Chinese sculptor Lei Xue has made these crushed cans in the style of Ming dynasty pottery.
The pieces are part of an ongoing series titled Drinking Tea, and unlike the mechanical process of producing cans, each object is sculpted and painted by hand.
So good! See also the ingenious design of the aluminum beverage can.
Tags: art Lei Xue
Artist and comedian Guy Madjar uses photoshop to include himself in all the films nominated for Best Picture this year. See more subtly (and not-so-subtly) altered movie posters below!
We feature an original illustration by Mari Andrew every Friday morning. Here’s today’s!
P.S. Awkward run-ins, and modern dating.… Read more
The post Nightly Thoughts appeared first on A Cup of Jo.
This is is remarkably fascinating: Squid speak a unique, undeciphered language using their skin
We’re putting together a big gallery of all of our favourite submissions to our Remake project. If you missed it, we asked our readers to recreate a well known work of art as a photo, using household objects rather than Photoshop. VIEW THE FULL GALLERY HERE.
Another incredible snow drawing by artist Sonja Hinrichsen (previously featured here)! Made in the snow covering Lake Catamount in Colorado last year, the site-specific piece pays homage to the Yampa River which used to run through the valley.
Helped along by roughly 50 community participants, the group’s route not only coincided with the course of the original river, the abstract designs created from their tracks in the snow mimic the meandering flow of water. See more images of “Yampa River” below!
I'm about to go porcupine on this pile of Justin's peanut butter cups and Red Vines. Relatedly, I hope you're twitching in front of a TV watching some terrifying movie and binging on even more candy. Happy Halloween!!
    
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“Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.”
- Maria Popova
Taken from Maria’s very personal post: 7 Things I Learned in 7 Years of Reading, Writing, and Living
Rather than bore you with details of the constant wallpaper scraping and other real-life, highly repetitive, and very zen activities of new home ownership (maybe I should blog about it?!), I’m going to talk about doughnuts instead. AW YEAH. Glazes and sprinkles and yums and AALLLLLL that. Let’s do it.
My bud Ashley from The Edible Perspective is an expert on the subject of doughnut making and even better, she knows her way around some higher vibe doughnut making as well. So she developed, tested and photographed a book‘s worth of content about it and the results are so, so great. I had a doughnut pan kind of languishing in the back of a cupboard for a long-ass time. I had bought the cookbook from a very high profile bakery with the hopes of executing their healthed-up doughnuts at home. So I bought the pan and tried the recipes out. Multiple attempts and total BS results each time. I’m not saying I’m an expert or anything (and neither would Martha apparently)(PS: COME ON), but I do know my way around a kitchen and some of the more freaky-funky-granola-type ingredients. I finally reasoned that the problem lied in the recipes themselves, and that some things should be left to the pros.
Then Ash sent me a copy of her book. Let’s talk about changing the game entirely. Her combination of flours makes for a pretty wonderful texture, without all the expensive gums that can be ubiquitous in gluten free baking. Her advice and approach comes from a place of experience, warmth and accessibility. I always appreciate her encouraging and authentic voice in blog land, so was really excited to see that translate in a real, printed work (high five, girl!). The potential for innovative flavour combinations is showcased to the utmost through the pages. There’s doughnut cakes, savoury treats, ice cream, and! She even thought of my sweet pup with a recipe for peanut butter and pumpkin doggie doughnuts. Cute right? I went with her vegan maple doughnuts and a version of her tahini maple glaze for toppin’. We were out of tahini so I went for almond butter and a complimentary fat pinch of sea salt to work its magic with the maple. So, so yummy.
Anyway, I’d like one of you to have some doughnut fun at home, so Ash is letting me give away a copy of her book, Baked Doughnuts for Everyone (plus a dope set of measuring spoons)! All ya gotta do is tell me what your favourite doughnut is in the comments. Mine? The grapefruit and candied ginger one from Pies ‘n’ Thighs in Brooklyn ranks pretty high. Prior to that, I was more of a classic raspberry jelly-filled kinda gal. But I promise if you bake me any of the goodies from Ash’s book, I’ll pretty much be your bestie for life. Yep, they’re that good. I’ll close the giveaway next Monday (the 28th), so tell me about your faves, people! (Note: giveaway is open to US, Canada + UK residents only) THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED, PEEPS :)
vegan + GF maple doughnuts with salted almond butter glaze from Baked Doughnuts for Everyone by Ashley McLaughlin
special equipment: a doughnut pan, silly!
serves: makes 8-10
notes: I went in with chopped pecans and pumpkin seeds to top mine (nature’s sprinkles!), but cacao nibs, chopped dried cherries or any other nut/seed would be lovely.
doughnuts ingredients:
1/2 cup oat flour
1/2 cup sweet rice flour
2 tbsp evaporated cane juice
2 tbsp almond meal
2 tbsp coconut flour
2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
3 tbsp neutral oil (like sunflower or grapeseed)
2 1/2 tbsp maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
salted almond butter glaze ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp almond butter
2-3 tbsp unsweetened almond milk
2 tbsp maple syrup
pinch of cinnamon
fat pinch of sea salt
+ chopped nuts and seeds to garnish if you like
Grease your doughnut pan(s) and heat your oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, combine the oat flour, sweet rice flour, cane sugar, almond meal, coconut flour, ground flax, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Whisk to fully combine.
