ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

Every Wednesday evening at around 8:30-ish in Des Moines there is a strange, remarkable thing that happens at the Des Moines Social Club on Locust Street. It’s hard to describe exactly what the JG Faux Show is. After my first time seeing the performance I told the host, Jason Garnett, “I’m not exactly sure what you’re doing but keep doing it.” If pressed for details I inevitably find myself saying, “it’s a talk show,” which technically it is but that simple description sells the JG Faux Show way short.

First of all, there’s not many talk shows that take place in a bar. Secondly, there’s not any other talk show I can think of that features the amazing “This Week on Craigslist” in which Garnett digs through the treasure trove of oddness that is the Des Moines Craigslist. Thirdly, no other talk show has a more charming co-host than Jen Morrow. And lastly, what other talk show has hosted the reigning World Record holder for the most push-ups in a minute on the backs of one’s hands? Though the JG Faux Show has had a bevvy of great guests since it’s inception in June, none, to my knowledge, can lay claim to being both in the Guinness Book of World Records and in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: The Remarkable.Revealed.” But tonight’s guest, co-host Jen Morrow’s father, John Morrow, can.

I dropped host Garnett a note to try and find out more and here is what he had to say: “John Morrow, father of our very own Jen Morrow, has been a black belt in Shao-Lin Chuan Kung-Fu since 1972. He holds many world records including pushups on the back of his hands in a minute. He is in the Guinness Book of World Records and Ripley’s Believe it or Not. So, basically he’s a bad mother effer. He teaches at the Morrow Academy of Martial Arts in the Quad Cities. He also is an adjunct professor at St Ambrose College. He has taught personal safety seminars to weaklings. His egg drop soup won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair (not true). He has a moustache which is also a black belt and beautiful (very true). He has been to China and Wisconsin.”

The JG Faux Show is always extremely entertaining but tonight’s show is one not to be missed…

Last night I finally saw the Gary Hustwit film Helvetica as part of the AIGA Iowa’s Design Week. (Yes, I’m very behind the times on this one. I promise you Mr. Hustwit, it’s not going to take me two years to see Objectified and I guarantee I’ll be one of the first to see the mysterious third part of this trilogy.) If you aren’t familiar with Helvetica, it “is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which recently celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.”

Above, work by Dean Kaufman (left) and Janno Hahn (right) from the soon-to-be released book, “3-D Typography.”

Helvetica is a great film with a damn good soundtrack and some terrific interviews with design luminaries like Massimo Vignelli (”There are people that thinks that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.”), David Carson (”Don’t confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesn’t mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesn’t mean it communicates the right thing.”);

Above, work by Lisa Reinermann (left) and John Beckers (right) from the soon-to-be released book, “3-D Typography.”

Erik Spiekermann (”It’s air, you know. It’s just there. There’s no choice. You have to breathe, so you have to use Helvetica.”); Michael Beirut (”It’s The Real Thing. Period. Coke. Period. Any Questions? Of Course Not.”); Rick Poynor (”Maybe the feeling you have when you see particular typographic choices used on a piece of packaging is just ‘I like the look of that, that feels good, that’s my kind of product.’ But that’s the type casting its secret spell.”); and of course, Stefan Sagmeister amongst many others.

The film reminded me of all the things in life we generally take for granted that play such a huge role in how we experience the world (architecture, urban planning, typography, fashion etc.). It also reminded me, unfortunately, of how so much of it is usually so bad. (more…)

There’s been a bevy of interesting camera related competitions lately (see Etsy’s Handmade Moment competition) and now the good folks from Jen Bekman Projects and 20×200 are staging another: Hey, Hot Shot! (below: Untitled, from the series “The Cybernetic Tourist” by Elizabeth Obert.)

This round (there are two rounds per year) of the competition, in its fifth year, closes next Friday, October 23rd but that leaves the weekend and all of next week to get out and do some serious shooting and see if you can’t take home one of the $500 prizes and the chance to have your work exhibited in Bekman’s New York gallery. Even if you don’t, you’re entry will none-the-less be reviewed by a stellar panel of judges and receive exposure via the their blog. What are you waiting for? You can apply now here. Got questions? No worries, you can find the answers here. Happy shooting!

