I've mentioned the Bunny Brand Hori Hori before as one of the best tools in my garden shed and since then I have been asked where to get one.
Try your local nursery first. In Missoula, I know that Caras sells them because my sister picked one up there when she visited. Online, you can get them from The Garden Shop in Washington state or if you are interested in a wide selection of Japanese garden tools or the Hori Hori in different sizes and metals, check out Hida Tools. Oh and search tip: I call it a knife, but Hida refers to it as a trowel. (You can also click through my Tip store to quickly get one through Amazon.)
Also, I want to give a shout out to the amazing wonder woman Jen Pledge Master Gardener for turning me onto the handy thing many years ago. She is a great go-to gal for gardening (and other fun things) in Missoula.
I really USE tools and my carbon steel Hori Hori has been indestructible so far. I use it for weeding the toughest buggers Montana has offered me without failure as well as the most delicate plantings like the thyme plugs.
My latest movie recommendation is Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren in The Millionairess from 1960.
There is no denying Loren's commanding beauty. Wow. But Sellers is the one most under-recognized in his career, I think. I love him most in Dr. Strangelove rather than The Pink Panther works for which he is most recognized, but in The Millionairess he shows his range with another subtle comedic worldly performance. It's a classic love story - the kind your mom would probably like. (One I could comfortably watch with Mabel.) Loren's character eventually redeems herself and Sellers is adorable.
Even if you don't see the movie sometime soon, at least listen to a wacky song that went with it, "Goodness Gracious Me," performed by the co-stars. Now I want the album/cd.
P.S. I guess this is a double-rec. If you haven't seen Dr. Strangelove yet, that movie is a requirement for anyone living in this century. (I assume too often and incorrectly that everyone has seen what I consider the movie 'basics'.) And if it's been awhile since you saw it and maybe thought you didn't like it, consider revisiting it. Pronto!
Our friend, Peter C., made this great little car robot which he runs with an app that he wrote for his Android. Bruce shot and edited a fun demo video of both in action. Many thanks to Peter's friend, Frank Lewis, for providing music, too. I ran it around Peter's backyard for a bit, too. It's really fun. Go Peter!
Oh, and be sure to notice the tracking shots. Oh yeah, baby, we got some new gear and it's my favorite kind: wheels.
This summer, we took a lazy, meandering road trip for three weeks to the Midwest and back. Night after night we rolled into towns, perused our options and stayed in hotels. Many times we searched out the ones with a pool so I could swim. Shedding my anxieties of work and life, and reflecting on visits with friends and family, I swam the length of each different pool. Back and forth, the obvious metaphoric cleanse became a simple satisfying ritual. I felt like I swam across the country in a way.
Burt Lancaster came to my mind. Starring in the 1968 movie, The Swimmer, Lancaster played Ned Merrill. His body is fit but his mind is troubled. (Um, mine is the reverse, in my biased estimation.) The film, written by John Cheever and Eleanor Perry and directed by Frank Perry, has asimple and unorthodox structure, slowly revealing relationships, conflicts and the character's flaws. I don't love every scene, especially in the last half, but I love the steady rhythm of the film, the masterful use of subtext to move the story forward - instead of plot - and without question, Lancaster delivers as Ned Merrill. It's a fleshy surreal expression of human corruption as authentic as I feel I've ever observed in life. Oh and p.s. watch for a great little bit part from Joan Rivers.
All imagery has meaning. It's inherent, right? As does any object. Hiding messages inside imagery is as old as the hills of course. And it's everywhere, not just in art. We depend on symbols daily.
I am exploring communication through symbols and gestures in my studio. I recently discovered (from Bruce) one obscure way to turn text into symbols or hide a message called QR (Quick Response) barcodes. They won't be obscure for long, I don't think, plus they are already big in Japan (where they originate). I am seeing them more and more in the margins of magazines, as ads, signs and on the web. Have you?
Image is everything. Symbols and imagery as signage is so often more concise and simply more aesthetic than text, which so easily (and often) becomes clutter. (When text is done 'right', it is a different thing of course, but save that for another time please. And save for later another personal favorite - when symbols are more confusing than effective. Love that too.)
Today, I'm interested in how QR codes diminish text into clear tidy boxes. They aren't only to hide a message but to condense them.
In order to read the message, you need a QR reader which now is as cheap as um, freeee and as easy and portable as an iPhone app. (For any mobile device really.) There are about a dozen apps for this. I got the MAAD QR app and it works perfectly fine for me. You open the app, point the camera lens of your phone at the code and zap, it pops up a translation which could be text, a number or web link. It's super fast. So, imagine reading a magazine and instead of jotting down notes on a new solar-powered gadget or ripping out pages to save recipes, you just zap a QR code with your iPhone and you get the additional information. Plus it's handily stored so you can revisit it later. Love. This.
It's no surprise that artists are embracing the new method to add another layer of visual communication in paintings, music videos and fashion. Techno and Mod styles merge so well in QR codes. Beyond the standard bold black and white palette and hard edges, the concept alone can add a juicy layer to a piece for the avant-garde as well as Pop. Or domestically, how about hiding a message publicly in a chain-link fence? See below Kylie Minogue's video, All The Lovers, featuring some codes (and other more obvious symbols).
Beyond the artwork itself, galleries and museums (like the Mattress Factory) are using them to condense wall text - gawd isn't that refreshing? As well as use them to track art pieces just like your basic bar code does. Educators are finding handy ways to utilize them in the classroom. This site has a list of tips for creatively using QR codes. A downside for luddites is that without a reading device I can't see how a person would translate the messages with their eyes alone. So those people miss out. However more and more even luddites carry a cell phone.
The appeal of QR codes is more than just being relatively new. They offer a wonderful aesthetic compromise. They have just the right ratio of high contrast portions that a person could ignore them if they choose, and say, appreciate the art nearby, be it natural or artificial. And conversely, they are eye-catching enough to easily spot them among the clutter of the world. Can't you just see them on t-shirts?
You can put a phrase into a QR generator at this site and make your own code.
