Chanel barbells, meticulously re-created Prada eau de toilette packaging, a Burberry punching bag and an entire Kate Spade store replicated from scratch - those familiar with the aforementioned sculpture and installations by Bay Area artist Libby Black might be surprised to learn that her approach is far from a cerebral spoof of branding in the modern world. Rather, it hews closely to Black's own upbringing.
Read the restPosted on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 by Allison Byers
In less than two weeks Savannah College of Art and Design will be hosting Design Ethos: Vision Reconsidered 2012 a two-part conference: part conversation, part action. The Ethos Conference delves into what is currently being done in the field of design to take on social problems, while the Do-Ference synthesizes those conversations to create a roadmap for social innovation in the future.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, April 5, 2012 by Allison Byers
WHEN you are a practicing alchemist, as Sasha Duerr is, strangers will often ask you to demonstrate your powers by heating up a caldron in the yard. It’s a living, and Ms. Duerr is usually happy to give it a try. On a recent Monday afternoon, she had arranged to spark up three propane camp stoves and scavenge a few things to boil.
Read the restPosted on Wednesday, April 4, 2012 by Allison Byers
Hank Willis Thomas is an artist based in New York and Paris. His collaborative project Question Bridge: Black Males premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Oakland Museum of California, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, and Chastain Arts Center in Atlanta.
Read the restPosted on Tuesday, April 3, 2012 by Allison Byers
An outdoor concert always seem like a fun summer activity, until one considers the restroom situation: long lines of people waiting to use malodorous, unhygienic Porta-Potties. Although it won’t do much to improve the stench, Kevin Cheng’s dual-use system promises to slash the wait time: Each unit has a closed stall on one side and an open urinal for men on the other, with waste from both flowing into a single tank.
Read the restPosted on Monday, April 2, 2012 by Allison Byers
In a new twist on sustainable fashion, designers aren't just embracing new fabrics made from organic cotton, hemp or bamboo, they're pawing through piles of clothing waste, crafting high-fashion, hand-made items from old cashmere sweaters, T- shirts and other castoffs.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, March 29, 2012 by Allison Byers
If you've ever imagined plunging into a Mobius strip, I have just the exhibition for you: "Architecture in the Expanded Field," at the San Francisco campus of the California College of the Arts.
Read the restPosted on Saturday, March 24, 2012 by Allison Byers
California College of the Arts has been training students in fine arts, architecture, design and writing for more than 100 years, and the school is translating that experience to a cutting-edge interaction design program, which launched in fall 2011.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, March 15, 2012 by Allison Byers
As we searched for the right image to feature on this month’s cover—something timely, and unusually provocative, smart, and beautiful—we realized that all our descriptors still apply, but that “beauty” has become an elusive ideal. Design’s expressions—product design in this case, but we may as well be talking about design at every scale—have become more complex than the foreground objects we celebrated in the last century.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, March 15, 2012 by Allison Byers
The Shanghai Biennale has announced the curators for its 2012 edition. The chief curator, Qiu Zhijie, is a professor at the School of Inter-media Art of China Art Academy, as well as the director of Total Art Studio and a member of the supervisory team in the Art and Social Thoughts Institute. As an artist, Qiu has exhibited in the 53rd Venice Biennale and the 25th Sao Paulo Biennale, and has been featured in solo shows at the Haus of World Culture in Berlin and the Ullens Contemporary Art Center in Beijing.
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