Not What You’d Expect

Spain’s ancient Andalusian city of Córdoba is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and not the place that you’d expect to find cutting-edge modern architecture. But away from the city’s glorious historic quarter the Madrid-based architecture group ParadesPino has developed a clever, multi-purpose community space. The Centro Abiertode de Actividades Ciudanas is now home to a twice a week market and a variety of public events.

The steel umbrellas, with diameters between 21 and 45 feet, bring color and a bit of fun to the city’s dull modern center. You can watch a fascinating Youtube video on the design, development and installation of the project.

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A Novel Idea

Germany

 

Heathrow Airport

 

Paris

 

Japan

 

Madrid

 

Tokyo

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As requested, More Book Art

Artist and advertising art director Su Blackwell’s stunning book art is based on her intricate scenes crafted by carefully cutting and folding book pages. Blackwell brilliantly reinvents the text to bring an entirely new dimension to storytelling.

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Those zany Ukranians

Ukranian photographer and social commentator Danil Polevoy alters vintage photographs by adding at least one significant anachronism. Some are funny, some ironic, some bizarre and some challenging.

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Mapa de Mundo (del Facebook)

An imaginative Facebook worker, Paul Butler (no relation) has created an astounding world map based on a visualization of Facebook “friendships”.

Butler defined weights for every pair of cities as the function of Euclidean distance between them and the number of friends between each. He then plotted lines between the pairs by weight, so that city pairs with the most Facebook friendships were drawn on top.

He used a color ramp from black to blue to white, with individual line color based on weight. He also transferred some of the lines to wrap around the map.

It’s noteworthy that Russia, Central Asia and China are so isolated in the Facebook world.

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Don’t really know why…

I really don’t know why Japan’s Muji stores has the “Santa vending machine” on the streets of Barcelona.

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Have You Ever Wondered…

Have you ever wondered what art museum guards are thinking about all day ? Well, now you can find out.

There’s a new art and literature magazine being published by professional museum guards. In fact, everyone involved with Sw!pe writers, editors and artists—are now, or were previously employed as guards at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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First Cut Is The Deepest

Like most booklovers ( and bookdealers ), I still cringe a little at the notion of cutting-up a book for art. But the brilliant work by Japanese artist Ryuta Iida is definitely engaging. With just a knife and an old book he manages to turn paper back to wood.

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Things In Books

Many thanks to Evan Smythe for the link to the diverting site Things In Books

photo of Terry Pratchett in Science of Discworld

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Hand, Voice & Vision in NYC

The Grolier Club will present an exhibition featuring artists’ books by thirty-six artists published over thirty years by Women’s Studio Workshop. Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop will be on display at the Grolier Club from December 8, 2010 to February 5, 2011. Curated by Kathleen Walkup, the exhibition is a comprehensive retrospective featuring some of the most influential contemporary book artists in America.

The forty works in Hand, Voice & Vision celebrate three facets that characterize the artist’s book program at Women’s Studio Workshop: the hand-made mark of the book-maker, the unique voices and viewpoints of a broad and diverse range of artists, and the visionary nature of artwork that forges new directions in the medium of book arts.

Since 1974, Women’s Studio Workshop has provided close to two hundred artists, both emerging and established, with studio facilities and technical expertise to produce limited edition artists’ books. Currently the publishing program at WSW adds five new artists’ books each year. The variety in form and content of the books in the exhibition demonstrates the breadth of the Workshop’s publications, reflecting an assortment of ideas, topics, and methods spanning thirty years of women responding to pressing political and cultural issues, as well as themes of a social or personal nature.

Women’s Studio Workshop was founded by four women artists – Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge – with a mission to operate and maintain an artists’ workspace that encourages the voices and visions of individual women artists, to provide professional opportunities for artists, and to promote programs designed to stimulate public involvement with, awareness of, and support for the visual arts.

Each of the four women founders are still very much involved in the day-to-day operation of the studios. Together with a vibrant new generation of staff, they continue to provide programming in accordance with the original mission: residencies, fellowships, internships, and classes have become the basis for professional programs that attract artists from around the world. Public programs include Art-in-Education in collaboration with Ulster County school districts, and community workshops.

About the Curator: Kathleen Walkup is Professor of Book Art and director of the Book Arts Program at Mills College, where she teaches courses covering a broad range of subjects, from visible language to women in the Paris avant-garde. Walkup’s research interests include the history of women in print culture and conceptual practice in artists’ books. Her own ongoing artist’s book project is entitled “Library of Discards.”

Catalogue: An accompanying catalogue will be available for purchase. It contains essays by the exhibition curator, librarians, teachers, curators, and artists on the topic of artists’ books and WSW’s role in the field, as well as interviews with the four founders.

Location and Times: “Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop” will be on display at the Grolier Club from December 8, 2010 to February 5, 2011. The Grolier Club is located at 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022. Hours: Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Open to the public free of charge.

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