Beatriz Milhazes

Brazilian painter and printmaker Beatriz Milhazes takes a graphic approach to fine art, using illustrative shapes and color to create dynamic emotional effects.

Model Parts Wall Art

If I had a wad of cash laying around I'd definitely pickup up DRIVE IN by Jellio. This is perhaps one of the coolest pieces of automotive related art I've seen. Technically, it's called "wall sculpture" but the idea here is scaling up a plastic model car parts tree (or sprue) to gigantic proportions and hanging it on the wall. DRIVE IN is the second model-themed piece of art in their lineup, and this particular one, "... pays tribute to the chrome-heavy hot rods of the fifties...think car hops, tail fins and drag races."

Jell-O City

AP recently featured a clip of an artist that has rendered Scottsdale Arizona in Jell-O. It's good, but not as good as the San Francisco skyline she did last year. In terms of Jell-o compatible cities, San Francisco was a much better choice, and in my humble opinion, a more interesting landscape. But since Scottsdale is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. (in the top 50, anyway), the juxtaposition of the edible sculpture and the evolving skyline is an interesting one.

Male Pairs

Ready to get back on the Will Ferrell bus to funnytown? The last stop for me was Anchorman, then I saw this. It looks like the formulaic Ferrell shennanigans, however, I'm already laughing. WARNING: Ferrell torso exposure in the trailer, please take the necessary precautions. ADDED BONUS: WIll Arnett

Mimobots

A mimobot is a designer toy and flash drive all in one. They can hold up to 2GB of memory, but really I just want to play with them.

This one is named Hero. He was designed by Tado and even has his own trailer. His hobbies are baking, jigsaws and playing ludo with Mr. Bonbon.

Check out mimoco to see the rest of the mimobots.

70s Funny Cars

Everything you ever wanted to know about 70's funny cars and the unique characters behind the machines that turned most of them to legends. Like Jungle Jim and Jungle Pam.

Over 400 cars, in all their glory. The typography of the cars, the colors and body styling made them such beautiful works of art.

Fresh Intelligence

I love my gossip. Radar Magazine is 0 for 2 in its attempt to enter the tabloid rag market. Their website is up and running though, looks like print really is dead. They serve their gossip up with a hefty dollop of sarcasm. Check it.

Shame

These aren't your journal entries but they are just as embarrassing. It's that hard-to-watch humiliation that is similar to the comedy of Ricky Gervais, only it's real. And unlike the art and notes in Found, you probably won't run into something you authored (unless you submitted it, of course).

Ecoist

These handmade, eco-friendly handbags and accessories are made from recycled print material like newspapers and candy wrappers. The company's objective is to merge design with social and environmental consciousness to provide stylish, functional, and durable products that people will love to own. I say they've hit the target.

Adirondack DIY

Have any leftover street signs lying around the house? Why not toss them together into an adirondack chair? A desk perhaps? There's even the brilliant option of using them as building material. All this and more on Makezine, an incredibly inventive DIY site. If you're feeling even more craft-sy, try Craftzine.

NYPL Digital Gallery

Are you looking for a picture postcard of a 19th century Egyptian footbridge? Or the flyleaf from a 12th century illuminated Psalterium? The NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 520,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

Life is Change, Growth is Optional

Self-taught painter Rodney White incorporates inspiring maxims into beautiful paintings that draw from old advertising imagery.

Art and Culture

Have you ever wondered who invented wearing black as the trade uniform for creatives? According to this site, where you can navigate music, literature and art movements by association as well as category, it was the father of modern poetry, French symbolist Charles Baudelaire.

www.artandculture.com

State of the Union

This dynamic infographic in The New York Times displays the incidence and occurrence of words in recent State of the Union addresses.

Michael Jackson's Thriller - LEGO Style!

Definitely not a technical tour-de-force, but hilarious nonetheless. Somehow the incredibly low production quality adds to the campy fun, along with the brilliant choreography. Oddly it makes you yearn for that Michael Jackson comeback.

LEGO Thriller!

