Thursday, November 13, 2008

Daily Door


Time for class

I stumbled upon this vintage school desk while perusing the ever so magical Factory 20 website and got instant goose bumps. I had one just like it in the 1st grade where I would store my pencils and reading workbooks. I was going to post a bunch of school house nostalgia pics but decided I liked the simplicity of these shots instead…










Monday, September 29, 2008

Daily Door







Textures

Anyone who has wandered the streets of San Francisco with me can attest that I tend to dawdle behind, taking snapshots of any little sight that might tickle my fancy.  Lately, I’ve been obsessed with textures and geometric architectural details.   Below are just a few of my most recent finds...  I’d love to take about 15-20 of the best ones and frame them in my entryway eventually but for now I thought I'd just share them with you, my observant readers, in the hopes that doing so will inspire future projects...







--Whitney

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

No photos, no photos

Happy Birthday to me!  That's right, and this year was a big birthday too, though I'm not telling you which one.  A lady never tells.

The greatest gift of all was, of course, sipping French 75s with friends and family, and shooting many games of billiards, during which the skill level exhibited did nothing to justify the level of photographic documentation that followed.

That being said, one of my other favorite gifts of the night was a book of Ron Galella's photographs.  Galella was one of the most famous paparrazi photographers of the last half of the century, and his photos stand alone as art as well as documentation of the celebrity culture of the 60s and 70s.  He shot many photos of icons such as Jackie Onassis, Marlon Brando and Andy Warhol, as well as incredibly evocative portraits from the disco scene.

His photographic style has come to be so inextricably linked to the scene he inhabited, that it becomes hard to tell where the journalism ends and the history-making begins.





cheers!
Gillian


Friday, August 15, 2008

The Life of Lee Miller

I know that the city is abuzz with excitement over the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the MOMA, and rightfully so.  However, the best thing that came out of my recent visit to the Museum was stumbling upon The Life of Lee Miller.


While some of Miller’s work has registered on my radar in the past, I had no idea just what a broad range of subjects her works touched on.

In the Lee Miller retrospective at the SFMOMA, museum-goers are treated to a multi-course visual feast that follows Miller’s career through her early days as a model...

... to a stint as a surrealist photographer in Europe where she cozied up with Picasso and Man Ray...

(Lee Miller,Charlie Chaplin, Paris, 1931© Lee Miller Archives, England. [above])

(Marie-Berte, Max Ernst, Lee Miller & Man Ray [above])


... continuing through to her more shocking photojournalist work, including this self-portrait of Miller bathing in Hitler’s bathtub shortly after the fall of The Third Reich…

...and on to her eventual settling down to a life on a small country farm.  I could delve more into the fascinating story of Miller’s life, but truly, half of the fun of going to an exhibit is in leading your own tour through a body of work, so on that note, I'll bid you adieu...




Monday, August 11, 2008

Home sweet Home

While I generally prefer to write about restaurants that I have a personal relationship with, i.e.  that I have eaten at,  I couldn’t help but share my latest gustatory/design find.  Located in Via Tortona, the Milan neighborhood known for its discerning aesthetic, Home is the brainchild of owner Monica Bagnari, designer Luca Rossire and architect Riccardo Salvi.  But Home is more than an evocative restaurant name; this epicurial sanctuary is also the personal residence of Bagnari, who converts it back into her home every night once the doors are closed to the public.


Each April, the Via Tortona neighborhood hosts the Salone del Mobile Internazional – one of the world's largest design trade fairs. In consideration of the project's unique location, Rossire and Salvi offered a number of top furnishing companies a partnership in the restaurant in exchange for donated goods, an opportunity they were wise to jump on.  As you can see, the result is a striking space where designers and gourmands alike would feel right at Home.



Midwest Side-- Sonnenzimmer



Of the many artistic talents to have blossomed in the Windy City (Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway), there are but few I have personally chatted about vegetarian cooking with, most notably Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer Studio in Chicago.  Whit and I met them several weeks back, and amongst a sea of felt-applique pillows (nothing against felt-applique pillows) and cheeky canvas totes (and who doesn't love a cheeky tote?), I was immediately drawn to their graphic design collaborations.  Sonnenzimmer's subdued use of color and non-representational style made them really stand out.  With their mastery of geometric imagery,  these two visionaires seamlessly blend both mod and  futuristic/technological influences in a very subtle and yet striking way.


Their gig posters were really captivating in their design and simplicity, and seemed to really represent the underground Chicago music scene they help to promote: confident, stylish, a little stark, and ultimately, very cool.


Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Victory is yours... if you're hungry

(an inspiring pitstop from my recent trip to LA)


The Victory Gardens so widespread during WWI and WWII are having a modern resurgence-- and a modern re-interpretation.    Urban organic gardens are popping up all over our city, as a way to reconnect with the land, a way to foster self-reliance in an ever-unstable economy, and a way to utilize public and private space to provide local, sustainable organic produce and reduce the food miles associated with the average American meal.

