When the going gets rough, give the going a camera and let it take self-portraits. Photographer David Slater set his camera down while on a wildlife assignment attracting a light-fingered black macaque. Upon seeing her reflection she accidentally set off the camera taking one of my favorite pictures of the year. I love this monkey right now.

Designing dynamic duo Skrekkøgle have taken the animated cascading bliss of winning solitaire and blazed a three-dimensional version. Can you believe this jawn? They printed out each card, fused each one to foam-core and went to town. A celebration of our championing boredom throughout the 90′s! So sick.

Ad agency Ogilvy & Mather has hooked up a brilliant little campaign for the Japanese plastic model kit company Tamiya. Remember how cool it was to twist and break off each of these plastic model parts? Fuse that feeling with five of the most engaging conspiracy theories in US history and you have something pretty damn cool. The conspiracy theories created were (in order) Roswell, JFK Assassination , Elivs, Marilyn Monroe and the Moon Landing. Sign me up.

I’ve never been a good skater. It looks fun as hell and I can dig the subculture but it never really got into my life like that. Maybe next life. And hopefully the next life still has a Homer Deck for me to get busy on.

Photographer Jonathon Kambouris gets his glossy-on by fusing nail polish designs and ice cream flavor inspired by countries and cultures around the world. I can dig it.

Greece: Pistachio ice cream, fresh chopped pistachios, honey drizzle, lemon peal

India: Mango ice cream, gold and silver sugar crystals, orange peal, cinnamon stick

South Africa: Cinnamon and chocolate ice cream, fudge caramel chocolate toffee, cookie crumble

Japan: Green tea ice cream, black sesame seeds, ginger syrup drizzle, candied ginger

Morocco: Strawberry and lavender ice cream, mixed berries berry syrup drizzle, turmeric …

The opening of the Memorial will be on the 10 year anniversary this September 11, 2011. Major.

German sculptor Oliver Voss has submerged an enormous nude woman into the Binnenalster lake in Hamburg, Germany. What you are seeing is art as marketing in motion. This supersized seductress is an advertisement for British beauty products company Soap & Glory to promote the “art” of bathing. She will be pruning for 10 days before she gets out of the tub allowing her frumpy 50ft husband to use the lake as a urinal.

Damn, just caught word that the King of Style Kase 2 passed away in the Bronx this weekend after a long fight with cancer. Fuck cancer man. This terrible beast has been taking down great people left and right. Cancer is an evil, nasty, ruthless monster and it scares the hell out of me.

Miami graf artist Typoe kills it on the streets both inside and outside the gallery walls. Check out this stand-out piece titled Confetti Death created from a skull and shards of plastic spray-paint caps. Absolutely incredible. I couldn’t dig up an official site for Typoe but click here for his full flickr feed. Enjoy.

HEY LAAAADIES! Don’t say I never gave you anything.

Look, we’re human beings……and we are weird as fuck. What a beautiful universe that would produce a creature capable of taking a piece of toast and meticulously simulating bread mold by needlepoint. Most living creatures of this planet take action based on survival, reproduction or a titillating mix of both. We twist the top off an Oreo and carve reproductions of classic Roman portraiture. This is who we are. We’ll cross-stitch a sexy-time whip on a grid of Chex Corn mix with a cryptic war message and call it a …

When I was a rat-tail sporting, Def Leppard admiring young lad my mother offered to cross-stitch the Guns-N-Roses logo across the back of a size extra-small jean jacket. Without question I was ‘sign of the horns’ psyched about the prospective project. Unfortunately by the time my Mother was able to complete the project I had grown almost three sizes out of the diminutive denim. To her credit, she did finish it…. and it did kick cross-stitching-ass. Now that my daughters are getting bigger I need to dig up this unused …

What’s good, good people. I have been on a full sprint for the past month or so. Full on, high steppin’, walk on water sprint-job. Needless to say that when you are trying to stay afloat by running on water you can’t really carry a load. All peripherals fall wayward, the blood leaves your extremities and actively supports your core. There is a strange satisfaction I get from setting goals, achieving them and starting anew. I believe that is the base currency of my happiness in life. These goals are …

I got shotgun!
Check it out.