In a small bowl, combine the almond milk, applesauce, oil, maple syrup and vanilla. Whisk to fully combine.
Pour the liquid components into the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Fold it all together with a spatula until just combined (or until you don’t see dry flour bits anymore). Spoon the batter into your doughnut pan (or fill a ziploc bag with the batter, cut off a corner and pipe it into the pan). Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into one of the doughnuts comes out clean. Gently remove the doughnuts from the pan and allow them to cool thoroughly.
While doughnuts are cooling, mix up the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together all of the glaze ingredients until you have a smooth mixture.
Once cool, dip doughnuts into the glaze and return them to your cooling rack so the glaze can harden a bit. Press any chopped nuts/seeds etc into the glaze at this point.
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In May of last year, MIT’s Kurtz Gallery for Photography opened with its first exhibition featuring Berenice Abbott. Abbott was hired by MIT to develop photographic imagery for the teachings of physics and spent two years using photography to document the principles of physical science–mechanics, electromagnetism, and waves.
Berenice Abbott, A Bouncing Ball in Diminishing Arcs, 1958-61 (24.1986)
Photographing movement has always been a challenging task. In the early developments of photography, pictures involving motion were often taken in the middle of a bright, sunny day, to allow for the fast shutter speeds. While working for German and Hungarian newspapers, Hungarian-born Martin Munkacsi developed an interest in movement, and developed an expertise in sports photography. Below, in a picture from his series involving acrobatic dancers, Munkacsi captures his subject mid-air, with arms raised, hair flying, and legs extended from her gigantic leap off the raised ladder.
Martin Munkacsi, [Tibor von Halmay and Vera Mahlke], ca. 1931 (2007.110.842)
Winogrand captures a similar moment of women in flight–cheerleaders synchronizing in their performance at a basketball game.
Garry Winogrand, Austin, Texas, from the Women are Beautiful series, 1975 (263.1984)
MegangrahamWAAAAAAANT
It’s not often we post about things that you can actually buy with your hard-earned cash, but seeing as it was payday last week we present you with one of the most coveted household items we’ve seen for a long time. We found out about Schönstaub after lovely photographer Nadja Stäubli dropped by the office last week. Together with pal David Schönen, she creates machine woven, large format carpets that resemble the creamy, sci-fi goodness of The Milky Way.
The AIDS crisis in the 1980s propelled many to take to the streets in anger and protest to rebel against the Reagan government, demanding rights to healthcare, treatment for AIDS, funding, and information. This movement mobilized communities, and in particular the queer communities who were initially the most effected by AIDS. This became a battle to be heard and healed. Fueled by anger and desire, a kind of queer politics. Judith Butler says, “Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire.”
So what did this language of protest look like, how was text and image leveled against injustice, against the system of haves and have nots, good and bad, healthy and sick, dead and alive? In fact, this binary language rests in direct contradiction to the queer methods it sought to enforce. Sarah Ahmed notes that a queer phenomenology would involve an orientation toward queer, a way to inhabit the world that gives support to those whose lives and loves make them appear oblique, strange, and out of place and by their very existence, challenging of the binary. So why was the language of the binary used in so much AIDS activism communication?
ACT UP, Silence=Death/Vote, 1988 (1351.2000)
ACT UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power), was founded in 1987 to fight for AIDS treatment and awareness. From the beginning the organization was extremely adept at using the news media, such as its indelible logo—the words Silence=Death printed below a pink triangle on a black background. Silence=Death was a visual icon created by Gran
Fury, ACT UP’s unofficial art propaganda ministers, who used the language of advertising and media. The overt cause-effect, passive-active binary being employed to rally action, and in this case to vote.
Boy with Arms Akimbo, Safe, 1990-91 (1244.2000)
Boy with Arms Akimbo, Unsafe, 1990-91 (1245.2000)
As we see in Safe/Unsafe posters created by Boy with Arms Akimbo, 1991, the same binary device is used to place a spotlight on Louis Wade Sullivan who refused to oppose a law preventing HIV-positive people from entering the US, his smiling face in stark contrast to the entangled gay bodies labelled SAFE.
