• Art,  Darn Good Ideas

    Missed Connections

    One of my post-college roommates was a Craigslist Missed Connections obsessor. She’d check them over every day, and occasionally read them aloud to me. They always seemed romantic, or at least dashingly honest. I think Sophie Blackwell illustrations of them are genius. The combination of her watercolors and script and someone else’s passing thought is so “what are we doing here anyway?” Whenever I ride the Boston T, it seems like all of us will never notice each other or the passing breeze of serendipity ever again. But evidently, at least according to the Missed Connections section, people are still paying attention.

     

     

  • Art,  Darn Good Ideas

    Miranda July’s Cut Outs

    Lately I’ve really wanted to have a touristy photo-op cut-out at the market. Me really wanting something I could never do by myself means I hassle Joe on a semi-regular basis, and make comments that make my idea sound really cool, like “I think Marc Jacobs just did this exact thing in Paris,” or “Doesn’t this seem very Christo and Jeanne-Claude to you?” Touristy photo-op cut-outs are actually very hard to google properly, but I mean something along the lines of this:

    I’m imagining something more family friendly, obviously (is that a demon casually resting between them?). Maybe it could have a shark, a ship caption, a mermaid swimming below, Pop Eye peeking around the corner…

    All that to say, I thought of my genius idea again when I saw Miranda July’s new interactive art in Union Square Park.

    In typical July fashion, it’s very personal and involved and somehow both cute and disturbing:

    For most of the exhibit, I think the real genius is: You get to stand on something. If there’s one thing we’ve established about the human race, it’s that we love to stand on stuff.

    You can read an interview with her about the project at Artinfo, see a few more pictures here, I first saw it on the indefatigable Chris Glass.

    (Apologies to the dear couple in the top picture, I have no idea who you are, or where I got that photo. Thanks for sharing  your experience with the www.)

  • Art,  Cooking,  Good design,  Joe & Rachael Projects

    Grains & Matches

    I have just finished eating twenty cocktail olives. It’s eat-everything-in-the-kitchen time because the subletters are moving in next week. Usually this means a grim grim analysis of the ridiculous sauces I’ve bought over the last eight months and used once each (really Rachael? Four different rice vinegars? That sounds like a great idea.). Were Boston to be Pompeii II, archeologists would analyze my pantry and think very highly of my eating habits. As it is not, I’m left with the facts that I often buy loads of grains, find old glass jars, pour said grains into jars, and cheerily put them up on shelf never to be acknowledged again.

    Does this pantry make you sick with envy and lifestyle jealousy? no? Just me.

    So the arrival today of 2500 very endearing little things that start with m–not monkeys, guess again–was enormously cheering.

    Matchbooks! We sell a lot of cigarettes at the market. Pack a/day, pack a/week, pack a/ “I only smoke on vacation.” And they all want matches with their purchase. As we see it, with matches you either can have them, or you can have them awesomely. We chose awesomely, obviously. We like to think Roy would approve of the cribbing, and are happy to give the beach babe second chance at pop culture stardom.

  • Art,  Boston

    Brimfield Wrap

    [slideshow]

    Our Brimfield affair dawned cloudy and rainy. Nonetheless we pulled it off with a few key purchases (see the pie safe in the slideshow, which, post-cleaning, will be for pastries). I found two lovely wool blankets to sell to beach-goers looking for something cuddly, and two display pieces (we’ll post pictures to the market website once they are in place and not lying on our living room floor). Since photos from our trip are rather dismal and narrowly focused (two food photos??), I’ll point out that A Continuous Lean has lots of great photos, and Design*Sponge posted a curated mix of her favorites.

  • Art,  Books

    Library Receipts

    My friend Josh found this gem from Post Secret’s* archives. It reminded me of why I joined social networking sites like goodreads in the first place. Perhaps predictably, my interest in meeting people was quickly sidetracked by cataloging my books, keeping up on my reviews, and finding the people I already knew in person, online. Let’s be honest, it takes a lot of work to find friends who purely share the same interests (as opposed to backgrounds, hometowns, schools). It takes so much work in the real world, that it’s almost shocking how easy it can be to find blogs that fit the bill perfectly.

    *Post Secret is an address where people can send their secrets anonymously. Be forewarned that behind that link is humanity in all its best and worst moments.