There are several community gardens in the city where yard-less urbanites can have access to a plot of soil on which to plant, tend and nurture greenery.
San Francisco Garden Resource Organization has a directory of all the Community Gardens in the city.

Also check out SF Victory Gardens, an amazing citywide project in which 15 households are chosen as sites for urban gardens, in an effort to create a city-wide mini farm of sorts.  These households will be welcoming expert Garden Teams into their yards/porches/windowboxes/etc., in order to ready them to yield abundant produce right here in the city, with crops assigned according to the various growing conditions of the sites chosen.  The fruits of their labors will be collected and re-distributed throughout the city as part of an urban CSA box.

Last but not least, check out the blossoming Victory Garden in the sprawling front yard of our very own City Hall.  Tended lovingly by SlowFoodNation volunteers, this ambitious garden will provide organic produce for local food banks, in an effort to get quality organic food to those who would otherwise be unlikely to acquire it.

Happy planting!

Gillian

Thursday, July 10, 2008

SF Events about town

A friend recently pointed out that we have a habit of posting pictures of events after the fact instead of letting our readers in on the fun. Since there are an abundance of fun events this weekend we thought we’d list a few:
  • Home: New work by Julia Rothman and Caitlin Keegan at Rare Devices. The opening is tonight from 7-10pm. Guests who participate in this jumpsuit themed event get 20% off all merchandise.
  • The 13th annual Silent Film Festival runs Friday July 11th –Sunday July 13th. We stumbled upon this event last year and were blown away by the live musical accompanists.
Musical highlights this year include Bay Area ensemble the Baguette Quartette, who specialize in Parisian dance hall music of the 1920s and will be making their festival debut with comedy provocateur René Clair’s LES DEUX TIMIDES (Two Timid Souls, 1928).

  • Renegade Craft Fair at the Fort Mason Center this weekend July 12th and 13th from 11am-7pm. Contributors include: Art School Dropout, Betsy Ply, 3 Fish Studios, Caralyndon and many more renegade crafters from across this industrious country of ours.
  • Local handmade guru Minnie Wilde hosts a summertime sale with other local designers turk + Taylor, Tinc, and Alma at El Rio (3158 Mission Street) this Saturday July 12th from 4-7pm. 21+ no cover.
  • Bambuddha Lounge hosts Stellar: SF Fashion Awards Show. Over the past few months, local fashionistas have nominated their favorite designers, style bloggers and models – winners to be announced Sunday July 13th from 3-11pm. DJ commodore 69 will be mixing electro-rock favorites.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Quantum Physics in your Living Room

Created for British furniture company Meta, the Ivo_03 table was conceived for "Atmospherics", a gallery exhibition of object architecture by Asymptote's founder, Hani Rashid.  Based on his series of M-Scapes, or Motionscapes, the table's base is made of a single piece of diamond-faceted Tula steel.  The shape's undulations are mathematically projected to convey allusions to both the technological and the organic, as well as convey a sense of motion in a still object.  I love the way the Ivo_03's curves suggest to the viewer that the utility of modern technology and the beauty of the natural world are inextricably linked, in today's increasingly high-tech world more than ever.

--gillian

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The way I feel's contextual...


"With fashion or photography, I always tried to start with depicting the topography that gives context to a subject."
--Hedi Slimane (former art director for YSL, Dior) 

-gillian

Thursday, June 26, 2008

White Elephant Vintage

I’m on the hunt for the perfect alarm clock and while I’ve yet to find anything I’m over the moon about, I did happen to stumble upon a great vintage resource on etsy. Here are just a few of the fun finds I spotted on the lovely White Elephant Vintage




Alarm clock candidate #1



Vintage pool balls in an egg basket



A good vintage fan is worth its weight in gold. I bought one similar to the fan above at the Alameda Flea market last month and it has been a godsend over the past few hot weeks!



Alarm clock candidate #2


Sears celebrity typewriter

Daily Door


Thursday, June 12, 2008

Area_2

Its official come June 10th I’ll be taking my first graphic design course and I couldn't be more excited. One of my classmates gave me a crash course last week so that I could make the (very amateur) logo below for my Commercial Design Concepts class.


I’m particularly interested in graphic design because at its root much of graphic design is ultimately about reinterpreting images and re-purposing them to fulfill a new function. Thus I was elated when I stumbled upon Area_2 : 100 Graphic Designers, 10 Curators the newest volume in Phaidon’s acclaimed “Area” series, which features 100 of the world’s most interesting emerging graphic designers, as chosen by 10 of the most respected figures in the field. More than 1,500 images reveal the talents and trends of contemporary graphic design as it has evolved over the past five years. It’s literally eye candy for the soul. Each of the book’s 100 four-page sections is devoted to the work of a single designer, and includes a critical essay written by the relevant curator.
Priced at a cool $90, Area_2 may just have to go on my ever growing list of things to buy when I finally get my stimulus check.



p.s. I have a feeling I’ll be eating my words in a few weeks when I’m struggling to master Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop but a girl can dream...
-whitney