the obsessive imagist | art, design, life: June 2012

FOLLOWING THE BOUNCING BALL

This little animation, created by Sebas and Clim, is beautiful and clever. Simple words, simple animation and fantastic results.

Here's to making your own stories this weekend! Have a great one; I will see you next week.

(thanks to swissmiss for the tip)

THE ARTIST SPEAKS

Amy Poehler may not be an artist in a traditional sense (aka a visual artist) but I will be damned if she isn't an artist of comedy. I mean, have you seen Parks and Recreation?! Genius!

Learn more about Poehler here.

(thanks to A Cup of Jo for the tip.)

HERMAN MILLER WALLPAPERS

To celebrate NeoCon 2012—a cool design-focused conference held in Chicago earlier this month—Herman Miller is offering some beautiful (and free!) desktop, iPhone, and iPad wallpapers for your downloading pleasure. My personal favorite is the green and blue venn diagram; what's yours?

Download your own here.

THE WEDDING FILES: HAPPY HONEYMOON NEWS, PART TWO

Remember last week when I told you how I had been swooning over photos of Iceland for a while? Well I wasn't kidding when I said they were everywhere. Just this morning I stumbled across this great post on the NYTimes' blog, Lens, about a new documentary being filmed in the country. Artists Lindsay Blatt and Paul Taggart have decided to film the beautiful age-old autumnal custom of rounding up Iceland's wild horses--a breed found only on the island country that has a unique and fiercely protected genetic makeup.

The film looks beautiful and (if possible) makes me even more excited to embark on this adventure with my fiance. If you would like to learn more about the project you can read the article here and contribute to their Kickstarter project here.

PORTRAIT IN A SHADOW

Sometimes the simplest creation is the most impressive. 'Shadow artist' Kumi Yamashita has created this stunning installation for American Express headquarters. Each piece of paper has been selectively manipulated so that it's shadow represents a silhouette portrait of an AmEx employee. Fabulous, right?

See more of Yamashita's work here.

(thanks to Plenty of Colour for the tip)

THE WEDDING FILES: HAPPY HONEYMOON NEWS

Guess what? My hubby-to-be and I have finally decided: we are going to Iceland for our honeymoon! I have been swooning over photos of the beautiful, exotic land for some time now and am absolutely ecstatic to be embarking on this adventure to kick off the start of my marriage. I mean, look at this place! It's spectacular!

I am so excited to get over there in September and take some more incredible photos to show you, but in the meantime check out more images here and find the map above here.

ART HISTORY NERD ALERT: THE GHENT ALTARPIECE AND THE GETTY

At work we get the Getty Institute's newsletter in the mail. Normally I page over it in search of the next stack of books I will add to my ever-growing Amazon check out cart. This time, however, I discovered a project that was far more compelling: the Getty now offers a website that represents the culmination of a year-long conservation effort of Van Eyck's seminal masterpiece the Ghent Altarpiece. For art history nerds like me, the opportunity to get up close and personal with this beautiful, important work is too good to be true.

First and foremost, the website lets you zoom in ridiculously close to see every crack and perfectly rendered detail of each panel of the altarpiece. The jewels on the crowns are my personal favorite to explore.

Also cool? Checking out the x-ray images to see what the artist originally painted on that panel. In the top shot you can see the nails that hold the hinge of that panel in place; in the bottom photo you can see a face (specifically an eye) hidden in the folds of the drapery.

What amazes me the most about this project is not only that the website is free (awesome!) but also that it lets us have an encounter with the work that mirrors the intimacy of the moment the artist painted it. Who else can say they have gotten so close as to see the individual threads painted on the angels' coats or the eyelashes of Adam's face?

If you want to take a moment and procrastinate from work, or just take a moment to see something incredibly cool, check out the 'Closer to Van Eyck' website here.

