In the City

So I've been running around New York all day. Here are a few of the spots I hit:

Freeman's Sporting Club:

Cafe Habana:

Matter:

Nice Lites

I've got a 4 a.m. wake up call, so this'll be short and sweet. Nice lights:

Wastberg Desk Lamp


The Small Fold from Established and Sons'

Nicolo Taliani's Lampada No 1

Gimme some Bistro

I'm headed for New York tomorrow morning, and I can't wait to get there. I lived in the city from August of 2000 to the winter of 03/04, and it's always really nice to go back. Especially in September. There's a laundry list of places I'll be revisiting over the next 5 days, but tops on the list is always Corner Bistro - my favorite burger joint / watering hole / jukebox spot on earth. If you've never been, go. Just avoid it from 6:30 to 8:30 unless you wanna stand in line for an hour for a table. That's actually half the fun though b/c you get to drink McSorley's Ales for $2 and catch up while in line. This one fits under the food design category I guess. It's a stretch:

Shacks!

Hoping to create the perfect escape, my dad and I have been researching various tiny houses over the last year or so. The Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. does a pretty good job of creating traditionally constructed small homes, but it's the custom ones that are really impressive. Check out the "Shack at Hinkle Farm" from Broadhurst Architects and the Love Shack by Smart Shax:

Marco Cibola

Marco Cibola is a seriously talented freelance graphic artist working out of the sleepy town of Dundas, Ontario, about an hour outside of Toronto.

Doodles, Drafts, and Designs

My friend Cheryl Shulke at Stash Studios recently mentioned an exhibit from the National Museum of American History that focuses on the drawings and sketches of early American inventors, so I have to follow up on it. As an amateur inventor / product designer myself (I only have one product on the market right now), I'm very much inspired by the engineers, inventors, and industrial designers of previous generations. In some ways - due to my lack of formal education in product design - I relate more to the old designers than to modern ones. Things were more simple then. More simple and often times more beautiful:

Cody Hoyt

A bit different than a photograph of a fisherman's hands, but oh well. Great stuff:

Dinner Inspired

I just had some crab cake-stuffed trout for dinner, and it made me think of a photo I took of a fly-fishing guide's hands a couple of years ago in North Carolina. One of my favorites - and it's much better if you click on the photo to enlarge:

Good Lookin' Innards

Some folks over at Graphic Exchange put together a photographic collection of well-done interior spaces. Check the link for more photos. There are some great ones.

Not Blackstock, Not Griffin, But Letscher

Well, something (maybe having dinner with an obsessive mind tonite) made me wanna feature the autistic and obsessive artist Gregory Blackstock for tomorrow, but I couldn't find the images online that I'd hoped to. Blackstock made me think of folk artist Scott Griffin, but I couldn't find the right images for him either. So, next up in the brain was Lance Letscher, easily one of my favorite artists in Austin and an obsessive who meticulously collects, cuts up, and collages "found" paper goods. By weaving and spiraling and overlapping strips and strands of old books, ledgers, recipes, etc., Letscher creates beautiful, color-focused works that drive me crazy in the best way. If only they hadn't skyrocketed in price over the last few years, I might have myself one of these:

If Only She Were Mine

For the first time since I started this thing - with a couple of "Fireman 4"s in my belly - I'm feeling lazy. Lazy enough to not really wanna research a blog post. So, folks, I hope you're OK with just a few photos of mine. I'm getting on the road again tomorrow and sorta wish I was hopping in a classic car to do so. Here's an old Imperial I found in East Austin a few years ago. Maybe one day I'll call her mine. For now, the Chevy will have to do:

Dirty Coast

Having grown up in Northwest Louisiana (Shreveport) and having called New Orleans home for a brief stint (pre-Katrina), there's a huge place in my heart for the Bayou State. It's doubtful I'll ever live there again, but I'll always go back to visit, and I'll always support various causes that might improve it. America's Wetland is my favorite special-interest organization down there, but on the design front, there's a company called Dirty Coast that churns out clever, humorous, and hot-topic t-shirt designs that bring attention to the state of affairs in Louisiana and around the world. Since Gustav just rolled through and was somewhat lenient in his wrath, I thought some of you might want to support a local NOLA business while the Crescent City is still up and running.

From Painting to Puppetry

Due to the twisting turns and endless trails of the internet, it's getting harder and harder for me to remember when and where I found out about certain design-related discoveries. Like the photo of the ocean swimmer in my last post, I can't remember how I came across the artwork of Claire Ellen Oswalt, but I just know I'm glad I did. Much of the Culver City, CA artist's past work involved graphite on paper with acrylics and watercolor mixed in for good measure, but Oswalt's latest productions are what she calls "sculptural drawings" - super thin 3-D puppets mounted on wooden backgrounds. I haven't seen anything like them - and I think they're flat out amazing. Enjoy:

Perfect Ocean Shot

Last week while traveling around California, I got the pleasure of taking a couple of dips in the Pacific Ocean - once in San Louis Obispo on a quaint beach and once just off the urban sands of Venice Beach in Los Angeles. I'm almost done editing some of my beach photos and may or may not post them on here, but they reminded me of a photo I found online somewhere last year. Props to this photographer:

I'll Take One of These Please

I own a Tivoli shelf stereo, but these little radios by designer Shinggih Kartono are even better looking. Made by hand from reclaimed java ebony, mahogany, and pine sourced from Indonesian villages, these guys are simple, stylish, and eco-friendly.