Hasta La Ideas The Adventures of Star Wars Figurines in Nature Archives

Jun 15

Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables

The quirky, anecdotal history of produce

As the homogenization of fruits and vegetables spurs concern among the food-obsessed, interest in heirloom cultivars and their respective origins grows. “Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables” delves into the history of the breeds, forming a kind of miscellany of interesting tidbits around the various types of produce. More of a historical study than a contemporary guide, the book succeeds in building out the mythology of heirloom and heritage varietals, crafting the story and significance of oft-neglected foods.

Many of the references go back to historical horticulturalists like Pliny the Elder and Charles M’Intosh, writers dedicated to preserving the rich history of plants. “I began by expecting that not all the old cultivars would still be in cultivation,” writes author Toby Musgrave, explaining his initial research. “What was shocking was the discovery that Europe has lost perhaps 2,000 cultivars since the 1970s, and in America the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation estimates that 96% of the commercial vegetable cultivars available in 1903 are now extinct.” Mass farming sacrifices the more finicky breeds, a trend that is hopefully being curbed by the labor of dedicated local and small-yield farming.

Accompanying the litany of useful errata are 157 sumptuous images from photographer Clay Perry. The still-lifes resemble oil paintings from the western masters, recalling the long held significance of humble produce. Musgrave digs into the history and mythology of various cultivars, relating at one point the tale of the “lumper” potato, a popular crop that caused the Irish potato famine when it succumbed en masse to the disease known as potato blight.

Each section is introduced with quotations from classical authors that reference the given fruit or vegetable. Some popular modern varietals, such as the gooseberry and currant, require conditions so precise that they were unknown as cultivated food for much of human history. Others, such as the grape, are so old that they have become mythologized—Homer famously referring to the Mediterranean as “the wine-dark sea.” Other lesser-known references include a superstition that “spitting a mouthful of beans into a witch’s face was said to neutralize her powers.” The collection may not be a complete record of the life of fruits and vegetables, though it goes a good way towards explaining the contemporary need to preserve variety in produce.

Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables is available from Thames & Hudson and on Amazon.

Images by James Thorne

Jun 12

Guy Laramée

Posted in: artistprofiles, painter

Our interview with the artist about sand-blasted books, ethereal paintings and a transcendental point of view

Examining evolution through the dual lens of spirituality and science, Montreal-based book sculptor Guy Laramée creates miniature landscapes from antiquated paperbacks. Drawing upon over three decades of experience as an interdisciplinary artist (including a start as a music composer) and an education in anthropology, Laramée carves out an existentialist parallel between the erosion of geography and the ephemeral nature of the printed word.

Laramée also evokes notes of nostalgia and the passing of time with his paintings of clouds and fog. A self-professed anachronist, Laramée takes inspirational cues from the age of Romanticism and the transcendentalism of Zen, exploring “not only what we think, but that we think.” Laramée’s distinct, conceptual medium and thematic study of change has involved him in such contemplative projects as the “Otherworldly” exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design and an impromptu collaboration with WIRED UK.

We caught up with Laramée during his recent exhibition, “Attacher les roches aux nuages” or “Tying Rocks to Clouds”, at Expression: Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinte in Quebec, to learn more about his process and philosophy.

What inspired the ideas for your book sculptures and what is the process that is involved in creating them?

The bookwork came in the alignment of three things: a casual discovery, my undertaking of an MA in anthropology and the building of La Grande Bibliothèque du Québec. The undertaking of this grand library fascinated me because at that time (2000) I thought that the myth of the encyclopedia—having all of humanity’s knowledge at the same place—was long dead. I was, myself, going back to school to make sense of 15 years of professional practice and was, once more, confronted with my love/hate relationship with words. Then came this accident, so to speak. I was working in a metal shop, having received a commission for a theater set. In a corner of the shop was a sandblaster cabinet. Suddenly, I had the stupid idea of putting a book in there. And that was it. Within seconds, the whole project unfolded.

Please tell us a bit about your collaboration with Wired UK and creation of the Black Tides project.