We’ve been thinking about garbage a lot around here lately and various ways to reduce the copious amounts we create. The talk turned to napkins recently and therefore I was pleasantly surprised to get word from my friend Lee Cerre of a new venture she’s involved in—Studio Patro.

According to their site, “STUDIOPATRO or ‘pattern studio’, began on the walls of Christina Weber’s studio in San Francisco. A growing collage of leaves, maps, typography, and architecture evolved into prints, patterns and tea towels. Chris is an art director and designer by trade and always wanted to explore design through textiles. Tea towels were a natural fit because they are inherently sustainable and lend themselves to endless interpretations. Studiopatro is now a collaboration of local screeners, sewers and friends, who share a passion to create high-quality, enduring products.”

Sounds like we may have to round up a few Tea Towels for around the office…

I am out in Iowa, communing with my fellow editors and helping to put the December/January issue of ReadyMade to bed. While here, I’m also taking an opportunity to pick through the review copies of books that have accumulated on our shelves since the last trip. (It’s been about ten years since my first media internship, and I still think free books are the best perk in the business.)

I’ve picked up two prospective reads that go together thematically. They’re part of a subgenre of literature that’s dear to my heart—and probably explains a large part of my attraction, years ago, to ReadyMade itself. They’re books that blend some degree of how-to component with a philosophical orientation that’s about questioning middle-class American values, asking whether we’re living in the best and smartest and most happy-making way, and if not, what we could do to make it better. I’ve already talked about my childhood obsession with the Whole Earth Catalogs that came out of the hippie movement. In college I fell for Paul Goodman’s 1960 book Growing Up Absurd, which was all about describing (in very ’50s terms) the “rat race” of modern corporate life, and what one could do to drop out of it.

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Little Otsu, the delightful small publisher/store in San Fransisco, has released their Annual Vol. 4 Weekly Planner. More about it from them:

We’ve teamed up again with Minneapolis artist Dan Black for the 4th Little Otsu Annual Weekly Planner! For Volume 4, we’re going wide and giving you 54 dateless weeks in a horizontal spiral format. In addition to all our regular features like list pages, we’ve added a brand new feature of fold-out mini calendars for 2010/2011!.

(For even more on Yvonne and Jeremy, the duo behind the company, check them out here.)

I was first introduced to the work of Nikki McClure through the film Handmade Nation. Faythe Levine, the director of the film, and her team did a great  job of capturing Nikki at work creating her stunning paper-cut images using an x-acto knife (below, the cover of her recently released 2010 calendar, “Revive”).

I was also introduced to BuyOlympia, the online purveyor of goods who, according to their site “started back in 1999 in Olympia, Washington as a way to help our friends sell their awesome handmade items online, and have since grown to have a lot more friends from all over the world.” Co-founders Aaron Tuller and Pat Castaldo are an inspiring story if ever there was one so I was really pleased to receive an invitation recently to the opening of their new retail space and art gallery, Land, in Portland, Oregon this past Friday (below, a few hours before the big opening).

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SF-based furniture maker Anand Gowda of Gravy Service, whom we featured in our July/August ‘07 issue, has new photos and new projects up on his website. Our favorites: a sky-scraping asymmetrical bookshelf in a loft, and a minimalist against-the-wall desk that would be cool even without the folding feature.

Rest of the pictures after the jump.

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The Chicago-based band Mittens on Strings doesn’t really fall into any one genre, but we’ll go with dark chamber pop/folk/electronica just in case. For their latest album, lead singer Alex Preston took the ReadyMade approach for the band’s “The Flaming Pig” music video. In order to tell the story of a pig that flies too close to the sun, Preston scoured the dollar store for items to make his stop motion video.

After watching the video, I think Ben Rubenstein of Centerstage sums it up quite nicely:

Chicago’s Mittens on Strings is an indie band that likes to jam. Or a jam band that dabbles in weird pop. Or maybe just a group of dudes who listened to a lot of Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while taking hardcore psychedelic drugs…The musicianship is solid and varied and the lyrics, while often humorous, also pack a definite punch. Before long, you’ll find yourself mouthing the words “a burnin’ hog ain’t fun” without even cracking a smile. (Ben Rubenstein – Centerstage)

Their new album, Let’s Go To Baba’s, is out today and mp3s can be purchased via a pay-what-you-want format here.