MUST SEE: MOONRISE KINGDOM

How was your weekend? I spent mine being both lazy (reading, dozing, hanging out with some friends) and being hyper productive (cleaning, prepping for the wedding, organizing). But my hands down favorite part of the weekend was an impromptu date with my fiancé on Friday where we went, on a whim, to see Wes Anderson's latest movie Moonrise Kingdom.

It was amazing. Seriously, the best, most heartfelt and artfully crafted movie I have seen in a long, long time. This clip of the adorable narrator, played by actor Bob Balaban, was Anderson's fabulous way of setting the scene of this vintage-inspired but altogether fanciful movie. The color palette, the costumes, and the props (oh the props! swoon!) are just beautiful.

Here, for example, is one of my favorite moments in the movie. It wouldn't be a Wes Anderson movie without Jason Schwartzman and he totally delivered in his cameo role.

Moral of the story: go see this movie! It's a delight!

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MINIMALIST CHELSEA

Just a couple of photos from my gallery hopping yesterday afternoon. All of these were taken in Chelsea at Gagosian Gallery's Lucio Fontana show. Go see it! It's open until June 30th and it's pretty spectacular!

All photos taken by me using Instagram. See more of my Instagram photos here and follow me! My username is obsessiveimagist.

THE COLOR RUN

I have had my eye on the Color Run for some time now. Basically it's a 5K run wherein the runners are coated in beautiful plumes of powdered color pigment (totally non-toxic and washable, not to worry) and thus, by the end of the run, emerge as human palettes of brilliant chromatic goodness. In fact, to enhance this giant color party, runners are explicitly required to wear a white shirt so that the pigment will show up as clearly as possible. Cool, right?

I am disappointed to report that the New York City registration filled up in less than a week*, but you can sign up for other cities here and learn more about the run here.

*I will still be there to photograph all the action; anyone care to join me?

WHERE THE WILD (LAUGHS) ARE

Thought you might like a little something to make you smile on this dreary day (there's a 70% chance of rain in New York this afternoon!). I meant to post this amazing Stephen Colbert interview of Maurice Sendak when the venerable illustrator died last month but it somehow slipped my mind. No matter, the brilliant author's acerbic wit continues to shine through in this hilarious and endearing interview; turns out Sendak was the perfect repartee partner for the cheeky Colbert.

See more humorous hijinks by Colbert on his website here and view part two of the interview here.

THE RICE GALLERY

As someone who got her professional start at a college art museum, I am always excited to discover university art museums or exhibition spaces that are constantly striving to engage students and the public in new, exciting, and ambitious ways. Even with the smallest of spaces you can do big things! And the Rice University Art Gallery totally proves it. In the past 15 years alone they have hosted countless incredible installations by renowned artists like Allen Ruppersberg, Joel Shapiro, Tara Donovan and El Anatsui, just to name a few. Browsing through their website's exhaustive exhibition archives is a visual delight.

As if the exhibitions themselves weren't impressive enough, the gallery has also created an amazing video introduction to each of their recent exhibitions. This beautiful short film about their current installation, crafted by Japanese artist Yakuaki Onishi, makes me wish I lived a little bit closer to Texas and could witness this beautiful creation in person.

Learn more about the Rice Gallery here, the Onishi exhibition here, and see more of their fabulous videos here.

WEEKEND WARDROBE: COLLEGE REUNION

This afternoon I am headed to my fifth year college reunion. Fifth year! I can't believe it has been that long; though I suppose it is only going to get longer . . . ha! Anywho, I thought it would be fun to show you my take on rocking school colors (in my case, having gone to Williams, these are purple and gold/yellow) in a sophisticated, stylish way. So, without further ado, here are three outfits I would have been happy to pack for my triumphant return to my alma mater.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON │ an outfit for lawn sports, museums, and margaritas

clean white tee, $29.50
pop o' color pants, $125
stack em' up jewelry: watch, $58 multi-strand bracelet, $295 leather bracelet, $15
chic summer wedges, $22.99