Tom Cheshire, one of the associate editors of WIRED, wrote me one day, saying that he loved my work and inquiring about my future projects. Off the top of my head and half jokingly, I told him that I had the idea of doing a piece with a pile of their magazines (that was not true). He picked up on the idea and suddenly, a pile of magazines was being shipped to my studio. I had had a lot of offers for commissions—all involving my work with books—and I refused them all because they all made me so sad. People were trying to use my work to fit their agendas but the collaboration with WIRED truly inspired me because it fit perfectly with a project I had on my bench for a while, and for which I had found no outlet. The Great Black Tides project is the continuation of The Great Wall project. It gives flesh to a short story written in the mode of an archeology of the future.

The first piece that came out of this project is WIRELAND. It is both ironic and beyond irony. It is ironic that a high-tech magazine would include such a low-tech work in their pages—and foremost a type of work that looks so critically at the ideologies of progress. And it is beyond irony even, because the piece is beautiful. It is beautiful for mysterious reasons but I like to think that the way Tom Cheshire trusted me was a big factor in the success of the enterprise. So if there is a message in all this, I would like to think that it is this: never stop relating to people who defend worldviews, which seem to contradict yours. There is a common factor beyond all points of view.

In addition to your sculptures, you also paint. Please tell us a bit about your painting process and what inspires your fog series.

The 19th century painter and emblematic figure of Romanticism, Caspar David Friedrich, said, “The eye and fantasy feel more attracted by nebulous distance than by that which is close and distinct in front of us.” That sums it up all very nicely. What is blurred and foggy attracts your eye because you want to know what is behind that veil. It is a dynamic prop to set you in motion.

Your work frequently explores themes of the ephemeral, surreal and nostalgic. What draws you to these themes and influences them?

The Great Nostalgia is my main resource. It is not nostalgia about a lost golden age (which never existed). It is the nostalgia, here and now, of the missing half. We live between two contradictory and simultaneous worldviews: the participant and the observer. I work along the thesis that all of humanity’s joy and sorrow come out of this basic schism, something most of the great religions (Buddhism, Sufism, etc.) evoke abundantly.

My work is existential. It may depict landscapes that inspire serenity, but this is the serenity that you arrive at after traversing life crisis. You can paint a flower as a hobby, but you can also paint a flower as you come back from war. The same flower, apparently, but not really the same.

Could you please share your thoughts on the theme of the Guan Yin project and how it manifested in the exhibited pieces?

Originally the project was a commission for a local biennale here in Quebec, an event that celebrates linen. The theme of that biennale was “Touch”. I started with used rags, the ones that are used by mechanics and that are called “wipers”. I started by sowing them together without really knowing what I was doing. I was attracted to the different shades of these rags. They are all of a different grey, due to the numerous exposures to grease and the subsequent washings but meanwhile, my mother died. I was with her when she gave her last breath. Needless to say, that gave the project a totally different color.

So, I decided that this project would help me pass through the mourning of this loss. I decided against all reason—you don’t do that in contemporary art— that I would carve a statue of Guan Yin, the Chinese name for the Bodhisattva of compassion in Buddhist lore. It took me four months. I had never carved a statue in wood. Finally, the statue came out of a syncretic version of the original. It is still faithful to one of the avatars of these icons but there is a bit of the Virgin Mary in there. Then, I built an altar over the statue and put the altar on this 16×16 feet tablecloth made of 500 used rags. The piece was first shown in an historic Catholic church which was almost a statement about the possibility of an inter-faith dialogue—even if that was far from my concern at the time when I put it up there. To me, these rags, with the hands of these women over them, became the metaphor of our human condition. As a Japanese proverb says, “The best words are the ones you did not say.”

“Attacher les roches aux nuages” will run through 12 August 2012 at the Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinte.

Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinte

495, Avenue Saint-Simon

Saint-Hyacinthe (Quebec), J2S 5C3

May 21

What do designers like to eat?

Posted in: Uncategorized

Last year, CR’s Patrick blogged about how two features in our August issue mentioned the importance of “lunchtime arrangements” in studio culture, and many of our readers concurred. Now a new book, What’s Cooking? asks 28 designers specifically about the food they like, and for their favourite recipes…

For studios where designers sit working at a desk for most of the day, the chance to be together at lunch can be an important communal time. Design itself is also like cooking in many respects. Different ingredients go into following a brief, or recipe, with the process being – as Korean designer and academic Chang Sik Kim writes in this design-led cookery book – “not about mixing, but integration, harmony and balance.”

