Hasta La Ideas

California artists get inspired by family weekend retreat at the Ace

For one weekend every spring, several dozen families gather at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs for a weekend of crafting. This is no ordinary organized school event with well-meaning preschool teachers sharing cute art projects to keep the kids busy while parents lounge by the pool. The brain-child of Karen Kimmel, Crafting Community brings together artists, kids, and creative parents looking for a meaningful weekend sharing their mutual love of hand-crafted arts. This year Undefeated, Splendid, and Kid Concierge joined the artists to develop projects using fabric, wood, leather, rope, paint, shaving cream, plants, and even cookie dough.

The first crafting community weekend that began in 2008 with a few participants has grown to include more than 70 families. “I have always wanted the event to feel like a party in a friend’s backyard,” says Kimmel. “The programming came from my fascination with traditional crafts and my desire to collaborate with innovative artists and artisans, but the workshops are almost a means to the end of carving out unstructured, creative time for our busy families. We want our families to set their own pace at the weekend – to really savor the vacation time, be present with their families, and indulge their artistic minds.”

The heart and soul of the project can be traced to Kimmel’s ability to attract charismatic artists. This year’s participants Cathy Callahan, Clare Vivier, Rene Holguin, and Tanya Aguiniga shared their expertise with the families and found inspiration to bring home to their own work in return.

Cathy Callahan was asked to base her workshops on projects from her book “Vintage Craft Workshop“. “The Macrame project just seemed like such a natural fit for Crafting Community,” says Callahan. “The parents had fond memories of doing it when they were young and it’s a great crafting skill for the kids to learn.” She loved finding two dads at her station making macramé plant hangers. Callahan searched down pieces of colorful vintage wallpaper for a mobile making workshop that kept the attention of both kids and parents cutting shapes and laying out the placement for balance.

Handbag designer Clare Vivier attended her first Crafting Community two years ago with her son Oscar. This year Vivier’s focus on recycling and material use led to the creation of a wrapped leather cuff project that captivated the attention of the kids and parents. “I knew I’d do something with my scrap leather,” says Vivier. “Bags require too much sewing so I thought this would be a great alternative.” Once back in LA, Vivier returned to the work left to ready her first store, opening soon in Silver Lake.

For RTH‘s Rene Holguin, this year was his first experience with Crafting Community. Holguin brought his leatherworking skills and piles of leather shapes and tools for a family crest project. “I feel it’s so beneficial, for kids and adults, to work with their hands,” says Holguin. “I’m a fan of family traditions. I thought, this being a family weekend, it was an opportunity to bond beyond a family’s everyday connection. It was great to see the dads with their kid on their lap, talking them through it, and working on their crest.” Holguin had such a positive experience at the event that he’s currently looking into opportunities to share his workshop with inner-city school kids.

Back for a second year, Tanya Aguiniga talked about finding time in her busy schedule to spend the weekend in the desert. “I participate because I love the idea of having local artists lead crafting projects with families,” she says. “I worked in Art Education years ago and have not had much of an opportunity to work with children until Crafting Community. Each year, as I work on my Crafting Community project ideas, I discover new methods of working more efficiently as I problem solve the steps for my workshop.”

For one of her projects Aguiniga ombre-dyed strips of Splendid fabric that hung dramatically from a rack for a necklace-making workshop. She also developed a series of modernist henna tattoos. “I was in India this past summer, and I was trying to get a henna artist in Jaipur to give me a minimalist tattoo. He didn’t understand, so I came home, bought some henna and did it myself. I told Karen the idea, she loved it and then I began dreaming up cool designs to tattoo on tiny tots. It was pretty amazing to tattoo babies, pregnant bellies and grandmas.”

Aguiniga is busy with June shows at the Architecture & Design Museum LA, the California African American Museum and Freehand Gallery, as well as one in July at Marine Contemporary. She can also be found staging Public Crafting: The Political Act of Weaving throughout LA as part of the KCET Artbound project.

Kimmel is set to collaborate with the Santa Monica Art Museum and local Southern California schools, and will launch a new Kimmelcolors stencil set this year. Her Crafting Community artists are back at work in their studios inspired to keep teaching and creating.

Illustrations revisit the Roaring Twenties

by Joanna Prisco

For the last six months, New Yorkers have been hotly anticipating The Great GoogaMooga, a free food and music festival to take place in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park this weekend, 19-20 May. Created by Superfly Presents—founders of Bonnaroo and Outside Lands—the GoogaMooga has sparked much dialogue among summer concertgoers for shifting the spotlight from the stage to the concessions. While food lies at the heart of the inaugural fest there’s a focus on design that sets it apart from its ubiquitous predecessors.

