Siftables, The Smart Blocks

From the TED.com video series, David Merrill demos Siftables, the smart blocks. These are essentially little computers that interact with each other and users in a totally new and unique way. UI design is about hit a whole new phase of growth. This is pretty impressive…

Don Ed Hardy Art Show, SF

Don Ed Hardy
Victory
2008
acrylic, ink on paper mounted on board
10 5/8 x 9 1/2 inches

I just recently learned about an art show featuring new work from tattoo legend and accomplished fine artist Don Ed Hardy. He’s got a duo show up with some guy named Ron Nagle, but it’s only up through the end of today, Saturday January 10. I haven’t been able to get my shit together to check it out, and I won’t within the next 12 hours. Bummer.

I’ve been a fan of Hardy since just before I started getting tattooed (at the ripe old age of 26). And not just his tattoo work — which is phenomenal, no doubt — but also of the other styles he employs in various media, from etching prints to painting. Through a fortunate set of circumstances that have nothing to do with me personally, I have a couple of original Hardy lithograph prints from the mid-1960s, and they’re prized among my meager art collection. One, a small, unsigned self-portrat of the artist in a floppy hat and glasses, is actually in his book, Tattooing The Invisible Man; the other is a signed and dated print of a pot with a feathers in it (pictured, “Feather Bouquet,” May 1964), a Hardy piece that I’ve never seen anywhere else. A veteran tattooer I know once offered me a hefty sum of loot for both prints, but because they’re sort of family heirlooms, I can’t see getting rid of ‘em at any price.

As far as I’m concerned, Don Ed Hardy’s down-by-law credentials as a fine artist make up for the ubiquitous and super gaudy Christian Audigier-partnered clothing brand that bears Hardy’s name. My friend Serg said it was the fashion equivalent of Three 6 Mafia doing a song with Linkin Park (Hardy being Three 6, and Audigier being Linkin Park, in case you were wondering), and I couldn’t agree more.

At any rate, you should go see this before the Rena Bransten Gallery in SF closes tomorrow, and let me know how it is. I can’t make it, got other plans.

Obamarxism? WTF?

I like to take photos of stencils. I’m not a stencil artist or a graffiti writer, and I’m not interested in any so called quality-of-life arguments, but it suffices to say that I enjoy the “vandal arts,” I’m fascinated by it, and I’m a fan. I really started seeing lots of sidewalk stencils when I moved to the Bay. So I take photos of it.

I snapped this at the Market & Spear St. entrance to te BART station in SF last week. I’m not sure what the point is — if there are two things I’m pretty sure Barak Obama is not, it’s a terrorist and a Marxist.

Mahakala Tattoo by Henry Lewis

I’ve been having my left arm, between the shoulder and elbow, tattooed for a few years now, and this past summer I really concentrated on getting the main part of it, what I like to call “Phase 1,” knocked out.

One reason it’s taken so long is because I let it go for a while once all the black line and shading work (three sessions) was done. The other reason is that the artist who’s been doing the piece, Henry Lewis of Skull and Sword Tattoo, is an in-demand tattooer, and it’s tough to get an appointment with any immediacy, so when I did decide to dig back in and finish the piece, I had to get into his queue for a few months before I could get back under the needle. From that point, we put in another three sessions within the last three months to complete Phase 1: the main character with the immediate background (what you see here).

As I see it — and as proven by the finished product, I think — a waiting list is proof positive of Henry’s skills, and I don’t mind waiting a little longer to make sure that something that’s inked in to me for the rest of my life is of the utmost quality. And it is. Henry is a deeply respected player in the tattoo game — as are the other artists at Skull and Sword: Grime, Yutara and Norm — and I’d gladly wait just about any length of time for an appointment.

The piece is a rendition of the Buddhist deity Mahakala. You can read about it here and here. I’m not particularly interested in explaining why I chose Mahakala or what that iconography means to me personally — because it’s not really any of your business — but it suffices to say that I’m extremely happy with the work that Henry’s done so far, and I’m looking forward to Phase 2: the inside of the arm, the deep background.

Swag Merch Crap

I sometimes get media mail containing branded merchandise for products, events, artists, etc. Most of the time, it’s pretty crappy — some weird candy, dime-store plastic toy, or wack T-shirt, usually bundled with some shitty indie artist’s shitty album, or a pitch for some niche event in bum-fuck nowhere that I could give two shits about — but late last week, I got a package from Red Bull, a pitch for the Red Bull Big Tune beat battle. Red Bull’s got loot to spend on promotional items, they have creative marketing folks, and they have a really active events group, especially when it comes to music.

Red Bull’s Big Tune event is basically a national beat battle, with events popping off all over the country — Philly, Oakland, Houston, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, DC and Los Angeles — where budding producers and DJs go head-to-head to find out who’s got the best beats. The two top-ranked beat makers from each city will head to NYC in December for the big battle, and the winner gets a whole bunch of new studio gear and the opportunity to record with an artist of their choice at Red Bull Studios in LA (last year’s winner did some tracks with Young Buck).

The promotional merch for this event is sweeter than your usual run-of-the-mill promo garbage. The box the pitch comes in (above) is done up to look like a mixing board, and inside there’s a can of Red Bull, a couple of business cards, a one-sheet of event info, and a 4GB USB flash drive that looks like a little boombox made out of rubber. The can of Red Bull is whatever (honestly, though, I can’t drink that shit), and the business cards and the one-sheet are useful but not really that cool. The flash drive, however, is the shit. First of all, 4GB USB flash drives cost anywhere from $15 to $50, and generally speaking they’re pretty practical, so that’s a score. Secondly, this one ups the cool factor by being encased in a rubber mold of a boombox. Yeah, ultimately, it’s on some throw-away technology swag bullshit, but I’ll definitely use it…after I delete all the Red Bull Big Tune promo photos and video and PR documents from it. Thanks Red Bull. Too bad I got this package a month after the Oakland event happened. I totally would have gone. Maybe.

Shepard Fairey & Russell Simmons Want Your Money… For a Good Cause

Got a few extra dollars lying around — like, a lot of extra dollars? How about a buncha extra time to bid in an online auction, only to win the right to continue bidding over the phone in a live auction?

If you’re rich and have an empty schedule, check this out…

RARE ORIGINAL OBAMA “HOPE” ARTWORK DONATED BY SHEPARD FAIREY TO ART FOR LIFE CHARITY AUCTION

[Los Angeles- July 14, 2008] Shepard Fairey, the contemporary artist whose irreverent works have deconstructed the meaning and methods of propaganda, ironically became the creator of one of the most potent political images in recent history – the OBAMA “HOPE” poster. The image found such immediate resonance with Obama supporters that it became ubiquitous throughout the primary campaign and across the web.

Now, at the request of Russell Simmons, Shepard has donated one of three fine art versions of the poster to the charity auction, Art For Life, an annual event which benefits Simmons’ Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.

This piece is approximately 4 foot x 6 foot in size and is a mixed media stencil collage on cotton rag paper. This “HOPE” may be the only fine art piece of this image available to the public, and is one of only three in existence.

The Art For Life auction ends Tuesday, July 16 at noon. Then the online budding is closed and the highest bidders are invited to bid by phone during the live auction on July 19. Entering the online auction is the only way to enter the live auction. The online auction can be found here:

Click here…

So to recap… You motherfuckers out there with nothing but time and money on your hands — all you trustafarians — get ready to spend your parents’ money on the chance at winning the right to buy some cool art from the nation’s preeminent hipster artist… Oh, and a good cause (after Russell gets his cut, of course.)

(At the time of this post, the bid had reached $40K.)