So what sustains the famous designers featured in What’s Cooking?

Well, Wim Crouwel, whose mealtime activities while at Total Design in the 60s were revealed in the aforementioned issue of CR, starts off proceedings with an admission: “I cannot even bake an egg”. But he follows this up by pointing readers to a Dutch wintertime staple, Stamppot boerenkool met worst, and its a simple recipe.

Russian graphic designer, Vladimir Chaika, offers up two different borsch recipes (with a frozen glass of vodka as a tempting addition), while Wally Olins praises the theatrics of Japanese cooking, and Niklaus Troxler extols the original Birchermüesli (don’t call it muesli!) designed by Zurich-based health food pioneer, Dr. Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Brenner (1867-1939).

Not all the recommendations are ones that Dr. Max would necessarily endorse. For example, Martin Lambie-Nairn advocates “cuisine’s answer to democracy”, “this most excellent of English dishes” – the all-day breakfast. And Michael Wolff likes to “keep it simple”, something that “good fry-ups in cheap cafes” can certainly provide.

Wolff also offers some thoughts on the importance of food and the communal experience within a studio environment, remembering how Wolff Olins’ hospitality became a significant part of how clients experienced the company. “For me, the quality of food in a design company is a good indicator of the quality of imagination and creativity,” he writes. “Ordinary and tasteless food usually means boring work.”

While Paula Scher opts for a Jumbledlaya, a Jamabalaya-style dish which is apparently simple to make (“chopping and stirring”) but boasts a hefty set of ingredients, there is a definite purist notion to the some of the choices, too.

Critic Steven Heller poetically exalts the simplicity of the poached egg (“poaching is much less violent than frying or scrambling or omeleting or baking – all requiring the egg to touch hot metal and cosmic pain”) and, perhaps most revealing of her own approach to graphic design practice, Margaret Calvert offers a fantastic treatise on the simplicity of spaghetti, served only with a sauce of garlic, tomato and oregano (and a few other herbs).

The book is ring-bound, wipe-clean, and clearly designed to be used in the kitchen. With that, I think a couple of humble ‘poachies’ are in order.

What’s Cooking? Famous Designers On Food is published by Baseline Magazine; £17 (including P&P). See baselinemagazine.com.

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May 21

Kessels Kramer don’t like advertising: hear why

Posted in: Uncategorized

Don’t like advertising? This could be the book for you. KesselsKramer is launching its latest tome, Advertising For People Who Don’t Like Advertising, next week in London with a talk by KK creative directors Erik Kessels and Dave Bell, along with HHCL founder Steve Henry

According to the blurb for the book “Despite many years spent in the heart of the advertising industry, KesselsKramer have always had a love/hate relationship with the business, and have repeatedly questioned the meaning of advertising and challenged its conventions. Now, KK have decided to write a book about these attitudes, with a little help from the people they admire.”

Described as “partly a creative handbook and partly a hunt to find new ways to think about communications” Advertising For People Who Don’t Like Advertising contains contributions from Alex Bogusky, Stefan Sagmeister and Anthony Burrill as well as from HHCL founder Steve Henry. “This book describes how to make something you like out of something you don’t. As well as drawing on its own experiences, KesselsKramer listens and learns from those who doubt the advertising industry” apparently. More here.

Henry, Erik Kessels and Dave Bell will be presenting a talk about the book, hosted by its publisher Laurence King, at King’s Place in London on Monday, May 28. Tickets are £9.50, available here.

CR is awaiting a review copy of the book and will post a review once we have received it.

May 18

The Bike-Owner’s Handbook

Posted in: handbook, maintenance

A small but mighty companion for two-wheeled maintenance

While biking vets are likely to know a gear set like the back of their hand, others are probably flummoxed when it comes to simple maintenance issues like a punctured tire or a stretched brake cable. “The Bike-Owner’s Handbook” is a cleverly designed, travel-sized folio that guides bikers through the most common operations they will encounter on the road. Simple illustrations and anatomical breakdowns serve to familiarize the uninitiated in processes like tire replacement, chain tension adjustment and bar tape wrapping.

