Many artists make new year’s resolutions to try a new creative project. Sometimes, they make art to help them keep their resolution. Sometimes, they resolve to make more art. And while many of these resolutions are lofty (e.g., complete an oil painting, work on portraiture), Portland-based artist Charles Vestal has resolved to up his drawing game—one derrière at a time.
The idea of a 365-day project isn’t new. (Check out some of our favorites of 2015 here.) But we haven’t seen this subject before. High-class or low-bro, he’s mixing up his styles and we have to give him props for that—not to mention maybe the best URL of all time (Butts.lol). Take a look at his progress, and follow the Tumblr to keep up.
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Three years ago, Laura Meilman assigned herself an ambitious project: Sketch scenes from each of the 121 subway and streetcar stations in Boston’s MBTA system.
It all started after Meilman, an artist who works with several museums and theaters in Boston, decided she wanted a structured art project with a goal; something involving travel, even though a long-distance trip wasn’t an option. She was already buying a monthly transit card, so she figured she’d put it to use.
It took almost two years to the day, starting with Heath Street on the Green Line in January 2013 and ending with the Orange Line’s Assembly Square at the beginning of this year. As she sketched her way around the Boston area, she earned a following on Tumblr and realized just how much the transit stations meant to locals.
“People have a lot of love for this city and kind of treat their T stops almost like their hometown,” Meilman tells CityLab.
With the new year approaching, she picked a small sampling of her “T-Scapes,” designed a monthly 2016 calendar, and put it up for sale on Etsy. Meilman thought it would get some interest among friends, family, maybe a few blog readers. As it turned out, they’re in high demand. She’s putting in an early order with the printer to make sure people have them for the holidays, and as more buyers roll in, she expects to send at least one more batch to the printers soon.
The surprising demand amplified something she realized as she worked on the project: Even with the unavoidable frustrations that come with public transit, even when people glue their eyes to their phones rather than talk to anyone around them, these stops are key points of human connection in a big city.
“These spaces are so public and so personal at the same time,” Meilman says.
She even made a few “small-world connections” of her own. At one point she heard from a Boston graphic designer Judi Hershman, who designed a mural in 1970 that’s still on a wall in Kenmore Station. The two met there, next to the mural, and Meilman sketched her holding an old copy of the newspaper with an article interviewing the station’s muralists.
“I thought that since I am making sketches of public spaces that thousands of people see and use every day, it is only fitting to incorporate the relationships other people have with those spaces, especially other artists who have contributed to the stations,” she wrote when she posted that sketch on her blog.
Another piece includes street art on the side of a wall near Eliot Station. “I showed a co-worker of mine and he immediately recognized it as the tag of a friend of his,” she says. “Whenever I drew a musician busking, I would meet people who recognized them from my sketches as people they had heard while waiting for trains.”
And with the help of another friend, Meilman’s project is taking the stage. She partnered with Jaime Carrillo, artistic director of local theater group Bostonia Bohemia, calling on writers to create plays, songs, poems, monologues, anything they could write with inspiration from T stations.
Their “Pla(T)forms” series received about 50 submissions—many from Boston locals, but also some from people who’ve never even been to the city. For those writers, Meilman’s sketches were their only frame of reference to start.
“We wanted the out-of-towner and people who weren’t familiar with the T as well, just to see what their take is on it,” Carrillo says.
The writings and sketches will be on display this month at three performances in the area. What they’ve reviewed so far is “very raw, very genuine, very urban, very fast-paced,” Carrillo says, much like the T itself. Still, writers haven’t focused much on the gripes you might expect from transit riders. “It’s more of a love-fest, which is kind of cool.”
Mergers and acquisitions mania: not just for banks, oil companies, publishing, movie studios, airlines, cable, phone companies, retail chains and family restaurants anymore. For years, the booze industry has been quiety homogenizing, as hedge-fund-fueled megafauna gobbles up smaller firms and even huge rivals, leaving behind a landscape where your "Mexican" tequila, "Irish" whiskey, "Scotch," "Puerto Rican" rum, and other bar standbys are all owned by a "British" company that claims it makes all its profits in The Netherlands.
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After winding their way up a hundred-foot-tall pathway in the Czech Republic set atop a mountain peak (itself located over 3,000 feet above sea level), visitors are presented with two options: walk all the way back down, or take a ride on the slide that shoots back down through the center of the spiralling walkways on all sides.
Another feature for daredevils comes in the form of netting suspended from a section along the top. Those who wish to can walk and lay on this mesh, experiencing whatever level of terror they can tolerate.
