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Here are some photos from Sara’s Bday bash the other night. We started the night at my house, then proceeded to the Goat Hill tavern for some beverages and shuffleboard, and then back to my house for Haiku reading and ice cream. It was a superb evening filled with friends, laughs, drinks, and haiku’s.

Steve and friend entering.

Justing Bauer getting weird.

Shuffleboard

Ladies

Back at the house for dessert.

Kyle Spencer eying Bauer’s food.

Bauer and tiffany putting on some moves.

Kyle and josh

Haiku readings were one of the highlights of the night.

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I just got back from Nicaragua a few days ago. It was a blast, 8 of us rented a house on the beach in front of perfect waves in a remote location for a week. We arrived home safely, with a few bruises, lots of mosquito bites, and many great stories. Here are some photos from the trip.

They have some interesting food with some peculiar names.

Grocery shopping for the week. It took almost half and hour to check out.

The longest receipt I have ever seen, 5 shopping cart filled and about $600.

14 surfboards.

Hanging at the house.

Amanda, our house chef, always was keen to stir up some great meals for us.

The house (Mark and Dave’s Place)

Mathias jumping over a pelican that was hanging out in our pool.

Matt Marbles after dinner jam sesh.

The security guard (AKA Animal Dundee) was catching all kinds of animals and was eager to show us.

Here is what we went for…

The crew after watching the Lakers get stomped.

Getting weird in the jungle.

Playing a game of Gin Rummy.

This made Matt’s trip, maybe even his year, Monkey Island.

Until next time.

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Been slacking on the blogging lately…

Here is this weeks Artist of the Week, Miika Saksi, who’s unabashed and charismatically whimsical style defies traditional approaches while adding a humorous touch.

Where are you right now?

At my office in Helsinki.

What’s the weather like right now?

Poor. It’s raining and few +degrees.

So tell us, what is it that you do exactly?

I do loads of different things. Stuff that I like to do. Mostly graphic design, as cd-covers, posters, logotypes, illustrations, tshirts, etc. But I also direct music videos, take photos to magazines, be an art director in fashion and band photo shootings, work as a stylist in photo shoots, do web site layouts, etc etc etc.

How did you get to be doing this?

I started by doing personal web site - some sort of photoshop art gallery as a hobby. Sounds really uncool and it totally was, but hey I was something like 14. By that I got interested in graphic design and typography. Afterwards the hobby became a real job.

What is a typical day like in your shoes?
I wake up, take a shower, go to office, check my email and after that it changes. Sometimes it’s just sitting on a computer, doing some graphics and sometimes I spend my day in photo shoots or meetings or lying on a sofa. Or in a bar with friends.

What is your first thought when waking up in the morning?

Do I have to be somewhere in half an hour or not.

What is art?

I guess it’s anything that someone made and you can look at and feel an emotion.

If you could go back in time to one point in your life, where would you go?

I would go 8 years back and stop myself starting a company with a friend of mine. We loaned money from the bank and it was a HUGE mistake.

Where have you traveled?

UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Tallin, Norway and Portugal.

Top 5 bands of the moment:

Elsiane, Burial, Junior Boys, Röyksopp, good remixes

Favorite 3 movies:

- The Shawshank Redemption
- Romancing the Stone
- My Neighbor Totoro

Must reads:

Bible & Wikipedia

How would you describe yourself?

Weird questions for a design blog.
But I would go for best friend material for boys and a boyfriend material for girls.

Do you have any pets?

Not yet. I would love to own a dog though. Maybe someday. I would name it a Bomb, because it would explode everything by being the cutest thing in the world.

What was the last thing you dreamed about?

Dreamed like awake or in asleep? Last night I was dreaming that I was lying in my bed and there was a window that I haven’t seen before. It was really dark and raining out side. I heard some whispering voices in my apartment and got a bit scared. I stood up to look where the voices were coming and I woke up.

Who would you want to be tied to for 24hours?

Shannyn Sossamon

Do you collect anything? If so, what?

Hearts.

Do you think there are aliens?

Sure.

What time did you wake up this morning?

What a question again. I think it was 8:30.

What’s your favorite day of the week and why?

Saturday. Because yesterday was Friday and tomorrow is Sunday. Basically the only day in week that I can spend by doing nothing.

Do you have any nicknames?

Check out my Facebook.

What does your last text message say?

“Hah! In your face! No wait, in my face?”

Would you rather have money or love?

I would choose love for sure.

What is your dream vacation?

Provence in summer time.

Name three things in the world you like:

Mom, food, girls

Name three things in the world you dislike:

Violence, unfairness, reggae

Do you like sushi?