Save Gocco! The Wurst Gallery

For over 25 years, the Gocco screen-printing system has been used in Japan. The small plastic device was marketed at families for making greeting cards and sold in toy and hobby stores. Since it’s peak during the 1980’s, Gocco’s sales have declined in the Japanese market with the advent of home computers and printers. Outside japan, however, appreciation for the Gocco system has only just begun. for artists who cannot afford to own or don’t have the space for a traditional screen-printing set-up, Gocco has offered a way to mass produce everything from postcards to wedding invitations to mini-comics to limited edition art prints. Check out The Wurst gallery for some limited edition prints for sale made exclusively with a Gocco machine.

In December 2005, Gocco’s parent company, Riso, announced they are discontinuing manufacturing the print Gocco system due to low sales in japan. savegocco.com was created with hopes that it may not be late too work together to find a new home for Gocco outside of Japan. Save Gocco!

Lost !!!

I like all the little mysteries of found art, but what's even better is something interactive like this. I sent a note to the address with my sympathy and inquired if the item had been found, but have yet to hear back. I will post an update if I hear further news.

Mullet Pony

I heart mullet pony. I find their artwork unfettered and unapologetic, which are traits not so easily attained for young female artists–or anyone else for that matter.

KCRW: Morning Becomes Eclectic

Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW in Santa Monica is committed to a music experience that celebrates innovation, creativity and diversity by combining progressive pop, world beat, jazz, African, reggae, classical and new music. Nic Harcourt, KCRW's music director, and trend-setting host of the show is one of the best and most inspiring DJ's around.

APAK Studio

Aaron and Ayumi Piland are two physically separate beings who are united in art as APAK Studio. They met in a distant dimension and traveled to Earth together in a magic imagination machine. Using their art, they have learned to exchange energy with beings throughout the universe. From their secret sky cabin, they are sending out their signal hopes of contacting other creative life forms.

Start your day off right

Breakfast cereal is a big deal here at Tolleson and these new bowls by FrenchKnicker are the perfect compliment to our mornings.

Created by Laura Strasser and Milia Seyppel, students of the Bauhaus University in Weimar Germany. These bowls and others from their collection have been chosen to be included in the Extremely White exhibition, which was organized by Otro Diseno in Amsterdam.

Personal Vehicles on Abandoned Light Rails

The HeHe Association, in France has come up with a personal transportation device, called Tapis Volant, that uses abandoned light-rail tracks within cities.

Kentucky Sunset

Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time and you get to see nature putting on an amazing display.

Hype Williams

Click through to music video director Hype Williams' dreamy urban aesthetic.

MFA is the new MBA

Design strategy is an interesting new creative discipline. The new D school at Stanford, unfortunately only open to enrolled students, utilizes bootcamps, labs and classes to infuse innovative thinking and design training into a variety of academic disciplines.

Aya Brackett

Lyrical photography by a native Californian who ventured east to receive a dual BA in Visual Arts and East Asian Studies at Brown University. Her work is infused with natural light and organic compositions.

Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

The ambient flash-based animation, luminous photography and hynotic navigation of the Pulitzer website delivers an entrancing user experience. The site also elegantly incorporates more rough-and-ready tools like a behind-the-scenes blog with a Flickr photo stream.

Modern Mini

Since the baby boom hit Tolleson Design - we are up to 6 - our web browsers have been pointed toward ModernSeed. A local Bay Area business started by former graphic designer Melissa Pfeiffer and business woman Shanette Westphal, their collection of all things modern for children and parents pulls the best hard-to-find products together in one cohesive online shop.

ModernSeed is now offering an exclusive reissue of six designs by one of the most innovative modern designers of the 20th century, Alexander Girard. Their Girard pillows feature bold graphic created from his early career with Herman Miller. If you happen to be in San Francisco before February 25th 2007, you can catch Vibrant Modern, a collection of Girard's work, on display at the SFMoMA.

Trees and Sky

Sometimes it is good to get away from the computer and look at trees against the sky.

Helen Levitt

For people who have not experienced the dingier side of Gotham, the work of veteran street photographer Helen Levitt offers a lyrical, down-and-dirty slice of real Manhattan life. Her latest book, Slide Show, presents a selection of color images taken between 1971 and the late 1990s.

Ezekiel's Horse

Equine photography typically tends toward the sentimental. Keith Carter's Ezekiel's Horse series seems to look at horses from a horses' point of view, capturing their mysterious, chiaroscuro nature.