Fránek Architects designed this massive wooden structure, dubbed Sky Walk and aimed at giving viewers a number of twists, turns and chances to find the perfect vista while they work their way up.
“It offers an endless amount of views, situations and moments where an indiscernible human being enters the depth and emerges on the outskirts of this natural structure,” said Fránek.
The pathways are suspended from a central structural core made up of metal-joined wood trusses, forming a space frame that also supports the stainless steel slide more brave guests will opt to take for their return trip.
Located as it is on top of a tall and exposed mountain, the structure is heavily reinforced throughout and tied to concrete footings buried deep in the ground. It also features an emergency spiral staircase down its center. Travelers can get to this wheel-accessible pedestrian viewing spiral via a chairlift at the foot of the mountain, near Dolni Morava.
“I don’t know of any other timber construction with steel elements of a similar size and purpose,” Fránek said. “There are constructions of a similar size but ours takes on an abstract form that suggests the flight of a nocturnal butterfly whose path is seemingly chaotic.”
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Joel Stein paints an incredibly sympathetic portrait of Sanders, painting him as a genuine true believer whose political tenures have been marked by equitable successes that benefited all his constituents, not just the rich and powerful.
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You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
-0.5 years
The change in life expectancy for Mexican men between 2005 and 2010, according to a new study. The number had consistently risen for decades, but, due in part to a rising murder rate, it was on the decline at the end of the last decade. [STAT News]
1 time in a decade
In response to a reported test of a nuclear weapon, South Korea will blast K-Pop music across the border shared with North Korea. It’s a propaganda tool that seeks to undermine the grip the Kim dynasty holds on the country, and has only been used once in the past decade. [Bloomberg]
3 balls
Every time one of these new blockbuster movies come out, it’s just merchandising, merchandising, merchandising everywhere! Commercials for totally unrelated products, head-scratchingly branded food — if you can slap a logo on it, it’s a free for all. But now merchandising has gone too far: officials in Vietnam say three metal balls weighing between 9 ounces and 99 pounds fell from the sky in the north part of the country. They blame the Russians, but it’s clearly a promo for “Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.” [BBC]
-15 to -20 degrees
Factoring in wind chill, the temperature at the NFL playoff game in Minnesota on Sunday may hit an all-time low for an NFL game, with forecasted temps between -15 and -20 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest NFL game ever took place in Green Bay in 1967. It was -13 degrees. [USA Today]
$20 per barrel
The price of oil continues to drop, and Canadian physical crude is now selling at $20 per barrel. That means it’s essentially being sold at a loss, given production costs. [Reuters]
650 submunitons
Reports indicate that Saudi Arabia bombed residential neighborhoods in Yemen’s capital with American-made cluster bombs, explosives that scatter 650 smaller munitions when they land. [Human Rights Watch]
1,400
Capacity of the Flynn Center in Burlington, Vermont, where Donald Trump spoke Thursday night. Worried that Sen. Bernie Sanders supporters would pack the theater, the campaign reportedly questioned the loyalty of people with tickets to determine who got to see the candidate. [The New York Times]
12,697 steps
Sen. Ted Cruz is storming through Iowa on a campaign blitz, but thanks to modern tech we have an idea of how much work that is: after one day of campaigning, Cruz’s Fitbit reported he had taken 12,697 steps by 9:35 p.m. This isn’t exactly Woodward and Bernstein stuff, I know, but it satisfied a lingering question I’ve always had about how much physical effort a campaign takes. That being said, I’ve had a Fitbit, and now I’m wondering if Cruz’s gestures during speeches means he’s inflating the stats a bit. I’m not saying I’m a Ted Cruz Fitbit truther, but politicians do tend to talk with their hands when they get into it. [The New York Times]
£20,000
Fine to a bar owner after a patron was mistakenly given a pint laced with caustic cleaning fluid that forced the victim to eventually have his esophagus removed. I personally feel like my esophagus is worth substantially more than £20,000. Like, if you offered me £20,000 or the ability to retain my esophagus as-is, I would definitely go for the latter. [The Guardian]
180,000 public domain items
The New York Public Library is releasing upwards of 180,000 photos, maps and other entries from its special collections digitally, and that requires a lot of planning from NYPL Labs, a group founded in 2011 that develops experimental ways of sharing the NYPL’s vast repository of information. [The New York Times]
If you haven’t already, you really need to sign up for the Significant Digits newsletter — be the first to learn about the numbers behind the news.
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send to to me: @WaltHickey.
At one time, Chicago was the center of the pool table/billiards universe, home to the Brunswick Billiard Table Co. since 1848.
Though the complete name has changed over the years (divisions including Brunswick Bowling Lanes), Brunswick still operates today in the Chicagoland area, headquartered in Lake Forest.