No, I never learned to like it.

If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you would buy?

Expensive digital camera with good lens.

Where do you think you’ll be in 1,000 years?

Pretty much dead.

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Several weeks ago my friend Sam and I built what my girlfriend Sara later named “the pagethumper.”

The pagethumper is a magnificent book shelf (page) and shoe container (thumper).

The “pagethumper” contains 14 shoe cubbyholes, 2 book/magazine/record holders with tree branch dividers, and storage beneath and above the unit.

In the first of many creative endeavors, here is Sam and I’s first finished project.

Here is Sam getting frustrated because the middle shelf was wavy and we couldn’t get it to lie straight. In the end we left it and it only adds character.

A sturdy device, the “pagethumper” can hold books, magazines, shoes, sandwiches, and even Sam and I.

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My favorite artist of all time passed away last night at the age of 82.

Robert Rauschenberg, died of heart failure at his home in Captiva, Fla., after a brief illness.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked. Rauschenberg was truly a magician of art, mastering one style or concept and then moving on and never looking back.

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”

A brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner, Rauschenberg had a charm and peculiar Delphic felicity with language that nevertheless masked a complex personality and an equally multilayered emotional approach to art, which evolved as his stature did. Having begun by making quirky small-scale assemblages out of junk he found on the street in downtown Manhattan, he spent increasing time in his later years, after he had become successful and famous, on vast international, ambassadorial-like projects and collaborations.

Conceived in his immense studio on the island of Captiva, Fla., these projects were of enormous size and ambition; for many years he worked on a project that grew literally to exceed the length of its title, “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece.” They generally did not live up to his earlier achievements. Even so, he maintained an equanimity toward the results. Protean productivity went along with risk, he believed, and risk sometimes meant failure.

When he wasn’t traveling in later years, he was on Captiva, living at first in a modest beach house and working out of a small studio. In time he became that Gulf Coast island’s biggest residential landowner while also maintaining a town house in Greenwich Village in New York. He acquired the land in Captiva by buying adjacent properties from elderly neighbors whom he let live rent-free in their houses, which he maintained for them. He accumulated 35 acres, 1,000 feet of beach front and nine houses and studios, including a 17,000-square-foot two-story studio overlooking a swimming pool. He owned almost all that remained of tropical jungle on the island.

One of my favorite things about Rauschenberg was that the process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

Rauschenberg, you will live on in all of our hearts forever, and you have changed the rules and boundaries of art forever.

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Somewhere out there is a kid, a traveling wilbury, consumed by wanderlust and searching for some adventure and documenting it all along the way.

This kid, is a 22 year old self taught photographer and train hopper, and he’s been capturing the stories of his train-hopping community (or sub-culture) on Polaroid film since at least 2003.

I would describe the work of Mike Brodie, as a modern day Jack Karouac, only his language is photography instead of words.

Meet Mike Brodie, “The Polaroid Kidd”.

Brodie’s photographs largely depict what he refers to as “travel culture”, train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters and hobo’s.

He’s exhibited work around the world, and most recently in San Francisco. Hopefully our paths will cross some day. By the way, he just won the “2008 Baum Award For Emerging American Photographers”.Here’s a quote from Mike on his galleries website (mbfala.com) that caught me, “Maybe I’ve just become obsessed with dirty cloth & dull rags, objects that have been touched by a million different hands then set back down–right there–just for me. Things that are made by chance or found on the side of a road, rather than bought or sold. What’s a story anyways? Why do people tell them?”

Here’s his website.

To see more from “The Polaroid Kid” and some other great photographers, check PLRDS.COM

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Here are some photos of the art show that we put on at Prime Urban in Santa Ana on Sat. night.

It was a great time had by all. Here are some photos encapsulating the event.

The boys setting up.

Garrett of Toms Shoes was so amped on the Ketel One Ice bar…

Cathleen and Sara.

Painting of Sara and I by the ever talented Justin Bauer.

The Rapps, and friend.

Tom Aeillo and Josh Ariza getting jiggy.

Artist, myself, Meredith Ambruso, and Justin Bauer.

People having a good time.

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Here are some photos from a Toms Shoe collaboration event with Thalia St. surf shop the other weekend.

Justin Bauer and I were the featured artist and we had a bunch of fun, and were slammed painting loads of shoes all night while rocking out to the Growlers.

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The somewhat forbidding exterior of David Yocum and Brian Bell’s architecture office in Atlanta. Loving the obscurity of the run down exterior with the modern and minimalist interior. Beautiful.

