Editor's Note: Monica wrote us from 21C to let us know the name of the artist is Laura Parker. Thanks, Monica!

RIP Fredrick Morrison, Inventor of the Frisbee

Fredrick Morrison, the man who invented the iconic Frisbee flying disc, has died at age 90. Morrison's disc, which he originally called the "Pluto Platter," was later renamed the Frisbee by Wham-O, the company that bought the rights to his invention in 1957. As Morrison's New York Times obituary explains:

Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee in 1958, influenced by the Frisbie Pie Company in Connecticut, whose tins Yale students hurled for sport. A Westerner whose plainspoken ways could be mistaken for gruffness, Mr. Morrison deplored the change.

“I thought the name was a horror,” he told The Press Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2007. “Terrible.” (Before perfecting the Pluto Platter in 1955, Mr. Morrison had called earlier incarnations of his disc the Flyin’ Cake Pan, the Whirlo-Way and the Flyin-Saucer.)

But as his royalties mounted — he would realize millions of dollars over the years — Mr. Morrison revised his position on “Frisbee.”

Vintage Streetcar Looks Like a "Rolling Howard Johnson's"

This turquoise-and-orange PCC streetcar is one of the most recent additions to San Francisco's vintage streetcar fleet, and I've heard several locals say it's already one of their favorites. Painted in the 1950s livery of Washington DC Transit, one wag described it as looking like "a rolling Howard Johnson's." Hard to dispute that!

Crimes Against Cocktails (Retail Edition)

The good news that in 2010, we are enjoying a new enthusiasm for fine cocktail craftsmanship -- a trend which I welcome whole-heartedly.

The bad news is that the dark forces of Reaction and Homogenization remain a constant menace.

These two products illustrate the latter point: The first are prefab flavored martinis, sold in plastic martini glasses. The second is single-serving shots of booze, sold in wee plastic packets.

Both are fascinating and horrible, each in their own way.

Gee's Bend Quilt Prints

Tbe master printers of Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley have been working with some of the master quilters of Gee's Bend in Gee's Bend to create remarkable little spitbite aquatint etchings of quilts.

To begin, the quilters--so far, it is quilters of the younger generation of Gee's Benders such as Louisiana Bendolph, Loretta Bennett, and Loretta Pettway--create original, little sampler-size quilts. For the spitbite process, a layer of wax is applied to the printing stone, and the design is transferred by etching it in with acid.

If you're trying this at home, you'll note there is an interim step, the transfer from quilt to stone, that goes undetailed in the publicity literature. Since interviews with Ms. Pettway show her to be a woman of strong Christian faith, I assume that no diabolical magick was involved. Maybe a scanner or camera.


Loretta Pettway's Gee's Bend prints by Paulson Bott Press [paulsonpress.com via andy]
Louisiana Bendolph's and Loretta Bennett's quilt prints are available at Greg Kucera Gallery [gregkucera.com]

Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was one of my first favorite contemporary artists. From the late 1980s until his death from AIDS-related illness in 1996, he imbued minimalist form and incredibly humble materials with powerful emotional and personal content.

Among his most well-known works are his pour pieces, where an "ideal" weight--usually around 180 lbs, the weight of Felix's partner Ross--of wrapped candy, free for the taking, is piled in a corner or spread across the floor. The pours upset the museum's typical hands-off! norms and turn into a living memorial as the candy gets taken and replenished.

At least that's how it eventually worked out. Felix's first pour piece, made in 1990, was actually Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner), and it consists of around 10,000 unwrapped fortune cookies. Which end up getting broken and stale. And kind of gnarly, to the point that, unless you're there the first day of the show, you wouldn't really want to eat one. Plus, they attract bugs and stuff.

So art history-wise: very significant. Actually showing or owning it: kind of a pain.

Which may be why the piece failed to sell at auction in 2003, even at the seemingly conservative estimate of $600-800,000. Someone eventually bought it, though, because it's now at the Felix Gonzalez-Torres retrospective at WIELS in Brussels. The artblog 16miles.com has awesome photos.

photos of Felix Gonzalez-Torres retrospective at WIELS, Brussels, BE [16miles.com]

Robert Irwin Acrylic Column, 1970-1

The uniquely Californian flavor of Minimalism is on revelatory view until tomorrow at David Zwirner Gallery in the provincial little burg that thought it invented Minimalism, New York City.

Robert Irwin's prismatic acrylic column, from 1970-71, is one of my favorite works in the show. This stuff looks like the art of the future.

"Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970" [davidzwirner.com]

Patti Smith's Gibson Guitar

Patti Smith Slideshow at Vanity Fair

Roald Dahl's Writing Hut

Our man Fritz sent a link to Roald Dahl's writing hut, following yesterday's post about George Bernard Shaw's shack.

Roald Dahl's Shackitecture (Thanks, Fritz!)

Donald Judd at Auction

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1987, Estimate 600,000-800,000 euros

Salinger Snapshots

New Yorker - Four Salinger snapshots from the collection of Lillian Ross

Michael Paul Smith's Amazing Model Village

The Flickr gallery includes build notes that prove this isn't just a bunch of die cast cars set around some model buildings.

Michael Paul Smith:

I constructed this garbage truck out of styrene sheets and tubing, using plans I found in a book that followed the history of garbage trucks. It was fascinating reading.
The frame and cab was from a Danbury Mint 1951 White truck.

Michael Paul Smith's Village (via thingsmagazine.net)

George Bernard Shaw's Shackitecture

From Guardian:

This was a strange place for a red-bearded socialist, with large ideas of how to change the world, to land up. But somehow it suited Shaw. He was, after all, a master of paradox - and besides, what all writers need, even the most public figures among them, is privacy while they are writing. "People bother me," Shaw confessed. "I came here to hide from them." From this modest hideout, he could bother people without interruption.

George Bernard Shaw's Writer Room (via V & A Museum)

Abitacolo Bed/Play Thing By Bruno Munari

I know it kind of looks like it belongs in the laundry room, but isn't that part of its charm? Also, each one comes with a personalized license plate?

Bruno Munari designed Abitacolo [Italian for "cockpit"], a bed/play/study/storage structure for kids, for the retail fixture manufacturer Robots [!] in 1972. I thought it was lost to the ages, but I just found out yesterday that Robots still makes and sells Abitacolo in Europe.

Robots.it [robots.it]