Peter Drinkell wrote the book with empathy for the neophyte. While he is a fairly accomplished tinkerer, he notes the “finickiness” of bicycles as something that often perplexes riders. The goal of the pocket companion is not so much to make you a two-wheeled savant as it is to improve the riding experience: “Once you get in tune with your bike, it will change the way you cycle. You’ll be able to treat it with kindness—checking tire pressure, brakes and chain regularly, keeping it running smoothly, and rewarding you with a much more enjoyable ride. You might also find yourself noting your environment a little more closely—keeping an eye out for glass or grit on the roads, carefully avoiding potholes and rocky surfaces.”

Drinkell’s recommendations expose the essential tools of a bike owner, ensuring that readers will have a patch and sandpaper on hand the next time they run a flat. The book also saves valuable time, replacing trips to the repair shop with do-it-yourself chain lubrication and brake pad replacement. Drinkell’s simple advice and the book’s straightforward layout make this a real boon as dusty wheels come out of winter storage.

The Bike-Owner’s Handbook is available from Cicada and on Amazon. See more images of the book in our slideshow.

May 17

Eat London 2

Posted in: octopusbooks, Olympics, travelguides

The ultimate foodie guide for this Olympic season

In the lead-up to the Olympic games in London this summer, a superlatively comprehensive guide to the best of the city’s food has just landed. Eat London 2 revamps the original 2007 edition with a new and updated array, taking the reader through the most toothsome digs in 15 London neighborhoods. The mouthwatering arrangement is the product of restaurateurs Peter Prescott and Terence Conran, who present the book as their personal guide to restaurants of the British capital.

While the recent economic climate may have lead to mass penny-pinching, the recession has not dimmed the vibrancy of the UK’s cafe, food and restaurant revolution. With foodie havens opening their doors daily, the streets of London have never been more plentiful. Cheap eats and Michelin stars fill the city, and with all the options around, a guide like this is indispensable to residents and tourists alike. The fold-out maps guide you through London’s labyrinthine streets, giving direction without the stigma of a traditional guidebook.

Whether you’re into food carts, gastropubs or fine French cuisine, the collection’s range has something for everyone in each neighborhood. To augment the directory, quotations from notable chefs and recipes for signature dishes are plated up alongside restaurant descriptions. Those who can’t make it to London will be sated by preparing a homemade dish of cuttlefish with broad beans and mint from Moro or Dover sole with Beurre Maître d’Hôtel from Lutyens.

Insider details for city eats are also given by notable local chefs. According to Chris Galvin of Galvin La Chapelle, “London is the greatest melting pot of ethnic cuisine in the world today and finally, we are blessed with lots of ‘young guns’ cooking and serving daring dishes and concepts.”

Eat London 2 is available from Octopus Books and on Amazon.

May 17

Seventy ways to start a novel

Posted in: Uncategorized

Neil Donnelly‘s treatment of the opening page of Great Expectations evokes the layout of a tabloid newspaper

In GraphicDesign&‘s first book, Page 1: Great Expectations, 70 designers reinterpret the opening page of the Charles Dickens classic. The results reveal much about the decisions designer’s face in setting any text, and what effect these choices have on reader experience…

Perhaps one of the more unlikely, certainly more experimental, tie-ins with this year’s Dickens bicentenary, the decision to dissect the opening of his 1861 novel came about because of the references to lettering on its first page. At the beginning of the story, Pip Pirrip’s search for clues towards his own identity has led him to imagine how his parents might have looked, based on the shapes of the letterforms on their tombstones. (“The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair.”)

So in Page 1: Great Expectations, what may at first seem like rather a repetitive read, the opening page of the novel really serves as the sample material from which the designers work from, with each interpretation of the page offering up a different approach and affect.

Using Caslon, A Practice For Everyday Life built on the symbolism contained within the opening; the obelisk glyphs standing for the five gravestones of Pip’s siblings

While there are, perhaps understandably, a number of examples that take a conventional approach to the typography – set in a range of faces from Caslon (above) and Arnhem Pro Blond, to Fabiol and Miller – there is also a range of more outlandish and conceptual approaches, which occasionally push the boundaries of legibility, let alone a sense of linear narrative. But more often these experiments explore the wider notions of reader interaction and even challenge the preconceptions we bring to the experience of reading.

