Every day for 100 days, BRAND SPIRIT will paint one branded object white, removing all visual branding, reducing the object to its purest form. Each object may be purchased for less than $10, something the creator owns, something another person gives them, or something they find. Simple, impactful and a great way to reduce the visual clutter that we are now exposed to. http://brandspirit.tumblr.com/
Most of the World is thankfully recovering from the onslaught that Saint Patrick’s Day brings. Despite the dyed green Rivers in Chicago, It is a time when Irish abroad, take time to think of the Country in a more pleasant light. Six years ago, our friend, artist Rob Ryan, started sending informal Saint Patrick’s Day cards to me, as we often joked that there was such a limited amount of cards available. Here is the current collection, something tells me we may have a book in this project. Thanks Mr. Rob! http://www.misterrob.co.uk/
Artist Dominic Wilcox has created a series of miniature time-based sculptures using a collection of vintage mechanical watches and customised model figures. By attaching tiny figures onto the second and minute hands of each watch, Wilcox has made unique, animated scenes from everyday observations and imagined situations. The resultant images are wonderful.http://www.dominicwilcox.com/watchsculptures.htm
Artistic renderings of the internal body, from anatomy books to fine art, are often poorly communicated versions of real-life. These paper creations by Lisa Nilsson, however, create the perfect balance of aesthetically pleasing detail and scientific accuracy… even though they’re completely made with strips of paper. Created using the paper-crafting technique of quilling, originally used by Renaissance monks and nuns to make artistic use of the worn out gilded edges of Bibles, Nilsson has curled and twirled some remarkably detailed and tiny pieces. http://lisanilssonart.com/home.html
British artist David Shrigley is best known for his humourous drawings that make witty and wry observations on everyday life. The are often crude, ill-advised but very, very funny.
Trained as a fine artist, his deliberately crude graphic style gives his work an immediate and accessible appeal, while simultaneously offering insightful commentary on the absurdities of human relationships.
His first major survey show in London has just opened at the Hayward Gallery. It covers the full range of Shrigley’s diverse practice. This extends far beyond drawing to include photography, books, sculpture, animation, painting and music.
He is guaranteed to lift one’s spirits with his ability to make people smile at the silliest of things. http://www.davidshrigley.com/
The crass commercialism of Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us. 99.99999% of activities surrounding this date are hollow, unappealing and cringe-worthy. However, one lovely installation in New York’s Time Square looks like championing a return to the beauty of the heart in a town that has it as it’s second unofficial logo.
The 10-foot tall glowing sculpture consists of 400 transparent, LED lit, acrylic tubes that form a cube around a suspended red heart. The transparent tubes refract the lights of Times Square, creating a cluster of condensed city lights around the heart. The hovering heart will pulsate faster reflecting the chain of human energy in the heart of Times Square, for example, at peak times of travel.
Designed by Danish designers BIG, the sculpture will be on view until 29th February.http://www.big.dk/
The renowned Philadelphia artist and sign painter Stephen Powers, who many know by his old tag name ESPO, is putting the finishing touches on a piece of monumental street art on the outside of an old Macy’s parking garage in downtown Brooklyn.
The piece, called “Love Letter to Brooklyn,” is made up of lines like “I cop futures here,” “Onward, upward,” “Home,” “I was nurtured here,” “I am made to leave, I am made to return,” “Born busy as a Brooklyn bound B” and “Is you for me?” The team used rollers and house paint from Lowe’s in Brooklyn to create the work on the garage exterior.
So far, “Love Letter to Brooklyn” had taken 13 days to paint, and Powers estimates it will take three more. The piece was largely inspired by conversations he and his team of a dozen painters had with people passing by the parking garage. Powers also interviewed long-time Brooklyn resident David Villorente for the piece, who grew up in housing projects nine blocks away. It turned out this particular Macy’s had a special resonance for Villorente.
“He saw Santa at Macy’s as a child,” said Powers. “The first time he had money, he spent it at Macy’s. He was employed there as a teenager and passes through currently as a local resident.”
Powers said when he got the commission from Macy’s for the project, it was important to him that it reflect thoughts from members of the community of downtown Brooklyn. http://curiositycounts.com/post/15569866003/after-his-graffiti-love-letter-to-philadelphia-and
South Korean artist Choi Jeong-Hwa says the city of Seoul is always under construction. So he created a shielding screen for a building under construction.
Jeong-Hwa used 1000 brightly coloured recycled doors to create a shielding screen for a 10-storey building, at the same time turning it into a visual delight.
The artist explains that by using discarded doors in the installation he could retain something of the memories and the daily routines that these doors once were party to. He says: “There were lives that used to pass through those doors.”
1000 Doors is also a means to engage the greater city population on the possibility of making “normal” things appear extraordinary.
Just having opened in December 2011, in a surprisingly simple yet ridiculously amazing installation for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, artist Yayoi Kusama constructed a large domestic environment, painting every wall, chair, table, piano, and household decoration a brilliant white, effectively serving as a giant white canvas. Entitled ‘The Obliteration Room’, over the course of two weeks, the museum’s smallest visitors were given thousands upon thousands of coloured dot stickers and were invited to collaborate in the transformation of the space, turning the house into a vibrant explosion of colour. Stunningly simple, but effective.
