Hasta La Ideas

Bike spokes upcycled into handy oversized paperclips

Faced with high unemployment in Switzerland, poverty in Africa and a hobby of collecting old bikes, social entrepreneur Paolo Richter started
Gump- und Drahtesel, a program in Bern which puts the unemployable to work restoring and upcycling bicycles. Most of the bikes go to Africa, but among the products the workshop produces—
rubberbands made from bike tires, bike rims repurposed as hangers—this clip might be the most elegant.

The design plays off the classically useful shape of a paperclip, poetically named Memory, substituting a bike spoke for the metal and made by hand. At just over 3″ tall, it comes in handy as a bookmark, money clip, for papers or any number of other clipping purposes.

Pick it up from Uncommon Goods for $10 or check out Gump- und Drahtesel’s store Pico Bollo next time you’re in Bern.

See how five of our favorite creatives celebrate the sappiest holiday of the year

While some bitterly cast off the romantic holiday as nothing more than an excuse to consume, Valentine’s Day is a great way to remind people how special they are. We tapped some of our favorite creatives to see how they make the holiday unique.

Artist Dodi Wexler has been making and sending valentines since she was 19-years-old, starting with 10 and now crafting more than 200 each year. Wexler explains “I started making the Valentines because I always was so saddened that I never had a secret admirer or anyone amazing asking me to be their valentine on Valentine’s Day. As I made them, I got so wrapped up in the production and sending them to people, that I forgot about being sad. The giving made me really happy, especially because I know how much of a bummer Valentine’s Day can be.”

She also sees the creative merit in her venture, saying “They are a great way to discover new materials and try out new techniques in a doodle without the pressure of a meaningful piece lurking over my shoulder.”

Jesse Levison spends much of her time silkscreen printing cards for Gold Teeth Brooklyn, a line she runs with her friend Emily Joiner. When we asked what she had up her sleeve this holiday, Levison replied with the “damn crafty” gift she received from her boyfriend Alex, a welder at furniture design studio Uhuru. The sculpture consists of a metal box, which houses a fold-up metal heart etched with a personal message.

Capturing the spirit of the holiday in ink, Vanessa Prager eschewed her eerie tendencies in favor of a more romantic theme, one that channels her playful and thoughtful personality. The classic card (the image above right is the inside message) serves as both a personal greeting and a keepsake for years to come.

Graphic designer Matt Van Ekeren teamed up with Italian illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli to create a charming animation for Valentine’s Day. “Let Love Grow” is a simple way to show that special someone you care.

A psychologist and artist “who sometimes suffers insomnia,” Ilana Simons began crafting clay creatures to keep her company at night. For Valentine’s Day she put her late-night hobby to use, filling an empty chocolate box with little characters for her boyfriend to help him with “fighting a chocolate addiction.”

Brooklyn folk collective Fort Makers create wearable art in their latest venture

Combining art and fashion in the literal sense, The Dress Project is a creative endeavor in dressmaking using silk and cotton fabric hand-painted by artist Naomi Clark of Brooklyn’s playful cohort, Fort Makers. Clark, along with co-founder Nana Spears, tapped fashion designer Lauren Nevada to create the dress form—a simple button-down shirt-dress intended to convey a sense of all-American style. “As we brought our ideas together, we realized this design would, on one hand, be the most symbolic piece we could find,” explains Nevada, while also noting that the relaxed silhouette (requiring few seams), would complement the garment’s identity as a wearable canvas.

The one-off frocks showcase Clark’s vibrant artistry, a form of object metamorphosis executed through the use of organically painted geometric shapes and patterns, bold brushstrokes and lively, often eye-popping colors. “The results are a wonderful surprise,” adds Nevada. “We found compositions hidden under the collars and button tabs sometimes—details that make them very special.”

The dresses will be available at Bird boutique in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhod, which will also be a temporary gallery space for pieces from Fort Makers’ inaugural venture, The Blanket Project. Employing a similar perspective and aesthetic towards textile art, the two-year-old collective self-dubbed “urban folk artists” source secondhand wool camping blankets from flea markets, garage sales and eBay, which are then cut, dyed, and sewn into new quilts.

The dresses will retail for $745 at Bird, as well as at Louis in Boston.

Bauhaus-inspired glassware by a Portland-based artist

Sourcing glass from as far off as Sweden or as locally as Washington state, glass artist Lynn Read works with glass from a variety of different sources (sometimes even old beer bottles) to produce a similarly wide array of pieces in his Portland, OR studio. His style ranges from intricate detailing reminiscent of a medieval tapestry to smooth and simple housewares in shades of deep cobalt blue and shimmering gold.

“I use different glasses for a variety of results,” Read explains, “like color, clarity, viscosity, cost, quality and its ability to be tweaked.”

Read got his start at Baltimore’s Maryland Institute College of Art, starting by studying sculpture and painting but soon taking up an outside apprenticeship to work with glass. Rather than blowing glass into a mold—perhaps the influence of his sculpture background—he shapes each red-hot piece (at about 2150°F) with soft touches and gentle air pressure.

Read produces two separate lines in the Vitreluxe studio. The clean, simple, Bauhaus-inspired line of housewares starts at about $14 a piece and can be found in retail stores all over the country. His signature line starts at about $1000 per piece and can be found in museums and galleries, such as the Seattle Art Museum and the Williams College of Art in Massachusetts. For more information, check out his website.

Four experimental fashion designers’ hand-built reinterpretations of classic Benzes

Berlin’s fashion week might not have the glitter of other fashion capitols, but then again Milan and Paris don’t have Recollection Quartett. The project, under the supervision of art director Frederik Heyman, tasked four of fashion’s more indie designers—Henrik Vibskov, Bernhard Willhelm, Mikio Sakabe and Peter Pilotto—with visually exploring how four cars from Mercedes-Benz’ “Young Classics” collection play against the contemporary context. Sponsored by the luxury automaker and Antwerp’s fashion museum MoMU, Heyman helped execute each designer’s unique vision with hand-built sets.

Henrik Vibskov‘s interpretation of the Mercedes S 123 expresses its popularity as a family car thanks to its spacious trunk. First released in 1977, the model is regarded as one of the first “lifestyle” models and a precursor to the wagons seen on streets today. Vibskov’s take on the car sees an interesting use of the anarchist’s palette of black, white and red.

Bernhard Willhelm was given the SL-Class Roadster 107 from 1971 (later updated in 1985) as his source material. An accessible sports-mobile with a powerful engine and a removable hardtop made this a big hit in the States. At the same time it enjoyed a nice slice of the limelight as the go-to car for bachelors or ladies of leisure. Willhelm’s installation sees two happily buff mannequins towing the car and a goddess-warrior-like woman in front of a large frothy wave.

Mikio Sakabe revisits the W 115 Saloon, which still operate on many European and Asian streets as taxis. Reliable, yet considered rather uninspiring, it’s a cultural icon in its home country and is typically found in the hands of company carpool drivers. Sakabe’s vision takes the business dimension of the car quite literally, save for spidery wooden legs sprouting from the windscreen like creepy typewriter arms.

Peter Pilotto gets the diplomat’s favorite to play with—the S-Class Coupé from the W126 series. While the straight lines scream ’80s urbanity, this was a subtle masterclass in quiet luxury with the long hood hiding a small coal factory of an engine. A bent-wood canopy adorns the car in Pilotto’s installation while horse silhouettes take the place of shadows in the work, hinting at the concealed pulling power under the hood.

The exhibition is open during the Berlin Fashion Week, from 19 to 23 January 2011 at the Stiftung Oper in Berlin.