Julian Morey (abc-xyz) used Helvetica Neue 65 Medium to reimagine Dickens for tablet devices

In Aaron Merrigan and Fred North‘s concept, for example, the text is set over both halves of the page, but readers have to read along with a friend sat opposite, in order to read each alternate word of the sentences. Jon Barnbrook meanwhile, tongue firmly in cheek, has reorganised the words of the opening page in terms of their frequency, the grammar structure, and the use of sentiment which might manipulate the reader’s emotions.

Susanne Dechant has detached the words from the page and rearranged them in alphabetical order, so the opening line runs as “a a a a a a a Above all Also am an and and and and and”. Vivóeusébio studio, however, reduced the page to its initial word, “My”, apparently as a way of “emphasising Pip’s great expectations and delaying the readers’.”

Ian Noble set his text in Mrs Eaves and used symbols to convey a second level of information about the relationships in the novel

Individually, many of these unconventional approaches could appear just a touch indulgent, but as part of a collection of treatments they work as another (esoteric) voice in the larger mix, and as an interesting counterpoint to the more straightforward and accessible versions of the text.

Workshop’s approach was to create a ‘tipped in’ version of All The Year Round, the weekly journal in which Dickens’ novel was first serialised

And some approaches tell us more about the life of the text itself. Alexander Cooper and Rose Gridneff of Workshop, for example, reference the genesis of Dickens’ novel, which first appeared in the weekly publication, All The Year Round. When the story came to be published in book form, the first edition didn’t sell particularly well so publishers Chapman and Hill ‘tipped in’ replacement title pages stating that these were new editions, when in fact they were actually from the existing print run. By the end of 1861, Workshop explain, five of these so called ‘new’ editions of Great Expectations had been published.

In looking at the novel’s movement from an ephemeral state (a weekly magazine) to a more permanent one (a bound book), Workshop address how the format of a text, let alone how that text is displayed, informs a reading. As with the other 69 versions that tell of Pip’s first reading of the gravestone letterforms, context is everything.

Page 1: Great Expectations is published by GraphicDesign& and is currently available for the offer price of £12.50 from graphicdesignand.com. After May 26 the book will be £15. The CR iPad app will also be showing a selection of different treatments from the book very soon.

May 16

Bill Hunt

Posted in: billhunt, theunseeneye, tintype

Our conversation with the consummate collector on the thrill of the hunt

For anyone working in the area of fine art photography, Bill Hunt is a familiar name. The self-described “champion of photography” has demonstrated an unrivaled passion for the medium as a curator, dealer and collector for almost 40 years. Hunt’s photography collection is nearly as infamous within the field as the man himself. Ranging from anonymous images from the 19th century to modern masterpieces by the likes of Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon, the pictures all share one thing in common–as Hunt says, they are “magical, heart-stopping images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen.”

Earlier this year, highlights from Hunt’s collection appeared in a beautiful and quite hefty book called “The Unseen Eye“, with thoughtful commentary alongside the images. We got the chance to talk to Hunt about his collection, pulling inspiring fodder from the book to spur the conversation.

“Photography is revelatory, both as revelation and as something to revel in.” What drew you to start collecting photography, especially at a time when photography didn’t have a lot of clout as an art form?

On some level I have always been a gatherer of stuff—shells, books, musicals—so that gene was there. But I didn’t start out to collect; I just bought a photograph, and then another, and then another until one day I asked, “Holy shit, what’s happening?” Then you give yourself permission to proceed. I thought it was funny that it was art too. Go figure.

“I like bliss, epiphany and escape. I am enthralled by the possibility of transcendence and subscribe to the belief that a large part of life is a search for meaning, or at least feeling. Sometimes this takes me to the darker side, to images that provoke a visceral response that is intoxicating and frightening.” What is it about a picture that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?