Sean McFarland

I was mesmerized by Sean McFarland's photos the first time that I saw them in his undergraduate show at California College of Arts (CCA). In his process, he takes photographs, and then uses multiple prints to recreate a diorama of sorts – which he then re-photographs and prints large format. The results are beautiful, surreal environments. The rest of his recognizeable San Francisco landscapes can be viewed at Jack Hanley Gallery.

SF3D: Yokoyama-san's takeover bid

Originally called SF3D (but also known by a handful of other names), MaK, the brainchild of Japanese designer Kow Yokoyama, dates back to 1982.

In spite of its humble beginnings the 'Armored Fighting Suit' that became the core around which the MaK universe was created, was custom built using a Micronauts model and some ping-pong balls. The original 'SF3D' name was coined (and later exclusively retained) by Hiroshi Ichimura, then editor of Hobby Japan Magazine in which the AFS first appeared. The MaK world has gone on to set The Standard of quality and depth for the science fiction modeling world.

Roboterkampf

Krueger's Krieger

Wiki

Pouring Down

I found this guy's films on a video blog site called The Pan which is in and of itself a fantastic resource for finding strange video material. Pouring Down is the video blog site of Daniel Liss. Don't know too much about him, but his short videos are engaging. The first one I saw, Farming, got my attention. Now I check in on what he posts from time to time. He did a project called Seven Maps where he took input via the web that sent him on a journey he documented in seven short films. Start with "The Proposal" and see how it unfolds.

Cabin Fever

The Cabin Project is a collective of young Canadian designers who are creating work that “speaks to the particulary Canadian mythology of wilderness”.

This collection will satisfy your longing for that perfect outdoors get-away without ever leaving the safety of your city dwelling. I especially like the Instant Campfire package shown above. Not proven to keep bears out of your apartment!

Hannah Stouffer @ Grand Array

I first came across Hannah Stouffer's work at Madrone Lounge in San Francisco. Since then, I have been trying to follow her work in exhibits around the city. Her latest show was at a new gallery in SOMA called Gray Area. Her work is highly graphic and illustrative and she has an eye for juxtaposing both modern and romantic elements – from pinup girls to muscle cars – in a classic way. See all of her work, both personal and commercial at grandarray.com.

Reskin

This collaborative project of The Austrailian Network for Art and Technology, the Australian National University School of Art, the Centre for New Media Arts and Craft Australia places jewelers and fashion designers with new media artists in an intensive three week collaborative research and development lab. It ends with the WearNow Symposium.

Beach Culture

Stuart Haygarth is a London based artist whose current work is based on a collection of ' man made' debris washed up on a specific stretch of Kent coastline. The material collected is sorted and categorized.

The Tide Chandelier is created from clear and translucent objects, primarily made of plastic. Each object is different in shape and form, yet they come together to produce one sphere. The sphere is an analogy for the moon which affects the tides which in turn wash up the debris.

Brooklyn Vegan

Like the indie / alternative music scene? Want to check out the next hot up-and-coming bands? Download new mp3's? Tour Dates? News? Well, my friend, check out Brooklyn Vegan, where cool new music, photos & news collide. All from a vegan in Brooklyn. Vegans never had it so good.

Shynola

Shynola is the collective name of a group of four visual artists based in London who have collaborated on a variety of projects, most notably a number of acclaimed music videos for several pioneering artists.

Shynola formed when Gideon Baws, Chris Harding, Richard Kenworthy and Jason Groves met in 1994 at The Kent Institute of Art and Design. They collaborated on a number of different art projects during their time at college, including organizing a show of work at a London gallery in 1996 called "Shinola".

Must see's in the video collection are Junior Senior's "Move Your Feet", and Blur's "Good Song".

Print & Pattern

If you love patterns, Print & Pattern is a great site that has a plethora of inspirational patterns that apply to products such as fabrics, wallpapers, ceramics, and gift wrap, just to name a few. It's the perfect place to go if you're looking for a little visual dazzle in your life.

Please remove your shoes

Michaela Schleypen's custom made floorcouture collection Floor to Heaven features a pixelated map of the world rug called "Part of World". Michaela's distinctive handtufted and handknotted rugs can also be customized. She holds do-it-yourself-rug workshops that will "channel your creative talents into animating results". In addition to Part of World, there's also a pixelated Popskull, a wood grain Woodwalk, a textured Swirl and the Russian Denim and Jewel. Take a look at the couture section of the site to see the images of her glorious creations.

