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Brian Moore’s Busy Simulator makes repeating app sounds that make you seem incredibly busy. Fun exercise: observe how your body feels when you hear these sounds. I have different reactions to different apps.
Tai Ericson is using donated Harry Potter books to make portraits of transgender people who have been murdered, including
Sam Nordquist and
Ra’Lasia Wright. “The author [of Harry Potter] has contributed purposefully and relentlessly to a culture that vilifies and endangers trans people around the world. The portrait destroys her work, replacing it with a memorial to someone that lost their life to the culture fostered by the author.”
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via) Artist
Isabel Fish created a dozen animated horses using “unconventional methods” with her computer, including with smudges on her screen, Excel, Google Maps, and desktop icons. Inspect the website to see horse frames in the HTML comments.
During the pandemic, Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein turned his quilting hobby into a full-time gig. (Check out his
studio setup.) Today, he shows his work at museums and hosts “bitch and stitch” sessions with his quilting circle. “Being an artist is constantly trying to figure out who you are,” he says about his reinvention.
Software developer
Jenn Schiffer left her tech job and opened a handmade candle shop,
Bugs Rock. These charming egg tea lights were a hit in my house.
I had the chance to see artist
Jo Hay’s huge portraits of iconic women in person last week. They are stunning. Looking at any one of them feels like making eye contact with a wise old friend telling you:
you got this. Prints, posters, and pins
are for sale here—the bigger the format, the more striking they are.
Erika Hall painted a truckload of
delightful chicken portraits while she was supposed to be writing a book. They await your appraisal at
Clickens. The work one does while avoiding something else is some of the best work.
My former colleague
Stephen Koch spotted some neat M.C. Escher tile art in a book, and spent a holiday weekend bringing it to the web using SVGs. This fascinating pattern is
made of 4 tiles which repeat, rotated. Set the tile color with the color’s the hex code in the URL, like this
pool blue.
Pay attention to the things that expand your heart. When a person, a work of art, an essay, a film, a song, a photograph intrigues you, makes your chest feel bigger, gives rise to a warm feeling in your body, take note.
I had these feelings earlier this fall, when I got to visit the Guggenheim for Jenny Holzer’s Light Line exhibit. I’ve loved Holzer’s truisms for years now. I barely felt my feet watching them scrolling across the edges of that gorgeous rotunda in person, the way they did in 1989, except at all 6 levels.
