Posted in Art or Commerce?, Authorship, Exhibition, Internet, New Media, Old Media, Photography, Popular Culture, tagged art world, artists, commerce, creativity, Design, Etsy, Etsy.com, galleries, Popular Culture, selling on December 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Happy news! Artists and the people who love them meet at last, on mutual ground. No more stark, unfriendly gallery spaces where some intern behind the front desk refuses to acknowledge your arrival. No more standing around at openings with a plastic cup of lousy wine in one hand and a gussied-up Ritz cracker in the other, hoping for a chance to speak with the artist. No more stratospheric prices that make you feel like a dwarf star in the vast art world universe. Really? Really! (more…)
Posted in Architecture, Exhibition, Installation, tagged creativity, Jeremy Mora, Joe Fig, Michael Peter Smith, miniatures, Ryan Boyle, scale models, shrinking dollar, small, tableaux on April 28, 2008| 2 Comments »
It’s little wonder we Americans are feeling small, despite our nation’s massive carbon footprint, enormous economy ($13.8 trillion GNP) and gargantuan military-industrial complex. There are still forces greater than we are. Consider the weather. Over the past five years California wild fires, severe droughts, Hurricane Katrina and regional floods have overpowered the government’s resources, decimated states and reduced vibrant neighborhoods to unlivable ruins.
That’s not all. Economic forces have sent us tumbling into a recession. Our homes are worth less than the mortgages we pay, our personal debt is rising, the price of oil has blown past $100 a barrel, job opportunities have diminished and the dollar has shrunk to half the size of the Euro. (more…)
Posted in Art or Commerce?, tagged camera, commercial, creativity, free, play, profit, toys, website on March 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Creativity and profit-making have always had a turbulent relationship. Creativity typically gets sacrificed for the profit motive (though not always), and profit-makers tend to see creative types as a cloud of annoying gnats blocking their progress toward the clear, melodious sound of “Cha-ching!” One welcome development in the creativity / profit-making equation can be seen on certain commercial websites, where the content overflows with originality and imagination. Visitors to such sites are invited to play for its own sake. Example: FWIS, a design studio with offices in Brooklyn, Portland and Cupertino, offers cleverly designed flat images to cut, fold and tape into manga-like 3-D toys at http://readymech.com — for free! One character featured on the site — “R. Mutt” — pays homage to DuChamp’s ready-made urinal. The toys are so beautiful that you’ll want to download all of them. Recently, FWIS was commissioned to create a series of free designer pinhole cameras for the Corbis website. The “Pablo” and “Peyote” cameras are especially fun.
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