I took a pottery class at Bodanna Studios a while back. Bodanna is a nonprofit that teaches inner city kids craft, creativity, and responsibility through pottery. My teacher, Jeff Nimeh, was fantastic. He taught me some good stuff.
After 10 years of operation, Bodanna is closing. This is too bad, but they are having a big sale of hand made pottery. If that’s your thing, check it out.
I was at the AmDC’s Purpose and Worth show last night at DSW Flatiron. The show had some great pieces in it. The highlights for me were seeing one of Lindsey Adelman’s chandeliers in person (they are incredible), Leon Ransmeier’s glass coin bank (I want one), and Karl Zahn’s Pallet Mirror (what a great use of material).
The pieces are still at DWR today, I recommend checking it out if you get the chance.
I was at BRKLYN Designs this weekend. There were some great pieces there.
I met Hugh Hayden (nice guy), designer of these great ball-pit ball chairs. He had a piece in Hue Are You? as well.
My favorite piece though was by uhuru. They took a new pass at one of their signature pieces, the Stoolen.
The original Stoolen is scrap wood beautifully formed into a cylinder with a found bicycle rim holding it all together. uhuru’s latest is the Metal Stoolen. Made of leftover steel lengths arranged in a similar pattern. The steel fills up the empty space of the wooden Stoolen. Beautiful design, way to keep working on a great idea.
Last night I went to the littleBits launch party at Eyebeam. littleBits is an open source project that is trying “to end the mysticism around engineering and electronics, to counter the black box product ideology of consumer electronics, and to fuel an explosion of creativity and innovation in artists, designers, kids and hobbyists. The release of littleBits Version 1 on April 30, 2009, will be unique in that it is a growing library of circuit boards preassembled by tiny magnets—the first of its kind. littleBits requires absolutely no programming, no prior knowledge and no hardware or software set-up. Just snap and play!”
This video might explain it a little more clearly.
littleBits intro from ayah bdeir on Vimeo.
The stuff is great and I can’t wait to get my hands on some. I could’ve really used it on some of the props I’ve worked on in the past (here and here). The party was held at Eyebeam. “Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital research and experimentation.” It’s in a very cool space in Chelsea.
Sorry for the bad pictures. In my defense, I’m a horrible photographer.
March 20th 2009 opening night for Hue Are You? at the Future Perfect. It was a great night with a lot of fantastic pieces.
The American Design Club put on a great show, and I’m very proud to be a small part of it.
I went to the DWR Champagne Cork Chair show on Wednesday in SoHo. It was really cool, and hey free booze. My chair was placed closest to the front door, so it was the first thing you saw. Very cool.
I met Tony Nemyer’s (the staff pick winner) father-in-law at the show. Very nice guy. He got Tony on the phone and my sister (who had a couple of glasses of champagne) proceeded to chat to him for some time. Open bar.
What a wonderful world it would be.
I took a laser cutting class at NYC Resistor this weekend, taught by Bre Pettis. I designed some tree ornaments.
The laser cutter is such a cool tool. To be able to design something and have the final piece in your hands 10 minutes later, it’s like living in the future.
All of the designs from the class are posted at thingivers.com. So if you have access to a laser cutter, you can make your own trees.
www.thingiverse.com/thing:170
www.thingiverse.com/thing:149
Fire the lazzzor!
There is a very cool art exhibit in Madison Square Park, Pulse Park by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Since I won’t be able to explain it any better, here is what the Madison Square Park Conservancy had to say about it:
I went to the Cupcake Decorating Championship last night, part of Ignite NYC. It was a lot of fun, people came up with some great stuff. I went with a My Name is Earl cupcake, mostly because I had a circuit board that says “Hi, my name is Earl.” I think I ripped it out of a magazine or something.
