Hasta La Ideas

by Sam Hatmaker

When we heard about Rizzoli’s new book “Wonder Woman,” celebrating the original female superhero, we called on NYC-based fan Sam Hatmaker to lend his perspective on the icon who inspired his extensive collection. Read on to learn more about one of the more comprehensive books on the leading lady published to date.

With punchy illustrations popping off the pages, “Wonder Woman: Amazon, Hero, Icon” spans the history of the most popular super-heroine in the world of comic books. Author Robert Greenberger, a former editor at DC Comics, breaks the book down in sections: The creation of the character, her Amazonian origins, her arsenal of weapons and gadgetry, her allies and her adversaries.

Enthusiasts and aficionados will find unpublished design art and rare, alternate pieces, mostly by artist Terry Dodson, a fan favorite. But none show the actual “birth” of Wonder Woman being carved in clay (or stone) by the Amazon Queen. The book also gives cursory treatment to many of her major friends and foes, with few mentions or pictures and no real history or descriptions to help readers unfamiliar with these characters.

In fact, Greenberger barely revisits the 1970s live-action television series, the only version familiar to many audiences. Omitting even a single image of actress Lynda Carter in that famous star-spangled outfit (although perhaps for legal reasons), makes the book more suited to those looking for a fresh addition to the coffee table or for true obsessives. Wonder Woman completists will find that the trade paperback’s reprinting of the first three “Modern Age” story arcs by illustrator and writer George Pérez, who wrote the foreword, sell for a comparable price.

For the casual fan, “Amazon, Hero, Icon” packs a good deal of information and trivia, with vividly reproduced, thoughtfully organized artwork. But it seems that Greenberger really couldn’t decide what he wanted the book to be. If he wanted it to tell the unabridged story of Wonder Woman through her history in comics, he skipped too many aspects that have shaped the character. If he wanted to show her cultural relevance—why Wonder Woman continues to captivate fans old and new alike—then he needed to explore the ideals of the comic series and how they relate to the real world.

Even after 208 pages, you would still need a faithful comic reader to explain why so many people find this Amazon fascinating, hold her as their hero, or think of her as an icon. See for yourself by getting it from Amazon or
Powell’s in hardcover.

Expressing to Mom just how much you appreciate her can stump even the most clever gift-givers. To help with the last-minute quest for the perfect gift, we reached out to some of our favorite mother-and-child partnerships to see how they celebrate the holiday in their family.

Emily and Joan Sugihara

Creators of one of our favorite on-the-go essentials, Baggu‘s Emily Sugihara and her mother Joan have been crafting together since Emily was a toddler, now regularly collaborating on new bag designs. For the enterprising duo, Mother’s Day means handmade gifts and personal touches. Emily tells us about making a small storybook about their family when she was 10, told from the point of view of her then two-year-old brother Nicky. With clever captions for photos of family members, pets and favorite items, the keepsake charmed her mother to tears.

Joan fondly remembers a Mother’s Day when Emily prepared lunch for the entire family, as well as a gift she gave her own mother. While in college, Joan (a consummate seamstress) crafted a Boho-style dress out of an rose-colored Indian batik bedspread. The gift delighted her mother, who wore the dress for the rest of her life.

Allison and Rhonda Kave

Peddling pies with more flavor than those found south of the Mason-Dixon Line, First Prize Pies‘ Allison Kave attributes much of her baking knowledge to her mother Rhonda, who also delights in the dessert business with her shop, Roni-Sue’s Chocolates. You can catch the both of them on weekends at the new Hester Street Fair, where this Mother’s Day they’ll be featuring Mother’s Day items and goods to benefit breast cancer in their shared booth.

The Kave family celebrates Mother’s Day by planting annuals in the yard, a tradition that formed during Allison’s youth. They also give gifts, which usually involve activities than can be done together, such as a cooking class taught by professional pastry chef Carole Walter or brunch at the James Beard house (where the above picture was taken last year). While Allison recalls the experiences, Rhonda remembers a symbolic sculpture of a mother and daughter that she says is “one of the loveliest Mother’s Day gifts” her daughter ever gave her.

Akaash and Jasleen Mehta

Contemporary Indian artist Jasleen Mehta moved to NYC with her son Akaash when he was just a baby. Her passion inspired her son, who created “a special sketch or drawing” every year for his mother on the holiday. Now an assistant director at Eden Fine Art gallery in NYC, Akaash first work at Sotheby’s and Christies, using these experiences to give his mother the ultimate Mother’s Day gift.

For the 30-year retrospective of Jasleen’s work in India last summer, Akaash helped to curate the exhibition while also creating the 100-page catalog for the show. This massive task included sifting through interviews and news articles from the past and present, getting some of her major collectors to add additional write-ups, and going through all the images and slides of her paintings from the late ’70s to the modern day for an incredible tome chronicling her entire career—”something she has never had before.”

“Beyond the Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art” is a behemoth of a book loaded with a who’s-who of the contemporary urban art scene edited by Patrick Nguyen and Stuart. Surveying the work from figureheads such as Aaron Rose, Wooster Collective, Deitch Projects, Stephan Doitschinoff, Faile, Brad Downey and Swoon, in-depth interviews supplement loads of color images and artist biographies to create a 400-page tome of information.

Below, Cool Hunting gets an exclusive preview of the book (it comes out in the U.S. on 20 May 2010) with this interview excerpt conducted by Nguyen with New York-based artist Steve Powers, a.k.a. ESPO.