“He’s a pretty serious guy but once you get to know him, he’s a real kid at heart“. You ever take the time to think about what the hell being a kid at heart actually means? It seems the phrase is tossed into the description of someone like a consolation prize for being pretty dickish. Besides, the heart is where all our painful and powerful yearning takes place whereas our brain is where all our hair-brained, risk-taking, double-rainbow appreciating takes place. So what good is being young at heart when …

My Mom posted a link to an article on CNN that was written by a Dad who detailed, “Why I’m raising my son to be a nerd“. At a glance I thought this guy had the same approach to parenting as I did which got me all giddy for a minute. The author is clearly a good Dad with a hearty conviction for celebrating good grades and academic achievement. I did however take issue with his alignment of “good grades” with “nerdiness”. Let’s get things straight here. Kids who get …

Everyone talks about how “dialed-in” we are as a culture and how increasingly difficult it is to “unplug”. As technology has evolved it is always the “next big thing” that will be the undoing of life as we know it rendering the old ways irrelevant. Each new development being demonized by the paternal attachments to the innovations that defined the generation previous. I consider myself someone who is extremely plugged-in. Between my time spent online, checking emails, social networking, text messaging, checking-in, researching, blogging, reading feeds, managing my calendar AGHHHH! …

Friendship and family are the fabric of life. So when a friend is in need I say we take that fabric and stretch a canvas.

Yes please.

In a few hours I will be bound for Brooklyn, USA. I am visiting a very close friend of mine who will be training me on some technical Flash projects. I am very excited to get back to the city the still pulls me in like a bad relationship. I miss New York terribly and Brooklyn in particular. In honor of this great Borough and my impending weekend I have collected some shots from a larger set by photographer Danny Lyon that detail Brooklyn during the summer of ’74. …

Paint can be explosive and paint can be contained. Artist Colin Chillag has found the path that runs right through the middle. His portfolio has a wide array of varied content but his stand-out material are his collection of portraits. Big fan, big man.

When I was growing up we would often play in the open expanse of vacant lots (in Detroit) and lush tree-filled lots that would act as “filler” between the houses in the neighborhoods (in Philly). In the cut of these unclaimed urban areas would often be the final resting place for all sorts of wild and domestic critter. As kids we would stumble upon these often half-decayed carcasses, with skin erosion exposing weathered bone yet still clinging firm to patches of fur and stench. Each kid would deal with these …

The great Lenny Bruce once said, “Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.” If this is in fact true, where do the dead neon cadavers specimens of the sea go to live? Silly question. They go to the same place pregnant pig computer hackers go to get famous. The interweb! This “New World Transparent Specimen” project has me transfixed and reinforces my belief that there is no end to what shinanigans human beings are up to across the globe. While I was out assistant coaching my daughters t-ball …

Contemporary Art is typically digested in two ways by the common populace. Either, 1. “My kid could do that. It ain’t art” or 2. “What the fuck is that? It ain’t art”.  Both expressions of the same negative, belittling attitude attempt to neuter creative expression that difficult to categorize or quantify. As the years pass I find myself more and more attracted to the odd and contemporary. I rolled through the Philadelphia Art Museum last weekend and found myself  giddy and giggly standing next to some Warhol “Brillo Boxes” and …

Yarn is out of control!! I haven’t seen such an unexpected explosion of creative material since the Oregon Highway Department decided to get into the business of detonating dead sperm whales on the beach. For realz. Check out Etsy vendor and needlework veterinarian Emily Stoneking and her lovable “aKNITomy” line of dissected crafty critters. Not only are they the most adorably eviscerated plush varmints you ever laid eyes on but they are also made to order. I gotta get mine, you gotta get yours!

Art imitates life. And your face is going to imitate a Jackson Pollock if you step to me the wrong way when I am up to my chin in Yeungling. Now I’m a peace-loving chap for the most part but there is never a time when I am not ready and willing to break out the Bud-Chucks and reprimand a party-foul!! These cement-filled 12oz cans of Bud created by Brooklyn based industrial designer Chen Chen and Kai Tsien Williams kicks ass as fast as Tango and Cash. The only thing …

If Toy Story were non-fiction I imagine the social and cultural interactions between toys would be far less like ours and much more like a warped, pseudo-society of chaos, acid-inducing violence and desperate awkwardness based on the perverted observations of our own disfunctional behavior. Enter the assemblage and photography of Diana Thorneycroft. (Awesome name for an artist for what it’s worth.) I have a sample here but you should check out her site and submerge yourself into a world where bald eagles snatch up chained moneys, lonely voyeuristic lumberjacks gaze …

Life is all about the journey, right? I talk a lot about the “path”. Finding the path, uncovering the path, looking back on the path, baby got path, pathamatics… Unfortunately the path we take is one that can only be traced back with the help from our fleeting memory. We don’t leave a tactile trail and even if we did our paths would be crissed and crossed by the millions of other paths that are left behind as people grind on making it virtually impossible to rediscover the trail. We …

Sometimes it’s just that simple.