Superfly tapped the Rockwell Group to craft the aesthetic of the grounds, marrying a carnival atmosphere with 1960s-era spirit from which the festival takes its name. But at a handful of exclusive gatherings being held inside the Extra Mooga paid-ticketed area, guests will be transported even further back in time to a roaring, golden age.

“There will be four parties inside of the Boathouse,” explains Superfly co-founder Jonathan Mayers. “And they will all have a 1920s vibe, with each hosting chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson, The John Dory Oyster Bar, Fedora or Monkey Bar pairing food and drinks to that time period.”

To further infuse the ambience with ’20s flair, Mayers commissioned Paris-based illustrator Rick Tulka to create posters featuring New Yorker-esque caricatures of the events.

“I was introduced to Rick a few years ago by a mutual friend and I’m a huge fan of illustrations,” said Mayers. “So we sent him a bunch of images of Marcus, Gabe Stulman and imagery from the Monkey Bar and let him kind of run with it.” Having spent the past 36 years illustrating for publications ranging from MAD Magazine to The Wall Street Journal, Tulka’s creative process was uninhibited by the fact that his subjects were across the Atlantic.

“Since I am a humorous illustrator, it really helps when the client has a good sense of humor too,” said Tulka. “For me, the 1920s theme added a really nice touch to the feel of the images.” In keeping with the look of that decade, Tulka suggested the idea to print the posters in sepia. And since the illustrations were all caricatures with a main subject, he kept the backgrounds more line and less tone.

“I wanted the subjects to pop out,” said Tulka, who sprinkled various food-focused details throughout the posters with piles of shucked oysters on the floor here and knife-and-fork cufflinks there. The result is both charming and appetizing. “When the illustrator and the client are on the same page and work well together, it makes for a fun job,” said Tulka. “Oh, and listening to 1920s jazz while working didn’t hurt either!”

Shark teeth and pheasant feathers in work by a UK artist

50-million-year-old shark teeth and thousands of turkey, pheasant and coque feathers are just a few of the materials comprising the work of UK artist Louise Greenfield. “I’ve always been into making and designing things. Even when I was a little girl I was creating little outfits and packaging boxes. I loved the construction, pattern and color elements equally and was occupied for hours as a child,” laughs Greenfied in her North London studio. “I’d drive my maths teachers crazy day-dreaming about things I could make!”

This love affair with construction and design led London-born Greenfield to complete a 1st Class BA (Hons.) in Applied Art before being offered a chance to work with the jewelry team at Vivienne Westwood. “I’d always admired the incredible theatrical, flamboyant nature of her work,” says Greenfield. During her time there she felt fortunate to work with Wendy Ramshaw, CBE, the queen of British jewelry design. Inspired by what she calls the “execution and finish on her work which is always so incredibly precise and intricate,” Greenfield soaked up everything she could learn about materials—”be it precious metals, jewels, plastics, leather and fabrics”—and used the results to create large-scale installations as well as jewelry and art.

In 2010, Greenfield launched her own range, Targets—intricate and highly detailed wall art utilizing hundreds of pheasant, coque, turkey feathers—at London’s Origin and 100% Design festivals. The positive feedback led to global editorial coverage and the opportunity to collaborate with some of the UK’s top interior designers.

The following year, while visiting New York, Greenfield stumbled upon a 50-million-year-old shark’s tooth, an encounter that eventually led to her latest animal-inspired collection, Dancing Teeth. “I found the my first tooth at an amazing shop called Evolution, an artist’s treasure trove full of preserved butterflies, beetles, snake skeletons and spiders. I found it fascinating to imagine the history behind these items that were so old. The tooth inspired this alternative fairy-tale narrative; I simply wanted to make playful, bright, fresh objects with a static energy,” she says.

Attention to detail and an obsession with structure are at the core of everything Greenfield creates, resulting in breathtaking quality. For Targets and Flight, Greenfield first decides on colors and types of feather before measuring and drawing out the design onto blank canvas. Next, each feather is positioned onto steel pins and Greenfield drills into the board to affix them. “I guess the hardest part is making sure the size, color and patternation on the feathers works with the structural shape,” she explains. “When I’m producing a new piece, it’s very much about working with the design as the shape evolves so timescales vary hugely. Yes, it can be frustrating but also quite therapeutic too!” In Dancing Teeth—a collection Greenfield is currently evolving—each tooth is individually cast before being carefully built into the sculpture.