Londoners can catch the U.K. book launch party the Friday, 7 May 2010, from 6-9 pm at Phillips de Pury & Company on Howick Place. For those in New York, the event takes place Thursday, 27 May 2010, from 6-9 pm at Deitch Projects.

Pick up the book from Gestalten or pre-order from Amazon.

What led you to become an artist in the first place?

It was just raw, desperate hunger for attention. Because I grew up in a household with a lot of other children, drawing was a way to separate myself from the pack. So I got into it as a three-year-old and have been a compulsive drawer ever since.

Is it true that you were an art school dropout? If so, why did you quit?

Yeah, I dropped out of two different art schools. I just had a sneaking suspicion as I was handing over my tuition that you probably didn’t need anything they were teaching at art school to be an artist. Like being a musician, either you have it or you don’t. If you have the talent and you put in the hours and you get lucky, art school’s not going to help you anyway.

When did you start doing graffiti?

I was doing graffiti as a teenager, basically as a sophomore in high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It was something new to me. It was just brutally breaking out of the neighborhoods of New York and Philadelphia and starting to go national with “Style Wars” and “Subway Art.” And it had everything I wanted in art: color, design, line, it was illegal, but not that illegal—all the things that captivate teenagers. Typically in those days, in the mid-eighties in Philadelphia and New York, it was really a young person’s game. They’d start at 12 and were done at 18. I started a little late at 16, and I didn’t really finish until I was 30.

Continue reading and see more images after the jump.

Could you describe some of the background to the ESPO tags you used to do on storefront grates in New York?

At a New Year’s party in 1997, I got in an argument with a graffiti video director/producer. I basically laid out the theory that I could paint anywhere in New York any time I wanted, and get over without getting arrested for it. He said, “Absolutely not. It can’t be done.” It was something I’d been thinking about for a while. At the time, Mayor Giuliani wanted people to be responsible for the graffiti on their own properties and for owners to be fined if they didn’t remove it. Well, the property owners in New York are an extremely powerful group of people, so that never really came to pass. But I liked the idea of doing something so fundamentally benign like painting over graffiti and then turning it into graffiti at the last minute. I didn’t anticipate the reaction it would get, but once I’d done it a couple of times, I decided to keep going and ended up doing around 75 grates. The rule of thumb in New York is that if you’re doing something new, you can’t just do it once or twice; otherwise, the next person’s going to pick it up and take all the credit for it. So in doing it as many times as I could, I really held on to the idea for myself.

When did you stop painting illegally and become a “respectable member of society?”

I stopped doing graffiti in ’99. I’d been painting for 15 years by that point and had done everything two or three times over. I really just wanted to focus on making art. To me, the term graffiti art is an oxymoron. Graffiti does its own thing; it doesn’t need to aspire to anything more than graffiti. It’s cool if it does, but I think calling yourself a graffiti artist places an unnecessary burden on you. You’re probably not going to make that good graffiti, and you’re probably not going to make that good art if you’re trying to do both at the same time.

The career trajectory of Milwaukee, WI-born artist Mathew Cerletty is a curious one. In the early 2000s, the Boston University graduate made a precocious impact on critics and curators with a technical skill lending his surreal figurative paintings and drawings an unnerving air of realism. More recent work however, since his move to New York City in 2003, uses logos and text as a springboard into abstraction—though the symbolic weight of a 2009 pencil drawing of
Philip Seymour Hoffman, or a painting of New York Times columnist David Brooks from the same year, bridge the painter’s seemingly divergent approaches.

Cerletty’s portrait for “Stuff,” an upcoming short film from the creative team behind the Kid America Club, cartoonishly reprises his early works. (Click image at right for detail.) Director and writer Frank Sisti Jr. approached Cerletty to do a painting of the titular live-action character, the imaginary monster friend of Felix, who’s a 30-something burnout from Queens. The domineering Stuff forces Felix (played by Kevin Corrigan) to do several projects, including the portrait.

“He was a little worried that I’d be offended that a painting was being treated as a joke, but I think he knew that that’s exactly what would make me want to do it,” Cerletty said in an email. “He said the Stuff character was a dick, and being familiar with the Kid America Club, I had a good sense of what that might mean.”

Sisti instructed Cerletty to paint Stuff in a Revolutionary War getup and set it in a gold frame, getting photos together of the costume created by Jeff Roberts, who also plays him in the movie. While the oil on linen portrait likely won’t go on exhibit, it may not be a one-off.

“No plans to show it,” Cerletty said. “I’m waiting for Frankie to give me enough ideas for an entire show.”

The id rebels against the ego in Diesel’s “Be Stupid” campaign: freewheeling models enter danger zones, taunt animals and ignore the laws of gravity. But as explained in an accompanying video, the campaign’s ethos reminds us that that risk-taking, discovery, and achievement often take place without the safety net of reason.

Diesel invites you to share your most defining “Stupid” moment in its “Faces of Stupid” contest, for a chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Each week, voters on the Diesel site will choose the top five “Most Stupid” contestants. A panel of Diesel judges will determine the “Most Stupid” contestant of the bunch, who’ll walk away with a swag of gadgets: a digital camera, a Flip HD camcorder and an iPad.

On 24 May 2010, finalists from each week will compete in a showdown for the title of “Most Stupid.” The grand prize? A motorcycle trip through Europe, a shark-diving tour off the South African coast, a journey through Mongolia by train—it’s your choice.

To enter, get a “Be Stupid” sticker from a Diesel near you, stick it on your forehead, take a picture, and email it to bestupid@dieselcontest.com. You’ll automatically receive an entry form. Submissions will be accepted each week until 16 May 2010.