Superbad

Remember the storybooks where you could choose you're own ending? Superbad is the visual equivalent. It's total mental stimulation.

The Real Story of the Superheroes

Artist Dulce Pinzón's photo series titled, "The Real Story of the Superheroes" pays homage to immigrant workers and the extreme conditions they work under in order to provide for their families back in Mexico.

From the artist's website: "The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper."

21C Museum Hotel

Downtown Louisville, Kentucky is undergoing a revitilization that now features the 21C Museum Hotel. It is the best boutique hotel in the country, bar none - including those I have seen in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Manhattan. The interior design is luscious and the contemporary art featured at the 21C draws from a top caliber collection assembled by Laura Lee Brown and her husband Steve Wilson. Brown's family controls the Brown-Forman liquor corporation, purveyors of Jack Daniels whiskey and Makers Mark bourbon. It is lovely to "live" with the art during a stay at the 21C, as opposed to viewing it in the somewhat sterile context of a traditional museum.

A sampling from the 21C collection.

The Boy Who Would Be Tsar

In the shifting eco-political landscapes of modern history there are inevitably individuals who are left only with the remnants of lost wealth, worthless titles and family legends. Gallery 16 presents the work of one such descendent, Prince Andrew Romanoff, who but for the Bolshevik revolution might have been a Russian Tsar. Instead he is an illustrator living in Inverness, California. The exhibition features an artist's book that describes Romanoff's childhood growing up as a deposed royal in exile.

Korby Lenker

There are some songlists you can listen to over and over while immersed in creative endeavors. On King of Hearts, his latest release, this Portland-based singer/songwriter combines spare arrangements, intimate vocals and reflective lyrics to achieve a beautifully understated romantic effect. EMO lives.

French Artist SKWAK

The first time I discovered SKWAK, I wasn't sure if I found his work totally unnerving or incredibly inspiring. What's amazing about it is how much insane detail is incorporated into each piece of art. It's truly different.

Nature Tech

OOOMS, a design studio in The Netherlands, has produced the perfect product to combat your lack of time spent in the natural environment. Their USB memory sticks are made to stand out against their natural environment of computers and offices.

The sticks are picked from the woods and are manually selected on their natural beauty, then professionally handmade into unique and personal USB memory sticks.

Translinear Light

Alice Coltrane, Vedanta priestess and widow of jazz great John Coltrane, died recently. She was a remarkable musician and composer in her own right, blending divinity, antiquity and global perspective into her vanguard jazz explorations. Journey in Satchidananda, her fourth album, remains mesmerizing thirty years after its first release. In 2004, the acclaimed Translinear Light marked her return to recording after a 26-year hiatus.

Many Muses

Artist Linda Plaisted of Many Muses studio creates moody photographic prints focusing on nature and landscapes. She achieves a tonality reminiscent of old hand-tinted images.

Videomaker From Outerspace

Charlie Mars is a french "videomaker from outerspace." He uses a filming technique known as stop-motion pixelization. I found his work truly mezmerizing and beautiful - and a little disturbing. I applaud this guy's craft.

Here are some of my favorites.

Carton | Piqûre | Deux

The Beaver Trilogy

Found this one the other day and I must say, I couldn't stop watching. The Beaver Kid is a short film by Trent Harris about this guy, Groovin' Gary, whom he stumbled upon outside a Salt Lake City news station in the 70s. The first version stars the original Groovin' Gary and the other two star Sean Penn in his first movie role and Crispin Glover as "Groovin' Larry".

Beaver Kid 1: 1 | 2 | 3

Beaver Kid 2: 1 | 2 | 3

The Orkly Kid: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Ask That Your Way be Long

Jorge Schmeisser, born in Pomerania, schooled in Germany and based in Canberra, Australia, has traveled the world etching in situ. His works display a reverence for the forms and intricacies of nature while showcasing a technical prowess worthy of Albrecht Dürer. He draws his life motto from a poem by Cavafy - "When you set out for Ithaka ask that your way be long, full of adventure, full of instruction … rich with all you have gained on the way."

Bygone Days

John Penor, a New York-based photographer, found this treasure trove of forgotten western frontier photos in his 93-year-old grand uncle's South Dakota sod house and made a book out of them.