If you happen to be in New York this week, try and get down to the Meg Cohen Design Store on 59 Thompson Street, Soho, opposite the Hotel 60 Thompson. Long time ABOUD CREATIVE collaborator, Hugh Hales-Tooke has an exhibition called “Micrographia,” a series of shadowy paintings of 17th-century buildings at Cambridge University designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Hales-Tooke, who grew up in Cambridge has been painting for several years whilst maintaining his career in photography. The paintings, on first sight, are very factual and simple, but when viewed as a collection, one starts to build up his vision of a place steeped in history, without one feeling overwhelmed with detail. The materials and the execution are simple, uncluttered, and portray a naive painterly quality. No matter what Hugh turns his hand to, he invests time to research and examine his subject matter, thus resulting in a unique solution of the task in hand. The exhibition finishes on saturday 5th November. http://www.remodelista.com/posts/art-photography-hugh-hales-tooke-micrographia-paintings
Heading to New York next week for the ABOVE ALL ELSE show. Our friends, Pepin and Teresa from Contrail are associated with this amazing looking event that happens this weekend. If you happen to be in NY, try and get to it. www.bringtolightnyc.org. Bring to Light is a free nighttime contemporary art festival in New York City that takes place simultaneously with “nuit blanche” events in cities around the world. It has invited emerging and established artists to make site-specific installations of light, sound, performance and projection art—creating a potentially incredible spectacle for thousands of visitors to re-imagine public space and civic life. Bring to Light will transform streets, parks and the industrial waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn set against dramatic views of the Manhattan skyline. Anyone who gets to it, please send some images back to us.
Rikkianne Van Kirk is a self-taught artist currently residing in Virginia. Her project, You Sentimental Idiot is an endeavor inspired by found materials that have a past. Antique diaries have been the main medium. Now, more recently, she has started working on found driftwood. Witty and humorous, these objects look like a mature version of her earlier ‘on paper’ work. www.rikkiannevankirk.com/
Ever wanted to see how some people spend their time instead of aimlessly watching TV or browsing the internet? Well, ‘Pencilheads’ is an ad campaign by Augusto Moreno dos Anjos created in collaboration with German artist Ragna Reusch-Klinkenberg, who carved the faces of the world’s most famous political leaders on the tips of pencils. The project was created for the German political magazine Cicero. Amazing, but one may lose the will to live if the lead snapped.
A small, somewhat insignificant piece of graffiti on a council estate in Sheffield is rapidly gaining national notoriety. The complex of flats is now undergoing a refurbishment by a property group called Urban Splash. With this regeneration, the company decided to celebrate the long standing graffiti with a more permanent piece of street art. They have added neon to the original artwork in order to create a more lasting piece of street iconography. Alongside this, a recent radio documentary aired on BBC sought to find origins of the grafitti. What started out as a light hearted piece, became something more poignant when the real truth about the creator and intended was revealed. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01302s4
http://www.vimeo.com/26852474 If you hate being bombarded by print and billboard ads everywhere you go, Will Sherman has created an App to replace all those adverts with a curated collection of original street art. The “Augmented Reality Advertising Takeover” is an initiative aimed at democratising public visual space through the use of augmented reality technology. The app is currently in beta testing, but eventually it will be able to transform posters and billboards in New York City’s Times Square into original artworks by the likes of Ron English and Posterboy. Augmented Reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or an indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.
Thursday night was a nostalgic evening. Our very dear friend Charming Baker (always and forever known to us as Alan) had the launch of his new paintings at 16 Mercer Street, London WC2. The show is on until 31st July, and well worth seeing. It was particularly great to see old St Martin’s friends appearing after many many years. The irony was that despite the huge success Charming is having, the venue was about 200 yards form our old site of St Martin’s, 27-29 Longacre. None of us went very far ! www.charmingbaker.com
Austrian artist Valentin Ruhry. Has a beautiful exhibit at the Austrian Cultural Forum in NYC until September. The piece is made up of 5,000 rocker switches you would normally see on surge protectors or power strips. I want one for the office. 
Wandering around New York this weekend, I went to a Richard Long exhibition at the Sperone Westwater gallery. In september 2010, they switched allegiance over to the Lower East Side, and moved into their new Norman Foster designed building at 257 Bowery.The building features a 12 by 20 foot moving gallery that connects four floors and allows visitors to move between the many levels. This specially designed moving room also allows the exhibition space to be extended in the vertically inclined building of 8 storeys. It is essentially an elevator the size of a large room, and quite an impressive engineering feat. If you are in NYC, try and visit it. Truly and odd experience essentially entering a building through the elevator shaft. 
LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood. A Throwie consists of a lithium battery, a 10mm diffused LED and a rare-earth magnet taped together. Throw it up high and in quantity to impress your friends and city officials. Graffiti Research Lab is a site dedicated to “outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies for urban communication”. They do not damage the environment, but enhance spaces with innovative art. This film shows you how beautiful, yet simple the idea is. 