Wayne White is dirt nasty with it! The artist, art director, illustrator, puppeteer was also a jaw-droppingly awesome set designer for Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Damn. The resume is gold but completely unnecessary when filing through his incredible set of word paintings. The colorful three dimensional block letter-forms that seems to playfully integrate into the conservative landscape painting is super-duper fresh. Take a few and check out his site. Legend level livelihood.

Life is hard and can be incredibly unfair. Bound to the dirt of this earth by gravity, our troubles seem to drag around behind us like rusty tin cans tied to strings around our feet. No matter how fast or how far you run the rambling noise of your troubles will persevere. The only way to properly move forward is to stop, sit down and pay the proper attention to the complexities of the knots. With a delicate touch and white-knuckle focus each binding wind needs to be unwound. It …

While upper-class society is obsessed with body and facial modification artist Hyung Ko Lee has found a shortcut that can reduce the wrinkles around your eyes and enlarge your lips puffier than diddy dirty money. Social commentary art that looks this weird is so damn fresh to me. There is a lot of work that goes into making a crazy ass helmet like this. Respect due my man.

My man Greg put me on to this abandoned mining town call Kolmanskop that was built in the middle of the southern Namibian desert. Coming from Detroit, I have a particular fascination with cities and towns that have been left to fend for themselves post-industry. Check out these gripping shots of homes and businesses that the sands of the desert have reclaimed. Amazing.

photos from Picassa user scollard.
 

I try to ride the line when curating content for my blog balancing the intriguing with the digestible. Every now and then I uncover a project that runs a bit unsettling. This is one of them. Artist collective Dorothy created a project speaking on the devastating psychological effects that war has on soldiers returning from the horrors of the battlefield. Quoting from their site: “The hell of war comes home. In July 2009 Colorado Springs Gazettea published a two-part series entitled “Casualties of War”. The articles focused on …

What’s the time?!?! It’s time to disassemble expensive watches and meticulously reassemble the pieces into surprisingly detailed and accurate motorcycle sculptures! Either that or it’s time to get ill. Whatever. When it comes to recycling watch parts and banging out mini-choppers, artist Dmitriy Khristenko knows what time it is. Aint that right Flav? Yea Boooyyyy!

For generations, potholes in the skid row streets of Paris have sat solemnly empty and alone only grabbing the fleeting attention of a slam-bam-thank you-ma’am confident & cocky Good Year or an over-bloated braggadocios Bridgetone. Well no longer. Thanks to artist Juliana Santacruz Herrera these physical and emotional voids in the streets of Paris will now be filled with color, creativity and fabric art. That’s right I said it. You know why? Cus’ it’s as true as the nephew of a tattooed gnu from the bayou chewing a see-through kazoo. …

New Jersey based, Koren born artist So Yoon Lym has put together an absolutely gorgeous body of acrylic on paper paintings that detail the intricately bound and tightly woven braid styles of her fellow Paterson New Jersey residents. These highly detailed paintings reflect the complex social, cultural and ethnic paths and experiences the subjects exemplify. Check out her site and make sure and read her description of the project. I’m loving her work.

Whether you like it or not, we as creative people are a community and when one of our soldiers falls in the line of battle we have an obligation to band together and take particular observation and show remembrance for someone who gave his life to the honest art of telling the genuine story.

One of the many things that amazes me about New York City is that the people occupy it vertically. I know it is only logical but when you allow yourself to conceptualize how strange it is that we stack up so high and dig down so deep to maximize the footprint of our occupancy, it’s odd. Similar to the many layers of our Earths crust, NYC has uniquely distinct layers in of itself buzzing with ant-like anxiety, pumping harder than the heart of Pig Pun eating all-you-can-eat brunch buffet at …

We are intrinsically connected to every living creature on this planet. Artist Kate Clark is bent on making us feel uneasy while observing her literal interpretation of this philosophy. Crossing humans and animals will finally allow me to ask and get answers to the questions I have been dying to inquire upon. For instance, I would ask Mr. Bear-face, “Hello Mr. Bear-face. I have always wondered what the habitual dietary differences are between large brown bears and grizzly bears?” At which point he would claw out my juggler, devour my …