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VW Art

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Photo © 2008 Guzman

Abstract Expressionist Stamps

 

Love these new abstract expressionist stamps currently on sale at the U.S.P.S.

Ten abstract expressionists who revolutionized art during the 1940s and 1950s and moved the U.S. to the forefront of the international art scene for the first time. Abstract expressionism refers to a large body of work that comprised radically different styles, from still, luminescent fields of color to vigorous, almost violent, slashes of paint. 

Your $4.44 cents include:

The Golden Wall (1961) – Hans Hofmann
Romanesque Façade (1949) – Adolph Gottlieb
Orange and Yellow (1956) – Mark Rothko (above)
The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb (1944) – Arshile Gorky
1948-C (1948) – Clyfford Still
Asheville (1948) – Willem de Kooning
Achilles (1952) – Barnett Newman
Convergence (1952) – Jackson Pollock
Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34 (1953-1954) – Robert Motherwell
La Grande Vallée 0 (1983) – Joan Mitchell

Fill your friend's mailboxes with love here

NYC Subway Turnstiles

 

 

 

 

US Debt Clock

View your $117,000 share here. (Roll over figures for explanation.)

To get an idea of what our national debt looks like, this stack above is $1 million. (100 packets of $10,000).

And this...

...is 12 trillion dollars.

Should make it a bit easier to explain to the grandkids.

It's Time To Mother Nature

 

 Sure, as an act of civil disobedience I'm risking a $5,000 fine and six months in prison (under U.S. 18  U.S.C. 331) for this line I penned and have been printing on every bank note that passes through my hands, but it's a chance I'm willing to take.

Go ahead, stamp this on a Jackson and send the world a message.

 

 

 

 

 
  

 

 

 

 

Upside Down Portraits

Brandon Voges hangs people by their ankles then takes their photograph.

Upside Downy Face is both an intriguing and disturbing take on the formal portrait.

Can't help wondering what the shots would look like if Voges was hung upside down.

BSS | Upside Downy Face from Bruton Stroube Studios on Vimeo.

The Psychology Of Procrastination

 

I've been trying to write a post about procrastination for a week now, but just haven't been able to get around to it.

Well, why procrastinate today when you can put it off until tomorrow?

Because chronic procrastinators relish the thrill of riding deadlines to the eleventh hour is why. Confronted with a one week deadline people in general split into two camps:

Those who begin immediately, complete the project in three days, then spend the remaining four days fine-tuning, rewriting, and reflecting on the fruits of their labor. (If the deadline's yanked forward two days, no need to panic.)

In the other camp are those who postpone the inevitable then begin only when the tension becomes unbearable.

And that's the riddle's answer right there: procrastinators are adrenaline junkies.

The endorphin release from solving the problem at 11:59pm is a higher high than completing the project days in advance. (As those with Attention Deficit Disorder well know, it's only adrenaline that allows their minds to focus on any given assignment.)

Such brinkmanship however rarely leads to great work; studies have shown that people are less creative when fighting the clock because time pressure means they can't deeply engage with the problem fully. Creativity requires an incubation period; the subconscious mind needs time to soak in a problem and let ideas bubble up.

And although perfectionism is commonly cited as a cause of procrastination––"it'll never be good enough so I never start"––a 1996 study by Robert Slaney found that adaptive perfectionists are in fact less likely to procrastinate than non-perfectionists.

But take heart, the penalties for skipping a deadline aren't what they were: when the first penitentiary at Folsom was built it had neither walls nor fences, just a white line that if you crossed you got shot.

It was called the deadline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talent You Should Know : Michael Najjar

Photographer Michael Najjar retouches mountains into stock graphs.

This is Lehman Brothers dropping off a cliff.

Mushroom Cloud Faces

You see 'em, right?

Russian Ground-Effect Airplane

[click to enlarge]

Witness the 'Lun.' A 350-ton ground-effect monster built in 1987.

Bigger than an Airbus A380, this ground-effect "ship" was commissioned as a high-speed military transport. Designed to cruise at ten feet above the water surface and land in a 15-20 foot swell.

Armed with Moskit cruise missiles, a hit by just four of them sinks any known vessel.

This Goliath sits rotting on the shores of the Caspian Sea like some discarded prop from Star Wars.

More

Talent You Should Know : Andrew Ohanesian

[Click to enlarge]

Andrew Ohanesian is a Brooklyn-based installation artist who builds an entire house inside a gallery, then destroys it. Really.

His walk-through installations can be seen on his just-launched website above. (It's a drag.)

[Pixels by Household Name. Development by Jerome Gipe at Slickerhat.]

Middle Class Dreaming

 

Talent You Should Know : Alexander Mihailenko

[click to enlarge]

 

 

Village near Kiev in the Ukraine.

Shot in 2009, not 1909.

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Sapling Hugger

I cannot be put back together again.

Where Ideas Come From : Part 4

 

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." To steal a quote from Picasso.

Where ideas come from:

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Sick Note To Teacher

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Sick note from a seven-year-old girl.

Bless.

Talent You Should Know : Dan Funderburg

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Some nice wallpaper from Dan Funderburg your Grandmother will hate.

Kill Twenty Minutes

Lost Unicorn Poster

Tusk, turn your back for a minute.