Hasta La Ideas

Discovered by chance on a recent trip to San Francisco, artist Amos Goldbaum caught my attention with his intricate line drawings that he applies using both traditional mediums and on t-shirts.

Goldbaum started selling his drawings on the street about three years ago, and built up his curbside shop to include prints and t-shirts. He credits his mother, who “always put a pencil in my hand when I was bored.” When asked about the drawing of his grandfather Goldbaum explains, “He’s super wrinkly which is great for line drawings and he’s also a handsome dude. I usually draw him reading or watching TV. The one with the headphones, I drew while he was listening to his iPod.”

With hand-drawn geometric shapes, Goldbaum’s drawing of a Muni street car especially stands out in bright yellow. He adds, “The Muni train drawing I did to add to the already burgeoning number of Muni-related art and t-shirts out there. I wanted to do one of the old Boeing trains that I grew up riding. They had a great shape and sweet color scheme.”

Cardboard boxes inspired another series of drawings. Goldbaum collects interestingly shaped unfolded cardboard boxes that he uses as a ready-made frame or shield to draw on. Currently Goldbaum is working on a series of water-colored pen drawings inspired by old photos found online.

You can find Amos Goldbaum and his curbside shop, where he shills his wares on Market Street and by the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Follow his Twitter feed for real-time updates. His shirts, books and prints also sell his online shop.

See more images in the gallery below.

Consisting of Harris Shper (on vox and guitar), Christine Hale (vox and keys), Al Mal (bass) and Farid Rener (drums), The Hoof & the Heel make unforgettably beautiful music that fits easily on dreamy summer playlists. Based out of Montreal, the quartet’s EP called “And All the Tigers” mixes folksy, poppy, hauntingly magical sounds to create some incredibly captivating tunes. We recently sat down with them down for a few questions, answered below.

Who’s the Hoof and who is the Heel and why?

This is a question we get a lot. Let’s just say Farid is both for now.

What’s the best show you have played?

Hard to pick just one, but an incredibly fun show was not too long ago at the Interstice loft in Griffintown. We played with Gutstrings and Peter Nevins, and everyone was just having a great time listening to music. There was no stage, so we were very close to 100 people dancing right in front of us and the energy was fantastic!

How did you meet?

Farid and Harris met through a mutual friend, then met Christine through a local promoter. She met Al when their names were picked out of a hat to play together in a band for Pop Montreal’s Rock Lotto, and voila!

Favorite song of all time (each of you) and brief description why?

Harris: “A Damn Good Disguise” by The Mendoza Line. Obviously a difficult question, but this is a song I can listen to forever and not get tired of. If I listen to it when I’m happy, I get happier. If I listen when I’m sad, I get sadder. It has a very simple melody and a lo-fi production, and the lyrics are beautiful and ugly and perfect.

Christine: I have two—”Jesus, Etc.” by Wilco because of Tweedy’s lyrics, voice and the overall production—and “Wally, Egon & the Models in the Studio” by Rachel’s because the cello somehow wraps around my heart and squeezes. Sometimes you just don’t have words for how music makes you feel. Both are so bittersweet, simple and honest.

Continue reading and check out a video after the jump.

Upcoming tours or plans?

NXNE in June, U.S. tour in July/August, mixed with local shows as well. Recording, writing, etc.

Why Montreal?

Love this city! So many creative, kind, beautiful people and the cold just makes us enjoy the summer more.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Work. [Harris is a recording engineer; Christine is an illustrator/designer.]

Who writes the songs?

Because it’s been hard to get us all in the same room at the same time other than practices and shows, Harris been writing the melodies/lyrics so far, and then we all work out arrangements very quickly in our practices. We all usually write our own parts with input from everyone in the band once the song is put on the table.

Anything else we should know?

Share our music with friends—if you don’t have enough cash at the moment to buy it from iTunes or the like, send us an email and we’ll send you a digital copy of the album! We love having people come out to our shows and want everyone to enjoy the music, thanks!

In a well-timed moment of cross-cultural exchange, the Corey Helford Gallery partnered with the Bristol City Museum and Gallery to put on a mega American show at the latter’s space, featuring some of today’s heaviest hitting street, pop and fine artists, including several never-before-seen works. Aptly called “Art From the New World,” the exhibit (opening this Saturday, 15 May 2010) includes work from Ron English (pictured), Gary Baseman, Mark Ryden and Camille Rose Garcia, among others. Check out the slideshow below for more images.