Despite the effort involved, Greenfield is overwhelmingly positive about her future. “When you’re working for yourself, the possibilities are endless and I think ultimately you get out what you put in. It’s exciting not knowing what’s coming next or what the next commission will involve. There’s nothing better than doing something you love and I’m excited to be indulging in my own creativity.”

Masterpieces on iPhone

Even from a few feet away, you can see the bold strokes that Sao Paulo artist Roberto Lautert applies to his portraits of iconic art figures, but step closer and you’ll notice that brush lines are strangely missing. That’s because there were no brushes—these works are enlarged versions of the portraits Lautert “paints” by fingertip on his iPhone 3G, using the Finger Draw app. The pieces are currently on display at Loja do Bispo in Sao Paulo in his first-ever solo show.

Lautert, an art and creative director at his own agency, has always loved doing portraits of friends and family, which in the past were made by pencil, acrylic or watercolor. So when Lautert discovered the Finger Draw app in 2009, he knew that his first stab would be a portrait. He painted his wife, who later gave him the idea of doing a six-image series of the artists he admired most—David Hockney, Lucien Freud, Avigdor Arikha, Alex Katz and Elizabeth Peyton.

Painting on such a small screen as the iPhone is challenging in itself, but Lautert finds putting in the details to draw the eyes and the shape of the face the most difficult to achieve. “Every new portrait becomes a drama because it seems like it’s not going to turn out right,” he said. “You suffer until the results start to excite you. But even so, every time you hit save and return hours afterward, you see there’s so much still left to do.”

Because the digital size of the Finger Draw portraits are so small, the images had to be put through a vector process to enlarge them before they’re printed on canvas. “What’s beautiful about Finger Draw on the iPhone is that you can put in your pocket, as if it were a Moleskine,” says Lautert.

Lautert is looking to bring his pieces to other major cities in Brazil, and the current show runs through 25 May 2012.

Blast off with Tom Sachs’ impressively detailed NASA-inspired mission

Most artists are obsessed—their fixation serving as a driving force for creative action—but Tom Sachs takes his to new heights with his interest in space exploration. His newly launched NYC exhibition, “Space Program: Mars“, is a love letter to NASA in his signature bricolage style, and not one detail of the mission’s extensive flight plan has been spared the Tom Sachs treatment. From a golf cart turned into a Mars Excursion Roving Vehicle (MERV) to the “interlocking system of systems” comprising the Landing Excursion Module (LEM), Sachs has created a charmingly kitschy and impressively thorough rendition of a mission to Mars.

Opening night visitors to Sachs’ massive tongue-in-cheek Park Avenue Armory installation sipped on “Vader Piss” and “Astronaut Sunrise” cocktails as they made their way from an upgraded Mission Control (stocked with Stoli vodka and an “expanded musical selection”) at the entrance to the Indoctrination Station on the opposite end of the 55,000-square-foot space.

Berms made from plywood—one of Sachs’ favorite materials—make up the terrain of the Mars Yard, where astronauts secure samples from Mars’ surface in a process called “The Dig”. Using discarded objects like a boombox, solar cells, an umbrella, a broom and more, Sachs created a set of tools to help with the scientific analysis, which include a Phonkey, an Indoctrination Fridge, a MILF Fridge, a Floor Raper, The Sun, a poppy-producing Biolab, a Hand Tool Carrier (HTC) and the MERV.

Sachs focuses on a seemingly insane number of details with ingenuity to match, simultaneously proving his prowess as both a leading contemporary artist and NASA expert. The world he has created at the Armory is one that children will relish in exploring, and adults will wish they had had as a learning tool while growing up. While his Mars exhibition presents space travel in an easily digestible and ultra entertaining form, his intention is more serious and far-reaching. The project’s official description explains that with the end of the space shuttle program last year, Sachs aims to provoke “reflection on the haves and have-nots, utopian follies and dystopian realities, while asking barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation”.

Sachs and his 13-person team will be in residency during the month-long exhibition giving artist talks and demonstrations. While the show is undoubtedly one to see in person, those outside of NYC (or who missed the 2007 “Space Program” show at the Gagosian in LA) can still get in on the action—200 Space Program Zines are available in the online gift shop, and fans can pick up his extensive book (to which Buzz Aldrin contributed) or wear one of the items from Sachs’ capsule collection that he developed with Nike.

“Space Program: Mars” runs through 17 June 2012 at the Park Avenue Armory.