I am so in love with Connie Lim’s Illustration series of playing cards. I’m not even a card player, but I would consider a round of Gin or 21 with this deck. . .

Agnes Varda, how I love thee, let me count the ways. Have you ever seen someone so inspiring it’s painful. The first time I saw Agnes Varda’s film, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, I didn’t just think, “wow, she is a great filmmaker” I thought, “holy shit! I want to be her!” Being very confused about the direction my life was taking while studying world religions as my bachelor’s degree (and for the majority of my life), I never really planned things, I always just felt as if I fell into things. Watching Agnes’ films I felt as if I saw for the first time in the modern generation, an artist who truly did what their heart desired and didn’t worry about what others would like to see. She seems to make films out her insatiable and geniune curiosity in life, not for some executive looking to make an extra buck. To me that is a beautiful and all too rare type of artist in the contemporary day. Thank you Agnes Varda, for your passion and your curiosity. Thank you for sharing that with the world. Entre Nous, c’est si bon.

Agnes came out with a new film last December entitled, “The Beaches of Agnes” which is an autobiographical documentary about her life. Agnes has been known to disclose certain aspects of her life, often making herself apart of the story in many of her films, my personal favorite being Les glaneurs et la glaneuse (translation: The Gleaners and I).   Agnes also made a touching film about her husband Jacques Demy, Jacquot de Nantes.  Varda’s work was a precursor  of the the French new wave style of film in the 1960′s, attending the prestigous Ecole du Louvre. She expressed herself at first through photography, but soon moved into film proving herself a unique and qualified filmmaker that met the ranks of Godard, Demy and

Pollock in his studio

Looking at a drip painting by artist Jackson Pollock, it may be difficult to see any sort of explainable pattern, but a recent study done found that Pollock’s paintings are actually fractals. This notion seems shocking to be able to find any sort of provable pattern to art pieces that were ironically trying to break away from what was deemed conventional art, and yet still mathematics were able to show how his art is aesthetically appealing to the human senses, and what makes a Pollock painting a Pollock and not like any other drip paintings.  Pollock is quoted as stating, “My concerns are with the rhythms of nature”. This becomes quite intriguing after learning that Pollock’s paintings are fractals. Fractals are patterns that are repeated at smaller scales representing irregular patterns—many are found in nature.   Pollock was using the ‘rhythms’, or rather patterns, of nature to influence his work, so it turns out that Pollock’s works are not as random as they may appear to be.  But Pollock is just one example of the multitude of patterns that are found in the world that mathematics is able to explain.

Number One 1948

 Aesthetically pleasing art forms can almost always be proven how and why mathematically, whether it is a painting, a sonata, or even the physical attraction to more symmetrical faces. When things can be proven mathematically, many get a deep sense of satisfaction that there is an order to the way the world works, some underlying order that exists, and that it may not be a chaotic random cluster.

Galaxy

JAMES HOUSTON! JAMES HOUSTON! Embed your brain with this name and keep him on your watch list. The British graduate student of graphic design took on Radiohead’s remix challenge to remix the track “Nude” from their album “In Rainbows” for his graduate thesis. Although Houston missed the deadline for the competition, his rendition of the track takes an amazingly unique perspective, and has garnered much earned attention. For those of you who’ve heard the track (and I shun those of you who haven’t) the concept of remixing it seems futile. But because of the ridiculousness of it, is just how Houston approached it, as he stated, “I decided to take the piss a bit, as the contest seemed to be in that spirit.” Houston used ordinary objects including an Epson printer and a HP scanner which results in a fantastic jaw dropping sound.

Michael Anerson's work at the Ace Hotel

Artist Michael Anderson has been collecting graffiti stickers since the early nineties, peeling them off lampposts and train station walls, he recently put them to amazingly innovative use by creating a commissioned mural in the lobby of the Ace Hotel in New York City. The mural consists of 4,000 or so collected stickers, from Andersons massive 40,000 plus collection, that was scanned from his notebooks onto black-and-white silk paper and then collaged to create a enticing mural that demands gawking.

Michael Anderson's work at the Ace Hotel

Paris, France 1989

When traveling I always make it a sort of mission to find unique postcards to send home to family and friends. While staying in Paris this summer, I not only found a beautiful postcard, I discovered a photographer whom I have become deeply infatuated with: Elliott Erwitt. Born in 1928 to Russian parents and raised in Paris France, Erwitt was strongly influenced at an early age after a meeting with photojournalist legend Robert Capa and fashion photographer Edward Steichen. Erwitt seems to have taken inspiration equally from both these photographers and used it to create his own genre of “candid” photos that are superbly composed, often with themes of irony and a touch of the absurd all while remaining thought provoking and emotionally moving.

Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt

a self-portrait of the young Hunter

I wanted to start off by paying homage to the great Hunter S. Thompson. The founder of the balls out Gonzo journalism style, he didn’t just challenge what it meant to be a writer, he challenged what it meant to be human. He never simply observed and commented on the human condition, he threw up on it.  Hunter constantly pushed the limits of human consciousness, making himself into a sort of guinea pig, he experienced the world from a perspective of a drunken drugged out southern gentleman.  Hunter rewrote, among others, Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby” in an attempt to delve into the mind of a great writer, well, it seems it worked.  Hunter is now recognized as an iconic American writer.  Although he never considered himself apart of the Beat movement, he was still apart of the ever-growing disillusioned generation in the late 1960′s, voicing the frustrations of those who had no voice.  He was particularly paranoid and loathing of Richard Mihous Nixon from the get-go, he was not shocked when his inevitable resignation came to a head.  Instead in classic Hunter fashion, he dedicated his book, “The Shark Hunt” to, “Richard Milhous Nixon, who never let me down.” 

Dr. Gonzo

 ”He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being  a man.” -HST Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“Buy the ticket, take the ride” -HST Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas