12ozProphet

Verner Panton was a Danish designer responsible for many icons of 60’s design - like the injection molded Panton S chair or his Phantasy Landscape sex lair. A superior blog called Nothing Is New recently introduced me to Verner’s magnificent and spectrally vibracious rugs and textiles. Minds were opened. Thanks Kelly.

New work for a group show at the Open Space gallery in Beacon, NY. Curated by Mike Perry and featuring work by such x-acto knife masters as Justin Fines, Wyeth Hansen, Damien Correll, Andy Mueller, Jeremy Dean and others.

In case you were wondering.

Bearded crayon tamer and High Deacon in the Church of Triangle Mike Perry has an opening this weekend at Giant Robot NY. I managed to obtain these blurry previews from sources within his Brooklyn studio stronghold. Art & space rock will start at 6:30. Don’t snooze.

From a beautiful NYT visual essay/biography by artist/illustrator Maira Kalman. I could probably use this hand-stitched reminder to disenthrall myself because I don’t do that often enough.

I took a crazy high kick to the mouth saturday. The Chinatown Newswire used the picture where I look dead, but I’m fine and I like this one better. Photo by Marco Spier.

As a Presidents day gift, I give you these cut paper panda bears that my mom brought from China. I have no way of knowing if these were hand made, but there’s an amazing tradition of paper craft in China you can read more about here if you like. If you’re into some wild and angsty contemporary paper cutting I’d recommend Kako Ueda, but I think I prefer the bears myself. Look - the last one just flipped you off!

My sister - the ceramic beastmaster Eva Funderburgh was in town recently for a group show in Dumbo. We made pizza, worked on some collaborative pieces and braved the elements to check out a few Chelsea galleries. There were some cool but aloof minimal string squares and some intriguing graphite type pieces, but the only thing that was certifiably mind blowing were Nick Cave‘s soundsuits at Jack Shainman. A runway of twenty odd monstrous mannequins bedecked in every order of wicker, fur, crochet, and porcelain-bird-sculpture stand around and look equal parts hilarious and menacing like some kind of interplanetary thrift store Klu Klux Klan. If I know anything about urban fashion these warlocks are definitely going to be next season’s allover hoodie. You heard it here first.

Christoph Niemann builds New York City out of Legos in today’s Times. This sort of thing has been done before, but usually with less wit and way more Legos. Here is a sample.

About a year ago, RazaUno introduced me to this company selling engraved notebooks and laptops. I was really psyched with the custom Moleskine notebooks, but it turns out that it’s not so responsible environmentally and that too much breathing the lasered PVC Moleskine covers can give you every kind of cancer at once. The solution was that they started making these terrific leather book covers that are pretty and tactile and not nearly as caustic. I made a couple designs, several more are on www.engraveyourbook.com.