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This weeks artist of the week is Lisa Congdon, who I recently heard of and have fallen in love with her work (and after reading the interview, her lifestyle too). Lisa hails from San Fransisco and makes some amazing artwork that makes me smile, with her use of bold colors, great imagery and fine details. Thanks Lisa for doing the interview!

To see more of Lisa’s work check out http://www.lisacongdon.com/ or her blog at http://lisacongdon.typepad.com/

Where are you right now?
On my sofa in my living room.

What’s the weather like right now?
Sunny but chilly. About 50 degrees out.

So tell us, what is it that you do exactly?
I make art of three different varieties: collage, paintings and ink drawings.

How did you get to be doing this?
When I was in my early 30’s my brother asked me if I wanted to take a painting class with him. He was in school for landscape design and needed to take an elective. I said SURE. I stood out in the class for having some talent. I’d never painted before. Then slowly but surely over the next few years I started making more art and discovered that I loved it very much. And that other people did too. Seven years later I have had nine solo shows of my work and participated in numerous group shows.

What is a typical day like in your shoes?
I wake up around 8:30 or 9, depending on how late I’ve been up the night before. I am not a morning person so I sort of sit around for an hour on my sofa (like I am doing now) and do work on my computer and snuggle with my dog (who is also not a morning creature). Then I straighten my house and get ready to go out into the world. I like to swim laps around 11 or noon, so that’s usually the next thing I do. Then it’s either off to the studio for about 7 hours of making stuff or off to my shop to work (I own a store/gallery with a friend), depending on the day of the week. Around 7 pm. I am off for the day. And then I either go out with friends or come home to relax/read/watch movies with my pup or do more work (if I am on a deadline or something). I usually retire to bed around 11 or 12. Then I start over the next day.

What is your first thought when waking up in the morning?
“Yay! I don’t have to go to a desk job anymore.” You see, until about 6 months ago, I worked at a non-profit where I sat behind a desk and computer everyday. I had to be there at 8:30 a.m. I did this for years—and before that I was a teacher. And over the past seven years since I have been making art I was only able to create at night or on the weekends. I was so bored at my desk job. All I did was fantasize about the life I have now. So when I wake up in the morning now I am very grateful for my new life.

What is art?
Stuff people make to decorate (look pretty) or make a statement or both. I think a lot of art out there is crap (ugly, poorly made, aesthetically unpleasing). And there are probably people who think my work is crap, but it’s still art if the intention of the maker was to make art in the first place.

If you could go back in time to one point in your life, where would you go?
I’d only want to go there temporarily, but I’d like to go back to being 5 just to see how I felt inside, because I don’t really remember.

Where have you traveled?
Europe, Thailand, Mexico, Canada, all over the US

Top 5 bands of the moment:
Radiohead (always been in my top 5)
M.I.A.
Cat Power (seeing her tonight, actually)
Andrew Bird
Iron and Wine

Favorite 3 movies:
Fargo
Best in Show
Far From Heaven

Must reads:
The Golden Compass Trilogy
Anything by Ursula Hegi
Bird by Bird by Anne Lammott

How would you describe yourself?
Nice person. Friendly. Driven. Always in search of the good. Willing to admit I’ve been wrong (and I have been so wrong so many times).

Do you have any pets?
Yes, I have three pets: Wilfredo, my Chihuahua mix. He is my baby. Margaret and Barry my cats (named three years ago when I got them from Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee). Margaret is a pill. Barry is sweet and sort of slow.

What was the last thing you dreamed about?
I have waking dreams of being away in a tropical place almost everyday.

Who would you want to be tied to for 24hours?
My puppy.

Do you collect anything? If so, what?
I have about 30+ collections. Too many to name. You can read about some of them here (http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/2008/01/collecting-lisa-congdon.html)

Do you think there are aliens?
No.

What time did you wake up this morning?
8:09.

What’s your favorite day of the week and why?
Sunday. It’s my day off. I no longer have to work at a desk job on Monday so Sunday doesn’t feel so hard anymore. It’s my day to relax.

Do you have any nicknames?
Not that I know of.

What does your last text message say?
“K.”

Would you rather have money or love?
Love.

What is your dream vacation?
Traveling through Scandinavia for 2 months.

Name three things in the world you like:
My mom
Thrift shopping
Sushi and unfiltered sake.

Name three things in the world you dislike:
Flying through turbulence
Heartbreak
Mean people

Do you like sushi?
God, yes.

If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you would buy?
A new house on a nicer block in San Francisco.

Where do you think you’ll be in 1,000 years?
Helping out.

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