Pete Souza's job for the past seven years has been to take photographs of the goings-on at the White House, including its inhabitants, staff, and guests. Behind the Lens: 2015 Year in Photographs is a selection of more than 100 photographs that Souza and his staff took last year. A few favorites:
That's the Obamas beginning a walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on the 50th anniversary of the brutal police attack of peaceful march to Montgomery accompanied by some of the original marchers. I love the looks on the faces of the various marchers: the dignified determination of John Lewis, the appropriate solemnity of the President and First Lady, and the carefree expressions of Sasha and Malia.1
Obama's like Subzero from Mortal Kombat but with rainbows.
I'm not sure there will ever be another President in my lifetime I love as much as this one.
The progression of generational expressions reminds me of that quote from John Adams: "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine." (thx @samuelfine)↩
Here are the New York Times' 50 most interesting stories, measured by the total combined time readers have spent looking at them. I haven't read most of these, so I'm going to bookmark this page.
It’s a mix of
ambitious investigative projects, big breaking news, features and service
journalism. You can see the big themes of the last year, like race, terrorism
and technology — but also the things we found captivating, like the tale
of a solitary man who died alone and a step-by-step guide for falling in
love. Leading the list is that Modern Love column, which people have
spent close to 900,000 hours reading. That’s equal to roughly 100 years.
From Coachella 2008. When fans over the years previously posted this video from Coachella 2008, Prince sent DMCA takedown notices. But when Radiohead's Thom Yorke was asked about the matter, he responded: "Really? He’s blocked it? Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our ... song." It was recently uploaded again and now Prince has Tweeted his approval.
When is someone going to write a musical about Elon Musk? It would be a futuristic elephant stampede over all the competitors, with all due respect, Hamilton.
Hyperloop Technologies will test its propulsion system in North Las Vegas next month.
The person I listen to the most regarding books I should be reading is Tyler Cowen...he has never once steered me wrong. So when he wrote about the best fiction of 2015, I perked up. I've been hearing many good things about Elena Ferrante's series (Cowen himself flagged her The Lost Daughter as a favorite back in 2008) but his assertion that her recent series of novels ranks as "one of the prime literary achievements of the last twenty years" puts it solidly on my holiday beach reads list. The New World by Chris Adrian & Eli Horowitz and Vendela Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty also sound particularly interesting.
Update: Cowen recently shared his list of best non-fiction books of the year as well. Biographies rule the list: on Elon Musk, Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, and Genghis Khan. What a list...but I have to say that reading biographies of Thatcher or Kissinger doesn't appeal at all.
Update: The NY Times Sunday Book Review names their 10 Best Books of 2015. Coates and Ferrante feature. By my count, 7 of the 10 books are written by women.
High-speed fiber: It's amazing stuff. It's what lets you surf the Internet at lightning-fast speeds. If you're on Google Fiber, you have it. Same if you're on Verizon FiOS. In some parts of the country, fiber lets you download an entire HD movie in less than a second.
But do you know how it gets built?
To get a better idea this week, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai went down to a Louisiana bayou where a local company, Southern Light, was laying down some new fiber. In many cities, fiber gets strung up on telephone poles. But in many other places, companies have to dig up the ground. In this case, Southern Light needed to break out some heavy machinery.
1) Outside Hammond, LA, saw @SL_fiber deployment in progress. Next few tweets describe the nuts and bolts of laying fiber in the bayou.
Using a big drill, workers basically created a horizontal tunnel underground with a big pipe. That's the thing you see in the bottom left-hand corner here, connected to what looks like a Ditch Witch directional drill.
At the far side of the tunnel where the pipe emerged, the company attached the fiber optic cabling that eventually carries your Internet traffic. Then the pipe retracted, pulling the fiber back along the tunnel toward the digger.
3) Fiber spool brought to hole at the other end, 300 ft away; fiber connected to the clasp of boring rig pipe. pic.twitter.com/3R7kVXL1u8
In case you haven't already figured it out, "boring rig" doesn't mean a rig that puts you to sleep. It's the most important part of the job!
In essence, the process isn't much different from tying a thread to the end of a needle and pulling it back through a hole. But although it sounds simple, it's incredibly costly and time-consuming. We've laid millions of miles of fiber in America already, and even that isn't enough to satisfy our insatiable demand for data. As companies keep installing more fiber — perhaps thanks in part to legislation that some in Congress are working on — expect more of these scenes to play out all across the country.
Atelier Iwakiri handmakes its nubuck goldfish purses to order, with a two-week to three-month lead time between orders and delivery.
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