That makes your heart boom? That makes you stop in your tracks? It must be some sort of “Road to Damascus” divine moment of clarity. Look for those moments that say, “Pay attention to this because it will give your life meaning, or at least some resonance.” Un coup du foudre. Thunderbolt. Orgasm. Somehow in the midst of banality you find a moment of real sensation. It is not about beauty—although it can be. It is alarmingly like drug addiction, but real collecting is completely spiritual. Hallelujah! It is like listening to the tumblers in a lock when you try to open it. When they are lined up, you can hear it—you recognize that sound—before the door actually opens. You know you have made it in.

“Many collectors look only at so-called ‘art photography’, which is considered and aestheticized and finely printed. There is an implicit elitism here. Then there are some souls who are truly responsive to the image first and foremost. I am in this group.” I am in this group too. Can you talk about the thrill of discovering an amazing picture that may have been taken by an anonymous photographer 100 years ago?

With photographs there are so many great, crazy questions. Why did a picture get saved if it doesn’t have informational value (Who is this?) or if it has condition issues? Your trash, my treasure. Great pictures operate in a special way. You are part of some equation. The way in which a completely peculiar piece speaks to you uniquely and powerfully depends on your being a collaborator. It means something to you. Very often it is the suggestion of something that brings you in—the enigma attracts. It’s as if as you finish a puzzle you didn’t know you were working on.

In my book there is a tintype portrait of a little girl. It is sweet but what makes it chillingly grand is its condition: the silvering has fallen off or oxidized, so it looks ghostly. She is a specter. Also what’s cool is that my sister spotted it at some antique fair and she snagged it because she knew it was a good one. That’s fun when you’ve got other people out there looking too.

“Collectors are obsessed, ravenous for this one and then the next one. People who do not collect, won’t. They don’t connect with this intense, obsessive force.” I know you have moved on from collecting these images of hidden eyes, but a collector never stops collecting. Where is the focus of your passion now?

I really don’t collect now. It’s not the same. The covetous part of collecting has passed, I think. I was shocked once to answer the question “Why did I have to own them?” by saying, after some hesitation, “Because then they were MINE.”

But I still want to look and have that thrill of engagement and then I want to write and to talk about it. That interests me intensely. That’s what I collect. I want others to look too. I am still a proselytizer but without as much stuff. Collecting is a way of creating order and insulating from chaos. I don’t need it or, more to the point, want it now. I want to be lighter in my feet, ready to move. It’s different. But wow, what a thrilling experience. As I say in the book, photography changed my life, it gave me a life.

May 15

Bold, brash covers for de Beauvoir’s works

Posted in: Uncategorized

Peter Mendelsund isn’t generally known as a designer who makes garish book covers. But in his recent designs for three late works by Simone de Beauvoir, he’s done exactly that. And for good reason…

His covers for de Beauvoir’s memoirs Adieux and A Very Easy Death, and the novella collection The Woman Destroyed apparently reference the look of the handmade protest posters seen on the streets of Paris in 1968.

Bringing the look up to date, the lettering has the quality of freshly daubed marker pen, while the illustrations are in bright blocky colours – the messy imagery on The Woman Destroyed reminiscent of an early MS Paint application.

“I wanted a style that had a certain directness – and I liked the idea of co-opting the visual language of revolution for a writer who was nothing if not (philosophically, politically) revolutionary,” writes Mendelsund on his blog Jacket Mechanical. “Also the style is more or less temporally and geographically correct. The simplicity of the style made it possible for me, with my limited skills, to make them myself.”

This is an unusual direction for Mendelsund who, as an associate art director at Knopf in the US, has a reputation for producing some quite beautiful and elegant book covers for writers such as Michel Foucault, Roberto Calasso and Franz Kafka (whose entire works he recovered in 2010 – we reported on the series, here).

On his blog, Mendelsund writes that his work for the de Beauvoir project sought to be both brash and attractive at the same time. “I’ve certainly made ugly covers before; and I hope that I’ve made pretty ones,” he writes. “But it’s the coexistence of both attributes that makes me happy here.”

Mendelsund also prefaces his explanation of the cover direction with a smart essay on the relationship between de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, using a single photograph of the couple as his starting point. His blog is well worth keeping up with: see jacketmechanical.blogspot.co.uk.

In the forthcoming issue of CR, out next week, we also look at the recent phenomenon of creating ‘ugly’ design, in light of the new book edited by 2points.net, Pretty Ugly: Visual Rebellion in Design.

May 15