I’m off for 2 weeks. I’ll be on this ^, and going to the places below. I hope to return refreshed and rested, full of energy and inspiration.
July 13, 2010
Vacation
July 2, 2010
Photo Friday
June 29, 2010
Patchwork Round Up
Danny and I had a booth at the recent Patchwork Indie Arts and Crafts Fair in Long Beach under the title of our new venture, Bingo Foxtrot. We sold a lot of stuff, met some awesome people and got some great feedback. Overall, we’re really grateful that we get to make stuff and people want it in their homes. Here’s some pictures of the booth from the beginning of the day -
June 23, 2010
Long Beach Breakwater
Last night a historic move was made in the city council of Long Beach – to move forward with a feasibility study for reconfiguring the Long Beach Breakwater. It’s odd that I live just a few block off the sand and yet, when I think about going to the beach, it’s not that one that I can walk to – it’s the one that requires a 15 minute drive south.
Here’s a little documentary that was just released by local breakwater reconfiguration advocate Grant Eads. A very informative video, with a couple of great shots too:
June 22, 2010
On the Subject of Clay Pots
At lunch yesterday, I made my way over to a garden store that I hadn’t been to before. I just wanted to check prices and see if they had any special succulents that other local vendors didn’t carry. The succulent prices were a bit steep, but I did manage to walk away with quite a few terra cotta pots – I use them for my plant stands. I typically purchase my terra cotta pots wherever I can find them the cheapest. This usually means home depot. What I’ve noticed is that sometimes the UPC sticker on the pots say Made In China, and sometimes they say Made in the USA. There isn’t really a measurable quality difference between the pots that are made here or abroad, and it doesn’t really matter to me either way on an economical level. Yesterday, when I was at the garden store I picked up a pot that said Made In Italy. All at once the intrigue set in. Was this pot better than the pots made in the US or China? I mean, Italy is the birthplace of terra cotta! Do they have access to some age old secret that automatically makes there pots better than others? Second thing I noticed, the prices were about half of their competitors! Hooray! Bizarre!? If you think about it, which I do, shipping a container full of terra cotta pots from Italy to California would take twice as long as a container coming from China. So how could this Italian pot be cheaper than it’s Asian counterpart? Are the raw materials cheaper in Italy? Does Italy own all the raw materials for mass producing terra cotta pots, thus making it more expensive for other countries in the manufacturing process? Perhaps there is a few major distributors of terra cotta pots in the US, and they simply buy whatever is cheaper coming from the various countries.
Either way, doesn’t it just sound more bourgeoisie to say that your terra cotta pots are imported from Italy? I think so.
June 17, 2010
Patterns and Creativity
The other day this quote by Steve Jobs was posted on KitsuneNoir:
Pretty much hits the nail square on the head. It’s quite perfect. I had a professor in college who’s mantra was “Look, Look, Look, Look, Look, etc” That’s definitely the first step.
Look. Make. Discuss. Remake. Etc.
Then I noticed this quick little article on BoingBoing, which features a video of Michael Shermer’s Ted Talk.
Here’s the excerpt that was feature on BoingBoing -
“An increase of dopamine caused subjects to see more patterns than those that did not receive the dopamine. So dopamine appears to be the drug associated with patternicity. In fact, neuroleptic drugs that are used to eliminate psychotic behavior, things like paranoia, delusions and hallucinations, these are patternicities. They’re incorrect patterns. They’re false positives. They’re type one errors. And if you give them drugs that are dopamine antagonists, they go away. That is, you decrease the amount of dopamine, and their tendency to see patterns like that decreases. On the other hand, amphetamines like cocaine, are dopamine agonists. They increase the amount of dopamine. So you’re more likely to feel in a euphoric state, creativity, find more patterns.
…
Dopamine, I think, changes our signal-to-noise ratio. That is, how accurate we are in finding patterns. If it’s too low, you’re more likely to make too many type two errors. You miss the real patterns. You don’t want to be too skeptical. If you’re too skeptical, you’ll miss the really interesting good ideas. Just right, you’re creative, and yet, you don’t fall for too much baloney. Too high and maybe you see patterns everywhere. Every time somebody looks at you, you think people are staring at you. You think people are talking about you. And if you go too far on that, that’s just simply labeled as madness. It’s a distinction perhaps we might make between two Nobel laureates, Richard Feynman and John Nash. One sees maybe just the right number of patterns to win a Nobel Prize. The other one also, but maybe too many patterns. And we then call that schizophrenia.”
Fascinating.
June 14, 2010
Books
I collect books. I like old books with interesting covers, and illustrations, and photos. Here are some covers of books that I didn’t buy last week.
June 9, 2010
News Stand
I was commissioned to build a little newsstand (one word? two words?) for the Hilton Resort in Huntington Beach. My friend Chris gave me the design and I set to work on the fabrication.
Locks up at night for safe keeping of books and magazines. Got the wood from a place called Vintage Timberworks – great old reclaimed wood, not cheap! Looks great though!
June 8, 2010
On Being the Devil’s Advocate
A Devil’s Advocate, according to dictionary dot com, is one who advocates an opposing or unpopular cause for the sake of argument or to expose it to a thorough examination. Often when this term is used, it connotes an unfavorable idea. In certain settings one who is playing the devil’s advocate is considered annoying to downright insolent, and everywhere in between. I see this as a result of two patterns that are present in contemporary western culture. 1 – The overall degradation of the art of conversation. 2 – The inability to separate our idealogies from our identities. Both of these ideas are linked together – I don’t believe it’s possible to have one without the other. Surely, those who are gifted in the art of conversation are those who are able to separate their ideologies from their identities. Ironically though, the most spirited conversations are those that carry emotional weight and vigor, thus interweaving one’s identity.
I have been accused of being a devil’s advocate with regards to conversations about politics and religion. Politics and Religion are often quite headache inducing conversations – But, I only think that’s true because we have a difficult time being able to distance ourselves for our ideologies regarding two of the most prominent identity shaping systems of the world. God and Country.
A solution – we need to be our own devil’s advocate. That is, we need to expose our own arguments to examination; take the unpopular argument in our own self dialogue in order that something more robust may emerge. This is something that artists and designers are very familiar with, some are even tortured by it. For every affirmative stroke of the brush, there is an accompanying skepticism that trails it. If it weren’t for the suspension of disbelief, no work would get done at all! But this is what turns mediocre work into great work – and mediocre arguments into great arguments.
I like the idea of a devil’s advocate as being one who exposes an argument to fire! A fire is where things go to get refined, and purified. It’s where the junk floats to the surface and we see what you’re made of.
June 4, 2010
Photo Fridays
In order to give my this blog a little bit more order I’ve decided to give myself a little bit of a schedule. Fridays are a good day to post the photos that I’ve taken with my phone during the week. It’s a catalog of what I’ve seen, what I’ve been making, what I thought was interesting. It’s a visual diary of interest. So from now on, you can expect photo round ups on every Friday. Thus:
Yes, we purchased this at the flea market on Sunday.
June 3, 2010
Studio time
I’ve put several late, late nights into the studio this week – and I’m headed for another late night tonight too. On Tuesday evening my brother came by to snap some photos of Danny and I working on our respective projects…
May 28, 2010
New Van Project
I just bought this van in an online auction. Now trying decide if I want to turn this into a project or just turn it around for a profit.