“Like the Arts Decoratif of Paris in 1925 or the bright, poppy England of the 1960s, America is gushing forth a new wave of taste and style born of Pop Iconic culture, expanding American diversity, resistance to the mainstream art world and a need to communicate to an art audience looking for relevance in America’s Age of Uncertainty,” said Corey Helford’s owner and curator, Jan Corey Helford, in a statement.

Buff Monster, in addition to painting murals, built a 15-foot-tall ice cream cone balloon sculpture. Bug-eyed characters from Baseman’s works will attend the opening (pictured above) and mingle with patrons.

Museumgoers can also expect to see Mike Stilkey’s painting done on the spines of 2,000 stacked books and Todd Schorr’s “An Ape Allegory,” a surreal artwork full of creative interpretations (pictured top right). AJ Foski (pictured above), Shag and Kent Williams also make up the lineup of works will be spread throughout the museum.

The show runs through August 22.

Thankfully, not everyone has outgrown the shoebox dioramas of their school days. Opening today, 12 May 2010, at Manhattan’s Murphy and Dine gallery, “Small Is Beautiful” showcases miniature cities painstakingly constructed by five artists. Curated by Scion and Theme Magazine, the accomplished group builds upon the headlining motif, tapping into themes such as childhood, urbanism and cultural diversity.

Acclaimed for his wallpaper designs, prints and decorative arts, Dan Funderburgh (pictured below right) uses 2-D cutouts to create a layered 3-D metropolis (pictured below left) inspired by Maurice Sendak’s book “In the Night Kitchen.”

Lori Nix is known for building and photographing epic dioramas of natural and modern disasters. In a CH video, Nix gives a tour of her Brooklyn studio. Her architectural model (sketch pictured below left, model pictured top and below right) is a dystopic vision of the future from the 1940s.

Ji Lee blurs art and commercial design. At CH’s 99% Conference in 2009, he gave a talk about balancing creativity and commerce. Lee’s small-scale work (pictured below) deals with adolescence as an out-of-body experience.

The show also includes wall vignettes by Josh Cochran and runs until 16 May 2010.

So what did you do this weekend? Anything productive? Anything creative? Whatever satisfying thing you achieved, whether it was mowing the lawn, painting a wall or baking some bread, it’s hard to beat the sheer audaciousness of the bright young media things in San Francisco who turned a magazine around in 48 hours, resulting in the inspired 48 Hour Magazine.

Yup, just in case you haven’t heard, i.e. if you’re not on Twitter, the concept of a working weekend was taken to new levels over the past few days by the 48 Hour Magazine team, who came up with what they described as “a raucous experiment in using new tools to erase media’s old limits.” Which is to say that they decided to push all previously understood publishing boundaries and attempted to “write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days.”

The great news is their experiment worked! In fact it more than worked, it was an outrageous success, and I say that without having even seen the magazine yet. But if you’ve been following the progress of 48 Hour Magazine, you will know that the energy, enthusiasm and community bonding the idea provoked in writers, photographers and illustrators around the world was awe-inspiring.

For all those creatives who’ve been understandably down on traditional media and the publishing world of late, this was the loudest wake up call of their lives. In the 10 days before kick off, over 6,000 people signed up to take part the 48 Hour Magazine experiment and during the production time the editorial team received 1,502 submissions. That’s a lot of people crafting and creating for this unpredictable and unprecedented concept of a 48 hour magazine.

The energy, experienced variously through their Twitter, Ustream and Blog was infectious and I, along with the other 1,501 crazy kids who submitted, was swept up in the creative possibilities of what new media technologies can produce.

48 Hour Magazine’s greatest triumph is that it motivated thousands of people to create something original, without knowing whether or not it would be used, just for the pure unbridled sense of joy, fun and pumping adrenalin that comes from being under a tight deadline and in the race.

The audacious 48 Hour Magazine editors Heather Champ, Dylan Fareed, Mat Honan, Alexis Madrigal, Derek Powazek, Sarah Rich, Joe Brown plus thousands of contributors made it happen. This informative interview with Gizmodo reveals the staff’s process in designing Issue Zero, aptly themed Hustle.

48 Hour Magazine is available from MagCloud. All the contributors and info about the magazine are available on the blog.

Production photos by Heather Champ