I totally want to paint my house like this. – Brian

These amazing art pieces took three months to create and give historical figures a makeover to show us how they might look if they were alive today…

Shakespeare as a hipster is definitely my personal favorite. -Shelly

    How cool are these art pieces that also function as furniture?

“Unveiled earlier this month at Salon Satellite at Milan Design Week 2013, Canvas is a set of two-dimensional, lightweight furniture pieces made of wood, aluminum and stretched elastic canvas that can be hung flat on a wall. The surface of each piece is printed with images of the furniture it represents, and once removed can be propped against a wall and used as actual seating.”

Perfect for the tiniest of apartments!
- Mallorie/Shelly

“People often ask me who my favorite photographer is and when I tell them Sebastiao Salgado, many people have no idea who he is. Here’s Sebastiao speaking at a TED conference… if you have the time to watch this, I suspect, like me, you’ll never forget who he is.”  - Jesse

  Merle Spurrier Gymnasium Pool – University of Rochester, NY

  Abandoned post office =- Kelso, CA

This tumblr of abandoned things is hauntingly beautiful. -Shelly/Kieara

“This project investigates the self-organization of two materials, plaster and elastic fabric, to produce evocative visual and acoustic effects. Inspired by the work of the Spanish architect Miguel Fisac and his experiments with flexible concrete formwork in the 1960-70s, p_wall attempts to continue this line of research and add to it the ability to generate larger and more differentiated patterns. Starting from an image, a cloud of points is generated based on the image’s grayscale values. These points are then used to mark the positions of dowels which constrain the elasticity in the fabric formwork. Plaster is then poured into the mould and the fabric expands under the weight of the plaster. The resultant plaster tile has a certain resonance with the body as it sags, expands, and stretches in its own relationship with gravity and structure. Assembled into a larger surface, a pattern emerges between the initial image’s grayscale tones and the shadows produced by the wall.”

-David/Shelly

Text via HERE

Can organization be as beautiful as art?  We think so!

“Mr. Wehrli’s first two picture books, “Tidying Up Art” and its sequel, “Tidying Up More Art,” present a simple but satisfying sight gag, over and over again, in which he “tidies up” modern masters like Klee and Picasso, Pollock and Haring in a series of “before” and “after” photos. In the “afters,” Mr. Wehrli deconstructs a painting’s components (body parts, say, in a Picasso, or squares in a Klee) and then stacks them in neat, color-specific rows.”

His third book, “The Art of Clean Up: Life Made Neat and Tidy” (Chronicle Books) takes everyday things like french fries and laundry and cleans them up in an also visually striking manner:

Time to go home and clean up!

-Shelly/Jesse

Text source HERE

This 7,000 square foot NYC penthouse comes complete with a tube shaped metal slide that runs through its 4 stories.  Which means all of our childhood dreams just may have come true!

-Shelly/Kieara

This perforated “tear off” wallpaper is just so nifty.

You apply the wall-covering and then tear off the pieces as you like to completely customize your space. I especially love the below- letting your kids go nuts creating art on the walls and then strategically allowing their masterpieces to show through.  Gorgeous!

- Shelly/Mallorie

Images, etc. via HERE

What can the brain tell us about art?

“How can art and science be brought together?

Alois Riegl, of the Vienna School of Art History in 1900, was the first to truly address this question. He understood that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer. Not only does the viewer collaborate with the artist in transforming a two-dimensional likeness on a canvas into a three-dimensional depiction of the world, the viewer interprets what he or she sees on the canvas in personal terms, thereby adding meaning to the picture. Riegl called this phenomenon the “beholder’s involvement” or the “beholder’s share.”

Art history was now aligned with psychology. Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich, two of Riegl’s disciples, argued that a work of art is inherently ambiguous and therefore that each person who sees it has a different interpretation. In essence, the beholder recapitulates in his or her own brain the artist’s creative steps.”

Read the rest of the above article HERE!

-Jesse/Shelly