Nancy Burson and Kunio Nagahima, Visualize This, 1991 (1273.2000)
In Visualize This (1991), Nancy Burson and Kunio Nagahima juxtaposed images with explanatory text that read, “The image on the right is a normal T cell which defends the immune system from infection. The image on the left is an HIV infected T cell.” Visualize This offered a clinical representation of a reality often associated with false stereotypes and prejudices,effectively utilizing the transformative power of scientific imagery and art to inform the general public about AIDS.
fierce pussy, I Am a Stone Butch, 1991-95 (1154.2000)
It is this language of false stereotyping which which the queer movement and AIDS activism in particular has sought to overthrow. This is seen clearly in in the text image by fierce pussy, which in fact celebrates a multitude of assimilations and identity claims.
Perhaps this appropriation of the language of advertising, a semiotics deeply embedded in the the politics of desire, predicated on the have versus have not, employs the binary for the purposes of protest, whilst all the time encouraging one to “watch the line between two frames” as Yvonne Rainer said of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls. By employing the overt, the need, the injustice, while simultaneously celebrating the unusual, the irreverent, the queer, the language of protest used to such great effect in the AIDS crisis has in fact paved a way for a more complicated view of human, governmental and economic relationships, what Douglas Crimp would call “a kind of model of polymorphous conspiracy” predicated on the
non-coupling of language and ideas.
–Bridget de Gersigny, ICP-Bard 2013
Here’s a Classic Wondermark for today! One of my favorites. It’s featured in color in my book Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death (which is just a handful of copies away from being out of print!).
Managing Stress: From Morning to Night
Time-Life Books
1987
Mary: I thought this title would be an excellent kickoff to our new and improved site. Hopefully, you will notice that pictures are loading faster. Both of us will continue to tweak this as we go along. We appreciate your patience for the last few days. Special shout out to my partner-in-crime, Holly, who spent the last few days slaving over our website, while I ate and drank my way through New Orleans. (BTW, my stress is totally busted!)
Submitter: We pulled this book from the shelves of a high school public library when looking for books on stress and relaxation. The pictures made us burst out laughing. My personal favorites include the man clutching a cork in his mouth (where did the cork come from? His liquid lunch?) for “jaw relaxation” and the lady slumped over at her desk who appears to be looking up her own skirt.
Holly: The advice and the exercises are probably fine, but it’s sooooo 1980s! And thank you, Mary, but the real credit goes to Insites Web Design and LitBreaker. They put the thing together; I just loaded the files and activated plugins!
Remember these stress busters?
What magic is this?? All I know for sure is that this guy is certainly handling the seasons of his life.
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I’ve been using this Nature Sounds Mixer everyday since I discovered it over on TWBE. So relaxing. If you make a good mix, leave a comment below with the link to it!
View the whole post: Nature Sounds over on BOOOOOOOM!.
Vice President Joe Biden and an intrepid second-grader have joined forces to reform gun control based on one simple platform: chocolate bullets.
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Artist / Designer Levi Bunyan (Aekido) has been experimenting with Lego and letterpress.
‘During experimenting with different forms of printing, initially letterpress and wood block, I began to experiment by introducing new elements into my printing process, and the Lego letterpress was born.’
Last night, John Krasinski and Jimmy Fallon engaged in a lip syncing battle — it's pretty wonderful. It's basically Boyz II Men v. Sam Harris, and it's hard to pick a winner.
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I think everybody could us a good book.
Ink and watercolour, 8x10 inches. Original drawing is available.
Check for other available drawings and signed prints in the shop.
via Freaky Fauna
Will 50 Watts
Even Harvard Business Review gets it: failure is a necessary part of creation and innovation. This blog post highlights how a few forward-thinking organizations build failure-friendly practices into their structure. One of our favorites is from DoSomething.org:
DoSomething.Org, a nonprofit that helps young people take action on social change initiatives, has a “FailFest” once a quarter (some people call this a FailFaire). It’s an off-the-record session open to all staff, interns, and board members and it’s designed to send a message: Failure isn’t something to be ashamed of. CEO Nancy Lublin presented during the first-ever event, demonstrating that admitting mistakes was OK and would be rewarded.
The two or three presenters at each FailFest follow specific rules:
- They wear a hot-pink feather boa (provided).
- They present for no longer than 10 minutes, and then take two minutes of Q&A from the group.
- They cover the goal, history, and timing of the failure; what went right and what went wrong; three things he or she personally learned; three things DoSomething.org learned.
- They present lessons using a fun metaphor. For example, they might show a photo of a celebrity or sing a song lyric that summarizes what they took away from their gaffe. This makes the presentations less speech-like and more, well, silly.
By making failure silly and fun, DoSomething.org takes the sting out of what might otherwise feel embarrassing.
