music loves art

I love this music video for 70 Million by French band, Hold Your Horses. Such a great send up of so many iconic paintings - can you recognize all of the artists? My favorites are The Death of Marat by David and Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Caravaggio.

bridal makeup

Nusja Jone-Our Bride from Kosovo 2.0 on Vimeo.

This gorgeous video by Yll Citaku features a bride from the Trebesh community in Kosovo getting ready for her big day - which features face paint and decorations. This article in Imprint explains the colorful tradition of transforming a bride into a "living doll," with heavy traditional costume and detailed makeup. The result is pretty stunning.

wanderlust

Getting ready to hop an international flight this evening, and totally excited by the prospect of another big trip, I was wowed when this came across my reader courtesy of Honestly WTF.

Artist Karen Knorr combines analogue and digital photography (with a touch of photoshop) to create these otherworldly scenes of Northern India in this series called, India Song. A mix of sacred and secular sites with symbolic animals seems dream-like and magical.  Doesn't it make you long for a trip to India?? The colors are so beautiful.

lovely owl

Aside from the goofy soundtrack, I am in love with this little movie and more so, this little owl. Too cute.

gift guides

Image Via

I just got back from the most wonderful long weekend in New York, and things were starting to look at lot like Christmas :) I know this sentiment is categorically not allowed until after Thanksgiving, and it's not like I'm playing A Charlie Brown Christmas on repeat (yet), but the tree was going up at 30 Rock, lights were being strung all over town and window dressers were hard at work behind paper covered glass up and down 5th Ave.

I'm also feeling a little extra Christmasy, because I'll be skipping Thanksgiving this year, traveling out of the country for two weeks starting on Monday. Our traditional Outer Banksgiving has been transposed to Christmas for what I'm guessing we'll call OBXmas - so I am very much looking forward to that.

But - this means two weeks abroad in a key gift-guiding period... so I need to get started and pre-load these posts. I've been saving up ideas all fall and I'm excited to share them with you - but who will we be gifting this year? Any special requests? I'm looking over last year's posts for inspiration - who was your favorite?

The Frequent Flyer
The Class Clown
The Baker
The Gentleman
The Team Captain
The Socialite
The Mountain Man
The Cowgirl
The Digi-Ninja
The Hibernating Homebody
The Pop Star
The Kitchen Chemist

occupy george

Regardless of where you stand on the ever-expanding Occupy movement, this little piece is worth a second look. Created by San Fran designers Andy Dao and Ivan Cash, "Occupy George," is one of the most effective tools coming out of the movement - and a decidedly non-digital way of making a message go viral.

Dao and Cash print or stamp simple info graphics and charts onto dollar bills (and you can too!) creating a crazy confluence of medium as message, or is it message as medium? Either way it's ingenious in its simplicity and according to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, these bills are still street legal.

Olympic posters

 

A series of London 2012 Olympic posters by British artists were released last week - the designs are fun and fresh with prints already available for purchase online. My favorites are the retro silhouetted legs of Anthea Hamilton's "Divers" and the repetitive ring motif of Rachel Whiteread's "lOndOn 2012."

In honor of the release, The Telegraph ran a great sideshow story featuring Olympic posters throughout history - a few standouts below. Isn't Mexico's 1968 design the coolest?

 

 

 

 

 

 

More animal portraits

So I couldn't write about Sharon Montrose's work this morning without also doing a quick blurb on my favorite animal portrait series of all time- Jill Greenberg's monkey portraits.

The human expression, beautiful coloring and composition in this series blows me away. The book is a favorite gift of mine for kids and grow ups alike. It is a perfect coffee table conversation starter and I love looking through it again and again. Maybe a good thing to keep in mind for the approaching holidays?

animal portraits

Really loving this series of animal portraits from photographer, Sharon Montrose's new book, Menagerie. The animal pics are also available as prints, which I love... She has several different series including one of baby animals called "Little Darlings" - would be perfect for a nursery.

speed racer

 A quick photo recap of our educational and inspirational trip to the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway a few weeks ago. We were exposed to the inner workings of NASCAR and some creative culinary experiments involving both fried desserts and bacon. An incredible trip.